Design 3 - Old City Web Services

Unique ways to market your business

September 13, 2016 by anoadmin Leave a Comment

Unique ways to market your business

Marketing seems to be a constantly changing puzzle business owners try to solve. In a world where focus is on what’s new, innovative, and different, how can your company stand out from the crowd? We're here to tell you some unique ways to market your business.

We’ve put together a few ideas to make your marketing ventures unique and eye-catching.

Business card: Changing the shape or texture of your business card can instantly catch the eye of people in the community. Whether it is changing your card from a rectangle to a square or making your card out of a thicker material, a small change can make all the difference between standing out and blending in.

If you have a brochure for your business, adding a map to the inside could be a great way to entice a customer to keep the brochure around for future map use (keeping your logo around as well).

Updating or redesigning your company’s logo to make it more effectively represent your company. Read our previous blog on the importance of a high quality logo.

Rack card for hotels: Many hotels have racks where businesses put cards advertising their services. It is a great way to catch the attention of a customer you might not otherwise reach, the traveler. If you already have a rack card out in the community, upgrading the design is a quick and easy way to improve your company’s brand in the community.

Reevaluate ads for print/online publications: Make sure message is conveyed in clear and concise way. Don’t overload your ad with tons of text. Make sure to use quality photos that represent your business. Use a simple, yet visually appealing layout.

Reevaluate your social media plan: Are you interacting with consumers? Are people engaged with your social media accounts? Changing what you post, when you post, or how often you’re posting can make a big difference in response rates.

Market in ways that are individual to your company: Putting your logo on items associated with your business can make a memorable impact on a consumer. For example, if you have a construction company, you could put your company’s name on a level or tape measurer keychain. If you have a technology company, you could put your logo on a flash drive. Bottle openers are great options if you have an outdoors company or bar.

Whether you are looking to redesign your business cards, reevaluate your social media plan, or completely revamp your marketing strategy, the team at Old City Web Services is here to help. Meet with us, and let's see what we can do to make you stand out from the crowd.

New Year, New Look: Update Your Website

January 5, 2016 by anoadmin

is a new year - a great time to start fresh for your business. One way to start the year off on the right foot for your business is to give your website a fresh new look, and make sure that your website is optimized to keep up with today's web design and development trends.

So many current and potential customers to your business will be finding you on the internet if they haven't already. It is absolutely imperative in 2016 to keep up with internet trends, and having a website that shows you put care and time into all aspects of marketing your business.

Mobile Friendly - in early 2015, Google started penalizing websites that aren't mobile friendly in their rankings. If you didn't make the change then, it is a good idea to do it now. It's never too late to make the changes necessary to keep potential customers finding your business as they search the internet for their needs. Contact us today so we can make your current website mobile friendly!

Design Trends - keeping up with design trends doesn't mean you have to be trendy and change every year. What it does mean is keeping the look of your business up-to-date and eye-catching for the internet. Having a web design with large, professional photography and going easy on the text content while still getting your message across is important. Contact us today so we can help guide you through the process of a new design that will showcase your business and keep your website up-to-date.

Content Management System - If you haven't built your website yet or moved your current website into a content management system, now is the time. 2016 is the time to streamline and simplify where you can, and your website is a great place to start. In a content management system like WordPress, editing and adding to your website is fast and easy. The investment is worth it. Contact us today to build your site in WordPress to get your business off on the right foot in 2016!

Why Good Marketing Needs Print Media

November 10, 2015 by anoadmin

We all know that every day, new trends are emerging on the internet and technology is ever-changing. For many, this leads them to believe that print is dead. Maybe surprisingly, though, print is far from dead. For many small businesses, print marketing is part of their overall marketing plan and goes hand in hand with their digital communication.

There are many ways in which print can be a very effective tool in communicating the message of your small business to your target audience. At Old City Web Services, we offer design of rack cards, business cards, folders, brochures, and other print media to meet your business needs.

Here is why you should be using print media in conjunction with your digital marketing:

Personalization:

First and foremost, people know that print media takes more time, more cost, and more effort to put together. If you add personalization to this, it will make the recipient realize that you are willing to go an extra step to share your business with them. This alone can add value and lead to increased sales for your company.

Print and Social Media

Print is a great way to combine the efforts you are putting into your online presence. Having print media like business or rack cards created that draw people to your social media sites is great way to spread the word about your small business.

Uniqueness

It can be really hard to stand out in the crowd these days now that it seems like everyone has a website, everyone has a facebook page, and everyone has a business card. This makes design that much more important. It’s not just having a website or print media that matters. It has to be well designed, eye-catching, and memorable. Print marketing can be successful, but it doesn't guarantee it. Put thought into it, get a firm to help you that knows trends and can help your small business grow in all ways possible.

Promoting Your Website Part II: Branding

August 12, 2015 by anoadmin Leave a Comment

Last week in our series about promoting your website, we discussed the importance of SEO. Part of SEO is knowing your brand and niche well enough to use the right keywords so that ultimately, your website is being promoted to its maximum potential. You can't do this until you have your branding complete.

Branding involves consistency and professionalism. You want your website, logo, and business actions to reflect a level professionalism that customers seek. Nearly everyone who is considering a business for services or products will look them up on the internet and the way you are branded needs to extend to your internet presence. Your brand needs to be consistent: your website needs to look as familiar as your shirts, business cards, and brick and mortar location.

Here are some tips for branding that will help you in promotion of your small business website:

Know Your Audience: When you are deciding on the look you want for your brand, it is more about what your customers will respond to than what you like. You have to appeal to a large audience - so, make it personalized to you but something a large amount of people will recognize and lean toward when choosing where to put their business.

Identify Your Competition: Know what your competitors are doing - this way, you can be consistent but unique.

Create a Unique Logo: The unique look of your brand is what will help you stand out, be recognized among the sea of competitors in your niche, and will bring new business as your logo and business name spread.

Build Your Website Around Your Brand: Your website is something that is key to branding. If a potential customer tries to find you on the internet and they come to your website but don't recognize it as your business from signs or logos or the feel of your shop that they are familiar with, they may not even know it is you. From colors and design to the warmth of your personality, you want your business to be expressed consistently through your website.

Be Consistent Across All Channels: Your social media channels, website, print designs, and other items that you use to promote your business - from t-shirts to bumper stickers - need to be consistent. Use the same colors, the same logo, the same tagline - to keep people knowing what your brand is. This will not only provide a feeling of longevity for your business, but also a professionalism that all customers seek when choosing a business to patronize.

We at Old City Web Services are experts at helping you formulate your brand for your new business beginning with your logo and extending to your website and other channels of promotion.

Next Week, we will be looking at how to use Social Media to promote your website and build your business. Make sure you check it out!

5 Best Practices in Web Design

November 12, 2014 by anoadmin Leave a Comment

Good web design brings a website to life, engages the user, and can be the catalyst your small business needs to attract more customers. A visually appealing website makes visitors want to stay and return. There is a lot to consider when building a website: brand, ease of use, appearance, color scheme, navigation, photography, and mobile compatibility just to name a few. There can also be other considerations like search engine optimization and e-commerce. All of this comes together in your website design. Here are some things all good web designs must have:

1. Attractive Design

Attractive web design catches the attention of visitors and keeps it. It's what keeps visitors exploring further into the website. An influential website layout implements basic design principles such as consistent header, logo and navigation pieces. It also includes good contrast between text and background while displaying good balance between text, imagery and white space.

2. Balanced

A well-balanced web design uses three to four colors at most and has text colors that contrast well with the site's background color. Graphics need to enhance content rather than distract from it.

Combining visual components including color, images, and slideshows in a clean, professional manner can be tricky to get right.

3. Well Organized Content

Content needs to be presented in a clean, sophisticated, streamlined way. Best practices for content in a web design include:

Using one or two common, attractive fonts.
Consistent use of fonts, colors, and sizes.
Content that is accessible with minimal clicks.

Content presentation can also enhance your website's search engine optimization (SEO).

4. Easy Navigation

Navigation directs visitors through your website based on what they are looking for. Ensure all navigation hyperlinks work properly and are not broken. Clearly label main navigation links, provide text links in the footer section. A good website blends easy navigation with a stylish design.

5. Usability

A great website requires sound functionality. This means all hyperlinks work, there are no errors, and all forms and pages function as they should. It also applies to how the website works across all browsers, operating systems and mobile devices. It must work perfectly and look great on older and current versions of browsers and be mobile-friendly. All elements should work seamlessly and it should be easy to move around your site.

Influence with design

November 14, 2013 by anoadmin Leave a Comment

Determine your goal, make a plan & persuade your audience

What is design and how does it relate to my website? Let's start with a definition:

Web design encompasses many different skills and disciplines in the production and maintenance of websites. The different areas of web design include web graphic design; interface design; user experience design and search engine optimization.
Web design refers to a process or a series of activities that will ultimately give someone or something a unique identity via the world-wide web.

Web design should accomplish a goal. Ask yourself: Why would people want to visit my site? What will people want to see or do once they get there. Is the important stuff easy to find? Think about your site's intent. Are you trying to showcase products, reach new people, expand employee relations, interact with your customers more or maybe you just want a mere presence.

Want to learn more about the power of design and how we can help make your digital goals a reality? Contact Us today to learn more!

Creative use of video online

September 25, 2013 by anoadmin Leave a Comment

Video has maintained a powerful reputation of being one of the most efficient tools of visual communication. A creative and engaging video is a terrific way to present a product, service or brand and transform the user-experience to a much more interactive level. Because of this, professional, eye-catching videos are becoming increasingly popular in Web design today.

Below are three ways to incorporate video into your existing or new company or eCommerce website:

Video as Eye Candy

Using video as a visual enhancement will give your website that wow factor it may be lacking. It will not only attract visitors, but keep them on your site longer. People are much more inclined to watch a virtual tour of your establishment or a content-driven video explanation of your products than read a drawn-out, monotonous page of text. Placing a professional video on your Home page will gain customer's attention and push them to look further into your site.

Demonstrative Video

How-to videos are one of the most popular types for online usage. What better way to showcase your products or services than to educate your customers in a fun, creative manner. If you sell computer software, demonstrate how-to install the program, what special features it has and why it's beneficial to the potential buyer. If you sell produce or homemade preservatives, you may want to include videos on how-to cook different recipes using your products. This way, people will be more likely to come back to your site and tell their peers to check out your videos.

Use Video to Drive Traffic

Search engines love video. With proper video SEO, you have the potential to drive lots and lots of traffic to your site. By creating a YouTube or Vimeo Channel, you can organize your videos in one virtual location. Users can provide helpful feedback, connect with you and share your videos across multiple social media platforms. Once you embed one YouTube video on your website, your other videos from that Channel will be advertised as thumbnail links after the video has finished. Who knows...your videos may even become viral across the world-wide web, making you the next big YouTube sensation!

Want more advice on how to integrate video into your site or how to optimize your videos for search engines? Contact Us today by giving us a call: 904.829.2772 or emailing us: letusmarketyou@oldcity.com for more information.

Responsive Web Design- what it is & why you need it

September 4, 2013 by anoadmin

Responsive Web Design is a web design approach targeted at crafting sites to provide an optimal viewing experience-- easy reading and navigation with minimum resizing, panning and scrolling across a wide range of devices (from mobile phones to desktop computer monitors).

When developing a new website for your business or redesigning your outdated existing site, it is crucial to make sure it has a responsive design. Drew Thomas, Chief Creative Officer and co-owner of Brolik, a global digital agency, reinforces this argument in an article titled, Why Responsive Web Design Has To Win Out. Thomas says, "The most important metric is how functional the website is for the user. . . Mobile and desktop websites should be easily found, easily shared, fast loading, easy to maintain and easy to build on."

Old City Web Services specializes in responsive web design and we provide the highest level of responsiveness to our clients, insuring that each design will work well on multiple digital platforms. We guarantee web designs that fall in line with the responsive web design standards. Test your website by bringing it up on various mobile devices, desktops, laptops and web browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox and Google Chrome). Does it appear user-friendly and remain consistent throughout?

Need help determining whether or not your website has a responsive web design? Concerned that visitors are not getting the best experience while on your site?

Contact us today by giving us a call: 904.829.2772 or emailing us: werespond@oldcity.com to schedule a free consultation.

Image fundamentals for your site

August 28, 2013 by anoadmin Leave a Comment

A picture is worth a thousand words. Okay, maybe that sounds a bit cliche, but it's true, especially when it comes to your website. So what does this phrase truly mean? It means that a single image has the potential to tell a story just as well as a large amount of descriptive text. Jakob Nielsen, User Advocate and principal of the Nielsen Norman Group, says: "Users pay close attention to photos and other images that contain relevant information, but ignore fluffy pictures used to 'jazz up' Web pages." Photos are important, yes, but what's more important is deciding what photos to use and what photos are useless. Shuffling through hundreds of old photos can be time consuming and aggravating, especially if you aren't sure what you're looking for. Below are some things to consider when deciding what images to use on your site:

1.) Image Fundamentals- size, composition, quality and exposure are four important things to look for in a good image. Make sure your photos are unique, high resolution and most importantly- you own them.

2.) Effectiveness- Each image on your website should create excitement or interest for your viewers. When determining the effectiveness of a photo, consider its emotional and rational appeal:

Emotional appeal- does the product in the picture look good and make the user want it?

Rational appeal- does the image show the benefits of the product?

3.) Transmitted Message- Each image should send a message that sticks. Make sure the message is in-line with your brand and it's strong enough to simulate an action from the customer.

Keep in mind that the human brain subconsciously ignores purely decorative or filler images on the web while pictures and images of real people or real products are automatically categorized as important and are often studied in detail.

Need help determining whether or not your photos are worth putting on your website? Is your site in need of an entirely new look and feel that incorporates the right images? Let Old City Web Services effectively showcase your business online. We can help you accomplish all of the above plus more! Just remember, visual content drives engagement.

For more information, contact us today by giving us a call: 904.829.2772 or emailing us: letusmarketyou@oldcity.com.