Latest Articles by ckirkbfs http://www.articletrader.com/ Articles at ArticleTrader en-us Does the quality of your design influence the success of your product? http://www.articletrader.com/business/marketing/does-the-quality-of-your-design-influence-the-success-of-your-product.html http://www.articletrader.com/business/marketing/does-the-quality-of-your-design-influence-the-success-of-your-product.html Mon, 21 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0500
So how do you obtain a professional look to your products? First you need to acquire the services of a professional graphic designer. Whether you have one on your staff or have to hire one, do not attempt to design your products if you are not skilled in this area. Consumers can pick out the “homemade” design from a mile away. What if you have one of those templates you bought? Consider how many others bought them also. You may have difficulty making your product stand out and be unique. Plus the template you bought may not reach your type of customer either.

What do you need to look for in a graphic designer? Obviously years of experience is necessary. Your friend's nephew who has been tinkering with photo editing software may not be your best choice to design a product that will represent your company. Experience with designing products for the same or similar markets as yours is a great asset. Check and see if the graphic designer has a portfolio for you to examine. Make sure that the graphic designer can do a quality design that will convert prospects into customers, not just eye-candy to look at. Something that looks really good to you may not necessarily attract clients to buy your product.

Once you have secured the services of a professional graphic designer, find out exactly what he or she needs from you. Then make sure you give everything required to the graphic designer. Try your best not to give what is needed by piece-meal. In other words, do not give a few things here then wait a fews days then give a few more required pieces and so on. For the graphic designer to give you the best he or she can, make sure everything that is needed is given in short order. It is hard to design a piece well when everything is not there and may end up requiring more changes than necessary thus raising your costs for design.

Any graphics or images that are required need to be high resolution. Web images are not high resolution. Even if your product design is going to be for the web only, give the graphic designer high quality images. It will make the job easier. The resolution of a web image is usually 72 dots per inch or dpi. An image that is considered high resolution will be 300 dpi. Dots per inch is simply how many dots or pixels that are in one inch on your computer monitor or paper. The higher the dpi, the more information the graphic has to make a good image. Curves and shades look smoother with a higher dpi. Any editing will look more seamless with graphics that are a higher dpi. It is very difficult to use low resolution images an make quality work out of them. After the design is finished it is simple to make the image web-ready.

Also do not have your graphic designer overload your design with images. Less is more here. A graphic designer worth their weight will know how to design well with “whitespace” - the area where there is no design element. Too many graphics or images is just distracting and will be less successful in converting sales.

Also have in your plans the time needed for the graphic designer to do a quality job. Handing a graphic designer a job that needed to be done yesterday will probably will not get you the very best he or she can do. That does not mean it will not be good, just not the best.

To learn more on how to create successful products through targeted design, go to http://www.designedforsuccessseries.com and order the Designed For Success Series for more

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Christopher & Heather Kirk are the owners of Branded For Success, Inc. which specialize in branding small businesses and entrepreneurs. Christopher has experience in computers and web design. Heather is a graphic designer with a background in marketing. See http://www.brandedforsuccess.com for more.



Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> Importance of Using Good Keywords http://www.articletrader.com/internet/site-promotion/importance-of-using-good-keywords.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/site-promotion/importance-of-using-good-keywords.html Mon, 14 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0500 So how do you finding the right keywords? Selecting your keywords should be of the highest importance. Remember what we said earlier, keywords are what search engines look for. Here are some factors to consider when selecting the right keywords for you:
1.What is your business? This seems kind of obvious. Do not select keywords that to not fit what you do or who you are as a business. Make sure the keywords are appropriate to your services and products or risk spamming the search engines and being penalized for it.
2.Who are your primary clients? How do they see your business and how would they try to find you?
3.Find variations and synonyms to your keywords. The same keywords will never be used 100% to find you. Searchers will use a variety to find services and products like yours.
4.Place priority to keywords that have alphabetical priority. Search engines still employ an alphabetical listing with common search terms.
5.Be as specific as possible. General search terms are used by thousands of sites and will make it hard to rank well. Use keywords that are not popular but still receive a fair amount of attention from searchers. After you have established your web presence, readjust your keywords to a more general term.
What is the proper placement of keywords? They should be in places where both search engines and visitors will see them. Most often we forget to put them in places where visitors will not see them, but the search engines will. Place your keywords:
1.In the Title tag of your page. This puts keywords on the top bar of the web browser just above the menu bar. Not only that, it is one of the first things in the html code that the search engines will see.
2.In the Meta description tag. Visitors will not see this directly on your page, but they will see it in the search engine results. Write your web page description filled with your keywords. This also is very high to the top in the html code.
3.In the Meta keywords tag. This is an obvious one, because that is what it is there for. But many authors of web pages forget to even use this.
4.In the main content of the web page. Here is another real obvious one. But again, we miss an opportunity when the keyword density is not at least 3% of the main content.
5.In the ALT tags. These are descriptor tags for images and other non-text elements on your page. These are other places your visitors do not see the keywords, but the search engines look for them. Realize this: search engines cannot determine the content of an image or audio clip or video clip. Why not help them out by telling them what it is and use your keywords while you are doing it.
6.In comment tags. Any web page creator who is worth the money for his services will place comments in the html code created by them. Here again, visitors do not see these, but the search engines see them all the time, if they are present. Why not use the opportunity to place keywords there?
7.In the URL. If you can find a www.websitename.com for your site that has your primary keyword in it, then you have found a great and wonderful asset. When creating new sites, keep this in mind. Assuming you have done your keyword research, find a URL that contains the primary keyword in it.
If you are serious about succeeding on the internet with your website, do not overlook the importance of keywords. Do the necessary research to find those keywords that will bring traffic to your site and eventually profit. Then place those keywords on your site where they will be most effective. If you are interested in being successful in getting quality keywords, go to http://bfsseller.bryxen4.hop.clickbank.net to find out about a tool that can help you with it.

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Christopher & Heather Kirk are the owners of Branded For Success, Inc. They brand small business and entrepreneurs so that they can be successful in their markets against larger corporations.


Christopher has over 15 years of experience with computers and the Internet. Heather is a freelance graphic designer of 13 years with an extensive background in marketing and internet marketing.


For more information go to http://www.brandedforsuccess.com



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