The Importance of Branding

Your website is only one of your marketing tools. There should be other methods with which you're making your work known. The most obvious are business cards, letter heads and other printable material.

Yes, print is still important in this cyber world. Just like radio and video (remember that song?)

Anyway, one of the most important things you can do is to brand your company or your work. A logo or image that identifies you will be a sure way for people to remember who you are. This could be a color scheme, something that relates to the idea of your website, something that incorporates some of your work, etc...

If people can remember your name or your company's name, and some kind of visual assistance, you will be a step ahead of your competitors. This of course goes on all of your web, print and other material. You can even get creative and wear a t-shirt or sweat shirt with this information on them. A simple identity makes all the difference.

Think of the Gap. Just with three simple letters and two colors, one color for the background and one for the letters, we can see the store a mile away. My all time favorite is Nike. No words needed, and the symbol itself tells a whole story.

Biggest Mistakes in Web Design

I've taken these quotes directly from the website critique and author Vincent Flanders.

Do go there, and read the whole thing. Entertaining and insightful.

Here, according to Flanders is Mistake #1. And I agree with him.

Believing people care about you and your web site.

Write these two sentences where you can see them as you’re working on your computer:

1. The only reason my web site exists is to solve my customers’ problems.
2. What problems does the page I’m looking at solve?

Nobody cares about you or your site.

Really. What visitors care about is solving their problems. Now. Most people visit a web site to solve one or more of these four problems:

1. They want/need information
2. They want/need to make a purchase / donation.
3. They want/need to be entertained.
4. They want/need to be part of a community.

Too many organizations believe that a web site is about opening a new marketing channel or getting donations or to promote a brand or to increase company sales by 15%.

No. It’s about solving your customers’ problems. Have I said that phrase enough?

Flash Galleries

The website design software Flash is great for simple, easy to navigate image galleries. Most photo galleries depend on pop-up windows or forward and backward buttons, making navigation cumbersome.

Flash avoids all of that. Instead, there are clear thumbnails which give you an idea of the image your are about to see, and the enlarged image opens right on the same page as the thumbnail. That way, you can skim through the thumbnails you want to enlarge, going back and forth at your leisure.

The idea is to keep your web audience as interested as possible, with the least amount of work. Too many buttons, non-visual navigation, and pop-up windows to close each time all take their toll, and many of those images you have for display may end up not being viewed.

Click here and here to see an example of a gallery designed with Flash.