Monday, October 31, 2011

Christmas marketing ideas – how to give your business a mega boost

This Christmas everyone is trying to earn some extra bucks! Hopefully if you have a business, you must be trying the same! Well, I have brought here some tips or Christmas marketing ideas for you that are going to help in boosting your business! The ideas may seem to you footling but those are effective in bringing you business. Whatever return you get over offline marketing can not be compared to the huge returns of the online if the process is proper. You can hardly imagine the power of a newsletter (designed effectively) or the discount coupons floated over internet. It can bring you so many visitors or the customers!

I am a freelance graphic designer and ever try to present my blog readers and the customers with some highly effective tips. So here are some Christmas marketing ideas to boost your online business:

  • Seasons free products or services: There cannot be any other attraction than a free gift or service! Just imagine if you can offer your customers with any sort of free services (it may be given after the customer buys product or service from you). Everybody would appreciate the effort. But you have to highlight one of this best Christmas marketing ideas properly in your website or other promotional places. You may have to create small banners (text or image based) to gather the attraction of the visitors.

  • Limited discount coupons: On this Christmas season you can throw discounts on your products or services. You can arrange automatic coupon delivery from your site. People would appreciate of this highly feasible Christmas marketing ideas. You just need to implement the system asking your web developer to do so. You may also float attractively designed coupons through several ad campaigns.

  • Varied greetings cards: Once you make a deal with someone, you begin a customer and seller relation. And for future business generation you should maintain this relation. This Christmas make use of all your contacts. One of the best Christmas marketing ideas will be to send cards and e-cards. As a freelance graphic designer I design several ecards, post cards even layouts for printed greeting cards. And report says – not only the relation becomes strong, even good business is generated through these cards.

  • Effective newsletters: Sending Christmas newsletter is one of the best parts of Christmas marketing ideas. But here are some big factors to consider. One is the text of the newsletter and the other one is the overall look of the newsletter. You have to take initiative in getting one of the nicely designed newsletter layout. Not only the layout will encourage the onlooker to read the text message but it will also showcase the offers directly through the images. Have a look at one of my newsletter designs.

  • Making full use of social media: In this present era you would certainly keep several social networking profiles for sure. These media keeps you connected with millions of others. Then why not use social media as one of the parts of your Christmas marketing ideas? Continuously promote your products or services through social networks. Create small and attractive banners to post & share in your profile. These types of promotions do bring huge traffic and help in sales conversion.

Hopefully from the above Christmas marketing ideas you have understood how in this Christmas season you can boost your business. But at the same time it should be clear to you that making offerings attractive you may need help from designers. So while choosing one of the designer, you have to check his or her web & graphic design portfolio for sure. This helps you know the potentiality of a designer for providing you the best of designs to make Christmas marketing ideas successful.

Friday, October 14, 2011

Cutting Edge Website Design – A Key to successful online presence

Every time I come across each client, they ask me to provide a ‘cutting edge website design’. And I must tell you that the demand is not to a freelance graphic designer but from every website designer! There are several themes, trends shown on the internet but the clients ever look something different and unique. It may be breaking the convention and designing to evoke a typical sense of emotion. On the other hand use of infographics, multi-header or priority to review can give your website layout an edge other others.

Now let us find out so factors that make the website layouts really cutting edge website design:

  • Design has to evoke typical emotion: Just simply designing a layout for your site you may never get the edge over others. In other words you have to make your site just unique than others. The look of your site has to evoke a purposeful emotion to the visitors about your products or services. Place the best of images, trimmed texts and everything to turn a simple design into cutting edge website design.

  • Proper use of ‘call to action’: This happen typically to product or service oriented sites generally that the site owners are eager to “drag” the users to some specific pages from just anywhere! Ok, let me clear, a visitor might be reading some valuable information from the site but all in a certain he finds attractive call to visit a page through clicks. It may be irritating to visitors. But it does not mean that you should avoid this! Rather put the call to action phrases at the bottom or ending part of all valuable info. It will then rather prompt the users to stick around your site. You are going to find that your website is have one of the cutting edge website design quality isn’t it?

  • Multi-headers & infographics: As I told at the very beginning that your website has to be different or edgy from others! So in the design multi-header increases chance to put more useful links at the home page and some infographics (graphical presentation of information) makes the understanding of anything better. In other words you could see that your website is having one of the cutting edge website designing trends for sure.

  • Keep space for reviews: Last but not the least - now people have really too less time to look into your content. For an example even Google has started to show Google rich snippets with the links in its SERP so that visitors directly see through the review or ratings of the site’s reputations. So don’t you think that keeping priority to the customer reviews in your layout will give you and edge to your site? Certainly keep the reviews in way in the home or other valuable pages and make it one of your cutting edge website designing factor for sure.

These are some of the points that can give your website a cutting edge over others. But here you should keep one point in mind that innovative designing or something unique can never be provided by any novice designer! So while you are seeking cutting edge website designing from a designer, do look at the web & graphic design portfolio to know how expert or experienced he or she is. If you fail to choose one of the best designers, you would find that your website has ultimately got another conventional design not the cutting edge website design!

Saturday, October 1, 2011

Bilingual Website Design: how far relevant in this multicultural world

Every one of us wants to build a great website for our business! Here with the word great I mean to say a website that returns higher than its investment! And it is same way true that we are ready to do anything for better businesses! It is a common factor that a website is built in a single language. The language is generally English for its high popularity! At the same time, Spanish, French and other languages are popular though. But have you thought about bilingual website design? Again you may say for the globalization of the trade and commerce you have to reach the multicultural world in their languages and in this kind of situation a bilingual website designing is not feasible! But it can be practicable for a few good reasons – specified business location, priority in specific search engines, and certainly the budget issue!

Well, while working as a freelance graphic designer, I have come to such typical question of feasibility of bilingual website design. I like to answer the question through the following points:

  • Business may limit to a specific location: It is not always possible to spread a business to so many locations. So you may have to limit your market to a specific business zone and certainly the language of the location has to be the language of your site! Say the language is French for the targeted location then the primary language may be French for the website. While you may go for a bilingual website design keeping English as the other language. It will increase the chances of business with those people who know English. At the same time some products (cosmetics for special temperature zone) or the services (pest control for specific insect prone zone) you have to pursue people in their own language!

  • English is not the only language: Till date the convention of web design is of building the site in English. Yes, it was true that once English was a highly popular language. But there are other languages like French, Chinese, German, Spanish and so many others which are getting popular. If you would like to grab the attention of the users who speak one of those languages, you have to think of bilingual website designing. In addition to local language keep English as secondary language to give your site a global attitude.

  • Priority to specific search engine: Do you think it is possible to optimize your site fast and easily for varied foreign search engines. Yes, I am talking about Spanish, Japanese and other search engines. Why don’t you begin with a bilingual website designing. It is always easy to rank high in foreign search engines if your website language is same of that. When you have gathered considerable business via one of these SEs catering to your local market, you may try other languages. But for start-ups it is always recommended that they start with bilingual website designing.

  • Money matters: Last but not the least is the investment of money! You may easily go for multilingual website designing as there are some added benefits. But do you think the cost of building such site is easy to bear? Especially for the start-ups? If no, then go for bilingual website designing. Having two languages – one being English and other catering to your local market, you have the opportunity of grabbing the world market.

Well, these are a few points that try to prove that a bilingual website designing is still relevant in today’s multicultural world. But at the same time you have to remember that building a bilingual website is not a child’s play! You got to get help from the expert. An expert web and graphic designer knows how to technically build a bilingual website. If you just assign the work to Tom, Dick and Harry, you will find all your investment has gone to sea. So select the web or graphic designer after you have carefully looked into their web or graphic design portfolio and satisfied yourself about the ability of the designer. Hope you choose the right person and your initiative of bilingual website design gets successful.