Having a professionally designed logo plays a vital role in digitally marketing small businesses. It helps attract new customers because when people see a cool and eye-catching logo, it leaves a lasting impression in their minds, and most times, people would always remember seeing a cool logo of a brand that offers the services they need. So you will probably be the first they will contact when that need arises. That is how much a professional logo design can help market your brand or business.

When carrying out brand auditing for your business and you notice a decrease in engagement or interaction, a sure way to turn things around is to give your company a new look and makeover by getting a professional logo design. This new look will arouse the curiosity of potential customers thereby creating awareness and putting your business back in front of their faces. This way, you can also win back your lost clients.

Another reason why you need a professional logo design is to build the trust with potential customers. If they see a logo that is amateur or naively designed, they will doubt the competence of your business and would likely not entrust their needs in your hands. Such consumers will subconsciously question how well your company will be able to professionally deliver its products or services. This doubt is immediately overturned when you hire a professional company to design your logo. A professionally designed logo will put a potential customer’s mind at ease and push them to make a buying decision quickly.

In summary, your logo is the major identity of your business. It is how your business is recognized, and it also reflects its core values and principles. It is undoubtedly the most effective marketing tool – so take your time to invest greatly in developing a professional logo design and in no time, your business will reap the rewards.

As we all know that choosing the right images for the right audience is a key to success. The importance of using high-quality images on a website cannot be over emphasized. How do you actually know if an image is of high quality? Here are some factors to consider when choosing images for your business website:

Relevance to content

It is important that the selected images are relevant and describes the text they accompany. For example, you would want to use images that are ideal for kids where you are trying to target them. Using an elderly image in this situation might not work. Also, the image should also portray the brand message and the tone of the website. A relevant image will always give a clue on what is next to follow ‘text’.

Resolution

Low-resolution images will only come out unclear, unprofessional and untidy. The devices used nowadays have high-resolution displays which will immediately expose a low-quality image, and deter people away from your website instantly. I will personally not use an image than to use a low resolution image, as I see it as an easy way to create a bad first impression. Well optimized high-resolution image will clearly attract the human eye quietly saying “I’m gorgeous, don’t you think so?”

File Format

Using the right file format to target different audiences is very necessary. In a business environment, graphical presentations and infographics tend to engage its users without a need for an accompanying text. You need to determine if your image will be a .jpeg, .png or an animated .gif. If you have an entertainment blog, using animated images .gif will attract attention immediately, which will have better interaction and engagement than .png and .jpeg images. Both .jpeg and .png images work well for corporate and ecommerce website.

Professional

Professional images make sure that lighting, composition, exposure, sharpness and colour balance are perfect. All these factors cannot be overlooked if a high-quality image is required. While most people cannot ordinarily pinpoint what makes an image look professional, but they can often tell when an image is unprofessional.

Uniqueness

Uniqueness means that the images used are not readily available everywhere on the internet. Even if an image is popular over the internet, try to make it unique by changing opacity, adding text, adding blur or merging with another image. Ensuring that images used on your website are unique also means that they cannot be easily replicated.

Now that we have highlighted the factors to consider when choosing high quality images for your website, we also need to look at the few ways or means to obtain high-quality images:

Do it yourself

This option is very budget friendly, but not necessarily the best in all situations, especially when your requirements are very advanced.  You can decide to take photographs yourself and you sincerely don’t require the best gadget to take the most stunning images. Your smartphone can also take clear, crisp and professional images that will wow your audience. To improve the quality of your images, you can edit using filter apps or free photo editing software like Gimp, or learn some basic photography skills.

Hire a professional

For example, if you are a fashion designer, and you are looking to showcase your clothing line professionally on your website, you can hire a professional commercial photographer who can translate your images into sales. Peradventure, you are a corporate organization looking to take professional headshots of your board members, an experienced corporate photography agency is all you need.

Stock photography

There are a lot of free and paid stock photography websites. The only setback on using stock images is that you might not find images that exactly suit your needs and will be forced to compromise. Also stock photographs might not be unique as other people could have used the exact images on their website.

Design and Edit images

As part of do-it-yourself, if you are skilled enough, you could go the route of creating and designing your own images using software like Adobe Photoshop or CorelDraw. If you feel you haven’t got the time or need an expert touch at an affordable cost, you will need a creative graphics designer.

In conclusion, high-quality images can help your website stand out in your niche and amongst your competitors. A website design is incomplete without quality images. The pictures have to be used strategically to promote and complement the website’s content. Often, the major factor that keeps visitors glued to a website scrolling and clicking pages is the quality of the images on the website.

If you need further assistance on quality branding and design, or require help on implementing the tips provided here, do contact us and one of our experts will be in contact.

Images also go a great length to convey your message and set the tone for your website’s audience of what they may expect, as well as create a better understanding of the accompanying text.

There are a number of reasons why it is important to have high-quality images for your website. Here are some highlights:

Personalized Website

Putting up unique images that represent the brand message of your business on your website helps the visitors get a personal feel of your message. A business may also add pictures of members of the team and behind the scene images that portray the tone of the business’ outlook on their website. This enables your visitors to quickly get acquainted and comfortable to deal with you.

Clarity

It’s no brainer that adding images make the message being passed by the text and other contents on the website clearer. For instance, a post on how to share Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics will do better with screenshots showing the step by step process rather than series of steps without any accompanying image.

Provoke Independent Reactions

Images on their own can provoke reactions from web visitors. Just as funny pictures can provoke laughter, and controversial pictures can provoke arguments, high-quality images can increase engagement and may even be shared by your web visitors, thereby generating more traffic to your website.

Visual Learning

Some people find it easier to learn from images rather than text. Ordinarily, images register faster in the human mind than decoding text, that is, it’s easier to remember images and visual contents better than lengthy texts. This makes it easier to learn through visual materials thus complementing the body of text. In other words, a high-quality product photo will do more justice in compelling a potential buyer than long selling pitches called “product description”.

Professional Look

Quality and unique images make a website look more professional and more interesting. A caterer who uploads quality images of food and the cooking process will boost the engagement and conversion rate on her website, which also gives the business a professional look. Quality and unique images perform better on posts as they catch attention and arouse the reader’s interest. Quality images on a website give it a more appealing look as opposed to no images at all, or badly cropped, warped, and low-resolution images.

Easy to remember

Pictures easily stick to the memory. Biological studies claim that images are registered in the long term memory while text goes to the short term memory. People will therefore remember your pictures long after they have forgotten the accompanying text.

Favourable Judgements

Humans tend to make snap judgments subconsciously and awesome images provide a foundation to base such snap judgments on. When a website has professional looking images, the visitors tend to give a mental thumbs up even before considering the other components of the website.

A break from reading

Images provide a break from reading without actually leaving the web page, this makes it possible to reduce bounce rate from your website and increase time spent on the site. Images make a website’s content more interesting as opposed to having ordinary text, as it holds more attention.

Enhanced SEO

Images reduce bounce rate, which ensures that people stay on the website longer, thereby increasing the web page ranking. Images that are optimized with title tags and alt attributes are easily understood by search engine bots, which helps to achieve higher search engine ranking for targeted keywords. In other words, unique and quality images will invariably increase page views which could potentially improve conversion rates.

In conclusion, you can never go wrong with using the right quality images as it connects you with your visitors instantly, thereby winning their heart without a single word spoken. In order to benefit fully from using high quality images on your website, here is a few other factors to consider.

Everyone knows that there’s more to establishing an online presence than just having a website or blog full of amazing content. One of your major considerations is how to get people to stumble across your website and then how to keep them there!

It’s important for your business to find out as much as you can about the people who visit your website or read your blog, to determine if there’s a chance of doing business with them in the future.

The more you learn about the prospects reading your contents, the more likely it will be that they’ll become paying customers. So how can you use your content to generate new leads and get hold of vital data like email addresses, phone numbers and social media profiles.

Use Landing Pages to Highlight Content and Generate Leads

The purpose of a landing page is to convert visitors into leads. It is a simple, single web page that acts as a gate for prospects to find out more about your products or services. A good landing page should have a simple design with no distractions, a clear and concise call to action, an eye-catching image and a hassle-free opt-in form.

Where to Link your Landing Page to instead of your Website

The most common place to link landing pages to is the homepage of a website, although you can up your game by linking to landing pages that specifically target visitors from other sources, like social media.

Rather than having a link to your website on your Twitter or Facebook profiles, try linking to a landing page instead. This is an effective strategy because you can customise your landing page to appeal to readers preferring to connect via social media.

For example, you can send a landing page specifically to your Twitter followers with just 140 characters of content, with a form requesting their email address.  You can appeal to your Facebook audience by designing a landing page that resonates with your prospects’ interests.

The Importance of the Call to Action

The call to action (CTA) is a simple one-liner at the bottom of your posts and emails that requests the reader to do something. It can be to find out more about a specific offer, download your latest price list, request a quote for your service, or simply to register interest in your products or services.

Keep it simple with statements like, “click here to share this post on Facebook” or “Leave a comment and have your say”. It is important to remember that if someone has clicked on your call to action, they have read your email or landing page through to the end which goes a long way to qualifying your new leads as being genuinely interested.

When you create your landing page you need to have a clear idea of what your objectives are. If you want to encourage downloads of your new white paper in exchange for personal information, make the CTA absolutely clear. There shouldn’t be too much going on design-wise with your landing page as that complicates the issue, although you should aim to attract the attention of your audience with a large CTA.

Get into Guest Blogging

The advantage of blogging on other related websites is that you can use the opportunity to link to a landing page. By doing this, you can appeal to a whole new audience which of course, represents a significant number of potential leads.

Make your link clearly visible in your blog pieces by placing it in the middle of your byline or bio at the bottom and tease readers to follow the link. All you have to do is ensure that your offer speaks directly to the audience you are trying to reach and that your links to customised landing pages always work.

Use Video to Attract Traffic to your Landing Pages

Using video is a really effective way of digging up new leads and also networking with others in your sector and can easily be done with YouTube and Vimeo. When using video, make sure you make full use of the description section by linking it to a customised landing page that targets your specific audience. For example, if your video is a book promotion, link to a landing page that allows your audience to learn more and buy the book.

You can make the most of videos by adding custom links known as ‘annotations’. These links ‘float’ over the video enticing viewers to explore your content. You can place links to landing pages in your annotations at the end of a video encouraging viewers to find out more.

The Golden Rule of Keeping your Focus Narrow

As mentioned above, it is always best to keep the design of your landing pages simple and that applies to your offer also. Research shows that it takes longer for people to make decisions when faced with more choices and so you really want to be quite specific about what you want the reader to do next.

Don’t make your landing page too busy. There’s no need for a navigation bar or loads of images. You don’t want to have elements other than your CTA for the reader to click on. Also make sure that you request only the information you need when you use forms. The more fields there are for your visitor to enter, the less chance you’ll have of getting good responses.

Conclusion

There are no limits to how many landing pages you choose to have – it’s more about using the ones you have wisely. Each time you create a landing page, you should have clear objectives that are obvious to the reader and more likely to encourage further engagement.

With every new product you add to your range or for those special offers, you should create at least one landing page. It’s a great way to target your prospects and reach your audience in a more personal way to encourage future business. If you are creating and designing a landing page is beyond your technical know-how, we are happy to assist you with your requirements, just contact us.