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Graphic Design uses visual compositions to communicate ideas through typography, imagery and colour. There is no one way to do that and that is why there are several types of Graphic Design that is specialized. At times, each type of Graphic Design may overlap, but each type of Graphic Design does require a specific set of skills and techniques, and many Designers specialize in a single type. Because of this, the industry is constantly changing and designers must be adaptable and be lifelong learners so they can change or add specializations to their careers.
1. Visual Identity Graphic Design
A brand is a relationship between a business and its clients. A brand identity is how the business communicates its personality, tone and essence. Visual identity design is exactly that, the visual elements of brand identity that act as the face of a brand to communicate with clients. Visual designers create assets like logos, typography, colour palettes and image libraries that represent a brands personality. In addition to the standard business cards and corporate stationery, Graphic Designers often develop a set of visual brand guidelines that describe the best practice and provide examples of visual branding applied across various media. Visual designers but possess general knowledge of all types of Graphic Design in order to create design elements that are suitable across all media.
2. Marketing and Advertising Graphic Design
Companies depend on successful marketing efforts to tap into their target audience's decision-making process. Great Graphic Design engages people based on the wants, needs, awareness and satisfaction they have about a product, service or brand. Since people will always find visual content more engaging, Graphic Design helps businesses promote and communicate more effectively. Marketing and advertising Graphic Designers can work alone or part of an in-house or creative team. Graphic Designers can specialize in a specific type of media (for instance vehicle wraps or magazine ads) or create abroad assortment of collateral for print, digital and beyond. Marketing Graphic Designers must be proficient with production and online environments.
3. User Interface Graphic Design
UI Design is how a user interacts with a device or application. UI design is the process of designing interfaces to make them easy to use and provide a user-friendly experience. UI includes the screen, keyboard and mouse, but in the context of Graphic Design. UI design focuses on the user's visual experience and the design of on-screen graphic elements like buttons, menus, micro-interactions and more. It's a UI designers job to balance aesthetic appeal with technical functionality. UI designers specialize in desktop apps, mobile apps, web apps and games. UI designers need knowledge of programming languages like HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
4. Publication Graphic Design
Publications are long-form pieces that communicate with an audience through public distribution. Think books, newspapers, magazines and catalogues. Graphic Designers that specialize in publications work with editors and publishers to create layouts with carefully selected typography and accompanying artwork, which includes photography, graphics and illustration. Publication designers must possess excellent layout and organizational skills.
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With today's technology, when we need something we turn to our mobile devices or computer and head to Google, then we browse the results and learn about whatever it is we need at the moment. From a marketing perspective, we want to get noticed by potential clients and hope we come up high on the right search engine queries. We hope people will visit our Website, like what they see and order something or at least give us a call.
How can we get more action from our Website?
With instant access to thousands of businesses, people are moving faster through Websites and spending less time on Websites they visit. This means we have to focus on getting people's attention and giving them easy ways to learn more, and quickly!
An important Website metric that gets overlooked: Duration of a visit.
If clients find and visit our Website and they find information that is both interesting and gives them what they need, this will lead to more opportunities and sales. The longer the potential client stays on the Website, then chances are bigger that sale opportunities will increase. Here are a few strategies to help increase session duration on your website:
1. Create a simple and eye-catching Website
2. Add videos
3. Add engaging and high-quality images
4. Update your blog with relevant information
5. Utilize internal linking
1. Creating a simple and eye-catching Website
First impressions matter, even if clients already visited your website. Every time people visit our Website, we have to grab their attention. Use attractive graphics and colours along with easy-to-read fonts that are large enough to read. The Website has to be easy to navigate and geared towards people looking for what they need as they are looking for something that will catch their attention and meet their needs at the same time.
2. Add Video
People hate to read, this is why video works well, but it has to be short and interesting, less than a minute if possible. Visitors are getting a lot of other information and making quick decisions about you and your organization from videos they watch. The impression you make from your video is larger than the information in the video.
3. Add engaging and high-quality images
Images speak a 1000 words, and since we already know people don't read, use high quality, engaging images to place your message into the heads of your clients, or to pique curiosity. Be creative with your images. Make sure the images you use are not of someone else and that you have purchased stock images.
4. Update your blog with relevant content
Your blog or news page is a powerful tool to give your visitors informal, topical information. Be sure to write topics that are receiving the most attention and visitors.
5. Use internal linking
Internal links are not used enough. Internal links are links on one of your Website pages that links to another of your Website pages. Using these links helps people move smoothly around a website, following what interests them the most. When you mention something in your website or blog, link it elsewhere on your website (or blog) as a way of adding to or slightly changing the subject at hand. This is a way to give visitors more access to information.
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We are in a world where we need to constantly update our lives and keep up with technology. We update our phones and tablets on a regular basis so that we have the latest technology on the market, and we update our computers to the fastest and smartest programmes. We update our social media, our clothes, our hair, cars, companies... The list can go on.
But why not update your Web Design In Pretoria as well? Imagine a computer or a phone that never gets updated with the latest software, you will still be operating on Windows95. Do you think your company will still function well with this? Updating your Web Design In Pretoria is not only necessary but has many benefits.
Fresh content means frequent indexing. Google has crawlers that go from website to website to gather new and updated information. These crawlers report back to Google then indexes the new information. The more your site gets indexed, the more searchable it will become.
More contents mean more keywords. Keywords are the king of the web. The more content you have on your Web Design In Pretoria that is relevant to your industry, the more Google will index you. Keep in mind though, your content should still be of high quality, find a good balance between quantity and quality.
Keep your visitors updated and informed. Visitors don't want to be greeted with content from 2005. Some information will always stay relevant, but always try to change it a bit every now and then.
Updating your Web Design In Pretoria shows your business is active. By updating your website, clients and possible clients see your company is healthy and active and tend to visit the site more than once.
Your website is a representative and employee at your company. You need to enable your employee to communicate the correct information and set an example for your clients. Worried you may forget to update your Web Design In Pretoria? Every time you update your phone, ask yourself "do I need to update something on my website, and if the answer is yes, contact Gotfunk, your Web Design In Pretoria Specialists.
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There are over 2.3 million searches performed on Google every second, and the majority of the search results include Google Ads. Google Ads is a paid service, and can be extremely effective in driving relevant, qualified traffic to your website when people are searching for tour products or services your business offers.
Google offers advertisements which appear in the search results with the use of Google Ads or through other websites as Display Ads. The search results appear with a green "Ad" label, any results below this is then referred to organic results. Display Ads uses an extensive collection of third party websites that have partnered with Google and agree to serve Google Ads. Display Ads can be text, images, videos, or rich media format, and can be targeted differently. This includes Remarketing Banner Ads as well.
Why Google Ads Appear
The Google Ads auction is focused around keywords. Advertisers choose a list of keywords that are relevant to their business offerings, words that people are most likely to use when searching for a product or service. They then bid on these keywords, basing each bid on how much they are willing to pay Google for users to click on their ad. This bid, combined with a Quality score assigned by Google based on the quality of the proposed ad, determines which Google Ads appear on SERP. When a user clicks on the ad, the advertiser pays a certain cost which is calculated with a formula determined by Google.
The Adwords Auction
AdWords works on an auction system, which takes place every time a user performs a keyword. To "win" with Google Ads Auctions and see your advertisement appear for a relevant keyword, you will need to optimize your Quality Score and Bid Amount. The higher your quality score, in conjunction with your bid amount, the better your ad position will be. The following factors (among others) affect your Quality Score
1. The relevance of your Google Ad to the search query
2. The relevance of your Google Keyword to your Ad Group
3. The relevance of your ad to its landing page
4. The historical Click-Through-Rate (CTR) of the ad and its ad group
5. Overall historical account performance
There are overall benefits of having a high quality score
1. Lower costs - Google rewards advertisers with High-Quality Scores by lowering their Cost-Per-Click, helping improve ROI
2. Higher exposure - When you have a high-Quality Score, your ad will appear more often, in better positions. This enables you to get more clicks and conversions without having to raise your bid.
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Be careful what you ask for, is very sound advice, and this advice can be applied to almost anything, even when briefing your new website design agency to create a new website for you.
The consequences of the briefing can stay with you for some time, and the result of assumptions for the wrong focus can be costly to fix once you realize your new website does not work. When we do a Website Design, we always give our expertise, but in the end, it is important for us to also give our clients what they want.
Briefs normally go wrong for a very simple reason, the brief normally starts of focusing in the wrong place, and the list of requirements for a new Website Design is usually framed around "we need our website to....". The we in question is normally the business wanting a new Website Design. This is the normal mindset when agencies are briefed, but it can also be a completely wrong focus. If your new Website Design starts off with asking for the wrong things, don't be surprised if it does not deliver the ROI you hoped for.
Here is a better way of thinking about your new Website Design
A simple change in the way you think about your new Website Design and how you brief your new Website Design agency, can lead to a stronger ROI. Instead of thinking "we need to....", thing instead "our customers need to...". This simple shift in mind set can change the entire project.
If everything you ask for in your Website Design brief is based on what you believe your business needs, where does that leave your customers? Business goals matter, but you need your customers to reach your business goals. Having a clear understanding of the final results on your new Website Design, and in your business in general, will have many benefits.
Customers are your business
Your goals can only work through the behaviour of your customers. When you last briefed your Website Design agency, how much thought was put on your customers? What they want to do, what they may like, what may turn them off? Do you have reliable insights on these? The challenge of focusing on customer intent is that there are no shortcuts so there is no room for assumptions, generalisations and misplaced optimism and this can result in low conversion rates and poor returns. To understand your customer you need to place more effort in research and observation in how your customers react in what you are already doing. The benefit of going the extra mile is that your new Website Design will deliver better user experience (for the customer).
Already have a Website Design?
You and your new Website Design agency can learn a lot from your current website before dismantling it. The start of a new Website Design should always include investigation into the existing site to find its strengths and weaknesses before creating a new wireframe. If you alienate your existing customers, there is also a change they will leave, so a good balance between the old and new should be found.
So are you ready to brief your new Website Design agency?
• Can you clearly articulate what different users will want to do on your site?
• Do you know how you need to speak to your customers? Can you tell what they will want? This question will tell you a lot of what language to use and what imaged you need to engage and persuade them
• Are you perhaps able to list five things your customers most value or hate about your current site?
• Are you able to determine the end goal of your site? Do you want to sell a product, is it to give your clients more information?
If all of this sounds too difficult and you do not know where to start, contact your Website Design agency, Gotfunk and we will guide you in the right direction.
