Author Archives: Logo Design Team

How to Halloween Your Website

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October is here my friends and that means that the official countdown to Halloween has begun! This next month will be filled with more Pumpkin Spice Lattes, apple cider and costumed children than you count. If you want to make the most out of this festive season, your website needs to show a little Halloween spirit. If you do it right, not only will it look great, but you’ll also have a happier, more loyal customer base. Here are a few ideas for how you can “Halloween your website”:

Halloween-ify your homepage

For most websites, the homepage is the place where most of your traffic lands. Why not create a unique experience for all that traffic and spruce up your homepage with a little Halloween décor. Just like we decorate our homes for the holidays, you can and should do the same with your website. Add a spooky graphic as the main image on your homepage, change out some of the fonts for a spooky style or just add a few spiderwebs or pumpkins – anything to show people that your business really knows how to embrace Halloween.

Add a Halloween Countdown

Depending on what your business is, it could be fun to add a Halloween countdown somewhere on your site. There is even a site that has already coded some spooky banners for you: http://www.halloweencountdown.com/. All you have to do is plug the code into your website and you’ve instantly added a little Halloween fun into your website experience. Pro tip: Make sure you also tie the Halloween Countdown timer to a specific event or concept for your business for the best results. Have the countdown coincide with a contest or company announcement. The Halloween-themed banner will be a fun way to draw attention to your event.

Run a Halloween Contest

Contests are a great way to get customers engaged in your business and the Halloween season provides a perfect backdrop for you to be able to run a really fun and interesting contest. Here are just a few ideas for Halloween contests that work well:
  • Halloween Costume Contest
  • Online Halloween Scavenger Hunt
  • Pumpkin or Apple Pie Contest
  • Halloween Poster Design
  • Spookiest House Decorations
The most effective contest will be one that ties in with your business somehow like a Pet Costume Contest for a pet store or a Spooky Decoration contest for a home décor or landscaping business. Even if there isn’t a direct tie-in with your business, a Halloween contest will be a fun way to get your customers involved.

Show Off Your Halloween Spirit

The holidays are a great time to showcase the personality of your business. Giving customers a view into what it’s like to work for your business is not only interesting, but it helps build up a loyal, supportive customer base. Why not go crazy and decorate your office with a Halloween theme. Have employees come to work in costume one day and post the pictures to your company blog or social media accounts. Even if you don’t have any employees and your business is literally a one-man show, you can still show off your Halloween spirit. Post a picture of your pet in costume or post some pictures of your favorite Halloween decorations. The important thing is that you are showing customers that you are engaged in the Halloween season.

Make Your Blog Halloween Central

Assuming you have a blog for your business (and in this day and age, you really should have a blog for your business), take the opportunity to write some Halloween-themed content. A great way to do this is to take an idea for a normal blog post and add a Halloween slant. For instance, if you were going to write a blog posts on the best party snacks, why not turn that post into a “10 Best Snacks to Spookify your Halloween Party”. It’ll feel more relevant since it’s tied to the season and will likely catch a few more eyes. If you’re looking for a quick and easy way to add a little Halloween spirit to your website, check out our collection of Halloween Fonts. On sale now, the Halloween Font Collection has a fantastic array of spooky fonts and clipart that are perfect for sprucing up any website.

6 Ways to Personalize Your Way to Success

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This past summer, Coca-Cola did the unthinkable and it reversed an 11-year decline in soda sales. How? By getting personal. They launched the “Share a Coke” campaign in June 2014 and customers lined up to find a Coke bottle emblazoned with their name. Revolutionary? No. Impactful? Absolutely. What the marketers at Coca-Cola latched onto was that customers want to feel a personal connection before they buy your product. They want to feel that the product that they are spending their hard-earned money on was made for them and that it will be exactly what they need. What customers bought into with the “Share a Coke” campaign was not just that it’s pretty cool to see your name on a Coke can, but that it felt like a product that was made for them. Personalization isn’t a new concept, but what is new are the tools we have available to make each and every customer’s experience a uniquely personal one. If you run a business and aren’t doing any form of personalization, you are absolutely leaving money on the table. Here are 6 easy ways you can personalize your customer experience for a more successful business:

1. Use names in your email

This may seem overly simplistic, but using a customers name in either your email subject line or within the content can have a dramatic impact on whether or not someone ultimately makes a purchase. While most customers know that their name is inserted automatically by a machine, there is something kind of magical about seeing your name in an email subject that really catches the eye. Bottom line: If customers trust you enough to provide their name, use it to create a more personal experience through your email program.

2. Personalize the email content

One sure-fire way to make sure that your email content gets read is to craft a personal message. You’ll need to have some basic data about your customers to do this, but segmenting your email list based on previous purchases or interests can have a dramatic effect on your sales. When you know what your customers have already bought, it’s much easier to know what makes sense to recommend for their next purchase. This may take some work if you can’t afford the tools that will help you automate the personalized email process, but every business can benefit from some level of email personalization.

3. Create targeted landing pages on your website

Targeted landing pages are a great way to create a personal experience for specific customers and they offer the added benefit of helping boost your search engine results as well. In a nutshell, a targeted landing page is one that has been designed with a specific customer in mind. For example, if you have a landscaping business, you might want to think about creating pages on your website to address a variety of customers. For example:
  • Home Landscaping done right by A+ Landscapers
  • How A+ Landscaping can help your apartment get more tenants
  • Professional Commercial Landscaping with A+ Landscapers
While you are selling the same product or service, when you personalize these landing pages, you are selling your services in very different ways. I’m sure you can imagine how a landing page might look different for home, apartment or commercial landscaping. The content, images and sales pitch can and should be different depending on who you are talking to and changing things up a bit can have a dramatic impact on your sales.

4. Stop automating your social media

It may be tempting to use one of the many services to automate your social media posting. These services certainly make things easy from a time management perspective, but they also take the personal connection out of your social media. Having a real person craft real messages and respond to comments and questions makes your business feel more approachable. Customers who are able to interact with your business on a personal level are much more likely to become brand advocates and will be extremely loyal. Do yourself a favor – let your social media do what it was intended to do and build those personal connections.

5. Create sales paths that feel personal

No one, and I mean no one, likes a pushy salesperson. When you try to push your customers into certain products or force them down a particular path, 9 times out of 10, it’s not going to end real well. You’ll either end up losing the sale or the customer will go home with a serious case of buyer’s remorse. If you want results that end up with happy customers and a happy business, you’ve got to personalize the process. In a retail store, that means having your salespeople take the time to listen to the wants and needs of the customer and having them find options that fulfill those wants and needs. Online, that means creating the right content to help the customer feel like they are being heard. You can do this by showcasing your products benefits, offering testimonials and showing them products that your data indicates they would like. There are a million ways to do it, but the important thing is that the sales process feels real and natural.

6. Be real, be human and listen

Last, but absolutely not least, it is vitally important that you don’t try to be something that you are not. When customers are ready to make a purchase, they want to feel like they are dealing with a business who is authentic, because authenticity means that you know who they are and can trust them. To help create a truly personal experience, you need to listen to your customers.   Whether that is in a physical location, through surveys or on social media, listen to what your customers are telling you and respond to that feedback. The personal attention will pay off in the end!

6 Tips to Create a Tagline That Really Works

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You may not realize it, but your tagline is essentially the first and most important advertisement you’ll ever place. A great tagline will help convey a company’s personality and benefits in one tidy little phrase. Most importantly, a great tagline will help customers connect to your business at an emotional level, which is more than what your logo can do alone. Taglines have been called many things through the years – slogans, catchphrases, trademark – whatever you call it, the idea behind it is the same. A tagline is a short phrase that tells the customer what you offer. So what makes a tagline great? What makes something like “Just Do It” one of the most memorable marketing slogans in the world while a million other phrases are instantly forgotten? Here are six things to keep in mind as you create a tagline for your business: 1. What’s your mission? When you start the process of crafting a tagline, you may be tempted to go for something that you think is clever or cool or funny. While that may seem like a good idea initially, it’s probably an area that you’re going to want to stay away from. Start out by defining who you are as a business and what your purpose is. People don’t have time to try and figure out who you are and what you do – don’t be clever, be clear with your tagline. Wal-Mart’s “Save Money. Live Better.” is a great example of a tagline that tells you exactly what you can expect from the business it represents. Take a page out of Wal-Mart’s playbook and tell your customers what you do. 2. What’s the benefit? Speaking of Wal-Mart’s tagline, not only does it tell you what their mission is, but it tells you what the benefit is in just 4 little words. When I read “Save Money. Live Better.”, it tells me that by spending my money with Wal-Mart, I’m going to be able to keep just a little bit extra in my pocket for the things that really will make life better. The city of Las Vegas highlights the benefit in their tagline as well: “What happens here, stays here.” lets every potential visitor know that if they want to go a little crazy, Las Vegas is the place to do it. When creating a tagline for your business, really think about what the most important thing people get from your product or brand is and start there. 3. Tie it to your brand If you want your tagline to really resonate, it needs to reflect your brand. What are the core values and beliefs of your business? What is your company’s personality? What do you want people to remember about your business or product? Your tagline is going to be much more effective if it relates to your overall brand messaging. Disneyland’s slogan “The happiest place on earth” is a perfect example of a tagline that really encapsulates the brand. Disney is all about bringing magic and happiness to people, so why wouldn’t their theme park be the happiest place on earth? 4. Keep it simple Above almost anything, you want your tagline to be memorable, and that’s hard to do if you’ve crafted a paragraph to describe your business. The best taglines are short and sweet and are easy to digest. Whether your customers are reading your tagline in a magazine ad, on a billboard or on your storefront or whether they are hearing it in a commercial or from a salesperson, you want that tagline to be simple enough for people to remember. With that in mind, there is no hard a fast rule about the length your tagline should be, but try to keep it under 7 words for the best opportunity for recall. Note that Geico’s “15 minutes could save you 15% or more on car insurance” is a very famous example of a very long tagline. Unless you have a marketing budget the size of Geico’s, it’s probably best to stay away from taglines that are this wordy. 5. Make it sticky When I say “make it sticky”, I don’t mean that you should pour honey all over your tagline (although I suppose that is an option if you like to take things literally.) What I mean is that you need to make your tagline memorable. Keeping it short is the first step in creating a memorable tagline, but there are other things you can do to help your slogan stick in people’s brains:
  • Make it command (Just do it or Eat fresh.)
  • Be repetitive (There’s strong, then there’s Army strong.)
  • Play with pneumonic devices (Every kiss begins with K)
  • Ask a question (What’s in your wallet? Or Can you hear me now?)
Whatever you choose to go with, just make sure it sticks in your head first and then introduce it to others. 6. Test, test and re-test Which brings me to my last point – as any good marketer or scientist knows, the best way to be sure about something is to test it out. Once you’ve settled on one (or a handful) of great taglines, try them out on a few people to see what they think. If you have the time and resources, put together a research panel to get some real-time feedback about your tagline options. Just know that there is a limit to the amount of research and opinions that will be helpful. Don’t let yourself get wrapped into analysis paralysis where you are so tied to the data that you can’t make a decision. To create a really great tagline, you need to trust your research, but more importantly, trust your gut. Need some tagline inspiration? Here are 25 of the most influential taglines ever:
  • “Got milk?” – California Milk Processor Board
  • “Just do it” – Nike
  • “A diamond is forever.” – DeBeers
  • “There are some things money can’t buy. For everything else, there’s MasterCard.” – MasterCard
  • “That was easy.” – Staples
  • “The few, the proud, the Marines.” – The United States Marines
  • “They’re g-r-r-r-eat!” – Frosted Flakes
  • “Have it your way.” – Burger King
  • “Think outside the bun.” – Taco Bell
  • “Pork. The other white meat.” – National Pork Board
  • “Like a rock.” – Chevy Trucks
  • “The fabric of our lives.” – Cotton Incorporated
  • “It keeps going, and going, and going…” – Duracell
  • “Are you in good hands?” – AllState
  • “It gives you wings.” – Red Bull
  • “Snap, Crackle, Pop.” – Rice Krispies
  • “Melts in your mouth. Not in your hands.” – M&M’s
  • “Good to the last drop.” – Maxwell House
  • “Only you can prevent forest fires.” – S. Forest Service
  • “Think small.” – Volkswagen
  • “The king of beers.” – Budweiser
  • “Because I’m worth it.” – Loreal
  • “I’m lovin’ it.” – McDonald’s
  • “Think different.” – Apple
  • “Where’s the beef?” – Wendy’s

Circular Text

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Rotating the entire selected text around a pivot point, from -360 to 0 degrees for text that dips below the pivot point, or from 0 to 360 degrees for text that curves above the pivot point. In Logo Design Studio, circular text can be used to wrap an object, create a text-based object effect or any other eye-catching visual representation your imagination can come up with:

Export

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Sending a file from the current application to another application in an image format, including JPEG, TIFF, BMP, GIF, Transparent GIF, PNG, Transparent PNG and PDF. In Logo Design Studio, you can export your logo in the following formats: Web use – JPEG, PNG, Transparent PNG, GIF, Transparent GIF. Print use – JPEG, BMP, TIFF, PNG, Transparent PNG, PDF (standard format for most print shops). Document use – JPEG, EMF, WMF, BMP, PDF, ICO (a desktop icon format).

Hue, Saturation, and Lightness

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Adjusts all colors in an object/image and changes their strength and lightness. Hue – shifts all pixels in an image around the color wheel to a different point. For example, if you change the red pixels to green, the green pixels turn to blue and the yellow pixels turn to cyan. Saturation – adjusts the amount of grey in a color. The level of grey increases as the saturation decreases. Lightness – adjusts the color’s brightness. In Logo Design Studio, the best way to change the color of an included graphic object is to use the Hue, Saturation & Lightness sliders:

Opacity

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Changing a selected object or text from a default of 100 percent (fully opaque) down to 0 percent (fully transparent) on the logo canvas. When a layer is partially transparent, layers below it show through. In Logo Design Studio, you can use opacity to create a reflective or mirrored effect, show off the depth of your logo, make layers beneath objects or text visible, or simply make objects or text more subtle: