A good design means good communication with the one who is observing it. Website designing is simply a result of changing technology; the core purpose is the same. Website design is for creative individuals, whereas website development is for technical individuals. This article aims to resolve any query regarding web designing.

What are graphic designing and its relation with web designing?

Since the inception of the digital era, we have always wanted to make communication between us and machines more creative and artistic. Graphic designing is simply a result of changing technology. Graphic design is a field that uses visual elements to represent a solution to a problem. So who is a graphic designer? A graphic designer creates visual elements to communicate effectively and creatively. Examples of graphic designing include Logo design, Package design, Mobile app design, Website design, and much more.

Graphic design is a very vast field that has many branches. Website design is a subset of graphics designing.

What is Website Designing?

You must be wondering what website designing is? But before this, let’s answer what a website is? A website is simply a group of web pages falling under a unique name. A webpage is a document on the internet having content. So anyone designing these web pages is called a website designer, and the overall process is called website designing. It is also called web designing.

Web design is the overall process of designing the arrangement of content online. A good website design fulfills its function by conveying the message effectively intended for a particular audience.

We can divide web designing into the following branches:

• User interface design: Whether creating a custom website design or a generic one, web designers work on the front user interface. The user interface is a layout on which users interact with the website. The more user-friendly your website becomes, the better the interaction is with users.
• User experience design: In simple terms, a user experience means how users feel when interacting with your website. To know more about design and development.

Tools for website design

There are a ton of tools for website designing. It ultimately depends on your usability and the scope of the project. Generally, a single software can get your job done. The most prominent tools/softwares are:

• Adobe Xd

Used for UX/UI designing and prototyping.

• Sketch

It’s a vector graphics editor for the mac operating system.

• Figma

A web-based user interface designing tool.

• Adobe Photoshop

Designers use it for Image editing, graphic designing, and digital art creation. Adobe Photoshop is an advanced design tool, so you need some training to master it. Do not worry. There are numerous free tutorials you can find on YouTube.

• Other tools

Balsamiq, Canva, and Invision are other prominent design tools used while designing a website.

Future and scope of website design

The technological revolution has changed how we work and communicate with each other. And after the pandemic(covid-19), we understood how it could assist us in our problems. Since website designing also evolved with shifting technology, it can be safe to say that website or custom website designing is future-proof.

But we must also understand that we also need to be dynamic in our understanding of digital technology. However, many platforms can do custom website design and are accessible. If you are a talented website designer, your future is bright. Changing technology also introduced new website design trends.

Technology has made learning easier for an individual. One can quickly master this skill set if one is interested.

What is Custom website designing

Any website design that does not follow any pattern or template falls under the banner of custom website designing. Many custom website design agencies offer tailor-made solutions to their customers. Such agencies seek talented individuals who have a knack for website designing. According to Researchgate, 94% of the audience’s first impressions are impacted by visuals and design.

When opting for custom website designing, statistics play a vital role. UX/UI research helps you understand your target audience and provide solutions to their needs through design and experience. Numerous tools can help you throughout your website design and development journey. Custom website design agencies can help you make your website designs more innovative and user-friendly.

Creative Website Studio and website design

Creative website studios is a customer-driven, innovation-oriented, and technology-focused company. Creative website studios work hard to implement the latest technology present in the market. Creative website studios focus on client satisfaction when it comes to website designing. Our portfolio and testimonial talk about our hard work and dedication. Creative website studios also provide custom website development, apart from custom website design. To know more about website development, visit our blog.

How to become a website designer?

Growth in technology resulted in many opportunities and development in graphics and website designing. There are tons of website designing courses to help you land your dream job. Many certifications make you go from beginner to pro in a decent time frame. Apart from that, you can visit the following website for your design inspiration:

• Behance – for showcasing and finding creative work
• Awwwards – It promotes the best website design.
• Dribbble – A community for designers, enhancing their skills and finding a job as well.

CSS Nectar, Siteinspire, Designspiration, and Pinterest are other platforms for design inspiration.

Salary of a website designer

As per payscale, the mean salary of a website designer in the USA is 52,296 USD/year. It will help if you have a portfolio that shows your creativity and intelligence in this field.

Conclusion

No matter how good your product is, a bad design makes people lose interest and hence interaction causing loss of potential customers. The same goes for a poor website design. Throughout your design lifecycle of a website, you as a designer or custom website designing company must ensure that you follow the latest visual design trends. One must also make sure that they are correctly using technology.

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In the digital age of today, where we all reside, things are far more complex than we might believe; it might sound straightforward for the generation that grew up with technology. However, the previous generations struggle with it.

Background

Businesses have been going on since ancient times, including ancient Greece, Egypt, Rome, and so on. These businesses required some sort of marketing advertisement to boost their sales, but they had a very different approach to ads back in the day.

Due to the non-existence of anything digital back then, businesses often tried to spread word of mouth all across the globe. Keeping the quality of their goods high, they wanted their customers to talk about their commodities and spread the name.

Inception of Internet

The inception of the internet has promoted the transformation of the world entirely at the highest level of upgrades that were never witnessed or recorded before. As soon as the internet became a norm for society through various social media platforms, businesses started switching towards a digital approach involving marketing. This was the beginning of the digital age, where a vast number of people came to know about various businesses.

When Facebook came into existence, it became prevalent, literally destroying its competitor, Orkut. Facebook is involved in creating pages where people can interact with their favorite pages by liking them. Due to this, several people switched to making their business pages, and Facebook thrived.

Modern Marketing

As of today, we find ourselves surrounded by advertisements, branding, and extensive marketing like never before. Today’s top applications, such as Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter, started to start paid advertisements on their platform, which assisted new and old brands in growing and maintaining their sales.

With PPC advertisements, new organizations are enabled to launch their line of brands for recognition, powered by robust, eye-catching, and informative content with the appropriate amount of keyword adjustments to optimize search engines, which further concludes that the website ranks higher on google.

Business Growth, Before Vs. Now

Before the internet, it was fairly challenging to get the word around; it often took a lot of time, and sourcing goods wasn’t accessible either. The only thing that mattered that allowed businesses to thrive were the quality of their products, involving something extraordinary which made customers talk about it.

However, today people are far more aware of new startups than ever before. Doing business has become so easy that many people are leaving their jobs to pursue their dream of owning a business. Due to a sudden spike in entrepreneurs, we see advertisements all around us. However, as much business birth, the better the service and the products get as customers can send their feedback to the organizations presented on google, causing potential buyers to have a generic idea.

With instant access to information and communication, it has become relatively easier to do businesses while managing them thoroughly and efficiently. Clients are directly engaged with the project manager, who ensures to keep a constant communication channel always open; through this accessibility, the client’s specifications and requirements for specific projects are clearly understood by the people who work on their project and similarly for the project manager.

This constant channel of communications has assisted businesses in providing their clients with the actual work they ask for along with the required specifications. Meanwhile, the Digital Marketing organizations benefit from the experience and learn to cater to specific issues effectively in the near future.

On various social media platforms, an individual comes across multiple ads from businesses operating in their own country, brands they prefer, and content that suits the masses; through these, companies can specifically target their audience collectively, attaining massive sales and virality of their brands.

Today’s brands try their very best to create video advertisements that may potentially get viral on the internet. Due to this, several brands have been successful in attaining massive reach.

Creation of Multiple Domains and Jobs

As new domains and industries come into existence, they bring multiple jobs, a considerable amount of funds, and a far better work culture, giving employees the empowerment they deserve.

A Digital Marketing Company offers a dynamic range of Digital Marketing Services which cater to all the online requirements of a business client.

As it so occurs, in all industries, there are a few which are known as the Best Digital Marketing Agencies. Through the domain of Internet Marketing, a big chunk of the global population made their careers out of it.

From Website Creation to Animations, from Content Writers to Graphic Designers, from SEO Experts to vital Marketing Agencies.

All of the services involved in Digital Marketing are as important as the other, however, when it comes to content, it is by far the primary requirement of any sort of digital marketing service. The internet is primarily a mega-giant of information, information which is written mainly by experts to engage the masses. Due to the positions of Content Writing, several students and individuals started to pursue it to build strong careers it.

Most of the jobs in the domain of Digital Marketing easily enable multiple individuals to work remotely, along with flexible hours, which is why people opted for working with them, as a number of people are not able to work onsite due to various issues. Due to these remote positions, organizations save their capital as they don’t have to bear the office overheads and running costs; meanwhile, the employees and freelancers earn more.

When new industries are born, they bring themselves with multiple careers, which conclude to wealth creation, making third world countries opt towards the goal of ending up becoming a first world countries, boosting their economy.

Conclusion

Along with the excessive ease in doing business in the digital age, it is also an undeniable fact that future entrepreneurs would have to engage with their creativity and innovations to sell their commodities, as competition is only going to get fierce in the decade to come.

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implementations are introduced in the market having only one aim to promote the brand, increase sales, and grab more customers.

Social media platform plays a vital role in this initiative; it is where a brand gets many generous benefits, including global reach to market insights and many more, by getting social media advertising services. Let’s talk about some of the significant advantages of advertising through social media.

1.    Increase Brand Acknowledgement

Social media is a massive platform where you can connect to millions of people worldwide. You can get the audience by advertising through social media and connecting more and more targeted audiences, and allowing them to share your business’s content or ad with their networks so that more networks will get to know about your brand’s presence which will directly increase your brand recognition and enables you to gain a potential audience for your business.

2.    Generates Inbound Sales

Your inbound traffic is restricted to regular customers if you do not start your business advertising on social media. Your potential customers must search for your brand to get your services, but you never get potential customers if you do not advertise your content or brand on social media. By adding advertisement to your marketing strategy, you can grab a vast range of customers beyond the limits, and also the audience will get aware of your brand. The more your target customers, the more it will influence your sales.

3.    Greater Conversion Rate

Since your brand’s visibility increases with advertising through social media, you automatically gain a higher volume of customers on your site, which is the rigid reason behind the increase in your sales. By advertising your content on social media, your brand will be accessible to the targeted consumers; they notice and share your brand to further networks, and whenever they find a need to have your products or services, you know that they will indeed approach you. This is what a social media advertising strategy does; it creates your existence in the market and lets the consumers know about your brand, which opens the doors for your brand and increases your conversion rates.

4.    Creates Strong Social Existence

Along with the numerous benefits of social media, it would be surprising for anyone that it is also beneficial in creating a robust presence of your brand in the digital world. When a brand’s ad is run on any social media platform, many people watch it, and if they find it attractive or relevant, they must check on your brand’s profile or website, which will immediately let them to your products or services, it’s a one way of how a brand gets a social media presence.

Another way is that when someone watches your ad and follows you and shares it with their friends or other networks, so a brand gains new followers, and their social media existence inevitably gets boosted. This is how a social media advertising strategy facilitates your brand’s presence in the social world.

5.    Enables Customers And Marketplace Insights

You can get valuable insights about your customers as social media holds and collect all relevant data about their interests and preferences. When an ad campaign runs on social media, it throws accurate insights based on the response of the audience and their interaction with your ad.

By advertising through social media, you get aware of your customers and help you understand the ongoing drifts of your industry and marketplace.

Final Thoughts

With all the above-explained advantages of ads, it must be clear how vital advertising through social media is for your brand and business. By running ads on social media, you can obtain relevant information and then plan and strategize according to those insights on how you can make your brand more valuable and preferable for your customers.

By implementing these factors, you can automatically gain a potential audience and increase quality traffic, and your brand credibility will also be enhanced.

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Your website is one of the most critical aspects of your brand and contributes significantly to your brands online presence. Besides that, your website is also a place where you nurture leads to get conversions. Therefore, you cannot afford any fails and need to do it right.

Consider these statistics:

• According to research, first impressions of the audience are 94% design-related
• The same research also highlights, about 46% of the consumers of a website base their decision of creditability of a website which is set through visual appeal and aesthetics.
• Adobe highlighted that 38% of the people will stop engaging with the website if the content or web design layout is unattractive.
• Judgments of a company’s credibility are 75% based on the company’s web design.

When designing your website, these statistics must be one of the top priorities along with your audience. There are endless tools, technologies, and UI, UX graphic designer services available today which can help you create a website design that can cut through the noise.

Importance of Graphic Design on your Website

People are visual beings. Think about it, the number of positive responses to visuals on a website surpasses the number of people who actually read the text. With that said, the more visual content you have on your website, the more will people be enticed to visit it again.

High-quality content must always find a way on the website to attract your business’s potential prospects and keep them engages with the brand. Visual representation assumes a unique position in planning your site. It involves two things the design and functionality.

While that code helps the users to interact with the right pages, decipher the content, and assist in finding the right product, graphic designs help that supports the code makes the content noticeable in terms of the text styles, colors, and images, as well as the navigation of the website. Subsequently, it is essential for a website to have a correct blend of pictures, content, text style, and tiles to make an exclusive web graphic design.

Five Reasons making Graphic Designs Important for Websites

• It sets the first impression

When your potential customers visit your website, it is important for your website to make a lasting impression on the potential prospects. They will judge your businesses in split seconds, and if your website has an unappealing or outdated look, your audience is likely to have a negative impression of your brand.

Graphic designs and an appealing website layout is an essential aspect of making an impression on the audience. It lays the foundation of how the audience perceives your business and what message it conveys to the audience. The impact you make on your prospects can either make your business or perish it completely to the ground. With that said, a good web design can help you keep your leads on the page.

• Graphics provide more information

Graphics can enhance the structure, design, or informative content presented on the web page while keeping the users’ attention at bay. If your potential audience is distracted when viewing your website, it means that they weren’t engaged enough, and that’s not a good sign. Bear in mind, the graphics you use on your website must always compliment the culture and the services of the organization, the style it presents, and the purpose it is working for.

Graphics are an essential part of the website as they provide a detailed information compared to the textual information present on the page. Think about it, a simple infographic or animation that lasts no longer than two minutes can provide much more engagement than a static image or the content.

Since the visitors of the website are likely in a rush to know more about your services, graphics are a more subtle way to give more information about your brand that can make an impact on the audience.

• It aids your business’s SEO strategy

Many web design elements and practices significantly influence how you publish content on the website, ultimately affecting how the Search Engine spiders crawl and index your web page.

This is one thing in making a brand that you cannot miss. One reason for this being that if you mess up the on-page SEO fundamentals of the website, chances are you will be fighting for the spot in the competition from the very inception of your business.

Not just that, it is important to keep in mind that certain web design elements can directly affect the SEO of the website. Web graphic design can be challenging to understand if you are unfamiliar with how it works, but you need to make sure that your code is SEO-friendly.

The best way to ensure web design practices is to find the “best graphic design services near me” and trust them with everything they are doing.

• It sets the impression for customer services

The audience tends to judge how you will treat them by the look of your website. Your web design gives them an insight on your view towards the audience, making them skeptical of their next action, i.e., to hit the call-to-action button.

To do it right, think of your website as a customer service representative. If your website is bright, modern, and welcoming, your audience is likely to feel more comfortable engaging with you. You’ll set an impression that you are open and welcoming to new people. ‘

On the contrary, if you haven’t updated your website in a while or it has an unappealing site, it can make your business look cold and aloof. People tend to leave a website that doesn’t match their expectations or makes a good impression on them.

Think of your website design as your business’s digital face. If someone walking into your physical business location is impressed with the ambiance, then it should make the same impression when they enter into your digital storefront.

• It creates consistency

You want your brand to perform greatly in the digital landscape and expect it to generate new leads. You want your brand to make an impression on the audience and expect them to be familiar with the brand so they can convert. If you have a different design layout on every page of your website, it will make it look unprofessional and drive people away from your website.

To do it right, you need to maintain consistency through the website—fonts, styles, color, and layout, every page of your website must speak the same about your brand as the home page of your website. This approach works seamlessly to build brand recognition.

On the other hand, if your website is not consistent, people are likely to leave your website to a website that looks more professional. With consistency in design, you keep your leads longer on the page, ultimately resulting in conversions. Consistency will give your users a feeling of a well-organized website, reinforcing the trust you want to build.

Conclusion

Graphic design is a vital aspect of building the credibility of your website. If you want to get the best results for your business, it is important to invest in creating a website that drives people to learn more about the company. Make sure to work with the professionals to make the right choices when it comes to designing.

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There are so many products and services in the market, with so much content communicating with us. Do you remember all of them? No right! But few stay in your mind. That’s because all don’t have successful branding; brands that create their own distinct brand identity in customers’ minds will go a long way.

We always hear people talking a lot about branding, and as businessmen, we even accept its vital role in today’s era. But we fail to execute it; many small brands, start-ups, and even traditional seasoned brands ignore manage branding in their business.

Today Designer People will discuss some critical branding statistics, which will give you a hint of reality in the market.

1. Logo is the #1 most recognizable brand identifier, followed by the visual style.

A brand logo’s overall visual identity can either make or break a brand in a target customer’s eyes. When it is about a recognizable icon for your company or organization, that will be immediately identifiable.

(Source: Render forest)

2. ⅓ of customers have a brand in mind when they go shopping.

Trust acts as strong purchase consideration for the vast majority of respondents, and they plan in their mind about what to purchase when they visit the store. It can be through various geographies, age groups, gender and income levels. Brands can build trust by discussing with consumers through multiple platforms and voices, not with advertising alone. Make sure you be present for them through various portals so that you don’t miss them out.

(Source: Render forest)

3. It takes 5 to 7 impressions on average for people to remember your brand.

Consistency is key to leading a memorable brand in the minds of customers. Your employees, staff, customers and everyone should be living your brand every day. They should have clarity on your brand objective, what your brand promise and how they can contribute and act as a positive part of your brand story regularly.

Social media branding provides opportunities to get a consistent yet dynamic in front of hundreds and thousands of people every day.

Source: (Pam Moore)

4. 82% of investors want the companies they invest in to have a strong brand.

Investors focus on the company as a whole before investing, not just its product or services but as a brand. A brand requires to be bigger than a product. Companies need depth that goes beyond a focus on one product or one solution. Hence so many percentages of investors brand need to rethink if it needs to rebrand its image through a professional branding agency.

(Source: big presence)

5. 94% of customers are likely to be loyal to brands that offer transparency.

Brand transparency and trust are two essential components of building a successful brand. It’s all about trust, and without which one can never be able to convince your target audience to select your product over a competitor. If there is no brand transparency, your customers won’t take the risk by giving a foreign company the benefit of the doubt.

Brand transparency will boost your profits in several ways. It makes it easy for you to convert into new leads, but it also means that your existing customers and clients will stay with you for much longer too!

(Source: Zimmer communications)

6. 75% of companies say building brand awareness is one of their top priorities.

Increased brand awareness allows a range of benefits, including increased traffic, brand advocates and possibly more sales. Audiences need to understand, recall, and become comfortable with your branding and products. Customers already identify your brand; they will be more likely to buy from your business than, say, a competitor’s business with which they’re not as familiar.

(Source: Render forest)

7. 77% of B2B marketers say building a strong brand is key to their company’s growth.

Whatever your target consumers or type of businesses may be, the branding helps companies grow drastically. Around 80% of B2B marketers agree that their companies couldn’t expand and develop without it.

(Source: Circe Research)

Also Read: Brand Design Types for your Business

8. 75% of people recognize a brand by its logo, 60% by its visual style, 45% by its signature color, and 25% by its unique voice.

The majority of brands identify logos easily because of their consistency displayed.

Start-ups might assume they don’t require to be consistent with their identity which. People identify businesses based on their brand identity.

Brand identity such as tone, shade, style and design takes disparate visual elements and unifies them into a complementary identity system. They should be consistent in their appearance, use, scope, color palette, feel, etc.

(Source: Render forest)

9. 70% of brand managers find audience building more important than converting sales.

Brand success isn’t always measured in direct sales or profit measures. The point of brand marketing is to build a following and establish trust. Over time, this potential audience will convert into customers, but only after establishing trust with your brand. Over the years, marketers have focused on building audiences as the go-to method for closing sales and converting visitors into customers.

(Source: Bynder)

10. 59% of customers prefer to buy products from familiar brands.

It takes years for brands to build their identity and image in customers’ minds, but once successful branding is done, there is no way back. People don’t like to take the risk. They believe in their existing purchases and their quality assurance. On that basis, they feel safe to buy products from familiar brands.

(Source: Invesp)

11. 13% of consumers will pay 31-50% more if they feel your business is positively impacting the world.

Brand impressions matter for long-term brand identity, But one has to capitalize on promoting the brand values consumers view as upstanding. When a company cares about the community, environment, and goodness towards society, consumers don’t mind paying more for its products or services, in some cases up to 50% more.

(Source: Customer Thermometer)

12. 54% of consumers would like to see more video content from the brands they support.

Videos are a consumers’ favorite type of content to see from a brand on social media. Consumers expect more video content. About 88% of video marketers are satisfied with the ROI of their video marketing efforts on social media.

The narrative of video content ensures to inspire loyalty between the brand and its audience. When consumers enjoy your video content, they build more trust by showing support to the brand.

13. 89% of shoppers stay loyal to brands sharing their values.

Consumers are happy to reward or punish based on brand values and company actions. They feel more comfortable if their brand is sharing their values. Also, they stay loyal to them. A sense of belongingness is created that influences the purchasing behavior of customers.

Brands that are welcoming consumers to join them in action are rewarded with more conversations, new buyers, and greater customer loyalty.

(Source: Fundera)

14. 77% of customers refer to specific products by a brand name.

Customers nowadays do not buy products or services. They invest in a Brand. Many shoppers are incredibly loyal to their beloved brands, from having good experiences to want to portray a particular brand image. Recognized brand names typically have shown consistency in product quality that has contributed to the brand’s evolution. Often, consumers rely on prior experiences or public word-of-mouth when selecting brands.

(Source: Crowd spring)

15. Over 65% of people have formed an emotional connection to a brand.

The brand with more robust bonds with their consumers scored higher on this emotional quotient wise. Brands that have cultivated emotional connection with their consumers have shown a clear financial edge over those who don’t. Emotions influence purchase decisions. Employing emotional science drives consumer’s willingness to buy your product or use your service.

(Source: Render forest)

CONCLUSION

Now that you have gone through the above branding statistics, we hope you have a glimpse of the necessary steps.

A brand is a story and a feeling. A perception of what your business shapes it to be. Everyone must be on the same page about your branding strategy; you can go out and spread the word unanimously.

Connect Creative Website Studios Designer People to now more unknown facts about branding and how you can include it in your brand building plan.

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If you are in the food and beverages industry, having a well-defined and highly appealing food branding strategy must be recognized by your prospective customers. With a food brand strategy, you can add up to the growth of your business. We at Creative Website Studios, are a team of creative heads who can tell a brand story that will not appeal to your customers and help you win your competitors in the long run.

Thus, to sustain the food and beverages industry, the essential ingredient is to have a good food branding strategy. Let us know some successful food brand strategies that can help your food brand stay on top.

What is Brand Strategy?

A Brand Strategy refers to specific and long-term goals that it can accomplish as your brand grows. It is not just your product, logo, or your website, which are mostly visible. It involves everything intangible such as what you stand for, what promises you make and, the personality you plan to convey to your customers. From your brand purpose, brand messages, and customer acquisition to your customers’ opinion about your business, everything comes under a Brand Strategy purview.

Here Are Some Successful Food Brand Strategies For Your Food Business

1.Create Brand Awareness

Creating brand awareness is an essential strategy that can help your customers know about your brand. Social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram can help you generate brand awareness among your customers immediately.

Another great option is to conduct in-store surveys and strategies like food demonstration where your consumers can try your items and offer their valuable feedback. Thus, letting your consumers know that your brand exists is an essential food brand strategy that you should follow.

2.Influence Consumer Preferences

Influencing your consumer preferences is another essential strategy to improve your brand. This strategy includes finding out what are your consumers’ preferences, tastes, likes, and dislikes. To know all these factors, you can let your consumers sample test your food item and compare it with your competitors.

Furthermore, your consumers should know about the process you follow or any good cause that you support. Whatever makes you stand out from your competitors can positively affect your consumers’ perception of your brand.

3.Establish and Maintain Brand Recognition

A brand that ensures to stay in the minds of consumers always wins the battle. However, establishing and maintaining brand recognition is not as easy as it seems. When you are in the food industry, you need to give something to your consumers that leave a long-lasting and positive impression in their minds. You can create a commercial with a catchy jingle that stays in your audiences’ memory so that they become aware of the business or the product behind that commercial.

4.Brand and the Product Life Cycle

Each product goes through a product life cycle that includes introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. Knowing the product life cycle of every item that you introduce in the market is a necessary food brand strategy. It helps you decide when it’s appropriate to increase promotion, reduce prices, expand to new markets or redesign your packaging. Thus, positioning your product and brand based on its life cycle can help you gain a positive brand advantage in the market.

5.Correct Distribution Channels

Selling your items to the right distribution channel always remains a not-to-miss strategy if you want to reach your target consumers. For instance, If you sell products that are ready-to-eat or single-serve oriented, you should make them available at all retail stores. On the contrary, if you are involved in bulk sales, you should include warehouse stores in the process. You can also look-out for e-retailing as people are very much involved in online buying these days.

6.Grab More Market Share

Grabbing more market share refers to getting more share of the pie in the industry. Just restricting yourself to one sales channel is not enough if you want to stay in the market for the long run. Thus, you can look into more product lines, expand sales channels, or even come in a joint business with someone who is not your competition but is compatible with your product line.

This food brand strategy will not only help in gaining more volume in the market but can also improve your brand marketing strategies.

Also Read: Brand Management for successful Business: Complete Guide

7.Trade Shows

Joining trade shows to market your product and increase your sales can be an effective strategy to improve your brand. You can exhibit your food items during an exhibition, sponsor roundtable discussions or speeches, advertise in show materials or join retailers or wholesalers trade associations to strengthen your relationships with other retailers for more sale avenues.

source: www.focusdesign.in/

8.Long-Term Goals

Consumers mostly switch from brands to brands to get something at lower prices. Moreover, promoting your product vigorously for just a week will not establish your brand in the long run. Thus, make sure to continuously advertise and promote your brand to build a loyal consumer base.

9.Brand Building via Social Media

Social Media Marketing has made life easy for consumers to gather information about different products and offer their feedback. Being a food entrepreneur, you should also make positive use of various social media platforms to engage your users and inform them about your item, its design, pricing, and a lot more. You can also conduct contests and giveaways to make your product more popular among your target consumers. This food branding strategy is the most productive strategy for your business if used wisely.

Conclusion

When it comes to branding your food business, only a logo or website, or name is not enough to build a successful brand. You require a strategy that is long-term and scalable to help your business grow continuously. These food brand strategies are curated especially to help you take your brand to the next level. All you require to do is understand your target consumers and implement these strategies for your brand.

Author

As a passionate entrepreneur and creative brand consultant with experience of 14 years in digital, branding and packaging industry, it is my honest effort to put my experiences and knowledge of industry towards readers. A chartered accountant by degree but a marketing personality in blood has motivated her to take in designing industry as a career. With her fun-loving personality and sharp branding skills, she is a great motivational speaker on her YouTube channel, an active member in various business channels offline as well as online. Do connect me personally via my LinkedIn and I love to share my expertise with you.

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Predicting the food label design industry’s future is not an easy task, mostly what all we saw in the year 2020. However, some key insights will continue to impact 2021 and, likely, beyond. Around 85% of consumers saying they’ve made changes to their food consumption due to COVID-19.

In 2020, consumers preferred safer online alternatives than physical stores, which made them spend more time at home. In 2021, organizations must be ready to quickly change and adapt to meet the consumer’s developing needs.

People with more time at home fuel more hobbies and domestic labelling. Increased online shopping creates a massive increase in the need for shipping labels. With less traffic through restaurants and bars, there is the potential of a decline in high-end wine and spirits labels in some markets. Growth in Amazon-style ecommerce shopping will fuel logistic style label needs. Therefore, the need for efficiencies in this label production type will be of prime importance to label converters.

We highlighted the Top 9 Industry Food Label Design Trends for 2021

1.Die Cuts shapes

Every label is a die-cut label, not all brand utilizes a custom die, and 2021 is all about that.

Shelf appeal and durability are paramount with food labels, and such brands are less to peel from the container while we can create a label shape that perfectly fits your design.

By varying the printing technique, it can use die-cut labels for almost any product or purpose. Different types of label shapes can easily achieved using die-cuts to highlight the products.

Source: packagingoftheworld.com/2015/09/state-street-honey.html

Source: packagingoftheworld.com/2017/03/bee-there-honey.html

Source: packagingoftheworld.com/2017/01/wild-honey-student-project.html

Source: behance.net/gallery/18686189/Red-Vintage-Wine-Cabernet-Sauvignon-2011-Grand-Reserve

Source: behance.net/gallery/58285213/DOYNA-Wines

Source: behance.net/gallery/77692833/Wine-Label-Redesign-Lustdorf

Source: behance.net/gallery/78423097/Native-Wine-Label-Design-7-Coline

2. 2D artwork – Flat illustration

A reason for 2D artwork or flat example picking up in the 2021 year is its added emphasis on simplicity of design, shades and typography. The minimalist approach leads the designers to adopt flat pictures as an ideal approach to create structures such as bottle label design on printed material.

They’re also a versatile illustration style that it can adapt successfully to represent many unique brands. They are most compelling for packaging design; flat illustrations are relatively easy to print on a wide range of packaging mediums.

Source: behance.net/gallery/110655793/Packaging-Design-for-Ecological-Fruit-Puree

Source: behance.net/gallery/110256635/YUGY-Packaging-Yoga-smoothie

Source: behance.net/gallery/110793287/Summer-Day-Packaging

Source: behance.net/gallery/101033527/Juice-Packaging-Design

Source: behance.net/gallery/96049425/Oat-Milk-Packaging-Design

Source: behance.net/gallery/110086437/SAIREN-Clear-Spiced-Rum

Source: behance.net/gallery/57825925/Honey-packaging-Miel-del-Manantial

Source: behance.net/gallery/96699303/Little-Melly-Solids

3.Loud Design

Your product label design should stand out on the shelf compared to competitors; hence they should not be dull or boring. They should be characterized by ornate patterns, intricate details, and eye-catching colors.

Bold design is not limited to art. If busy backgrounds are not right for your brand, you can still make a statement using typography that stands out. Typography can provide the best way for creativity. From lettering of simple sans serif with a heavy stroke, it’s entirely of patterns or illustrations.

According to phone book experiment found that participants viewed 42% more bold listings than straight listings. When you use bold borders, such as thick, diagonal stripes rather than thin strips, or no lines, this makes labels more attention-grabbing.

Source: behance.net/gallery/27328859/Linocut-label-design-for-de-Vine-Spirits

Source: behance.net/gallery/103066301/Fresh-Up

Source: behance.net/gallery/106932747/Miami-Cocktail-Company-Spritz

Source: behance.net/gallery/91576183/Testament-wines

Source: behance.net/gallery/102729543/BOOM-Beverages

Source: behance.net/gallery/109293677/Ron-Esclavo-Rum-Packaging-Illustrations

Also Read: Brand Design Types for your Business

4.See through packaging

Sometimes a see-through food label is a perfect way to ensure people notice your products.

We have long been proponents of the “no-label-look” that is so popular in the beverage and food industries, but it’s great to see brands getting explicit material and transparent aspects on their food labels. Transparencies can be a form of a clear path to getting noticed.

“For me the greatest beauty always lies in the greatest clarity” — Gothhold Ephriaim Lessing

People are these days conscious about what they are eating, especially after COVID-19 hence transparency allows them to gain confidence in the visible product.

Source: behance.net/gallery/110940901/Royal-Republic-Vodka

Source: behance.net/gallery/106147371/Kaska-Drinks

Source: packagingoftheworld.com/2016/11/danubio-new-positioning.html

Source: packagingoftheworld.com/2020/07/kum-kum.html

Source: packagingoftheworld.com/2018/09/dry-run-honey-company-wildflower-honey.html

5.Sustainable Material

Consumers are now more aware and find themselves looking at the environmental impact of brands they are buying nowadays.

Around 74% of consumers are willing to pay more for sustainable packaging. It is found that most consumers identify themselves as ‘environmentally aware’, with more than two out of three consumers citing ‘environmentally friendly, ‘recyclable packaging’ as necessary.

There are sustainable packaging materials which will play a significant role such as biodegradable packaging, corrugated bubble wrap, recycled materials, corn starch packaging, seaweed, mushrooms and organic fabrics are few alternative options in an eco-friendly manner.

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Source: behance.net/gallery/100116913/KP-BREW-Coffee-Packaging

Source: behance.net/gallery/110149901/YO-VEGAN-Street-food

Source: behance.net/gallery/60275755/Greenhouse-Juice-20

6.Contrasting Palettes

One of the important things you should do if you want to step up your creative game is to get confident about choosing color combinations. Knowing what colors go together is a skill in itself, and it can have a positive impact on all areas of your life.

Color contrast can evoke powerful feelings from people; therefore choosing your shade wisely is essential. They simply help us distinguish objects from each other. It allows professional designers and marketers to guide customers’ attention who come to their websites, and this is done with and without color.

Complementary colors, in comparison with analogous colors, tend to create a higher contrast and, consequently, a stronger visual engagement. Consequently, purchase intention is expected to be higher for packages using complementary colors.

Source: packagingoftheworld.com/2021/02/ornaments-art-festival.html

Source: behance.net/gallery/102470763/Letteringillustration-Labelpostersstickers-design

Source: behance.net/gallery/89982755/Wine-labels-design-visual-identity

Source: behance.net/gallery/90311617/Beni-Tonka-Sauces

Source: packagingoftheworld.com/2021/02/jelen-pivo-new-vbi.html

Source: packagingoftheworld.com/2021/01/bak-bak-indian-energy-drink.html

Source: packagingoftheworld.com/2021/01/komo-probiotic-packaging-made-with-ai.html

Source: packagingoftheworld.com/2021/01/komo-probiotic-packaging-made-with-ai.html

7.Patterns & Texture

The year 2021 will be focusing on textures and patterns in label design. A design pattern is a repeated element while being digitized, and it comes texture room a surface that can experience through the sense of touch. It can use both to complement a brand without taking away from the logo.

Pattern & texture over the label improves customer experience and help building your brand’s personality.

Make sure your design is not too busy, which will create a readability issue for customers. Be purposeful and sustained with the scale of your patterns and textures.

Source: behance.net/gallery/101861803/Rose-Wine-Label-Design-Damascena

Source: behance.net/gallery/89733713/Plum-Spread

Source: behance.net/gallery/91206357/Label-Design-For-The-Nuts-Honey-Spread

Source: behance.net/gallery/62075791/Gama-Curvos-Wine-Packaging-Design

Source: behance.net/gallery/28848595/Ancienne

Source: behance.net/gallery/76220117/RESERVADO-CELEBRA-MEXICO-2018-Concha-y-Toro

Source: behance.net/gallery/112417039/Profundo-wine-label-logo-design

Source: behance.net/gallery/112358895/ALLEA

8.Shades & Gradients

Make way for them; they are color transitions, are a gradual blending from one color to another color while there is no restriction of two shades only.

The gradient trend is exceptionally versatile and powerful as its personality is subtle and bold, where the primary point of a design or a background. The mix and blend different shades of shades can create new creative color combinations that feel gives a modern feel and emotion towards label design.

The application, execution and placement of a gradient can be transformative, creating a standout visual experience.

Source: behance.net/gallery/95827111/Rose-Hill-Wines

Source: behance.net/gallery/100187869/Package-Design

Source: behance.net/gallery/109819535/Eclat-Irise

Source: behance.net/gallery/112052521/Abstract-Spirit-Packaging

Source: behance.net/gallery/112052521/Abstract-Spirit-Packaging

Source: packagingoftheworld.com/2018/08/fresh-thyme-kombucha-range.html

Source: behance.net/gallery/112818163/Honey-Packaging-Design

Source: packagingoftheworld.com/2019/03/modus-new-375ml-cans.html

9.Old world charm -Vintage style

People in 2021 will start valuing old as gold where the nostalgic emotion will be in the picture.

Food label designs with vintage feel will evoke happy feelings in people reminding them of simpler times referring to any design or hint of a time gone, single era or a combination of periods.

Going beyond logos and labels and encompassing the whole brand experience, using vintage-inspired textures, bottle shapes, materials, outer packaging and imagery choices.

The actual designs were done in the past, while retro typically refers to modern designs that emulate these older designs. Hence plans are vintage-inspired, rather than authentic vintage designs.

Source: packagingoftheworld.com/2018/12/mill-st-brewing-rebrand.html

Source: packagingoftheworld.com/2017/02/ambrosia-centenary.html

Source: packagingoftheworld.com/2010/07/sir-kensingtons-ketchup.html

Source: behance.net/gallery/52854103/wine-label-concept

Source: bashooka.com/inspiration/retro-vintage-style-packaging-designs

Source: behance.net/gallery/88744737/Kombucha-Label-Design

CONCLUSION 

Every year trends do come and go, but the most important thing is to stay updated to not lose your game in the market.

Emerging Trends in the food label industry are highly influenced by the need for clean, smart, convenient, and sustainable solutions and many more. It is time to adopt new trends for your brands and move ahead.

Taking the time to get your food label design right will increase your sales and build customer loyalty in the year to come. So, take the time to honestly assess and connect us for professional food label designs, ensuring success in the upcoming days.

Author

Passionate, adventurous and my never-ending learning approach lead me towards the world of content writing after working years in core marketing profile. My experience of working in world-famous MNC motivated me to understand the niche requirement of strategic words to communicate correctly about brand message towards people. My zeal in an informal way of writing articles allows anyone to enrich their knowledge in the world of branding, packaging and digital marketing. Being an MBA in Marketing and HR, my excellence lies in framing marketing strategies as well as relationship building. Do connect me personally my LinkedIn & I love to share my expertise with you.

The post Food Label Design Trends 2021 appeared first on designer People.

The post Food Label Design Trends 2021 appeared first on Blog.

Brand design is something which plays an essential role to navigate the creative process of designing your brand. It is about creating a brand identity that correlates and reflects your brand.

A brand designer or brand design agency are professional experts who will ensure to figure your firm’s branding design and represent your brand’s personality.

We know your brand is related to reputation. Hence he is what your audience feels and thinks about you when they read your name. We can create the perfect brand image for you to grow your business and drive your long-term profits.

1.Shape branding

The brand identity and the process of branding design begin with an emphatic “SHAPE”. Creating a brand mark may seem very simple, but several factors accompany a successful brand design. We always focus on colors palate and font styles, but we usually miss the shapes that make up a design.

When you build a specific design, a logo shape can help forge a more transparent psychological and emotional connection between your consumers and brand. Hence, it’s essential to understand what each figure says about your brand and comprehend how you can effectively incorporate them in your design.

Each shape has its meaning and can be consistent throughout the brand elements such as brochures, stationary identities, logo and many more. The form is decided based on brand personality and its purpose of existing.

source: behance.net/gallery/77000273/ideafix-Branding-Identity

source: behance.net/gallery/74971985/Thousand-The-Boutique

source: behance.net/gallery/67068513/-Taipei-Songshan-Airport-Visual-Identity

source: behance.net/gallery/52667081/Museum-Identity

source: behance.net/gallery/52667081/Museum-Identity

source: behance.net/gallery/77240287/Academy-Brand-Identity-Design

source: behance.net/gallery/77821903/Personal-Branding-Allyssa-Ellis

source: behance.net/gallery/55504867/Jewelry-Gift-Brand

source: behance.net/gallery/73575203/Debrecen-2023-European-Capital-of-Culture

2.Typographic branding

You can create outstanding exemplification, graphic content, and other pictures. Still, if your design’s typography is not so good on your products, it could quickly turn off potential buyers of your products and services.

Every typographic element impacts your brand design on both macro and micro stage.

Typography is the way and style of presentation of the text. When a company develops brand identity, It should use a persistent type of fonts, each with a particular reason.

Typographic branding is one as simple as using the same font from the logo for any brand text, as seen in the complete range of brand design elements.

Source: in.pinterest.com/pin/797981627716950508/

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Source: in.pinterest.com/pin/293015519481639165/

3.Colour branding

Your brand guidelines should justify the brand color throughout design designs as it will represent your brand even when there is no support of the text. Such as looking at the red color, we usually image Coca-Cola brand that’s because Coke has created its emotional space in our mind, and we tend to identify it with color tone also.

Consumers “make a subconscious judgment about an environment, person, or that product within 90 seconds of initial viewing. Between 62.0% and 90.0% of that assessment is based on color alone.

If the color of a product does not appropriately represent its purpose, this can confuse and even damage a brand’s sense of identity.

Each color has its meaning, and brands should select their color smartly as per its purpose. Blue represents trust, Brown green as natural earthy, purple-pink as feminine while black is known for masculine and luxury.

Country-wise each color representation may also differ; hence when you plan to establish the brand in a foreign country always conduct research and understand their cultural value of colors before planning to involve in brand design.

Source: in.pinterest.com/pin/187954984423873479/

Source: in.pinterest.com/pin/383720830757349091/

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Source: in.pinterest.com/pin/809029520544399398/

Source: in.pinterest.com/pin/431290101792624659/

Also Read: Brand Management for Successful Business: Complete Guide

4.Illustration branding

Brand image is typically build up from different interesting visual elements — logos, color palette, a particular font where the illustrations are another powerful means of visual communication which are more and more in demand for online UI.

Illustrations give you wings: It turns away from realism and let you build the world as the brand sees it.

Illustration systems expand the range and depth of messages a firm communicates visually about itself, from mission records to practical product support, while building up the brand image.

Images in an illustration system of brand design elements share a unifying mood or style that makes them identifiable with the brand’s wider image and message.

It enriches a brand’s visual language and says more nuanced things that a logo, color scheme, typeface, or even words cannot convey alone.

Source: in.pinterest.com/pin/163325923973589185/

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Source: in.pinterest.com/pin/849702654674965835/

Source: in.pinterest.com/pin/187532771968003593/

Source: in.pinterest.com/pin/396316835960840513/

Source: in.pinterest.com/pin/616571005217498581/

source: behance.net/gallery/86241995/Penguin-Classics-Book-Covers

source: behance.net/gallery/107345945/Music-Festival-Poster-Design

5.Image branding

Imagine the massive number of images we go through in our daily lives: billboards, websites, Facebook, Instagram, and many more online and offline platforms. If used productively, it can deepen a customer—or potential customers —attachment to your brand.

Brand image is the customers’ existing sight towards a brand it is known as the distinctive bundle of associations within the minds of target customers. It is a set of beliefs held about specific brand consumers develop various associations with the brand.

The same repetitive images on various platforms will help customers recall your brand, building trust and confidence.

The brand photographs are the most common brand images, many modern companies it comes only from authenticity. Hence go for realistic photos instead of the boring stock photo which looks made up and fake. People like photos that perfectly fit the brand’s carefully cultivated aesthetic and snag that coveted repost from the company.

Source: in.pinterest.com/pin/126874914491358192/

Source: in.pinterest.com/pin/43136108918300667/

Source: in.pinterest.com/pin/833165999805103375/

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Source: in.pinterest.com/pin/420101471467902568/

Source: in.pinterest.com/pin/206813807877767094/

CONCLUSION

Consistency is essential to ensure a brand has a coherent voice while keeping yourself always open for constant iteration, leading you to a successful brand design. Everything is just a prototype, and you have to stay very open to tweaks to make your specific branding linked to users.

Stay aware about latest technology and updates involve, as long as you immerse yourself in research and feedback, you will be heading in the right direction. That is what I find most rewarding about brand design.

Once you establish your brand design, ensure to document it in a brand style guide to ensure the brand remains consistent across all platforms and channels.

If you plan to revamp or craft a new brand design for your brand, connect us today and we will be the happiest to guide you right direction.

Author

Passionate, adventurous and my never-ending learning approach lead me towards the world of content writing after working years in core marketing profile. My experience of working in world-famous MNC motivated me to understand the niche requirement of strategic words to communicate correctly about brand message towards people. My zeal in an informal way of writing articles allows anyone to enrich their knowledge in the world of branding, packaging and digital marketing. Being an MBA in Marketing and HR, my excellence lies in framing marketing strategies as well as relationship building. Do connect me personally my LinkedIn & I love to share my expertise with you.

The post Brand Design Types for your Business appeared first on designer People.

The post Brand Design Types for your Business appeared first on Blog.

To develop a brand, one should plan a brand management productive strategy to build real relationships between you and the target audience. A brand strategy helps business people to utilize marketing, PR, advertising, and social media, to accurately and consistently reinforce your product/service character.

What is brand management?

Brand management is a beautiful art of creating and sustaining the brand. It is a series of techniques which increase the perceived value of a product or service. Effective brand management builds healthy, loyal customers through positive brand association and positively affects your bottom line.

It is to capture the niche market for your valuable product/service and to create assurance in the present and prospective customers’ minds that you are a unique solution to their problem.

Tangible elements of brand management involve the product itself; its look, price, packaging, etc. The intangible elements are the experiences that the target markets share with the brand and their relationships with the brand.

The strategic brand management process

Brands with powerful equity are no accident – its a result of thoughtful and imaginative planning and include planned brand management process. Firms launching a fresh new product need to be cautious and creatively craft brand strategies and plans to maximize the probability of success.

Strategic brand management process is a critical element for creating and sustaining brand equity.

If you are developing a new brand identity, or have a well-established brand, below ten steps guide can be put in at any point, and your brand’s journey can start at any stage within the branding process.

1.Discovery

Every successful brand has a powerful act behind it, where your brand stands presently and what it plans for the future should all cover in this phase.

Ask yourself a few questions which will help you analyze your status.

• Why do you exist?
• What distinct value proposition your brand is offering?
• What is your brand mission and vision?

Understanding the brand internally and externally with its values is essential. They may form an intrinsic element of your particular brand’s voice or tone, expressed to the market and your customers.

2.Positioning

There should be a clear and brief understanding of what the brand is to showcase and its position about competitors.

Positioning is the unique space a brand occupies in the brains of the customers. It provides the company with a marketplace advantage and boosts the value of a product.

Positioning statement will helps to create the first impression of brands in the minds of the target audience. In simpler words, positioning helps in creating a perception of a product or service amongst the consumers.

3.Creation

Here it would help if you focused on establishing your brand values and attributes which will define the character of brand in the market.

Brand creation lies on buyer persona and to reach this, and it should list attributes out and state how you want your brand to be perceived by your target audience.

Hence, this process will help you construct character to your specific brand, and next add the personality traits that need to add to bring your branding to life. A systematic creation process will lead to the correct brand name, message, value proposition and communication strategies.

4.Applications

Now the production of all the PR, marketing, campaigns, symbols and communication material should sustain authentic to justify its brand resemblance.

To protects brand integrity; the brand manual should be consistent with its application, explaining how it should utilize your brand internally and externally.

5.Results

When you invest time, effort and human power, there should be defined measures to track the success so that processes can be modified and aligned correctly.

There are various tools to measure online performance while for offline activity web traffic is the best way to analyze.

While also measuring customer satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy to understand the final steps of the customer journey fully.

Also Read: Brand Design Types for your Business

Why is brand management essential for your business growth?

The central part of brand management is on-going control and maintenance. Proper brand management includes making sure that each promotional piece, touchpoint, and usage of your name, logo, and message supports your organization and goals by reinforcing your brand in the way you intended.

1.Develop positive brand perception

It ensures to bring every person in the organization and connect through the process. The one who comes in contact with the brand should develop an experience that should leave a good impression on the mind.

There are various ways through which an organization can sustain positive brand perception:

Make sure your brand be authentic and honest by delivering excellent customer service.

2.Self-evaluation

It is essential to understand about yourself first what is your brand value, mission and vision. Brainstorm with your leadership team and try to understand their point of view on what they think about your organization, do a SWOT analysis about your brand, which will give you an idea of where your company stands.

3.Target audience 

Analyze who is your core audience that resonates with your product. By knowing your audience helps you identify what content and messages people care about.

Clear objectives should be defined that are aligned with your brand’s target audience, customer journey, channels and messaging.

Analyze who are your core target audience and how to communicate with them with the correct source. Is it through feedbacks, interviews, one to one discussions, word of mouth, referrals, in events etc.

4.Prioritize employees

Employees from all departments will literally accelerate brand visibility and are essential to include in your brand management strategy.

Brand messages targets achieved 561% further when shared by employees vs the same messages shared via official brand social channels (Source)

Any good strategic brand management strategy should concentrate on how to obtain employees advocating on the company’s side. The easiest way is to activate them online and encourage content sharing to their social media networks.

5.Protect your brand

A strong one can help your company grow and flourish. A poor one can lead to the demise of even the strongest of corporations. Unfortunately, the online world poses many threats that can tarnish your company’s right name.

Do below things to safeguard your brand.

• Control your brand logo
• Be responsible for resolving complaints.
• Keep route of newest updates on social media.
• Use google alerts and tools.

6.Track brand perception 

Customers, not companies, own brand perception, and it comes from customer use, functionality, experience, reputation and majorly word of mouth recommendation – on social media channels as well as face to face.

Below are some of the main ways to measure brand perceptions:

1.Category Drivers and Barriers: Motivations and emotional drivers, needs and functional expectations, purchase triggers

2.Category Behaviors: Overall category perceptions, purchase frequency, price sensitivity, information/inspiration sources, channels for discovering new brands

3.Competitive Landscape: Core brand funnel metrics for your brand and for competitors (awareness, familiarity, usage, purchase, etc.)

4.Classification: Zip code, education, household income, employment status, etc.

ROLE OF BRANDING AGENCY IN BRAND MANAGEMENT

With any new business, establishing your foot in the market and to your target audience is crucial.

With this early problem, you should implement comprehensive and well-strategized branding for your business.

Raising your brand around your products or services is simply done if you have the background knowledge and research.

The aim of a branding agency is to bring credibility for the brand in the minds of the target audience and prospective clients and customers. The responsibility of any branding agency is to get the longevity of brand image in such a way that it brings in sustainable brand values.

The large business entities used to rely on the branding agencies for innovative advertising strategies for reaching the branding goals.

It is the main aim of the entire branding agency to consider certain things and elements to make it successful. When you hire a professional branding agency for your business, the company will take care of branding needs considering these factors in the first place.

CONCLUSION

Brand management is one of the most critical keys to fuel your company’s growth trend. It’s an overarching business procedure that distinguishes your company in the market stream, ensures the power and consistency of your brand, that helps your firm live up to its concerning promises.

It’s essential to understand what tactics and plans can help your firm continue to expand brand visibility and take your firm to the next level of achievement.

Wherever you are in your brand’s journey, and at whatever time in its lifecycle, you can connect Creative Website Studios to maximize the true potential of your brand.

Author

Being a strategist’s head and a long term visionary personality aims to achieve excellence in branding, packaging and digital marketing field. My 15 years of design experience and masters degree ais my strength which keeps me motivated and keep me going positively. I have participated in extensive branding design conquests in India, USA, Australia and New Zealand with winning zeal. Do connect me personally via my LinkedIn and I love to share my expertise with you.

The post Brand Management for successful Business: Complete Guide appeared first on designer people.

The post Brand Management for successful Business: Complete Guide appeared first on Blog.

“Achieving great UX design is not just a function or talent of individuals, it is an organizational characteristic.”

Knowing this, means we must strive to understand and grow the maturity of UX practice within the organizations and product teams we work with. Simply being good at our own jobs isn’t enough. As UX practitioners, we are advocates and educators of our craft within the organizations we work for or with.

Note: This article is the first in a three-part series covering six tactics UX practitioners and managers can adopt to facilitate the growth of UX maturity at their organization.

Let’s take a quick look at the six tactics we’ll be covering and their relationship to UX maturity:

1. Finding and utilizing UX Champions
   Beginning stages: the UX champion will plant seeds and open doors for growing UX in an organization.
2. Demonstrating the ROI/value of UX
   Beginning stages justify more investment, later stages to justify continued investment.
3. Knowledge sharing/Documenting what UX work has been done
   Less relevant/possible in the earliest stages of maturity when there is little UX being done. Creates a foundation and then serves to maintain institutional knowledge even when individuals leave or change roles.
4. Mentoring
   Middle and later stages of maturity. Grow individual skills in a two way direction that also exposes more people to UX and improves the knowledge transfer of more senior UX, should lead to a shared understanding of how UX looks and is implemented in the organization.
5. Education of UX staff on UX tools and specific areas of UX expertise
   All stages of maturity require continued education of UX staff.
6. Education of non-UX staff on UX principles and processes
   All stages of maturity benefit from education of non-UX staff.

These tactics don’t build on the prior tactics — you can and should implement multiple tactics simultaneously. However, some tactics (e.g. mentoring) might not be possible in an organization with low UX maturity that lacks the support for a mentoring program.

UX is a skill, it can be practiced, grown, and improved. It can also languish and atrophy if not appropriately exercised. This is true for individuals and organizations. An organization’s UX maturity level impacts all aspects of how UX is prioritized and implemented throughout the organization and its products.

If we wish to meaningfully improve our UX practice, it is critical we look for opportunities to help grow the maturity of UX across our organization. We face a larger challenge when it comes to growing UX in a way that has impact across an organization than we do with growing our own UX skills.

In this article, I’ll briefly discuss some of the existing models you can use to provide a framework for thinking about an organization’s UX maturity. I’ll then explore two specific tactics for UX practitioners to make an impact to help grow UX maturity within their organizations when they are in the early stages of UX Maturity.

Defining UX Maturity

We don’t have one agreed upon model of what UX maturity looks like at different stages. Natalie Hanson has a blog post providing a collection and discussion of various UX Maturity models up to the point it was published in 2017.

Chapman and Plewes define five stages of organizational UX Maturity from “Beginning” which is essentially no UX, to “Exceptional” where UX has been fully integrated into the business processes, resources are plentiful, leadership understands the value of UX and how it works, and the organization’s culture is supportive and promotes UX.

Most of us probably work for organizations with some level of UX Maturity, meaning beyond Stage 1 where there are no resources. However, it’s also possible some of us work in organizations at the beginning or awareness stages. If you are in this situation, you might find yourself frustrated with the lack of support and understanding of UX within your organization and product teams. We should push to move our organizations and colleagues further along this UX maturity continuum if we wish for UX to grow as a field, increase opportunities to bring our peers into the fold, and ultimately to provide the best experiences for end users of the products or services our organizations offer.

Frameworks and models are helpful for understanding how researchers and professionals have observed UX maturity growing in organizations. They allow us to understand where we are and where we are headed, if we create a strategy to get there. We need to move beyond theory and into the application of specific tactics if we want to push our organization to grow in UX maturity. I’ll present two tactics for demonstrating the value of UX and documenting progress of UX in an organization that will help grow UX maturity in the section below.

What Can We Do To Grow Our Organization’s UX Maturity: Two Tactics

It can feel frustrating trying to make change in large organizations. Here are some tactics UX practitioners can consider applying to their situation. These two tactics are especially helpful for organizations with less mature UX, and more opportunity to grow:

• Finding and utilizing UX Champions,
• Demonstrating the ROI/value of UX.

These tactics are meant to create a broad impact across the organization and plant the seeds of UX in potentially fertile fields. I’ll tie them back to Chapman and Plewes factors composing the stages of UX Maturity as relevant within the discussion of the specific tactic.

Tactic 1: Finding And Utilizing UX Champions

Champions are people who enthusiastically support the growth of an innovation or idea within an organization. Researchers have long found champions are a critical component of overcoming social and political barriers to innovation within organizations. I would argue you cannot move a large organization out of Chapman and Plewes stage 1 without having a set of Champions. Champions do not need to be experts or practitioners of UX. However, we need to identify the correct people, in the right positions of power, who can advocate for UX as a concept, advocate growing UX, and push for UX resources in the form of budget and roles, if we wish to grow UX in organizations with low levels of UX maturity.

Effective champions display the following types of behaviors according to some researchers:

• Pursuing the idea
• Expressing enthusiasm and confidence about the success of the innovation/idea
• Persisting under adversity
• Getting the right people involved
• Building networks
• Taking responsibility

I’d add to these behaviors that champions need to be well educated on the idea or innovation (in this case UX) in order to maximize effectiveness. We are responsible for providing this education through conversation, examples, and providing resources supporting the champion in their learning.

We can tie champions back to Chapman and Plewes factors of Leadership and Culture, as well as potentially the Timing of UX factor:

• Champions should be able to identify and advocate for the proper time to insert UX into existing process.

Champions usually play this role in an informal capacity. This makes sense when we think about an organization at the fledgling stage of implementing UX — it is unlikely you would immediately go from having little to no UX, to hiring a specific role for championing the cause. Champions therefore are promoting UX in the course of their other everyday activities.

As a UX practitioner, your goal is to find the champions within your organization, educate them on the role and value of UX, provide them with real life examples of how UX is making a difference, and work with them to identify the opportunities to insert UX into other products or processes within an organization.

We need to be purposeful when we look to invest time cultivating a champion. You can answer these questions when looking to identify and work with a champion:

• Who has been expressing dissatisfaction with current design and development processes?

You can pick and choose which of these questions might apply most to the situations you are trying to find a champion, or you could use these questions as filters, start with the largest list of potential champions you can think of, then remove names when they don’t meet the qualifications. Your remaining names are the people you can pursue to become UX champions within your organization.

Case Study: Finding And Utilizing A UX Champion At A Large International Logistics Company

You might think it is a fairly daunting task to quickly identify an effective champion within your organization. This case study will show the opposite can be true. Within one month, I was able to identify UX champions in an organization I’d never worked with. Within three months, the champions had created meaningful change, identified more opportunities than we could handle with the resources we had, and set the course for a bright future for UX within the organization.

A major logistics company serves as the example for this case study. The company had familiarity with UX and CX, even espousing that it was transforming itself into a customer first organization. Unfortunately, these words were not reflected in the UX integration throughout the company.

I would classify the organization at Chapman and Plewes adopting stage in some products, however, it was clear other products or projects were only at the awareness stage (stage 2) in that there were no UX processes. This includes the project I was assigned to when I joined as a consultant. There were scattered products receiving some UX attention — one off efforts being run by small UX teams focusing on addressing key issues brought up by major clients. There was some legacy of having UX in the past, however, after many years of UX work being done in various pockets of the organization, there was still no true UX process identifiable across the company, UX was not required for products or workstreams, and when budgets contracted, UX titles were some for the first to be eliminated.

The company was undergoing a complete backend technology transformation in order to move it’s many disparate entities onto the same technology platforms. When I became involved, I was brought in to see how to infuse UX into the process. I knew this was going to be challenging, as the ways of working had already been defined and the focus was on getting things quickly to production, with developers also doing the design based on requirements created by large groups of product owners and managers.

There was a huge appetite for the UX work, but much less appetite to incorporate the process into the already break-neck pace of the development underway. We worked to find ways to contribute to the current development efforts through testing, and found we were able to get a foothold into some of the key areas the effort was focusing on.

Specifically, what we did was take on a UX research and design project with a product owner who we’d identified as key to having as a champion during our preliminary interviews with stakeholders. This champion was ideal because they were highly motivated, well connected with people in powerful positions across the company, and perhaps most importantly, had a product that was key to the success of the endeavor and was in a position to immediately have us start conducting research that would lead to design.

I want to note here that the champion was not an executive level employee. They did not have the power to make people do things just because they told them to. This champion had all of the traits referenced in research on the role of an innovation champion:

• Pursuing The Idea
  Our champion traveled, spent time in meetings and workshops, reached out to countless others, educated themself, and spent time outside of their typical duties in order to push for UX to grow in the organization.
• Expressing Enthusiasm And Confidence About The Success Of The Innovation/Idea
  Our champion maintained a positive attitude and was able to readjust without giving at multiple points during our time there.
• Persisting Under Adversity
  The general conditions on the ground were adverse to UX — with the focus on production. However, there were other mountains that were in the way that our champion needed to overcome. One specific example was that there was immediate and then constant pushback from colleagues on the ability for the product to incorporate research and redesign. This was relentless, however our champion did not let it stop them.
• Getting The Right People Involved
  Our champion was well connected and knew how to get the right people involved. They had been in the organization for a decade and had a stellar reputation. For example, they knew the right executives and could get them to attend meetings to make a statement on the need for UX, when they were facing the adversity referenced in the bullet above.
• Building Networks
  Our champion introduced us to key people, set up meetings between people across products and teams, and had the ability to get the right people to network without the need of being present in every meeting themself.
• Taking Responsibility
  Our champion assigned and delegated tasks as needed, but they also took it upon themselves to review all work, spend time learning UX processes and value, and advocate for UX.

This case study highlights the power and importance of a UX champion in growing UX in an organization. Thanks to the presence of our champion, we used our foothold to gain the ear of key executives as well as many champions who were able to advocate a need to “walk the talk” on saying we were customer focused. This allowed UX to define some key processes and contribute to the broader group.

While our work there did not last beyond the end of this key workstream, when we left there had been an established library of reports, a defined process for UX to integrate with building technology, and a philosophy shift that not only did the words customer focused need to be stated, but the actions of customer-focused behavior needed to be reflected in what was being done.

Additionally, the champion had secured a new UX resource as a permanent hire for their product, they had a backlog of UX projects to complete, and had created a larger network of UX practitioners across the organization than had previously existed.

Tactic 2: Demonstrating The ROI/Value Of UX

As UX practitioners, we often focus on the value our work provides through the lens of a more satisfactory, efficient, or enjoyable experience. We take pride in meeting our users’ needs.

However, we work in settings where decisions are scrutinized based on their impact to the bottom line of profit and loss. We avoid reality if we don’t acknowledge the need to justify UX based on the return on investment a business or organization can expect. However, ROI can be more than a monetary calculation, with other metrics and key performance indicators useful for showing how UX impacts an organization or product.

Nielsen Norman Group notes ROI encourages buy-in, which is key for growing UX in organizations less familiar with the value UX work brings. NNG also states there are three myths that tend to prevent us from moving forward with calculating UX:

• The ROI of UX is all about money;
• The ROI of UX has to account for every detail.

You will need work to overcome these myths as they might exist within your organization as you start to measure UX ROI if you want to start increasing buy in for UX.

You can use a number of different metrics to show ROI, as NNG notes, it isn’t limited to money. Your product and industry might best dictate what metrics or key performance indicators tell the story of the ROI of improving UX. Yes, if you design for an e-commerce site, increasing conversion and sales will be a story you’d want to tell. But this tale might focus on additional metrics such as speed to completing a task, cart abandonment, or ratings on an app store or review platform.

I do believe many executives, across industries, are looking for the financial benefit of the decisions they make. We do need to present a business case for anything we propose that will cost money or resources such as time, training, and tools.

At face value return of investment is the increase in value or profit (return) an investment (in this case adding UX resources to a product) divided by cost (investment) in that resource (budget, UX software subscriptions, UX training, etc.). There isn’t a magic number, but you can assume you’d like the final number to be greater than 1, suggesting a positive return on the investment. You can potentially consider many items as part of what goes into the cost and return, depending on the product.

Anders Hoff provides a website ROI calculator. Human Factors International provides six different calculators depending on what you are trying to measure, from increased conversion to increased productivity, to reduced costs on formal training and reduced learning curve and more.

Moving beyond the specific monetary return requires deeper research and/or collecting analytical data. You will use these metrics to tailor your conversation on the need to grow UX to a specific audience that might. In other words, for some of these metrics you might benefit from being currently low or less than desirable, as they bolster your case for improving an experience to enhance the return.

Many product teams do collect analytics, even if they aren’t invested in UX, as this has become industry standard and easy to do. However, if you don’t know how to use these analytics, or haven’t had upfront conversations about what to collect, you’ll need to connect with the people in charge of collecting and reporting analytics to ensure the data you need will be available.

• Finding information/navigating a site or application
  How long does it take a user to go through a typical workflow? Do they encounter errors? Do they drop before reaching a critical destination, but after starting down the path?
• Ratings on app store or industry rating platforms
  How are users rating the current experience? What qualitative information are they providing to support their ratings? Does any of this tie back to UX or would any of it be addressed with improved UX.
• Use/time spent
  Overall visits or time spent on an app or using your site. If you provide information or an experience that needs people to focus and pay attention this might be a number that is low and you think go up. However, if you are providing a way to apply for goods and services, or do something like pay a utility bill, you might want to focus on how time spent could be reduced as a good return for users.
• Service/support calls and the frequent topic of calls
  How frequently does your support receive calls or emails related to usability issues, or issues that could be easily resolved with an improved UX? My experience has suggested confusing login credentials and inability to self service basic account issues online are frequent reasons people contact support. These are UX issues with a direct cost — and most companies know the cost of their support center calls. How much would you save by reducing these calls with better UX?

These are all examples of ways you can communicate ROI to your stakeholders, as part of a justification to grow UX in your organization. You need to determine what metric might speak clearest to the audience you are hoping to sway.

Case Study: Demonstrating ROI/Value Of UX At A Medical Insurance Provider

A large medical insurance provider had acquired a number of small providers over the past decade. Each of these separate companies had different systems their agents used. The company undertook and effort to shift all agents onto the same, new to everyone, platform.

The company planned the rollout in phases focusing on geographic regions. Initially, the company had no UX roles or processes, and they did not intend to account for any UX in their budget. Independent agents who were part of the first phase immediately stopped running policies through this provider. Exclusive agents flooded the call center with cries for help, needing to be walked through basic everyday tasks such as running quotes and binding policies. The provider pushed pause on subsequent releases while they determined how to best move forward.

I was brought in, along with my colleagues, to form a usability workstream on this project. However, we knew that budget was tight and we would need to show our value. We immediately engaged end users in a series of interviews and usability testing. From there, we made design recommendations, from small tweaks to major overhauls. Some of them were adopted, others were not considered feasible. The project moved on to release the usability fixes to the phase one agents, and into the subsequent phases of release.

The project leadership had to request any future budget for UX on the project from an executive committee. Project leadership knew what was meaningful to convince executives UX was making an impact, and therefore had a positive return on investment. We had a workshop with project leaders to determine key metrics. We landed on user satisfaction, calls to the call center requesting assistance, number of quotes run, and many other industry specific methods.

I need to note the importance of collecting benchmark metrics here. For example, We weren’t able to speak to the increase or decrease in the number of quotes run, because this metric wasn’t being purposefully tracked during phase one. However, we set a line in the sand and from that point forward we created a benchmark that could then be compared in future updates and releases.

Using a combination of user surveys, interviews, and data analytics, we were able to create the case that phase 1 users had the lowest satisfaction, but was trending upward, with the recipients of the UX improved phase 2 showing higher initial satisfaction, that UX was making an impact on reducing calls to the call center, and as noted we started purposefully documenting specific analytics. Project leadership presented these findings to the executive committee as part of their ask for continued funding — which was approved.

Fast forwarding a few years, UX remained onboard the project, with a budget for testing and revising designs prior to release, and was touted as a must have part of any future projects and digital products.

Conclusion

We all stand to benefit from increasing awareness and growing UX maturity in our organizations or on the product teams we work with. As practitioners, we are responsible for advocating UX to others.

I’ve presented two tactics that are especially potent in less mature UX organizations, however, they could be useful in any organization — especially larger ones where UX might be more robust on some products or projects (and almost unknown on others). The tactics highlight the need to choose the right people to be persuasive in your organization and use data in supporting our arguments for UX to play an expanded role.

The next article in this series will explore internal processes we can take to document and share UX work that has occurred, and mentorship needed to take UX maturity to higher levels. The final article will discuss education of both staff with UX roles and staff who do not have UX roles. Stay tuned!

Author Note: I want to thank my colleague Dana Daniels for assistance with background research on UX maturity models.

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