How to adapt without compromising the soul or your business.

Effective business plans depend on an established value proposition by your organization and within your customer base. This is the belief that the customer value will be experienced as promised by the brand. Value is defined as benefits minus the cost. The visual identity of your brand should become synonymous with this perception of value in the eyes of your target market. Your visual identity is very deeply rooted with your logo as well as the brand colors, type, type stylings, and visual marketing methods. These things must maintain enough constancy so that the market recognizes these things as being uniquely you, but must also adapt to the changing needs of your business.

Change is important! Since the market is always in a constant state of flux and growth, it is vital for your brand to grow with and adapt to this ever changing market. If you haven’t updated your brand since your business began, it is most likely in need of a refresh. Even if there isn’t a need a full rebrand, it is vital to be constantly evaluating your assists and your position in the market in order to assess the direction and growth potential of your business. At the same time, you have a strong history of brand value that is deeply rooted in hard work, great service, or reliable and valuable products in the market. Do everything within your power not to leverage against the established equity you have in your brand while being flexible and growing enough to stay relevant and profitable within the market.

Leveraging your existing brand strengths throughout a rebrand is vital for staying true to your existing customers and making the most of everything you have built. Not only this, but staying true to your essence maintains the perception of honesty and the integrity of your brand. A perception of wholesome values can be a great asset in a degraded marketing economy with “buy one get one free” and “special one time offer”marketing schemes exist at every turn. Flex to take advantage or sales and growth potential, but maintain a honest core at the same time.

When delving into the rebranding process, take this opportunity to do as much research into your market and client base as possible. This is a great time for you to seriously consider the potential growth for your company. After all, a new visual identity system for your company should be one that you can grow into and embraces what you want to become as well as what you are. Think big and collect data from every source possible. Utilize social media as well as more direct communication and research opportunities. Remember, that what people say is not necessarily what people actually do. Don not trust everything you are told when you talk to resources about your organization. There is much more merit in the actions of people and the actions of the market, this should override less quantitative data.

Embrace your competition, cross market, and network. You can utilize connections to benefit from the successful market trends in other industries. Don’t just focus on what you do well, also focus on what others are doing well and how it can tie in what you are doing. This way, you rethink your customer base and learn how to expand, while still staying true to the core of your business by continuing to do what you do well.

To maximize the effectiveness of the rebrand, a plan should be in place to help your organization make the switch over to the new identity system. Employee email signatures, printed collateral, and all digital media assets including the website have to be adjusted to incorporate the new brand, ideally at the same time. That is why considering to tackle a rebrand when you are already planning to rebuild your website and digital collateral can cut back on the cost and time by streamlining the process. Putting out an internal guideline can help everyone make the switch over smoothly and in a timely fashion to increase the effectiveness of the rebrand and to eliminate potential confusion for the customer and to also minimize drawing attention to the change so that it seems more seamless in the eyes of the market.

I personally believe that honesty, handwork and a healthy dose of creativity are the most valuable assets to maintaining a healthy brand. Hiring creative experts to assist your through your rebranding process can breathe life into your business and your ideas and help your business thrive.

There are many things that influence the user’s decision making process. Here are seven major elements that I’ve come across in my research lately that can be very useful to enhancing user experience, increasing conversions, and helping the user make a more informed decision.

1_Reciprocation

People like to return favors. Providing free samples, downloads, useful information or free trials is a courtesy that can often compel users to become a committed buyer later on.

2_Commitment

People like to follow through and act on the things they say. This in particular is social media oriented because social media is a communication tool that allows users to make a commitment to a brand by liking, commenting on, reposting or tweeting a company, organization, product, or service. This is a minor commitment that often will encourage loyalty in the future.

3_Social Proof

Not to say that users do not all have unique identities, but social conformity surely plays a part in decision making. If there is a system on your site that shows how many others are purchasing, downloading, or interested in an item this will increase the popularity of the item due to social trend. Often if users don’t have much else to base their decisions on, they will choose to go with what’s popular.

4_ Authority

This is the emphasis on promoting credibility via references or the perception of authority. People are much more likely to make decisions based on information that is presented to them from a source that appears to be legitimate. Citing references and accreditations contributes to perception of credibility.

5_Scarcity

If an item is presented to a user as being of limited availability, the desire for this object increases since it is seen as being exclusive or highly desired. Product inventory tracking with low inventory alerts can be useful in this way. Also, a lot of timed or limited availability discount offer sites are popping up that use this to promote sales.

6_Framing

Framing allows users to assess the value of something based on comparison. Benchmarks and pricing reference points are often needed for a user to know whether something is a good value or not. One example of this can be a site that allows users to make a charitable donation. Offering preset donation amounts can enable users to get a concept of what an ideal or relevant donation amount would be.

7_Salience

Site users will be drawn to what is relevant or important to them at a specific point in time. A good example of this is to provide space for related products in a shopping cart right before the checkout process, perhaps after an item is added to the cart. This is useful to remind users that other products may be relevant to their purchase (like AA batteries for a universal remote) and they can then quickly add them to their order through the cart interface. Another example would be to strategically present discounts or up-sell offers at relevant times to encourage user engagement.

shot with a nikon d80 at 7am. photoshopped to oblivion.

something simple and violet

Spent some time today doing a quick impromptu layout as an exercise. It’s nice to work with no restrictions sometimes.

Just a little typography exercise for fun!

photo by Katarina Smuraga

http://www.flickr.com/photos/katarina_smuraga/

Life is like walking on a trail through the woods in the dark. There are many different paths you can choose (this is where free will comes in) but there may be paths that are easier (less resistance) than others. Since you’re in the dark, you really can’t see where you’re going, and you have to feel your way along. You know when you’ve strayed off the path when branches start hitting you in the face. You can either keep going – even though you’re stumbling and probably walking through spider webs – you’re still going to get somewhere, or you can make gradual changes and adjust your path until the going gets a bit easier and a bit easier. Life will send you little signs that your on the path of least resistance. Then you will possibly make it further in life, more comfortably.

Some people may stop walking, or simply wander aimlessly, abandoning the hope of even finding direction. Some people may run – rushing through and failing to feel their surroundings and make informed decisions about where they are going. It is important to remain calm, aware and sensitive using our gut and our minds to choose our path.

This is my analogy that I use to understand free will and destiny. I think both are possible.

It’s often common to put majority of the emphasis on the functionality of a site. While this is important, the value of good design needs to be recognized. It is possible to overlook the design and the value of content above and beyond what is strictly needed. We see that this type of extraneous content can be very important when we look at how human beings engage with the websites they use.

In psychology, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a food pyramid of human needs. The base of this pyramid is “physiological” needs. Before any other needs can be met, physiological needs have to be taken care of. The next level is “safety”, then “love/belonging”, and “esteem”. Only when all these more basic needs are met can we being to attend to the highest need, “self-actualization”.

A similar hierarchy of needs can be applied to web interface design. The base of the pyramid and most fundamental need is that a site be “functional”. It has to enable a user to complete a specific task. The next element is “reliability”. The site has to be online and working whenever a user attempts to access it. After this we have “usability”. Things have to make sense and the user should be able to figure out the site without to much learning. Up until recently, this was a high as the pyramid went. But now we have learned that the actual “pleasure” that is derived from a site contributes very much to how effective the site is.

Looking at some basic info about how brains process information, we can see how the pleasure factor when viewing a site can be very important. Emotionally charged events last much longer in our memories. They are also recalled with greater accuracy than neutral memories. Part of this is due to the fact that when we experience something that speaks to us more emotionally, the brain releases dopamine. Dopamine actually acts as a type of marker, signifying that what we are experiencing is important and this allows the information to be more robustly processed with more detail and a greater ability for recall. You can see how this would be incredibly useful to engaging your users and enabling the content of your site to be stored in their memories with greater strength and accuracy.

Another aspect of how good emotional design can contribute to the user experience is emotional stimuli is disarming and engaging. It makes us comfortable and signifies that this is something we should be interacting with on a deeper level. Molecular Biologist and author, John Medina states that using emotional stimuli to build positive memory is actually a very effective brain hack and a great way to engage the users ability to learn.

Our perceptions are critical. Usability is absolutely necessary but not everything, and the value of pleasure in a design should not be disregarded.

Anyways, I’m experimenting with a new mark and some new layout ideas for this site. The idea as of now is to build it using Bootstrap’s fluid grid system. Just because the Boostrap system has a lot of built in features I’d like to play with in my downtime. Before I was working like.. 3 jobs. And now that I’m only working 1 (and a half.. if you count kickboxing instructing), so I need something to fill up that void in my heart.

So without further adieu here is a Costco sized sample of my future intentions.