website design

Branding

When does a company need a facelift?

Maybe your sales aren’t exactly sagging, but if your business has sort of plateaued, it might be time to consider injecting some new life into it. A newly rejuvenated company can increase it sales and expand its customer base while helping to maintain the customers it already has. What company wouldn’t benefit from this?

Unsure of whether or not your company could use a bit of a makeover? Here are some signs your business might be in need of a facelift.

Outdated branding

If your business has been around for a number of years, your brand might be outdated. Over the lifetime of your business, trends change and having a brand and logo that keeps with old times can make your company seem stagnate unattentive. A company needs to continue to evolve its brand over time so it can: set itself apart, appeal to new and emerging markets, and connect with its target audience.

Startups can also benefit from updated branding. In the early days of beginning your company, you may not have been able to fully develop your identity. Taking the time to establish what you want your business to be is critical in helping with your brand awareness. This is something that can spill over to a company logo, website and printed materials all with the goal of unifying your business’s message and overall image.

Changing products or services

It’s certainly not unheard of for a company to start out doing one thing but overtime evolve into something different. This is a natural progression. The problem is, your company’s image needs to also reflect these changes.

Take some time to evaluate what your business started out doing and how it has evolved to the present day. Make sure your image reflects new products or services, so you can better communicate what you represent to current and future customers. A good tip is to review your business plan once a year to make sure your business is heading in the right direction to match the goals of your five-year plan.

Stagnate marketing plan

If your marketing plan doesn’t ever change, it’s likely your business is in need of a facelift. Over the natural evolution of any company, goals, products and services can all change. This will affect who you market to and how. In order to make sure your business is working with an up-to-date marketing plan, ask yourself the following questions:

  1. Who is my target audience?
  2. Is social media part of my marketing strategy?
  3. What areas do I want to focus on for spreading my message?
  4. What is the time frame for my marketing plan?
  5. What are the end goals for my plan? For example, how much will sales, profits and spending increase?

Over the life of any business, a facelift is inevitable. You can’t expect your company to maintain its customer base without acknowledging new trends and technologies– let alone attracting new clientele. Three big indicators that your company may need a facelift are: outdated branding, changing products or services, stagnate marketing plan

Change is inevitable. How you respond to it will determine the longevity of your company.

Web Design

The Value of WordPress

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With 58,000 of the top 1 million web sites and more than 20% of all sites in the US powered by WordPress, it has become the most popular content management system (CMS) on the web. Originally created as a blogging platform, WordPress has used information gathered from bloggers’ extensive use of content to create a CMS that is not only powerful, but also easy for people without programming degrees to use.

At one time, updating your web site or creating new content required either a programmer or knowledge of programming to be able to get your content live on the web. WordPress has made this process as easy as creating and sending an email, meaning even those with limited computer knowledge are able to provide their users with fresh content. The platform operates on the WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) principle much like a simple word processing program.

As an Open Source project (read FREE), there are countless numbers of themes and plugins that make creating a website or blog possible within a few minutes of downloading the software. If you prefer a completely personalized site, you should consider having a custom site designed for your business. Once the design or template is complete, creating the content management portion of your WordPress is a breeze.

Adding categories, pages and posts are as simple as pointing and clicking on your desired action, and entering the relevant data. Once you have created your basic framework, the addition of content and media is a matter of selecting the appropriate heading and saving the content after it has been modified. It is due to this ease-of-use that WordPress has become the most popular CMS on the web.

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From shopping carts to photo galleries, WordPress plugins make adding special features to your site extremely simple. Once the plugin has been installed, most features can be implemented using drag-and-drop to put them where you wish on the site. Adding comment boxes and feedback forms work in the same manner.

Perhaps one of the most important features of WordPress is its reputation with search engines. Fresh content with high engagement will keep search engine crawlers active on your site, which means your rankings will be higher. WordPress’ design and add-on features make search engine optimization a natural process rather than another full-time job.

Creating a web site that is easy to update and including a blog to create a farther reach does not have to be a difficult process. To create a site that will not only stand out from the rest, but also to rank high in search engine results, Contact us today to schedule a meeting or just to talk.

We believe your website should represent who you are and what you do, intersecting great design with user accessibility. We strive to meet the needs of each client no matter how unique.

 

© 2013 Web Design, Branding & Marketing Insights from Hub & Spoke.