When coming up with marketing strategies for your business, it’s essential to take web design into account. Web design is important for your marketing strategy more than ever. Your website is no longer just there so you can have something of an online presence; it’s a key component of how people discover you and decide whether or not to work with you. Here’s what you need to know about why web design is important for your marketing strategy and how to achieve success with your website’s design.

Web Design Is More Important Than Ever Before

Marketing is shifting more and more online. When you want to know about restaurants or businesses nearby, you turn to search engines. When you want to check the reputability of a business or a product, you look up online reviews and ratings. When you want to see what services a business offers, you want to be able to click through their website and have all the information you need at your fingertips.

As such, a beautiful, functional web design is important for your marketing strategy more than ever, and will likely only get more and more important as time goes by.

It’s About More Than Looks

You need your website to look good in order for people to want to spend time on it. But web design is important for your marketing strategy in more ways than just being aesthetically pleasing. A beautiful website that isn’t functional or designed well beyond presenting a pretty picture won’t help your marketing strategy much. In addition to being attractive, web design needs to take several other factors into consideration in order to be effective for your marketing strategy. Some of these factors are as follows:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is essential to a functional web design. While traditionally, SEO and web design have been pitted against each other, the truth is that you need both in order for your website to benefit your business. SEO increases your website’s visibility in search results by using keywords your target audience searched for, using correct links, positioning content in a way to increase visibility, and by making it easier for users to interact with your website.

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

Your CRO measures how your website performs in order to make for a better user experience. How your website looks affects how effective it is, so you want a good balance between functional and simple. Too complex, and your website will slow down, which will drive potential customers away. Too simple, and your potential customers will be bored and leave to find another site that is more engaging.

User Experience (UX)

The user experience is one reason why web design is important for your marketing strategy. A good experience, and people are more likely to use your services than that of your competitors’, because they like your site. You want your website to be easy to navigate, load quickly, and to be attractive, crisp, and clean.

Analytics

You may have had a fantastic web design a few years ago, but times are constantly changing. Analytics is a key part of having a good website that helps your business. As times change, so too does your website need to change. Analytics will help you see how your website is performing, so you can make any necessary changes.

Branding

Web design is important for your marketing strategy in regards to your branding, too. You need it to be consistent with your brand across other platforms, on and off-line. Your website should reflect your brand positively, so that when people click on it, they get a good impression of you. A bad web design can destroy your chances of this.

Marketing Success With Web Design

As you see, having a good web design is important for your marketing strategy in a number of ways. When you’re coming up with your strategy, don’t forget about your website. Your website should be a priority when it comes to marketing. It’s how people will discover you, learn about you, form impressions of you. It’s important that it’s designed well and reflects you. Many businesses spend a good portion of their marketing budget on their website, precisely because of how vital it is.

Professional Web Design And Marketing

Performance Driven Marketing offers professional web design and marketing services for all your needs. We have a free website SEO audit so that you can see how well your website is performing. If you need help with your website or your marketing strategy, schedule a consultation today! We’re happy to help however we can.

Every year, content and how it intersects with web design changes. Content is king, and with how much content is out there, yours needs to be top tier in order to lure people to spend more time on your site. Web design impacts content marketing significantly, heightening the importance of truly stellar web design for an effective content marketing strategy. For the best results, you need your content and your design to work in tandem. Here’s what you need to know about some of the ways in which web design impacts content marketing.

#1. Makes Content More Accessible

It doesn’t matter how well-written and engaging your content is if your web design makes it hard to access. Web design impacts content marketing through making said content easily accessible with the implementation of intuitive navigation, so that people can easily click through your site without having to put in a lot of effort to try to find the pages that they’re looking for. If your users have to click through pages that have nothing to do with the information they want in order to get to said information, they’ll likely abandon your site out of frustration and irritation.

There are more and more websites being created every day – people don’t have the patience to deal with an inaccessible site. Luckily, web design impacts content marketing positively when it works with a sitemap, to make finding what you’re looking for a breeze. When web designers ensure there are menus, such as drop-down menus and hamburger menus, and search bars at the top of the site, it makes it so much easier for people to navigate through your site, causing people to spend more time on your site and be more likely to use your services.

The user experience, as always, is key. If someone finds your site through one of the pages that popped up in their Google search, you want them to be able to navigate through your site with ease from any page that they’re on, not simply the home page. Web design impacts content marketing through ensuring this.

#2. Enhances Content’s Aesthetic Appeal

Have you ever clicked onto a site just to see a massive block of text and clicked right out to find another site with similar content arranged in a more aesthetically pleasing way? Looks matter a lot, which is a key way web design impacts content marketing. Content needs to be neatly spaced and presented in a tidy, easily readable manner that is consistently placed throughout the website.

A page that is well designed, with a nice font, colors that work with your brand and on the eyes, that uses white space well, that is aligned neatly – these are all ways that content’s made easier to read. The simpler the better. People don’t want to have to scroll and scroll and scroll to try to find the information they want. Web design impacts content marketing by designing pages that are cohesive, neat, and organized clearly, so people can instantly find the information they’re looking for.

#3. Engages Readers

This way web design impacts content marketing goes hand in hand with the above point. It’s fine to read a page that is organized well, and that’s it. But a well-designed page that makes use of visual elements such as pictures and videos and graphs and the like? That makes the content more interesting and gives readers something to engage with. It’s all well and good to talk about how to fix a plumbing problem, but when you include images and videos, it makes that information really sink in and makes it so much easier to understand.

The more engaged your reader is with your content, the more effective your content marketing will be. Web design allows you to work with visual elements to enhance your content, break complex information down further into something easy to understand by someone who has no knowledge of your industry, and increases the likelihood that someone will work with your business.

#4. Enriches The Reading Experience

Web design impacts content marketing too, with how it enriches the overall reading experience, both through the ways listed above, and through the colors and fonts used on the site. If your fonts and colors are all over the place, it makes your site look jumbled and disorganized and unprofessional.

Colors and fonts that are consistent across your site and that fit with your brand and your industry can make your site that much more readable. You want your font color to complement your background color. A good contrasting color, plain and easy to read fonts, and consistency across your site will make your site that much more professional and easy to navigate.

These are but a few of the ways in which web design impacts content marketing. As you can see, it’s vital to have a good web design in order to ensure the effectiveness of your content marketing strategy. Performance Driven Marketing has several professional web designers in house who can create a beautiful, functional website for your business that will take your content marketing to the next level. Contact us today for more information!

If you hear the term “environmental graphic design”, your mind might take that to mean “environmentally-friendly graphic design”, leading you to wonder how something that involves designing logos and the layout of promotional products impacts the environment. While understandable that your mind would go that route, environmental graphic design actually refers to the usage of graphic design elements such as typography and imagery to provide visual cues that inform people about how to navigate through a space.

Environmental graphic design is a key part of the interior design of a building, way-finding, and more. It does indeed impact the environment, but not in the kind of environment you may initially think. The goal of environmental graphic design is to implement graphics that ensure it’s easy for people to make their way around a facility, be it a stadium, museum, conference space, public transportation, and more.

Factors Involved In Environmental Graphic Design

It’s one thing to know the purpose of environmental graphic design, it’s another entirely to make effective ones. There are several essential factors involved in this type of graphic design that go hand-in-hand with traditional graphic design. You need to understand the intention of the people who will visit that environment, and what their experience there should be. A person’s experience in a place will be dictated by whether they are there to complete a task, to be social, to explore, to be entertained, or to learn.

Once you understand the purpose of your intended audience, you’ll be able to create a design that both speaks to their purpose, and yours. This includes:

Your unique brand personality
What sets you apart from the competition
Designs that create value for your customers

Environmental graphic design is more than just imagery that speaks to your brand identity, but that also conveys your values, your purpose, your vision. Good designs combine the customer experience of those who experience your environment with your brand, why people should do business with you, and garner an idea of what working with you will be like.

The Different Types Of Environmental Graphic Design

As you can see, environmental graphic design is incredibly broad, so we’re going to break it down to some of the most common types that you’ll encounter.

Way-finding

As the name suggests, this refers to designs that make a path throughout an environment that help people navigate an unfamiliar space. Way-finding utilizes icons, aspects of interior design, such as arrows, and placement of branding elements that both guide customers throughout your space and are consistent with your brand.

Environmental Branding

Plain walls and blank environments work in some cases to cultivate a minimal atmosphere, but they likely won’t help people move through your space. Environmental branding refers to utilizing graphics, such as your logo, to bring your space to life and set the tone for your space and your business. This gives people a sense of your brand while helping them navigate the space.

Signage

This works in tandem with way-finding, but can be set apart. Way-finding can use signage to assist people in finding their way, but signage not only identifies a place, but delivers information, and can be found on company vehicles, temporary mounted signs, and more.

How Environmental Graphic Design Helps Your Business

Just like the user experience is one of the most essential components of website design, environmental graphic design works in a similar way, through making the customer experience walking through a space more positive and higher quality. Architecture influences human behavior in curating specific environments and atmospheres that tell people how they are expected to behave in a space; environmental graphic design influences people in how they think of your brand, how it makes them feel, and whether or not they’re inclined to want to work with you.

Good environmental graphic design will create a positive experience that both informs and guides people in a way that remains true to your company brand, values, and mission. With how vital it is, it’s essential to ensure that the designs you have are high quality and professional, which one of the expert graphic designers at Performance Driven Marketing can make for you.

Do You Need Environmental Graphic Designs?

Performance Driven Marketing has several experienced graphic designers in house who can both help you come up with a brand identity and come up with designs for your website, promotional materials, environment, and more that help generate you more business. We also offer digital marketing services such as SEO and web development. To learn more about how we can help you, don’t hesitate to contact us today!

If you’re dipping your toes into the world of marketing to launch and better promote your brand and your business, you’ve probably heard the term “SEO” bandied about. SEO is one of the key fundamentals of online marketing, so if you want to grow your business, implementing the current SEO strategies is one of the best ways to do so. Here, we’ve broken down some of the basics of SEO to get you started on your journey.

What Is SEO?

SEO is short for “search engine optimization”. This refers to the process of optimizing your website to rank better on search engines, such as Google. When people search for a keyword, such as ‘low back pain from shoveling snow’, by utilizing SEO practices, you can get your page or article about that to show up in the first few pages of Google search results. At its core, SEO is how you increase the visibility of your website.

SEO isn’t purely about optimizing your website, though. It also involves other aspects of digital marketing, from the user experience, to web development, to the design of the content, to your branding, to content marketing, and much, much more. Thus, in order to have a high-ranking site in the search engines, you need to have excellent digital marketing practices as a whole, in addition to SEO expertise.

How Google Ranks Content

Google ranks your content in multiple ways, and to be successful at SEO, you’ll need to understand how this works. In order to rank well, you’ll need high-quality, original, and relevant information on your site’s pages that relate to what the searcher looked up. Google determines how relevant your content is through having “crawlers” evaluate it based on the keywords (like ‘low back pain’) within the page and whether or not the majority of the page’s content is just copy and pasted from another site or if it’s something quality and new.

Quality is also determined by how many sites link to your own, and the quality of those sites. If a reputable website links to yours, this will tell Google that your content is high quality and relevant. If a little personal blog that no other site has linked to links to yours, this won’t help your rankings. You’ll want links within your content too, to prove it can be trusted. These include .govs, .edus, and .orgs.

How long people stay on your site will also inform Google how relevant it is to the search result, as will how quickly your site loads and whether or not it is mobile friendly. The way Google ranks content is ever-changing, though, so in order to maintain a high-ranking in search results, you’ll need to stay on top of new and emerging tactics.

How To Build Your SEO Strategy

There are several key steps that you can take to build an effective SEO strategy. They are as follows:

Create your list of keywords
Study Google’s first page – what are the highest ranking results doing?
Create something new, better, and/or different from what’s already out there
Add a hook, which is why people link to specific types of content
Optimize your on-page SEO (keywords, internal, and external links)
Optimize for searchers (make sure it matches search intent)
Up your content design with pictures, graphics, charts, banners, and more, so it’s more interesting to look at and easier to read and understand
Audit your site
Be continuously improving and updating your content to meet current SEO standards

Keeping Up With Changing SEO Standards

Something that frustrates even the professionals is how SEO is an ever-changing practice that you need to stay on top of in order to continue seeing good results. What got your site to the first page of Google searches years ago will make it practically invisible now. Search engines are constantly changing their algorithms which means that you need to be learning constantly and stay on top of all the latest changes. SEO is complex enough already, the last thing you need is to complicate it even more through utilizing strategies that no longer work. Staying informed will help you know what tactics to add to your strategy and what to toss.

Keeping up with changing SEO standards can feel like a never-ending race because it is. In order to stay ahead of the rest of the pack, you’ll need to both understand and keep track of: up and coming trends, new features in search tools and products, your audience, and the latest technological advances. Luckily, there are professionals who can help you out.

Do You Need Help With SEO?

Performance Driven Marketing has SEO experts in house who can help you increase the visibility of your website and generate more organic traffic. We want to help you get more customers and garner a stronger online presence. In addition to our professional SEO services, we can help you with web development, graphic design, and more. Contact us today to learn how we can help you grow your business.

As a company owner, you most likely have tried all sorts of different things to help build up your business. One of the best ways to boost your business and attract customers is to have promotional products. Promotional products are typically items that have your business’s logo on them or something that describes your company. There are all sorts of different types of promotional products, and oftentimes the best promotional products are simple items that people will use. Usually promotional products are sold to passersby or customers, but they could also be given away for free, depending on your focus.

Why Promotional Products Work

The reason why promotional products work is because they are typically things that people want and need. The purpose of promotional products are to spread awareness about a cause or company and the reason why they are so useful to companies is because they are a visual representation of your company. Promotional products help people remember your company, associate your company with good things and recognize your brand.

Individuals seeing their friends or families using your promotional products may make them want to get some of your products. Or, more likely, will remind them of your company. Those that own the product will also think fondly of your company if they like the product. When they are in need of the service that your company provides, they will remember your company and call you to get that service completed.

The Best Promotional Products

There are several great products that would be useful to have as a business, however there are certain products that rise to the top when it comes to being functional for your customers and displaying your company well.

#1- Writing Utensils

One of the most common promotional products that are on the market today are writing utensils. Pens, pencils, markers, etc. are all great options for promotional products. Writing utensils are useful to people, and that is why they are a great choice for a promotional product. Every time a person uses their pen or pencil, they will think of your company. People will love it, especially if you have a high quality promotional product.

#2- T-Shirts

Another great promotional product is a t-shirt. People love free or low-cost t-shirts. Also, t-shirts are a great promotional tool because they depict your company well and in a spot where everyone can see. Having promotional shirts gives you cheap, willing billboards.

#3- Cups Or Water Bottles

A promotional product that many people go crazy for is cups or water bottles. Most of the time people do not care what is on their water bottles or cups and will use them for a long time. Water bottles are useful to the customer and are also great for the environment as well.

#4- Calendars

Calendars are great promotional products for older generations especially. Even if you are selling products to millennials or younger generations, they will most likely also like having at least one calendar in their home. Calendars are a great marketing tool as well because people will see your company whenever they need to check the date, every month of the year.

Do You Need Promotional Products?

If you are in need of promotional products for your business, we at Performance Driven Marketing would be happy to help. We not only provide you with all sorts of solutions to your online marketing problems, but we also have the ability to help you create the perfect promotional products for your company. We have several experienced graphic designers who would be delighted to help you find the perfect design for your products and will ship the products directly to you. Reach out to us for more information.

As a business owner, the most important person in your life is your business’s customer. As an internet entrepreneur or online business owner, the most important person to you is an internet user because they will likely become a customer. The difference between an in-person customer and an internet customer is that internet users are much harder to impress. You may ask yourself, what do internet users like in a website design?

What Internet Users Like In A Website Design

A customer who comes into your business is unlikely to look around your store and leave without buying what it is that they need, but if an internet customer clicks on your website and finds that it is not up to their standards, they will move right along to another website that will satisfy their needs. That is why it is essential to have a quality web design.

A Simple Design

One of the things that is most important to internet users when it comes to a website is that it is easy on the eyes. Back in the day, it may have been possible to litter your website with all sorts of advertisements, but today if a user clicks on your website and is confronted with “click me” buttons right away, they will leave immediately.

Keep It Consistent

A thing that many internet users like in a website design is consistency. This includes color themes, fonts of words, how pages are laid out and the overall flow of a website. Be sure to keep the color scheme of your website simple. Having too many colors or patterns going on on a front page especially can stress potential customers out. Although it is important to have differences in pages, such as pictures and written content, make sure that you keep the overall look and feel of your pages the same or similar.

Minimalism

When building a website, it is important for it to be clean and easy to navigate. A trend that has been going around for the past few years is minimalism. This trend has seeped into web design as well, so for many websites, it is advisable to stick with the simple and clean designs. However, some businesses may have more information or photographs to display than others. In this situation, be sure to keep your website easy to navigate.

Answers Their Questions

Websites should be geared towards serving the internet user first, with the understanding that they are more likely to return and buy something or complete whatever action you were looking for. The answer to a user’s question should be easy for them to find and should be pretty apparent in the content you create. It is also important to make sure that your website is easy for your customer to navigate, so they can find the information they need.

A Responsive Design

Another important tip for creating a great website is to have a responsive design. When a website is responsive to the type of technology that a web user is utilizing, users are much more likely to stay longer on a website and to return to that website.

Are You Looking For A Web Designer?

While all these tips are useful for building your website, they can compare with the efficiency and experience of a professional web designer. Expert web designers are able to not only build your website, but take it to the next level. Here at Performance Driven Marketing, we can help you create your website, manage your website, fix any bugs that you may not know how to fix, and keep your website fresh with new content and updates. Contact us today for more information about our services.

Web design and graphic design tend to be confused for each other. They both have design in the name, right? They both involve creativity, they both require an understanding of design fundamentals, they both work on the computer. Aren’t they the same thing? Why would one choose web design versus graphic design?

The truth is that while web design and graphic design both fall under the general category of visual design, they’re actually quite different and have different purposes.

What Is Web Design?

Web design is the process of creating a website and designing how it looks. Web designers are responsible for finding the balance between appearance and function in a website. No one is going to stay on an ugly or confusing website, but they won’t stay on one that doesn’t have any content either.

Web designers organize content to be both visually appealing and optimized for search engines. They make sites look good, but they also make sure that they work on mobile devices as well as computers. Websites rely on code for creation and to run right, so web designers need to know coding so that the design they have for a website will actually come out right. Essentially, web design is as it sounds: designing a website.

What Is Graphic Design?

Graphic design is the creation of graphics. Graphic designers are the ones responsible for taking an idea or message and finding a way to convey it through graphics. Hence the name: graphic design. If you want an ad that sticks with someone, you’re going to need a good graphic designer.

Graphic designers present ideas through design with the use of typography, art, color, and more for a variety of items. These include: logos, prints, posters, layouts, catalogs, business cards, letterheads, brochures, and more. They’re also behind branding. Graphic designers need to have an understanding of visual art and layout and other design fundamentals, and use creative software like Photoshop to make their graphics.

How Are They Similar?

Because web design and graphic design are both subsets of visual design, they do have similarities. Both web and graphic designers learn the same design fundamentals: typography, color theory, layout, etc. They both require creativity, as design in and of itself is a creative process. As time goes on, design standards and expectations evolve, which means that something that looked good eight years ago can look terribly out of date now. As such, web and graphic designers need to stay on top of the latest trends.

What’s The Difference With Web Design Versus Graphic Design?

While web design and graphic design have similar roots, they’re by no means the same. They do different things and have different freedoms and restrictions. Because web design is online, it’s more interactive and on-going than graphic design tends to be. You can update a site, but you can’t change something already printed – only print a different version.

Web design is more technical and restricted in how typography is used, while graphic design is more artistic and has more freedom in how it uses fonts. Web design takes a lot of information and can spread it throughout a website. Graphic design can’t do that, because it adapts information to pamphlets and the like, meaning that there’s less there. They require different skill-sets and the nature of the jobs and their end products is not the same.

How Do They Work Together?

If you’re reading this and thinking that there must be a competition with web design versus graphic design, that isn’t so! Web design and graphic design can be confused for each other because the fields can work collaboratively. For companies with a foot in both traditional and digital media, they’ll want to hire both a web designer and a graphic designer.

A web designer will provide an aesthetically pleasing and functional website, and a graphic designer will provide distinctive branding and eye-catching graphics for products and marketing materials. Together, a web designer and a graphic designer can create a good-looking, professional image for a company.

Do You Need Help With Web And Graphic Design?

Here at Performance Driven Marketing, we offer both web design and graphic design, and can help you build a beautiful website and eye-catching branding. We also offer a number of other services, such as content writing, internet marketing, and more. If you have any questions, contact us at Performance Driven Marketing today!

In the marketing world, “branding” is a hot topic. It’s thrown around regularly in regard to graphic design, web design, a company’s tone, and more, but what does it actually mean and what can it do for your business?
The Basics
Company branding is basically the way that you differentiate your company from other companies. It’s what makes your company unique and what your customers recognize you by. A company’s brand may include:
• The logo
• Fonts
• Packaging
• Company name
• Specialties
• General design
• And more!
Deciding your company brand is one of the very first things you should do when you set up a business, but very few startup businesses give it much thought. Because your customers will remember and react to your company brand, it’s important to consult a designer about what your brand should be.
Changing or Renovating Your Company’s Brand
If you have only just realized the benefits of creating a company brand and want to change or renovate the (intentional or unintentional) branding your business currently has, meeting with a designer and a marketing team will really help.
You see, you don’t want to change your company’s branding too much or your previous customers might not recognize you next time they come looking. When designing a completely new branding for your business, you want to make sure that it looks great for people who will become acquainted with your company but is also recognizable to your past customers.
This task is much easier said than done. It takes real marketing expertise and design experience to come up with a new branding that works across all categories. If you are interested in setting up or modifying the brand your business has, contact the graphic designers and marketing team at Performance Driven Marketing. You can reach our office by calling (801)-326-0582 today!

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Why Web Design Is Important For Your Marketing Strategy