You are probably already aware of the importance of a great logo for your business; your logo represents your business and can send a powerful message. However, if you find that your logo is sending the wrong message, it may be time to make some changes. Or your company may simply need to update its look. Changing your logo, though, is not a quick task. Change too much and you may confuse current and prospective customers. Change too little and you will not accomplish your goal for revamping your logo. If you need to change your logo for any reason, consider the following steps for making the change without weakening your brand.

Stay with the look and feel of your current logo

Source: http://humancapitalleague.com/socialweb/2948

Subtle changes may be all that you need to update your logo. Your logo must now and always identify your business, product, and services.

Decide if you need an update or a complete overhaul

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Firefox

A complete overhaul may be needed if you are moving into a new category. If you are changing your entire market, then changing the look and feel of your logo is necessary.

Keep your branding in mind

Source: http://www.graphic-design-blog.com/2007/11/toys-r-us-logo-redesign.html

Remember that your logo will have to be incorporated into your brand on posters, brochures, and business cards. Use a logo design that will work with your current designs.

Keep your logo design usable in any context

Source: http://humancapitalleague.com/socialweb/2948

You will still need to shrink it for business cards and it should still look good when photocopied in gray scale. By keeping the design elements simple, you can create a versatile logo.

Consider that your people may have an emotional attachment to the present logo

Source: http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/less_hyphen_more_burst_for_wal.php

For this reason, only change when it is necessary. When you do make changes involve your clients and customers and target audience. Engage the people, target audience, stakeholders, and clients in the logo change, such as Walmart did with its controversial logo redesign. You can hold a Facebook survey to ask for suggestions. Implement those suggestions as much as possible.

Make a logo that will last for 100 years

Source: http://psdcollector.blogspot.com/2010/06/logo-evolution-50-aweome-examples-of.html

A design that appeals to your customers while representing your brand will last as long as 100 years. Have the mindset that this will be the last change, beside little updates, that you ever need to make.

Avoid trends and be true to your business

Source: http://psdcollector.blogspot.com/2010/06/logo-evolution-50-aweome-examples-of.html

In order for you new logo design to be effective, it must differentiate your business from the clutter of “modern” logo designs.

Work closely with a professional logo designer who understands your needs

Source: http://www.logoblog.org/ibm-logo.php

A professional will be able to navigate the difficult task of creating a logo that will be effective in your market. If you work closely with them, then you can communicate the values of your business so that they come through the logo design.

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There are books, blogs, and even conferences devoted to SEO, however you should be thinking about SEO in the simplest of terms. Don’t get too caught up in the hype and theories and trying to figure out how to manipulate Google’s algorithm because you’ll drive yourself crazy and that’s no fun, or worse, you may end up getting your site dropped from the search results if you go too far.

For your website, focus on the following SEO best practices as a guide:

Title tags:

Your title tags on each page should contain the primary keyword/phrase that best captures the “theme” for that page, followed by your brand. For instance, if your app helps designers create invoices, the title tag for your homepage could be: “Simple invoices for designers – MyInvoices.com”, where “invoices for designers” is your targeted term/phrase. Your brand should follow the tagline. There have been numerous studies that track a visitor’s eyes across search results and as a user scans the page they see more (left-to-right) of the top results and only look at the left most portion of the search results as they scan down to the fifth to sixth ranked site. So it’s key to have your targeted keyword/phrase to the left of your branded term. In addition, Google will bold the searched keyword/phrase within the search result’s title (ie: your title tag), which will increase the number of clicks for your organic listing.

Meta Description:

This is where I see a number of people missing a great opportunity. Your meta description is what someone sees when viewing the organic search results across the major search engines and has a direct impact on whether they click your listing. Take advantage of this space and keep it short and to the point, but don’t be afraid to include a call-to-action within the meta-description for each page of your site. In addition, be sure to include your keyword within the meta description as well. Like your meta title, Google will bold any occurrences of the searched keyword/phrase within your meta description as well, grabbing the eye of searchers and increasing clicks.

Keyword(s) within URLs:

It’s also a great idea to include the targeted keyword/phrase for a page within the URL. For example, if you’re targeting “top designers”, an ideal URL for the page you’re targeting for this term could be www.mydesignsite.com/top-designers.

External links:

We all understand the importance of reputable sites linking to ours, and how that can help our reputation within the major search engines. In terms of increasing the number of links back to your website, there are various tactics to accomplish this whether it’s exchanging links or including links back to your site within your press releases.

Focus on the quality of your content, first and foremost and that will naturally increase the number of people who link to your website. If what you build is quality, other sites will happily link to yours. You can always follow up with someone who has linked to your website and ask them to modify the anchor text (the text that is hyperlinked). By editing this text to contain the targeted keyword/phrase, this can help your site rank higher for the targeted keyword/phrase.

Internal links:

Another best practice focuses on the links within your site that link to other internal pages. For instance, if you’re linking the anchor text of an article to another page on your site, it’s a best practice to include the targeted keyword/phrase within the anchored text for the page the user will taken to after clicking.

Keyword density:

Google looks at the percentage of time the targeted keyword/phrase appears on a page in relation to other copy on the same page. Do not try to manipulate the search engines by stuffing a keyword into the copy of a page. We mention keyword density because it’s something you should pay attention to and in combination with other best practices it holds value but not something you should focus on heavily in an attempt to manipulate search results. Write the copy for your pages as you would normally and use a keyword density tool such as http://www.googlerankings.com/ultimate_seo_tool.php to double check the density of the keyword/phrase for a given page. There are a number of theories on optimum keyword density, but it’s recommended at around 2% for each page for a targeted keyword.

Site speed:

As of May 2010, Google factors the speed of your website when determining rankings. It’s obviously key to make your website as speedy as possible as it provides a positive experience for your users, but know that it also affects the rankings for your site. A great tool to measure your site’s speed is Yahoo’s YSlow. It’s a simple plug-in for Firebug and works great. Test your site on a regular basis and make sure you’re improving the speed. Look for any unnecessary javascript or snippets of code that’s calling files from other sites/sources as these can slow down your site and are typically an easy fix.

Sitemap:

Using a tool such as XML-Sitemaps, set up a sitemap for your website and add it within Google’s Webmaster tools and within Bing’s Webmaster tools. This helps tremendously in getting your content indexed quickly.

As we mentioned above, Google and Bing offer Webmaster tools. If you haven’t signed up, be sure to get an account and add your website to each. Google provides great resources within their Webmaster tools that gives you additional insight into the performance of your website. For example, you can view a list of pages that are resulting in 404 errors and you can see any external URLs that link to pages on your site that have 404 errors. This is just one example of the key features you’ll have access to within Webmaster tools. It’s a great tool and can give you a lot of insight as you’re optimizing your website, from both an SEO point of view and in terms of usability.

Remember, these are best practices and things you should keep in mind as you’re designing, developing, and writing copy for your website, but never put these ahead of a visitor’s experience. Your visitor/user should always come first when designing your website.

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There are many places to find WordPress themes. Below I’ve compiled a list of the best places to find premium WordPress themes. Enjoy!

UpThemes

With their Theme Club, you gain access to their collection of premium WordPress themes and top-notch support. Build amazing websites for your clients (or yourself) and get help when you need it.

Press75

Why choose Press75.com? In short, their themes are unique, clean and efficient with several key customization and content management options. Basically, you get everything you need and absolutely nothing you don’t.

WooThemes

Their themes are all built on a solid code framework which they have fine tuned over time. With a new backend to let you easily control the theme options and multiple theme styles to every theme, it won’t take you long to get up and running.

Themeforest

At ThemeForest you can buy and sell HTML templates as well as themes for popular CMS products like WordPress, Joomla and Drupal with prices ranging from just $5 up to $40. Items are priced on the complexity, quality and use of the file. The site is home to a bustling community of web designers and developers and is the biggest marketplace of its kind.

RocketTheme

Welcome to the new home for the very best in Joomla Templates, Drupal Themes, WordPress Themes, phpBB3 Styles, Extensions, and the very best web development community bar-none!

Thesis Theme

Thesis Theme for WordPress is a premium template system designed to serve as the rock-solid foundation beneath any kind of website. Over 25,793 people rely on the airtight SEO, incredible design flexibility, and lightning-fast loading times that Thesis provides.

MojoThemes

MOJO themes is a marketplace for everyone to BUY or SELL themes and templates. They sell themes for the most commonly used CMS and e-commerce platforms on the web such as WordPress, Tumblr, Joomla, and Magento. Their templates range from basic PSD templates to complex HTML site templates.

Templatic

A place to get out of the box, premium and awesome WordPress themes to fulfill your needs in different areas of blogging and web design. From a simple Blogging theme, to a complete e-commerce integrated WordPress theme, they are releasing themes in diverse range so you can use WordPress as a CMS.

WPRemix

WP Remix 3.0 – the only theme on the net that offers WYSIWYG page template editing.
Over 50 page templates to choose from.

DailyWp.com

Free and premium WordPress themes for blogs, portfolios, news, and more.

StudioPress

StudioPress themes are a perfect solution for small businesses or individuals looking to establish their online presence with a WordPress blog or website.

SoloStream

It doesn’t have to cost a lot to publish your new blog or website, and it doesn’t have to be difficult. With WordPress and Premium WordPress Themes from Solostream, you can get a professional-looking website or blog up and running for less than a hundred bucks.

PremiumPress

Design and develop quality, feature rich Premium WordPress Themes for small, medium and large businesses. Their themes include a shopping cart theme, coupon site theme, classifieds theme, and many others.

Headway Themes

Who says you have to dig deep into HTML to change the layout of your site? Headway’s Visual Editor lets you do anything from create a standard blog page to creating an e-commerce site.

ElegantThemes

From ElegantThemes.com, “I created this website to provide WordPress themes of quality and integrity. I craft my themes with a goal of simplicity and professionalism and strive to inject each design with a dose of modest elegance. I believe that your website is not just a tool, it is an integral part of your identity. My job is to respect each customer by providing attractive and userfriendly templates that will help you achieve your online goals.”

ThemeJam

ThemeJam delivers professional quality themes for WordPress. They take it further and give you additional formats to complete your online presence. Formats include WordPress themes, site templates, and email templates.

Viva Themes

They create quality and professionally designed WordPress themes. They offer themes for your business, blog or personal sites. All of that comes with excellent free support.

Obox Design

Gorgeous design and functionality that you would normally only be able to attain from expensive professional agencies. Obox creates premium themes built for multiple platforms.

WP Zoom

WPZOOM is a small team of two talented web-designers which create Premium Themes for blogging platform – WordPress.

ithemes

iThemes is one of the leaders in producing high-quality premium WordPress themes for photographers, designers, and businesses.

Gabfire Themes

Gabfire Themes was founded in 2008 by Mehmet Ozekinci a 29-year old independent web designer and web project consultant based in Estonia.

Organic Themes

From OrganicThemes.com, “Aloha, Organic Themes is a complete WordPress theme solution company founded in the remote town of Lahaina on the Hawaiian Island of Maui. Lahaina is referred to as the art capital of the Pacific, and we believe our beautiful surroundings and healthy environment translate directly in to the design and development of our premium WordPress themes. At Organic Themes, we work hard to play hard.”

Theme Shift

ThemeShift WordPress themes are professional-looking and extremely well-coded. A lot of handy features let you turn your blogging software into a CMS. Packages include theme updates. You have access to the latest version at any time and get a mail when a new version is published.

NattyWP

From NattyWP.com – “We are developing professional wordpress themes and provide efficient support of our templates. Join the club and choose the membership that suits your needs. We are proud to invite you to the best wordpress themes club and provide you with the full access to all our themes, as well as tutorials, support and the community forum. Join us now!”

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There’s a lot that goes into making your app or web-based service successful, however I want to take a closer look at some key takeaways from successful apps that you can apply to your business. So what makes some of the most well-known apps successful and what can we learn from them?

A Great Team:

We consider this to be the most obvious and it serves as the solid foundation that everything else is built upon. You have to have the right people on your team and they have to be comfortable filling various roles early on. The responsibilities for the initial founders will be plenty and they will be doing things they aren’t very good at, but that’s ok. They should focus on the one thing they do well and understand that they can hire someone else in the near future to handle those areas where they aren’t very strong. In the beginning, “getting stuff done” is most important and will make or break your start-up. The initial team is critical and it’s this group who will help pave the way for the future of the company. Choose your team wisely – especially during the early stages. As your team grows and you establish core values be sure that anyone you add to the team shares these values and will stand behind them.

Execution:

It’s all in the execution and when a passionate founder meets their idea there’s little that can stand in the way of success. Someone else could have had the idea for Flickr, Twitter, or Facebook and there have been competitors but it was a matter of execution that has lead them to where they are today. A “great idea” is just that – an “idea”. It’s tough to get others to help you and impossible to make a positive impact in the world unless you take action. Stop over-analyzing your ideas and asking “what if?” and begin taking action. As you build your business, be aggressive, always have a bias towards action and don’t be afraid to make mistakes.

Know Your Metrics & Track them Closely:

Start-ups may not always have their numbers together initially and completely understand what they should be tracking and how to properly track it, but if you can get started with the most important numbers it makes things a lot easier as you grow. So what are the critical numbers for your app or web-based service? Here are a few key metrics to think about and begin monitoring if you aren’t already:

Basic website metrics:

1. Number of unique visitors to your website
2. Number of pageviews
3. Bounce rate (shows % of visitors who enter and exit on a single page)
4. Drill down into “Traffic Sources” to see how many visitors are finding your website across these various sources.
5. Primary keywords visitors are searching for to find your site across the major search engines (if you’re running paid search campaigns be sure to view this by “paid” and “non-paid”). This will provide insight into search volume and opportunities for additional optimization for certain keywords and keywords you can bid more aggressively for your paid search campaigns.

For your website metrics we recommend using a free service such as Google Analytics. It’s simple to set up and once you’re comfortable using it you can begin customizing it for your needs and use it for advanced tracking as well. There’s also a great iPhone app for Google Analytics (Analytics App – http://analyticsapp.com). There are also a number of real-time analytics services including ChartBeat, VisiStat, and Clicky.

Revenue and Conversion Metrics:

1. Total revenue per month (across all marketing channels)
2. Additional (new) revenue month-over-month across all marketing channels
3. Number of trials each month (if applicable)
4. Number of paying accounts each month
5. Visitor to trial conversion rate (if applicable)
6. Visitor to paid conversion rate
7. Trial to paid conversion rate
8. Average revenue per user or Average rate per user – if you’re selling a subscription-based service. If you are not selling a subscription-based service then you’d want to track your Average Order Value (AOV).
9. Cost-per-acquisition (dollars invested divided by number of paying customers)
10. Cost-per-acquisition (for trials) – dollars invested divided by number of trials

For the metrics above be sure to look at these from a high-level (across all marketing channels), but also break these out by marketing channel to monitor their effectiveness and which are profitable. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but these are the primary metrics you should be tracking on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.

Viral Component:

Take a look at Farmville. How were they able to grow to over 80 million active users in such a short amount of time? They have a viral component. You know those annoying Farmville messages you see within your news feed in Facebook from others who are playing? That’s how they’ve grown so quickly by sending those updates via Facebook and attracting other players. It’s the same with Gowalla and Foursquare. This isn’t a recent trend. The same tactic helped Hotmail dominate the free email space. Every email sent had a link back to Hotmail within the footer. Do you have a viral component? If not, how can you incorporate one within your app.

A Focus on Design & Usability:

Have you noticed that some of the most successful apps are also the best designed? It’s not a coincidence. Design and usability alone will not guarantee success but it certainly contributes to the success of some of the most popular apps. Invest time and money in the design of your app. This will give you one of the greatest returns, and advantages, right out of the gate.

Openness and Ability to Build Apps/Plug-ins:

Facebook crushed MySpace for a number of reasons but one of the primary reasons is because Facebook allows developers to build apps and plug-ins which extends the capabilities of Facebook and allows it’s users to get more functionality from the service. The beauty of this model is that it allows each user to extend functionality without adding new features “across the board” and making simple apps cumbersome and bloated. Each user can customize it based on their preference and needs. How can you “open” your app or service and allow others to build apps and plug-ins? Release an API? Build a developer community around these plug-ins? If others are building swarms of apps based on your technology, you know you’re on the right track. Open it up and allow others to build add-ons or plug-ins but keep your core service simple. You don’t want to build a bloated app that tries to be everything to everyone, but by allowing others to extend functionality for their needs, you’ll see some creative implementations come out of this while keeping your core service simple. In addition this will help in building a loyal following for your app and build your brand.

Constraints (or “focusing on a niche”):

Constraints are great. Facebook began by only targeting students (remember when you had to have a .edu email address to sign up?), Twitter only allows 140 characters, 37signals preaches fewer features instead of more features, and the job hunting website, TheLadders.com, is growing quickly focusing solely on jobs that pay $100k or higher. An important lesson that successful apps/services have taught us is that you shouldn’t try to be everything to everyone. Target a smaller audience. Try to do more with less. As your app grows within your niche you can then make a decision as to whether you’d like to extend functionality across the board or, as mentioned in the point above, you can allow other developers to build apps and plug-ins and extend the capabilities on your behalf. Regardless, keep it simple and remember that constraints are good.

Giving it 100% & Creating Your Own “Lucky” Breaks:

Luck isn’t something that falls from the sky and into your lap and you’re instantly successful. Luck happens because you put forth the effort and hard work to create opportunities and if you keep putting yourself in position you’re going to win. Many of the most popular apps were founded by people who have started a number of ventures. Some were also successful, but others you’ve never heard of. They didn’t quit and continued to dedicate themselves to their passion and give it 100%. Take that first step, make a lot of mistakes, learn from those mistakes and keep pushing forward, you’ll have a lot of “luck” along the way.

Be Sure to “Zag”:

Everyday someone is launching a new app and chances are they are entering a crowded market. With access to open source tools it’s easier than ever to get up and running and with the barrier to entry so low many markets are crowded with solutions that are competing for the same users. However, this is good news! Competition is great! It proves that there’s a market willing to pay for a software solution that serves the same market as you’re targeting.

The challenge is differentiating your app from the competition. There are a number of ways you can differentiate your app and it should be clear to users how you differ from the competition. Design can be an excellent differentiator and we provide detail on this later in the book, but think about companies like Apple or a web-based company like 37signals, design has definitely set them apart from the competition and helped them grow rapidly. In terms of your app, think about how you can improve the design and usability. Are there improvements you can make to increase the visual appeal of your website? Is there some process within your app that you could improve and making it easier for users? When we think about comparing one app to another many of us think about features, and while features are critical, there’s more to making your app stand out among the competition than adding more bells and whistles.

Look at the competition and what you are likely to find is a number of competitors chasing one another and adding another feature to “one-up” a competitor. Take a different approach. Look at what they’re doing, let them chase each other, and take a radically different approach. Marty Neumeier, author of Zag, said it best “When everybody zigs, zag.”

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I hear a lot of self-proclaimed “social media experts” raving over developing a “social media strategy”. The reason I cringe when I hear this is I feel that these “experts” are viewing social media as just another marketing channel like Paid Search, Display Advertising, or SEO for example, but it’s different. It serves as a powerful tool to connect and engage with your audience. While social media is different than other channels, it should certainly be measured as an equal to other channels by monitoring interactions and measuring revenue generated and conversions.

Think about how brands approach their image and marketing efforts. They know their brand can spread like wildfire via word-of-mouth and the way they can influence word-of-mouth is by giving their customers a unique product or service and unique experience and delivering a product or service with exceptional quality. Notice that I didn’t include anything about advertising. Sure, we’ve seen brands develop unique ads and we tell friends about them and pass along links to commercials or images of print ads, however that doesn’t substitute for a less than stellar product. The ad may be creative and evoke emotion in those who interact with it, but that doesn’t mean we’ll all rush out and purchase the product they’re selling. Even if the ad convinces us to purchase, if we don’t receive a great experience from the product, we aren’t going to recommend it to our friends. We know that people trust the opinions of their family and friends when it comes to recommending products or services and we’re seeing data that more and more people are turning to social media outlets when collecting information before making a purchase.

As a consumer, the great thing about social media is that there’s so much information available and not to mention it’s in real-time. Having so much information available is also a downside as there’s a lot of noise to filter through when searching for those things that you’re interested in. As a business, don’t spend so much time thinking about how to “get people to talk about you” via social media. What are you doing to deliver a unique experience that people will want to talk about? That’s where you should be focusing your time and energy. Imagine you’re a musician and you’re standing on stage in front of thousands of people. If you ask these people to cheer but you haven’t played a single chord, they’ll probably cheer for you in anticipation, but for how long? They are not going to support you and help you unless you begin playing music they love.

In May 2008, a couple of friends and I launched a simple app using Twitter’s API (www.fuelfrog.com). Fuelfrog is a free app that allows you to tweet your gas price, miles, and gallons each time you fill-up and it tracks your vehicle’s gas mileage. You can view how your gas mileage trends over time and view data such as how much you paid for gas the last time you filled up. We built something unique, at that time, using Twitter’s API and people embraced it. We received a lot of coverage across various blogs and via Twitter. We had an influx of users soon after we launched and each day we’re continuing to add several more. We launched something that was unique and gave people a new experience and as a result, people blogged and tweeted about it.

Here’s a look at the coverage we received for the first year (give or take a few months) after we launched:

1. July 18th 2009 – Mashable
2. January 23rd 2009 – CNET/Webware
3. September 23rd 2008 – PopularScience
4. August 8th 2008 – CNET
5. June 19th 2008 – 37signals interview (note that I contacted them first about their book)
6. June 2nd 2008 – About.com
7. May 30th 2008 – Mashup Awards
8. May 20th 2008 – AutoBlogGreen
9. May 19th 2008 – FastForwardBlog
10. May 16th 2008 – LockerGnome
11. May 16th 2008 – CenterNetworks
12. May 15th 2008 – bnet
13. May 13th 2008 – WebWorkerDaily
14. May 13th 2008 – LifeHacker
15. May 12th 2008 – jkOntheRun
16. May 12th 2008 – Download Squad
17. May 12th 2008 – ReadWriteWeb
18. May 5th 2008 – SocialTimes
19. May 5th 2008 – A Tweet from @ev (founder of Twitter)

My point is that you don’t need to yell louder to standout among the social media outlets or perform one-off campaigns in an attempt to get your brand as a trending topic on Twitter. You could do these things and it takes a lot of effort, but in the end if you haven’t spent the time to create something worthwhile then what’s the point? Instead, focus on your business and delivering an extraordinary and unique product and experience for your customers and share what you’re doing via social media. The reception you receive from your friends, followers, and perhaps others you’ve never connected with will tell you whether you’re building something great or if you need to try harder. Don’t spend so much time up front trying to figure out how to “get people to talk about you” via social media. Instead, spend that time working on your app or service and delivering a great experience for those who do business with you, leverage social media to connect with this audience, and then measure the results.

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Three creative print ads from Fresh Step Cat Litter. The agency is DDB West in Los Angeles.

The caption reads:

“Cats everywhere are having a hard time smelling their litter boxes.”

Source: via Ads of The World

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Right-brain versus left-brain or designers versus accountants, both refer to two different ways of viewing the world. I call them Crunchers (as in ‘number crunchers’) and Creatives and there’s a healthy tension among these two camps in almost all organizations, but what about the influence they each have on the growth of a company?

We’ve seen companies like 37signals burst onto the scene in the last few years with a great appreciation for design and user experience. Both supported by their preachings of simplicity which has launched a mentality of “less is more” in designing apps and has made a convincing argument that design is key to growing your business. We’ve also seen Apple’s focus on design skyrocket the company into a leader in technology. We see this happening around us but for some reason there are companies that continue to downplay design and its importance in impacting the bottom line. The companies that are ignoring this haven’t built a culture that understands the power of design and realizes its real impact on business and my guess would be that these companies are filled with Crunchers.

So let’s look at Crunchers and Creatives. Both understand the importance of revenue but approach its generation a bit differently. Crunchers tend to develop a laser-like focus on the goal of acquiring revenue and make a b-line for it without paying close enough attention to user experience. Examples of this would include aggressive sales tactics in order to “close the sale”, bending the truth in their messaging in order to attract more customers, or selling customers products or services they don’t need. They can get a little too aggressive with closing the deal. I believe that this effort is needed to makeup for a lack of clear differentiation of their product in the marketplace which could be achieved due in large part through great design and a focus on user experience.

When strong design and focus on user experience is non-existent or weak, marketing must work that much harder to compensate for these shortcomings. When design and user experience are strong it removes a burden from marketing by making the benefits of using the product clearer and empowers users to share their experience via word-of-mouth and through social media. In short, if your product is easy to use and empowers users, they will share their experience with others. When this happens marketing can simply play a supporting role and doesn’t need to work twice as hard in convincing prospective customers on why they should use your product over a competitor’s.

The Big Picture and How These Elements Work Together

The diagram below illustrates Design & User Experience, Marketing, and a solid Business/Revenue Model working together to generate revenue and growth for your company. You can also see what happens when you have two out of the three working for you.

Marketing Must Overcompensate for a Lack of Quality and Focus on Design & User Experience

We can see what generally happens when there’s a lack of quality and focus on design and user experience. Marketing must work harder to tout the benefits and competitive edge over similar products.

A Greater Focus on Design & User Experience can Relieve the Burden Placed on Marketing

By focusing on the quality of design and user experience and improving it, marketing dollars can be spent much more efficiently and work to support a product that has a clear competitive edge through ease of use and quality of design. In addition, making the product easier to use can reduce the amount of effort and resources needed to support it, which can lower costs and increase your return on investment.

Creatives tend to do a great job of focusing on the customer’s experience and also attracting the right customers. If they can do these things well there can be a clear differentiation among their competitors and customers will be easier to support. Creatives also realize that by focusing on the customer and their experience customers will trust you, pay you (and perhaps even pay a premium), and continue using your product leading to a higher lifetime value.

However, there needs to be a balance between these two approaches. Creatives must remember that there’s a difference between building a product and building a business. An extreme example of this is Twitter. I love Twitter, but they have yet to develop a business and revenue model around their product. That’s not to say that it won’t become a revenue generating machine, but it’s currently lacking the model. Building a product will serve your customers, but you must develop a business model around the product in order for it to be sustainable and serve your customers, you and your team, and thrive. If Creatives can do that successfully and team it with great design and user experience, and support it with targeted marketing, the sky is the limit for their business.

Crunchers on the other hand must realize that not everything can be individually and directly tied to a return on investment and it’s the small things that collectively contribute to a customer’s experience with your product and brand. In addition, don’t treat design as an afterthought. Design is king. Design is the reason Apple is a success, design is the reason you chose your car over others, design is the reason you chose the clothes you are wearing, design is the reason you chose one app over another- you get the idea. My point is that EVERY SINGLE THING YOU TOUCH WAS DESIGNED. Do not downplay its importance in generating revenue and growth for your business and its impact on customer retention.

On that note, one of the greatest things we’re witnessing are creative agencies building businesses. They are taking the talents they have provided clients and developing apps for the rest of us that solve the problems they, and/or their clients, are experiencing. I love seeing this. Who better to launch an app than a company who has all the tools to build it and an in-depth understanding of what users are looking for based on their experience working with clients. As a result, we’re seeing well-designed apps that solve real problems all while inspiring us to better serve our users through great design.

Whether a company is lead by a Cruncher or Creative a culture should exist that emphasizes design and user experience and a realization that without them, innovation, differentiation among competitors, and solid growth cannot and will not happen. If you’re a Creative and leading a company be sure to include a Cruncher on the team for balance and healthy tension and leverage what they do well like financials, forecasting and planning and if you’re a Cruncher leading an organization it’s time to embrace design and user experience, spread it through your organization and realize that nothing can have a greater impact on your bottom line.

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One brand’s junk is another brand’s treasure. Some may criticize Brandstack’s approach of selling off-the-shelf branding, but I think it’s a great model. The service allows designers to sell any extra designs they have lying around from past projects. There are also a number of designs that include a domain name.

If you’re launching your business or re-branding and you’re strapped financially there’s nothing wrong with purchasing a ready-made design as long as it’s unique and clearly conveys the message and feel you wish to portray with your company. However, I do not recommend purchasing a logo from one of those out of the box services where they sell the same design to 100 different people and you slap your company name next to some clip-art of an orange shiny globe-I know you’ve seen it. While there’s a lot more to your brand than finding the perfect logo, it’s essential in supporting your organization’s mission and the feeling you want others to have when they interact with your company.

Brandstack has a number of high quality logo designs available and I’ve found myself paging through the site for hours (literally) looking through the thousands of designs available. Here are a few samples of logos that are for sale:

Prices range anywhere from $150 to $50,000, with the higher priced logos typically including a great domain as well, but not always the case. Of the 3,000 logos that are available over 500 include a domain name as well. Here are a few samples of higher priced logos (ranging in price from $1,800-$21,500) that include domains:

-and here are a few lower priced logos ($300-$700) that also include a domain name:

People are scooping them up. Here are a few designs that were recently sold:

The bottom line is you can invest a lot of money in getting your logo designed, but if you’re strapped for funds a service like this can give you the opportunity to get a very high quality logo design, and even a domain, for a fraction of the cost of a custom design. If however, you’re hiring a designer to help you with your logo I’d still recommend checking Brandstack for inspiration in helping to establish the look and feel that you’d like to capture. By having this understanding going into the design process and clearly communicating to your designer what you’re looking for, it can make the process move a lot quicker and save you money.

Custom Logo Design

If you’d like to hire a designer to create a custom logo for you, I’d recommend checking out 99designs from the team at Sitepoint. They allow you to set a budget, run a contest, and select entries from multiple designers. This is another great way to have flexibility in choosing the best design at a great value.

A second option for getting a logo designed to your specifications is Logoworks from HP. They have a number of design packages available ranging in price from $299 to $2,999. Each package differs in price based on the number of designers working on the project and the number of revisions. The higher priced packages include additional services such as website and stationary design.

These are three of my recommendations if you’re looking for a high quality logo design on a budget. I like what Brandstack is doing as they’ve developed a new model allowing designers to sell their “extra” designs and they’ve given entrepreneurs access to quality designs on a budget-it’s a win-win. If the “off-the-shelf” option isn’t for you, I’d recommend checking out 99designs and Logoworks.

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