5 Essential Principles For Growing Your Small Business

It isn’t all it takes, but these five essentials will help you build a solid base and become one of the small businesses that succeeds.

Leading a small business can be more stressful than raising children or maintaining a healthy relationship with your spouse. Here are some basic principles to get you started on a sane journey toward growth.

When John Mackey and his then-girlfriend Renee Lawson opened a vegetarian food store in their Austin, Texas home 34 years ago, nobody–including the couple themselves–would have dubbed him an entrepreneur. Today, a clean-shaven Mackey is most likely unrecognizable to patrons of the bearded college dropout’s first shop. He built his venture into the $15.5 billion Whole Foods empire, with more than 300 supermarkets that boast organic and grass-fed meats along with an array of vegetarian fare.

Few will ever rise to the ranks of Mackey, who made the cut for Fortune’s 12 greatest entrepreneurs of our time. Mackey created a repeatable process of selling high quality natural and organic products in communities with the right appetite for a brand that relies on customer affinity. It takes a combination of understanding market demand and market size and having repeatable processes to support that market to have a scalable business. And Mackey had to strive to sustain innovation in a world where even Walmart peddles organic foods.

So many business founders come up with a good idea, yet they are unable to scale their companies for growth. Through my own journey as an entrepreneur, I’ve learned that every business is unique, but there are certain key precepts to follow for success. The few that do succeed do so with unmatched focus, discipline, and unconventional thinking.

Although it takes more than just this to be a success in business, here are five essential principles that you can begin implementing right away as you begin your journey toward growing your business:

1. Timing is everything.
The timing of your product or service must be right in the marketplace. Mackey bit on the organic and natural food revolution just as the public’s palate for these products oozed into the mainstream, but if the market isn’t ready and you are way ahead of the market, then you must possess the drive and the willingness to sacrifice in order to make that product or service work.

You will need to choose to either wait for the market to catch up (requiring the resources to survive during that period, and accepting the risk of emerging competition), or you’ll need to adjust your offering to something more palatable to the market’s current readiness.

Smaller businesses have the advantage of being able to make choices and implement changes without the exhaustive process and conflicting points of view that slow down major corporations. You need to anticipate your market and customers’ needs and constantly innovate to stay ahead. This requires leadership with agility, resilience, and a willingness to fail–and to recognize that failure quickly enough to adapt and move forward.

2. Brand, brand, brand.
Today’s economy requires business leaders to create positive memories for customers and partners, like Mackey has, or customers will turn to a competitor in search of a better experience. Whole Foods shoppers are loyal and believe they are embracing a healthy and socially conscious lifestyle by shopping at the stores. If you want to create a scalable business, you have to understand just how crucial it is to build brand equity. The emotional attachment that links customers to your product, as opposed to any other, translates into sustainable growth.

Here are some basic rules to connect, shape, influence, and lead with your brand:

• Choose your target audience. The surest road to product failure is to try to be all things to all people.
• Connect with the public. Your objective is to make your audience feel an emotional attachment to your brand. Be sure to have a stunning website.
• Inspire and influence your audience. An inspirational brand message is far more influential than one that just highlights product feature functions.
• Reinforce the brand image within your company. Make sure employees at every level of your organization work and behave in a way that reinforces your brand image.

3. Scale your sales.
Creating a unique product and a unique brand isn’t enough. It takes repeatable sales processes to create a scalable business. It is one thing to sign up a few customers; it is another thing entirely to identify, design, and implement repeatable sales and customer delivery processes. You’ve created a repeatable and scalable sales model when:

• You can add new hires at the same productivity level as yourself or your sales leader.
• You can increase the sources of your customer leads on a consistent basis.
• Your sales conversion rate and revenue can be consistently forecasted.
• Your cost to acquire a new customer is significantly less than the amount you can earn from that customer over time.
• Your customers get the right product in the right place at the right time.

A repeatable sales model builds the platform to scale. Like the search for product/market fit, it can take major experimentation/R&D to find a repeatable and scalable sales model.

4. Embrace technology.
Nearly two thirds, or 64%, of the recent Bank of America (BofA) Small Business Owner Survey respondents said they wish they took better advantage of technology innovations to help manage their business. If a small business can identify a genuine need, technology likely exists to fulfill that need both locally and globally. There are few barriers to entry in an age where anyone with wireless can cheaply and quickly access the enabling technologies needed to execute their business model. It comes down to creating the right operating blueprint that connects the dots between your business model and the application of accessible technologies.

5. De-stress for success.
Most small business owners consider managing the ongoing success of their business to be twice as stressful as maintaining a healthy relationship with a spouse or partner, nearly three times as stressful as raising children, and more than four times as stressful as managing their own personal finances, according to the same Bank of America report mentioned earlier. The survey indicates that small business owners routinely forgo physical fitness and other personal priorities to keep up with business demands. Thirty-eight percent of small business owners maintain full or part-time jobs while running their own business.

The stressors can be relentless. But if you’re not happy, healthy, and motivated, you can’t create a business model that provides a positive market experience. You also set the tone for everyone who works with you. Nobody wants to do business with a grouchy, bitter, and exhausted owner. Therefore, investing the time and effort to adequately take care of your physical and mental well-being will further increase your chances for long-term success. Mental health is not just about going to the gym to let off steam. It’s about achieving a state of mental calmness to see you though the relentless challenges–but that’s another topic in itself!

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WittyCookie is an award-winning digital agency that specializes in affordable web design, graphic design, and SEO solutions to help small businesses grow.

Service plans start at just $19/month, all-inclusive with web design, web hosting, email setup, ongoing maintenance, and unlimited updates. We charge no setup fee, no cancellation fee, and no term contracts with a full money back guarantee.

Visit wittycookie.com to get started.

10 Inexpensive Ways to Advertise Your Small Business

Banner ads and print ads can be expensive. And they are not necessarily the best way to advertise your small or mid-size business. So to find how to get the greatest return on your advertising investment, Small Business Computing surveyed small business owners. Below are 10 of their top suggestions for how to advertise on a budget.

1. Invest in Google AdWords

“AdWords and PPC [pay-per-click] can give you crazy amounts of traffic if you are tight with your campaign and run niche ad groups,” explained Andrew Riker an SEO specialist at WordStream. “Focused, long-tail keywords that are specific to your industry will cause the highest possible click-through rate and in-turn conversions.”

Riker adds that you don’t have to spend a lot of money to get a lot of traffic.  “A small daily budget — $10-$20/day — can provide you with a large amount of traffic and in turn qualified leads, as long as the ad is relevant,” he said.

2. Try Facebook Ads

“We tried print ads and banner ads, but for our money Facebook ads provide us with the most focused consumers,” explained Chris Knollmeyer, Web manager for Carolina Rustica. “Being able to target specific demographics lets us pinpoint people we have not reached yet and provides us with a platform to reach out to them. This kind of targeting allows us to minimize extemporaneous clicks from consumers [who are] just browsing or searching for information and gets us the most for our money.”

“Facebook ads have definitely been the most successful overall,” concurred Megan LaBant Abrahamsen, the owner of Blue Star Bazaar. “I can set a small budget (less than $10 per day) and target specific customers – [by] age, gender, education and interests similar to my product categories.”

Even if people don’t immediately make a purchase because of the Facebook ad, many of them wind up “liking” her business, she said, which lets Blue Star Bazaar create a database of potential customers.

3. Look into StumbleUpon Paid Discovery

“One of the best ways to advertise and get traffic to your website is by using StumbleUpon ads [StumbleUpon Paid Discovery],” noted Chris Wise, the online marketing director at CustomerRave. “They cost as little as $0.05 a click, so for $5 you can get 100 unique visitors to your site. While the bounce rate is more often than not higher when using these ads, it’s a great way to advertise contests, giveaways and big promotions,” he said.

And if the content you are promoting proves to be popular and receives a lot of “likes,” you will start receiving free traffic from Stumbles, which can go on for months, even after you have stopped advertising.

4. Get Published Online

Another great way to advertise your business is to “submit articles on topics your customers may be interested in to reputable websites, such as Ezinearticles.com, Articlesbase.com or TheFreeLibrary.com,” said Matthew Kostanecki, a marketing specialist at Archon Systems.

“In exchange for the content, they allow you to include a couple of back links to your website. Not only does this provide you with potential traffic and leads to your business, it also helps establish you as an expert in your related field,” said Kostanecki.  Can’t come up with a subject to write about? He suggests asking your customers about their biggest pains and problems.

5. Donate Products or Volunteer Services to a Worthy Cause

“I got the equivalent of $1,000 in advertising by building the website for the Rhode Island Rally for Recovery,” explained Benjamin John Coleman, founder of The Origami Bonsai Company. And his investment of time really paid off — resulting in $5,000 in new business. That’s because when other vendors who participated in the Rally saw what a great job his company did building and maintaining the Rally website, they hired Coleman to help them with their websites.

6. Cultivate Bloggers

“Find influential bloggers in your industry and ask them to review your product or service,” suggested Daniel Weaver, the president and owner of Daniel’sPromise. “Many will be happy to do so if you give them free product for them to use.”

That’s what Juppy, the maker of the Juppy Baby Walker, did. “When we started out, our company we didn’t have a lot of cash on hand to spend on advertising,” explained Mayra Sotelo, the COO for Juppy. “So we decided to seek out mom bloggers who would review The Juppy Baby Walker. This worked out great for us…because there is no better [endorsement of] our baby walker that fits in a purse than by a real mom who loves our product.”

And if you can’t find a blogger who will review and write about your product for free, there are also bloggers “who will write about your site/product/company in exchange for a fee,” noted Mike Scanlin, CEO of Born To Sell. And even with a fee, that kind of endorsement is typically more effective and less expensive than a banner ad.

7. Claim Local Listings on Google Places, Yahoo Local and Bing Local

“You’d be amazed at how many small businesses forget to sign up for services like Google Places, Yahoo Local, and Bing Local even though it’s free!” explained Mandy Boyle, the SEO manager for Solid Cactus. “Claim your local listing, fill out the information and take advantage of people searching for businesses in your area,” she advised.

8. Use Community Sites and Local Directories

“Community-based online networks [such as Thumbtack and Quentin’s Friends] are a great way to cost-effectively get the word out about your business to a more targeted group,” explained Dana Leavy, CEO ofAspyre Solutions.

Leavy uses a site called Quentin’s Friends, an invitation-only network where members can post recommendations and offers for their products and services for a very small fee ($15). “The service is location-specific, so my ad is going out to thousands of people who are specifically in my geographic area, New York,” she said. And Leavy’s return on investment has been an impressive 6,500 percent.

9. Link Up with LinkedIn Ads

If you own a B2B company, a good way to reach your target audience is through LinkedIn advertising, “We are a small business and our target market is small business users,” explained Damian Raffele, vice president, marketing, AnyMeeting.

LinkedIn Ads has worked well for the company, because it allows them to target a specific audience by geography, demographics, job title or LinkedIn Group. “Being able to target users who belong to specific LinkedIn Groups… allows us to design ad copy that is tailored for them, which has resulted in great conversion rates, providing us with a great ROI on our marketing spend.”

10. Distribute Flyers

“If you have a small business that focuses on a particular area, flyers are a great way to advertise,” said Nathan Letourneau, co-founder of CampusBooks4Less. And they needn’t be expensive. Chances are you have someone in your company, or a friend or family member, who can help you design the flyer inexpensively (or for free) – and you can print the flyer in house or find an inexpensive printer.

As for distribution, “hire some high school or college students and have them put the flyers on parked cars, attach them to house entry doors and distribute them inside area businesses (to employees and on any bulletin boards, if allowed) and apartment complexes,” he advised. “We saw huge increases in traffic after having students distribute flyers on parked cars in our target areas.”

While not every method will work for every business, each advertising strategy is inexpensive enough that you should be able try a few to find out what works for you. Also, many of the sites mentioned, such as Google AdWords and Facebook, periodically offer advertising credits or discounts, which small business owners should use to their advantage.

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WittyCookie is an award-winning digital agency that specializes in affordable web design, graphic design, and SEO solutions to help small businesses grow.

Service plans start at just $19/month, all-inclusive with web design, web hosting, email setup, ongoing maintenance, and unlimited updates. We charge no setup fee, no cancellation fee, and no term contracts with a full money back guarantee.

Visit wittycookie.com to get started.

Choosing a Designer: How to Review Portfolios

It’s easy to spot a beautiful portfolio. Designers know that looks sell, and many people sell themselves that way. Of course, the ability to make something that looks good matters, especially for visual designers. But the challenge is that great images say nothing about what it will be like to work with someone, or whether they’ll be consistently able to produce good work.

Hiring a designer is a challenge. As a founder without firsthand design experience, it’s hard to know what skills to value and how to judge a candidate. You likely have experience reading résumés and interviewing candidates, but how should you judge a design portfolio?

It’s possible to look past the pretty imagery — you just need to balance first impressions with a bit of rigor and analysis. A portfolio isn’t a collection of pictures. (Writers have entire portfolios without a single image.) A portfolio is just a collection of past work. And it’s a great complement to a résumé because it shows you the actual work instead of just listing responsibilities and top-line accomplishments.

Actually, start with the résumé

Before I look at the portfolio, I usually look at the résumé to establish some baseline expectations:

• How many years of experience do they have?
• Any formal design education?
• Any companies or agencies I’d recognize?
• How are they positioning themselves? (Interaction designer, visual designer, etc.)
• Any job titles or responsibilities that seem overstated?

Based on the résumé, I’ll look at the portfolio to challenge possible biases, look for clues to questions I now have, and get a more nuanced picture of what type of designer this person might be.

Then I dive in. After seeing a couple hundred portfolios, there’s a set of questions I ask myself. Some are about the portfolio generally, and the rest are about the work.

Look at the portfolio design itself

Did they treat this like a design problem? Too often, designers don’t think about their portfolio as the solution to a design problem. Let’s phrase it as one: create an experience giving the person screening you enough insight into your unique set of experience, skills, and approaches that he or she feels reasonably confident that interviewing you won’t be a waste of time.

Did they build it themselves? Yeah, building it yourself gets you more credibility, but only if it’s well-designed. An interaction designer might suffer here by putting their lackluster visual chops to work, though there’s more room for building thoughtful interactions. Portfolio sites — CargoCollective, Behance, any number of WordPress templates — tend to only emphasize images, and even a visual designer should have a good story to tell.

What’s the navigation like? If it’s custom, are they communicating that they understand the nuances of portfolio browsing? Whenever I drill down on one piece, I look to see if I can move to another piece directly, and whether they’re placing that navigation in a thoughtful location, such as the end of a long page. If you’re using modal lightboxes, have you tried to make the image bigger and the navigation better than the defaults? If they’re grouping work, is it by theme, by job, or arbitrary?

Look at each piece of work

Did they communicate their understanding of the problem they were solving? Very few people do this, and it sucks. It sends the message that they were either lazy, not user-centered (where the “user” is the person looking at the portfolio), or that they value the wrong things about design: making pretty things and not solving problems through clear communication.

Did they understand if and why their solution was successful?Success can be defined a number of ways: meeting the goals originally laid out, improving on a key metric, recognition by the press or users, etc. Can they be self-critical and assess the outcome of their work? Can they communicate what makes something effective?

What was their contribution as part of a bigger team? This is especially tough if it’s a bigger project where other designers played a similar role. It’s great to know how much collaborative work someone has done, and it’s even better to know that a person can gracefully share credit with their peers.

Generalize: What kind of designer is this?

There are a few portfolio stereotypes I tend to see. Does the design candidate fit into one of these categories? Which category best fits your company’s need?

Visual/UI designer: Likely the lowest word-to-pixel ratio of any designer, and the greatest use (and misuse) of trendy type, color, and visual effects. They can make your homepage hum and your buttons sparkle, but can they create a consistent and comprehensive brand and visual system?

New grad: The portfolio is heavy on student projects. Most often it’s an HCI Masters student, or possibly an industrial or graphic design undergrad. How much work in your domain have they actually done? Can you discern their contribution to group projects? If they have an HCI background, they may have better research skills than actual design chops.

Web designer: Comes off as a real all-arounder. They’ve most often worked at agencies or freelanced. Mentions their front-end skills and visual design skills, but might be bluffing on their UX chops. Have they tackled more challenging, stateful, and conditional interactions, or have they just built content sites?

Experienced UX designer: They’ll throw out big product or company names you recognize, and you may see inflated job titles. Hopefully they’ve tackled longer projects and more challenging feature sets. However, if they’ve been at big companies, they may have moved much more slowly. Either way, set your standards high, but be hopeful.

Making the decision: Should I interview this design candidate?

Think hard about what a designer is communicating — deliberately or not — based on what they’re showing you. What are they saying and how are they saying it? Their focus and delivery tells you a ton about what they value. Will that align with — or be a complement to — what you and your company value?

Who to hire depends on the specifics of your situation. Different products need different skills. It’s easy to go with the wrong set of skills, and easy to be swayed by the wrong things.

What if they don’t have a portfolio?

Lots of great designers don’t have portfolios, including some of the best ones I know. They’ve been working somewhere for a long time, or have great connections, or otherwise haven’t felt the need. Among web and software companies, portfolios weren’t used commonly as a screening tool until a couple of years ago. The portfolio was presented as part of the interview, but not as a requirement to get the meeting.

But times are changing. When I screened candidates at Google from 2004 to 2008, I didn’t expect portfolios. Now I see online portfolios frequently enough that I do. If I don’t see one, I feel comfortable asking for one, usually expecting a PDF. If they’re hesitant or too busy but it still seems promising, I usually ask for a quick screen-sharing session over Skype to walk me through a project or two. It’s not ideal, but it’s better than wasting time on multiple in-person meetings if you learn too late that the person is clearly not a match.

Some advice for designers

Stop selling sex. If you’re not showing how you think, all you’re selling is your good looks, and you’re setting the tone for the relationship between yourself and the rest of the team going forward. Pretend your portfolio is an online dating profile. What would it say if you looked at someone’s profile and all they had was a bunch of perfectly coiffed photos of themselves, with nothing written and little else — visual or verbal — to give you a better sense of personality?

Show that you’re a great thinker, not just a great Photoshopper. You are not a voice controlled mouse cursor for the client. Show that you can clearly frame a problem, establish goals for success, and explore solutions in a way that inspires confidence.

Vary how deep you go. Show a wide variety of work. Do a “case study” where you spend more time on problem framing and process work — everything that shows that you’ve got a great brain, not just good eyes and hands. Then mix it up with shorter project descriptions — something that piques my curiosity and leaves me wanting to hear more. Surprise me with a section that’s shallow but broad, say a collection of your best sketches.

Write about what’s unique. Don’t just say that you follow best practices: Personas, Contextual Inquiry, Card Sorting, blah blah. Everyone has that same list. Show me why your persona doc is better than any other, or why the way you capture behavioral states should be signed and framed. If your design solution is novel, tell me. If none of them are, that’s not so great, but then tell me why working with you is different. You are a unique snowflake, dammit, so hand me the magnifying glass.

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Choosing who to hire is arguably the most important decision a startup makes. Given the high-risk nature of startups, the kind of collaborative work involved, and the small size of the team, the team you pick (and the team who picks you) has a huge impact on your success. Hiring is important at large companies, but at startups, it’s absolutely critical.

Designers have never been in more demand, so I feel conflicted about telling you to be more rigorous when looking at portfolios. But as demand rises, there’s always the risk of quality taking a dip. I want a generation of creative, thoughtful, disciplined designers making continually bigger contributions to startups, and your hiring choices will make that happen.

What have you learned in your time spent perusing portfolios? Anything you’ve seen more than once that makes you wonder, “why’d they do that?”

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WittyCookie is an award-winning digital agency that specializes in affordable web design, graphic design, and SEO solutions to help small businesses grow.

Service plans start at just $19/month, all-inclusive with web design, web hosting, email setup, ongoing maintenance, and unlimited updates. We charge no setup fee, no cancellation fee, and no term contracts with a full money back guarantee.

Visit wittycookie.com to get started.

8 Design Tips for Effective Landing Pages

I’m going to take a different approach to this post and use photography to illustrate some principles of design.

Understanding these fundamental concepts will help you grab your visitors attention and direct them to your intended conversion goal.

The most important element of any landing page is the conversion goal. Similarly, the most important aspect of your landing page design is to focus the visitor’s attention on that conversion area.

Make your visitors pay attention to your landing page!!!

Using Photography to Illustrate Visual Techniques

There are multiple ways to catch the attention of your visitors; you can use bold, catchy, funny or controversial copy or beautiful typographic design, you can have a video to allow a multimedia experience, and you can use some fundamental principles of design toguide the eyes of your customers with directional cues.

In this post I’ll break this into 2 main categories:

1. Suggestive Directional Cues: Abstract techniques that guide attention in a more subtle way.
2. Explicit Directional Cues: The use of arrows and real-world indicators familiar to our learned behaviour.

Some of these principles can be utilized by using photography directly, and for the rest, the illustrative powers of a photograph should be all you need to understand the concept.

TIP: Click the photos for a closeup…

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Suggestive Directional Cues

1. WHITESPACE

In this example, the muted tones of the meadow drive your eye to the Pronghorn positioned in the corner.

Whitespace (or more correctly “blank space”) is an area of more or less nothing surrounding an area of importance. The reason I say blank space is that the color of the space isn’t important.

The purpose is to use simple spacial positioning to allow your Call To Action (CTA) to stand out from it’s surroundings and give your eye only one thing to focus on.

Landing page tip: Give your CTA or lead gen form some breathing room to allow it to stand out from the rest of your design.

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2. COLOR

Color can be used to create an emotional response from your visitors. Orange for example is known to generate positive feelings and as such is a great choice for the color of your CTA. (You can also consider the positive affect of Green for go, and Blue as the classic click-me link colour).

The color here is so extreme that you can’t help but pay attention to it. This example also illustrates the contrast of color compared to the muted surrounding area.

Another important consideration is the contrasting effect of color. This idea borrows from the whitespace and contrast techniques described in points #1 and #3 in that it’s a method of “isolation via difference”.

In this first example, an “in your face” approach is used – the color is so overwhelming that you can’t help but stare at it – in this case often in disbelief as it’s a remarkable example of nature.

Landing page tip: Let your primary conversion target dominate the page.

Color and contrast

Position and color contrast are used here to move your eyetowards the grasshopper. The reason is that the entire shot is a single color except for the subject or interest.

Landing page tip: Use a single color (with a variety of tones) for your entire landing page – except for the CTA.

Make it jump off the page.

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3. CONTRAST

I dare you to click on anything but the moon.

This is a fairly simple concept that applies across the color spectrum, but is most easily viewed in monochrome.

Landing page tip: The more you can make your Call To Action stand out from it’s surroundings the easier it will be to see. If you have a lot of black/grey text on a white background, then a black or white CTA won’t provide the desired contrast and you’d be better off with a colorful element. But if you have a very clean design without much detail or copy, a big black or white button can be dramatic.

Attention is focused on the primary element rising from the lake, and a secondary feature (the bush) due to the contrast with their surroundings.

This is a more subtle example that shows how contrast can be used to highlight one or two key elements of a design.

Your eye is drawn to the Tufa formation rising from the lake, and then bounces down to the bush.

Landing page tip: Test using an impactful and contrasting photo as your hero shot, and mirror the palette choice and contrast levels on your CTA to draw a parallel and guide the visitor from the emotional element to the conversion goal.

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4. THE SUGGESTIVE POWER OF THE EYE

As humans we’re all programmed to understand the purpose and use of eyes, and the meaning that comes with a stare/glance/look from the eyes of someone or something else.

Here the monkey’s eyes and tilted head force you to stare at the Banana

You can’t help but look down from the head of this Coyote

A subtle suggestion to follow the gaze of the Elk to the flock of birds

Imagine walking down a city street. There is a single person standing looking directly up in the air. Our innate curiosity requires that we follow their gaze to see what’s happening. Turn this into a crowd of people looking in a certain direction and we behave like sheep or lemmings, blindly (?) following the implied or perceived importance of the actions of others.

In the first example, the Capuchin is looking at the Banana as if were a hand in a game of cards.Curiosity is the motivation that forces you to follow his gaze.

With eye movement comes head movement. In this shot, you are not only curious about what could be in the grass, but you are forced to look downwards with the Coyote.

You’d want your conversion target to be where he (and everyone else) is looking.

In the 3rd example, the directional cue is much more subtle, but still very clear. Your attention is first driven to the Elk in the bottom-right corner (this would be your primary headline or Unique Selling Proposition).

You then follow his gaze to the left to see what he’s looking at – arriving at the flock of birds flying over the river – which would be your CTA.

Landing page tip: Use photography of people or animals on your landing page and have them stare directly at your CTA with either the angle of their head or their eyes (in a closeup).

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5. INTERRUPTION (Surprise)

There’s a reason why banner blindness has helped click through rates plummet over the last few years.

Visual surprise

People have become programmed to know where the advertising is positioned on your website, enabling them to switch off (or put on blinders like a racehorse) to concentrate on the content instead.

To prevent this you need to surprise people.

In the photo shown, the person (me) is so out of place in the photo of a desert slot canyon that it makes you question it’s purpose or reality.

Landing page tip: Go a bit punk and try something radical on your landing pages.

A slight rotation gives this button difference to catch your attention.

While you don’t necessarily need to have a naked man streaking across the page – you could try something as simple as taking your Call To Action button and rotating it by 30-45 degrees to create an unexpected design shape.

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6. ENCAPSULATION

The river frames the central feature and traps your eyes inside

This is a classic technique used to hijack your visitors eyes and create a tunnel vision effect. You can think of it like creating a window on your landing page where your CTA is the view.

In the first example a strong dark line is created by the river which helps to hold your attention in the center of the frame.

The arch forces you to pay attention to the view inside it

In the second example, a circular arch creates a frame for the feature in the distance, preventing your eye from wandering elsewhere in the photo.

Landing page tip: Use strong dynamic shapes to constrain your points of interest.

Think of the classic James Bond intro sequence where you see him inside a circular design. (Examples here).

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Explicit Directional Cues

The previous examples were all very suggestive and implied an interaction with your visitors. If you want to get a bit more instructive and literal, you can try using more explicit directional cues to point and lead the way.

7. ARROWS

Photo credit Missy Shana – MissyShana.com

As directional cues, arrows are about as subtle as a punch in the face – which is why they work so well. With so little time on your page, guiding the user to the checkout is a smart move.

Arrows let you say, “ignore everything else and pay attention to this please”.

The awesome example opposite shows 3 types of cue all at once. The arrow is a directional pointer, the man opposite is then firing you right back to the guy with the arrow using his eyes, and finally the upside-down text acts as an interruption that make you stop and stare (and most likely rotate your head to figure out what it says).

I used an arrow as a directional guide on the 101LandingPageTips.com site to move attention from the main product image and headline, down to the primary conversion area – the lead gen form.

Landing page tip: Call attention to your most important page elements by using strangely placed and angled arrows. Tie a sequence of arrows together to define a path for the visitor to follow, ending at your CTA.

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8. PATHWAYS

The road leads your eye directly to the large rock Mesa at the top of the photo. Place your CTA here.

Pathways are representations of real-world wayfinding avenues that trigger our brain into thinking we need to follow them. This example shows a long straight road, leading your eye to the large rock formation at the top of the photo. Roads are so strongly ingrained in our psyche as the path of least resistancethat we naturally gravitate towards them as a transport guide.

Landing page tip: Design converging lines to draw people to your Call To Action. Triangles are the most dynamic of all shapes, and their natural tendency to point make them a special design tool (in the same way that an arrow is a more intricately designed pathway).

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WittyCookie is an award-winning digital agency that specializes in affordable web design, graphic design, and SEO solutions to help small businesses grow.

Service plans start at just $19/month, all-inclusive with web design, web hosting, email setup, ongoing maintenance, and unlimited updates. We charge no setup fee, no cancellation fee, and no term contracts with a full money back guarantee.

Visit wittycookie.com to get started.

Who to Hire: Web Design Agency or Freelance Designer?

Since the dawn of the Information Age (circa 1970s) and the birth of the modern day Internet (circa 1990s), specialized services like website design, online marketing and computer programming have been in high demand. As companies continue to move their efforts online, the need for web savvy individuals will continue to increase – which is where we step in.

There definitely aren’t any “set in stone” rules about when and why you should hire a web design agency versus a freelance designer, but just like any situation, the choice should depend entirely on your individual project needs and the overall needs of your business.

While some companies prefer to work with larger teams, others may opt for more of a “one on one” approach to meeting their web requirements. To help you decide, we’ll list some of the benefits to hiring a web agency versus a local (or overseas) freelancer.

Extensive Portfolio

A definite plus to hiring an agency over a freelancer is that agencies will typically have a larger portfolio of websites and clients. This can give you a more accurate picture of their design, development and project management capabilities – as well as any high-profile clients they’ve worked with.

Though a freelancer could boast a list of established clients and diverse creative, the odds of them having sufficient experience in a wide range of industries (like finance, real estate, engineering, automotive) is pretty slim.

Project Management

Probably one of the major benefits and deciding factors for hiring a web design agency is project management. Different from working with a freelancer, web agencies often designate an account manager to oversee your entire project from start to finish; including discovery, design, development, and deployment.

If you have the technical know-how, hiring a freelancer may be a good choice as you would have direct contact with the designer, but the management of a project is often what ensures that every requirement is met, both technologically and creatively.

Expertise & Services

While a freelancer can draw from their own personal and professional experience, a web agency often has a plethora of additional services and resources that they can bring to the table should the occasion arise. On the other hand, an agency could be limited due to strict internal process, whereas a freelancer is more likely to “roll with the punches” – once they put their creative ego to the side.

A key difference is when it comes to additional services. Agencies usually employ in-house strategists, SEO analysts, social media managers, copywriters, illustrators and branding experts who are all available to contribute to the success of your website. Though your freelancer may “know someone”, having the talent located in one place is always a bonus.

The Truth

The truth is we’re not in any way discounting the importance or capability of freelance web designers – because many of us started out as freelancers. If you’d like to be more hands-on with your website design, and don’t really have a strict timeline, then hiring a freelancer is the way to go.

But if you’re company that employs more than 10 people, chances are you need a web vendor that has the experience and track record needed to meet your budget and deadline – not to mention keeping the “suits” happy throughout the process.

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WittyCookie is an award-winning digital agency that specializes in affordable web design, graphic design, and SEO solutions to help small businesses grow.

Service plans start at just $19/month, all-inclusive with web design, web hosting, email setup, ongoing maintenance, and unlimited updates. We charge no setup fee, no cancellation fee, and no term contracts with a full money back guarantee.

Visit wittycookie.com to get started.

Why Are Logos Important?

A brand is a complicated, breathing thing. It consists of many components that must all integrate into a seamless, functional whole.

However, humans are creatures that place a great amount of reliance on their sense of sight. For that simple reason, companies that want their branding to succeed put a lot of effort into making a logo. In some circles, logos are considered the most important component of a branding strategy or campaign.

For those who don’t quite grasp the importance, here are a few reasons:

• Visual Representation – just as the face is the frontline representative of a person, the logo is that for a business. Good branding makes the logo the “face” of a company, giving it an image and appeal that no other branding tool can provide.
• Memory – people tend to remember logos better than they do names. A good logo will often be easier to remember than the name of a product. It also provides an additional benefit – a familiar logo on a new product can help boost sales of the new item, because customers will associate its quality with the quality of other products with the same logo.
• Uniqueness – in a cluttered business environment, nothing can help a company or product stand out more than a good logo. A logo can do more for differentiating a product from its competitors at first glance than virtually anything else, making it a very important tool.

The logo is not going to be the only thing that a good brand needs, but it is a massive component of it. The ability to be distinct, to be remembered by customers, and proper representation of the product and company are all critical tasks of a good branding strategy. These are also functions that a good logo can be used for.

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WittyCookie is an award-winning digital agency that specializes in affordable web design, graphic design, and SEO solutions to help small businesses grow.

Service plans start at just $19/month, all-inclusive with web design, web hosting, email setup, ongoing maintenance, and unlimited updates. We charge no setup fee, no cancellation fee, and no term contracts with a full money back guarantee.

Visit wittycookie.com to get started or check out our logo portfolio.

Why is it important to have a website for your business?

With over 2.2 billion people online, the internet has revolutionized how we find and share information. The online world is moving at a rapid pace and doesn’t show any signs of slowing. For businesses, a web presence has become a fundamental part of success. But why is a presence on the web so important? How significant is the impact of being online? We’re glad you asked.

After several years with Fidelity Investments, in 1996 Richard Sexton decided to step away from the corporate world and follow his passion by opening Himal Home Gallery, a local home furnishings store in his hometown of North Carolina.

“I didn’t have any experience in running a retail operation. [The] learning curve had its fair share of mistakes,” Sexton said. “Going online early and choosing to use Google products were some of the better moves.”

During the ‘90s, no one knew for certain if there was a place for small businesses online or if they could find success there. But Sexton took the chance and launched a website for Himal Home Gallery.  The online presence gave Sexton’s small business a great deal of attention and the small shop took off. In 2000, Sexton relaunched the furniture store as Carolina Rustica, focusing primarily on wrought-iron furniture, their best selling item.

“We started with a small 500 square-foot booth in an antique mall and now our gallery is almost 20,000 square feet,” Sexton said. “Through the web, we could reach a much larger audience, and we began to invest in marketing activities that could connect us with us potential customers. I am very happy with the results. Our sales have increased 50% year on year.”

Carolina Rustica is just one of the many small businesses that found great success establishing an online presence.  But can their model apply to other business types? Can business that don’t sell products online still find a success with a website? Is having a business website really that important?

Yes, absolutely.

Never before has the world been able to connect across the globe and interact so easily. Think about the last time you needed to know something, anything — chances are you went to look it up online. The Internet has completely changed the way we live and how we gather information. Not only is it now our primary source of information, but it has revolutionized the way businesses operate and communicate with customers.

Websites and the online tools that promote them should be the focal point of all advertising and marketing for all businesses, big or small. Here’s why:

Because people are online. If you’re looking for an audience, more customers, or people to influence, the web is where your business needs to be. With over 78% of adult Americans using the Internet and an astounding 2.2 billion people online worldwide, it’s no surprise that small businesses with websites experience an average of 39% greater revenue per year than those without websites, according to the Small Business Administration.

But what if my consumers aren’t online? At WittyCookie, we get asked this question all the time.  For example, sometimes our clients refer to their consumers from an older demographic. We always tell them that they would be surprised at the amount of adults over 50 using the Internet.

When Roy Williams (business guru and New York Times bestselling author of “Secret Formulas of the Wizard of Ads”) was giving the keynote at a trades conference in Las Vegas, the chairman of the organization asked him to avoid mentioning the Internet because nearly all their 1,600 members were over the age of 55. Surprised by his request, Williams decided to start the talk by asking the crowd, “How many of you have used a search engine within the past seven days to research a product or service you were considering purchasing?” Almost instantly, over 95 percent of the members raised their hands.

A personal example: My gramps is an old-fashioned man who frankly didn’t care for computers until after he retired in 2002. But now at 70, he can’t get enough of his iPad or sharing vacation pictures with his friends on Facebook. (Yes, that’s right, my gramps is on Facebook with his friends). When I asked him why he changed his mind about the Internet, he simply said, “It’s convenient. That’s where everybody and everything is. It’s the fastest way to do or find or share anything.”

Your consumers are online, trust us.

Because it establishes credibility. When consumers can’t find a company online it raises a red flag. Does this company really exist? Can I trust them? Are they trying to scam me? People are more skeptical than ever.  Even when consumers don’t purchase online, they research and look online before they buy. In fact, 58 percent of global online consumers said they more likely to trust a company with “owned media,” such as a company with a website, versus one who doesn’t (Nielsen Advertising Survey, 2012).

When you have a good website, it gives people a peace of mind about your business. Whether you’re selling a product or service, or simply providing information, it’s important for your business to have a web presence in order to establish credibility.

Because it’s a great way to build your brand. A website lets you brand your business like never before. Websites give you unlimited freedom to determine how your business looks to your customers. Websites are flexible and can grow as yours business evolves, and they also allow your business to be available around the clock, even during off business hours. Add to this that websites are one of the most cost-effective tools available and it’s obvious why so many businesses now leverage a website.

Business branding through the web will help you develop a stronger reputation to millions around the world. Potential customers will be able to research your business and find good reviews about the product or service you provide. In fact, consumers say they trust online consumer reviews second from personal recommendations (Nielsen Advertising Survey, 2012). Think of your website as an extension of your sales staff, helping you nurture and generate leads by educating people on your products or services.

Because it is the best way to engage with prospective customers. Word of mouth has and always will be the most trusted form of advertisement. 92 percent of consumers around the world say they trust earned media, such as word-of-mouth and recommendations from friends and family, above all other forms of advertising (Nielsen Advertising Survey 2012).

With a website, you make it easy for consumers to share your business. With a simple link, they can instantly access all your business information. And with social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, it’s now even easier for people the to share things they love or recommend. When you have a website, you give these recommendations a place to go. Websites serves as central place for potential customers to learn more about why your business is so great.

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WittyCookie is an award-winning digital agency that specializes in affordable web design, graphic design, and SEO solutions to help small businesses grow.

Service plans start at just $19/month, all-inclusive with web design, web hosting, email setup, ongoing maintenance, and unlimited updates. We charge no setup fee, no cancellation fee, and no term contracts with a full money back guarantee.