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Archive for July, 2009

Do professional practices really need custom designed logos? Or is the name on the signboard adequate?

The advent of the internet has brought around several changes in the way we go about our daily activities. We carry out research without visiting libraries, we settle payments without even needing to go outside and we shop without having to brave bargain hunting crowds. But sadly there are certain things that need us to leave the comfort of our homes.    

The District of Columbia has around 1.044 dentists per 1000 citizens, which is the largest number of dentists per capita anywhere in America. Some orthodontists are more prominent than others and can boast very lengthy appointment lists.

Dentist visits have often been associated with pain. The sonic pitch of the drill is often more than sufficient to send shivers down the spines of grown men. If you examine dental sites on the internet, you would certainly have noticed that there are normally images of smiley people greeting visitors. They hardly ever display the latest technology by displaying the latest drill being used.   

People tend to select dentists with the help of recommendations. However, if you were to ask 10 different people, you would obtain 10 different suggestions. How would dental practitioners then differentiate themselves?

Visual imagery has for ages been an important marketing tool and is often used in logo designs. It is currently being utilized in professional services as well. A dental logo design can be used to express many things. To begin with, a dental logo design must signify that the logo itself belongs to a dental practitioner. Next, the dental logo design must express an feeling of professionalism. Smooth lines, soft colors and non aggressive designs all play a role in assuring a potential patient that this is definitely the right place to be.    

The logo design can be modified in such a manner that it might appeal to specific target markets. Some dental surgeons specialize in child patients while others prefer adults. The dental logo design could also be created to promote a particular procedure such as teeth whitening, implants, smile makeovers or any other cosmetic or dental procedure.

Moreover, it does not cost much to get professional logo designers to create a custom dental logo design. In actual fact, a typical online logo design price is practically the same as the cost an ordinary teeth cleaning procedure.

With the competition intensifying, it has become increasingly obvious that clean and professional looking logo designs are indeed important to professional practices. 

Rex Hunter has been in the arena of PR and advertising for over 15 years. He has written extensively on the subject of logo design and logo design price.

The construction sector is getting very competitive. More established organizations handle the major development jobs while smaller and newer firms must prove their quality with various subcontracts before moving on to bigger projects.

My design company has just been given an assignment to produce a new construction logo design for a local construction business. To get things going, the art director and I visited our client’s office for a short interview to learn more about the company.

Like many others we have surveyed, most companies instinctively know they need a new identity to help them compete but are not really sure what they want. That is where our services can make a positive impact.

Before beginning work on the logo design, we ordinarily inquire about the history of the firm, its turnover, its goals, its specialty, its target market and exactly why it wants a new construction logo design; just to get a better perception of things.

We determined that they are a relatively young firm, 11 years in the business with 4 major subcontract projects and many minor ones under their belts, each one bigger than the last. They are now moving to adopt a blue ocean strategy and progress into eco-friendly medium cost suburban development – a niche with a low number of competitors – and subsequently taking the opportunity to create a reputation for themselves as one of the first firms to service this niche.

From the dialogue, we discovered that they have the required resources to handle medium scale development projects. Their selected niche also makes it easier to differentiate them from other developers.

At our agency, we had a typical brainstorming session and and decided on the concept we would finally adopt. From there we designated 4 designers to produce individual interpretations or logo samples to turn those concepts to logo designs.

After a couple of days, the logo concepts were ready for perusal. Some designs made use of stylized text while others used construction related graphics like hardhats and tool pouches to get the point across. Even though all 4 construction logo design samples were unique in their own way, they all kept to to two primary points.

Professionalism
Developers deal with major projects. To be considered for such projects, they must always be viewed as a professional and responsible organization with good business ethics. Thus, the neat and clear designs reflected that well.

Eco-Friendliness
This is the niche this company is determined to penetrate. Naturally, the designs, either by color or graphics, corroborates the company’s commitment to the preservation of the environment.

Alas it is up to our clients to decide on which of the four designs they prefer. Alternatively they can certainly make minor alterations but as professional designers, we must make certain the design ultimately keeps to the key points expressed earlier.

For beginners on the web, the question is “How do I start my own website?”.  First:  One of the best things you can help yourself with in your domain name choice is to develop a strategy and plan of attack.  A well chosen domain is a key component to your website’s success. Fine tuning your choice and thinking it through will help secure good placement with search engines and in the minds of your potential visitors/customers.

You have searched for your desired domain name and it turns out someone else has already snagged it.  Now what?  Would it still be possible to buy the domain name?  Possibly.  It’s possible, but there are conditions.  However, with a little luck and enginuity you can still possibly register that coveted domain name even if someone has beaten you to the punch.  There are other ways to get the domain name you want:

Hyphenated Names If the domain name you want is already taken, consider hyphenating it, as in taking billsplumbingsupplies.com and making it bills-plumbing-supplies.com.  Is hyphenating the best way to go?  Maybe, maybe not.  If you are dealing with an already well known name, generally the answer would be no, as most web surfers would usually just enter the non-hyphenated version in, and end up at your competitors’ website instead.  Not the desired result!  Also, the longer the name you have chosen, the more tedious and error prone it becomes for the surfer to type in the name correctly, again foiling the chances that they will end up at your website.  So, the shorter the better.  Hyphenating a domain name might be a good strategy for you in the following scenario: Let’s say the domain name you want is taken, and the current owner is not willing to give it up.  After researching it you find that there is no website published under the domain name, or perhaps there is but it is poorly designed and gets very little traffic.  In a case like that hyphenating the domain name might make sense and in fact could be a wise strategy.  But be careful:  the last thing you want is to cause internet domain name confusion because you have decided on a domain name registration that is so close to a major competitor’s name that you end up losing business to them.

Longer or Shorter?  Domain names can be up to 67 characters long.  At 63 characters, thelongestdomainnameintheworldandthensome
andthensomemoreandmore.com claims to be the longest domain name in the world, and it may very well be.  Can you envision anyone wanting to type it into their browser?  My website is www.StartYourWebsiteToday.com    When choosing my domain name I wanted something that in a few words would tell the web surfer what to expect from my website.  Good name selection can be helpful also with search engine ranking.  In as few characters as possible the name of the site, the purpose of the site, and the keywords of the site have all been neatly put together in a domain name.  Keep it as short as possible.

Brand Name or Generic  Should you give your website a descriptive generic name or do you want to use a brand name?  If your business is known by a brand name, and it is a well known name, of course it is the best possible strategy to try to register that domain name.  Budweiser.com is a site that is well known and gets a lot of traffic, even though there is nothing specifically in the domain name that says anything about beer.  But because Budweiser is known all over the world as a beer brand, people know what they are getting when they surf to the website.  If your brand name is well known, definitely try to obtain your brand name as a domain name.  But if your company is Nike or Coca Cola or Budweiser don’t discount the idea of buying the domain name shoes.com or soda.com or beer.com if they are available as well.  People often search the web using generic terms, more so even than brand names.  A person is more likely to search the internet with generic terms like shoes or footwear or sneakers than to search by a single brand name, even one as big as Nike.  Think it through and hedge your bets.  You can have as many domain names as you want pointing to a single website, so the more generic terms you can acquire that directly describe your business, the better.   A generic name if your business is new or not yet well known can get great results, if you can find a good one.  To start your search for your own unique domain name, here is a link to a domain name search engine.  Good website design begins always with the wise choice of a domain name. 

Website design is the most important factor for any business starting out in the world wide web. Understanding and making sure that you have the perfect website design could determine the whole difference between the success or failure of your internet marketing business.

It’s interesting to note that the Internet holds a big amount of information and is probably one of the fastest when it comes to growing networks all over the world. Thousands of websites are being built on a daily basis and if the business is similar to yours then you should be aware that these websites are now your competition!

You may be thinking about the fact that in knowing a majority of these websites are built without a specifice website design in mind, then this will definitely bring your competition down. If and only if, you take the time and effort to build a website with good website design you are far more likely to succeed

Building a website is actually giving your customers a sort of an online catalogue in which where they can view your products and get more information. Poor website design could discourage a potential customer, this is normally the case if your website is hard to navigate around and difficult for the customer to find what they are looking for.

When thinking about navigation it is important to remember that is determines the search engines will rate your website as well as affect the number of pages your potential customer will view. Most sites have some sort of menu and the easier and more visible this is the better!

However, if you have decided to get the help of a professional website design company, then it is important to play an active role so that your opinion and ideas are taken into account. Make it clear you need a site that has structure, structure means having a clean and coherent hierarchy to the site and good page structure. This means your visitors will be able to appreciate and recognize the significance of different sorts of information on the page as well as access exactly what they are looking for, which in return increases web traffic and visits.

Make sure you understand exactly what the professional website design company include in the package you have selected, it is common for a business to think they are getting a lot more than they receive. Never assume that promotion of the site is a free and instant offer in their services.

Website design packages vary in price but lets face it you get what you pay for these days!, with this in mind it is worth paying that little bit extra for a more professional service. Just like top seo services, most professional website design companies will offer you a free quotation so make sure you shop around and not only compare prices but what is on offer.

So you think you want to start up a website.  In prior posts I discussed choosing a domain name and creation of web pages.  Which brings the subject of hosting into play:  Choosing a hosting plan is a primary step in launching your fledgling web presence.

Once you have created the pages for your website, now you want to publish it to the internet.  In order to do so, you will need a hosting plan.  By purchasing a domain name you have branded, or named your website.  You own the name, but now you must pay rent to someone to actually get your website online.  In it’s simplest terms a hosting plan is paying a company to broadcast your website onto the internet.  The key considerations for choosing a good hosting plan will be discussed here.

SERVICE  The number one thing to look for in a hosting plan is service.  It does not matter that a multitude of features are offered or if the price is low if the service you will be getting with your hosting plan is sub par or even worse, nonexistent.  After you have published, or “gone live” on the internet, the last thing you want is for the website to go down and become unavailable to potential customers.  Therefore should a problem occur it is important to select a hosting provider that is readily available and will resolve the issue in as timely a manner as possible.

UPTIME  Does the hosting provider you are considering offer an “uptime guarantee? Many guarantee 99% uptime for their servers.  That sounds great, but it does mean that your site could go down for 1% of the time, which means over 7 hours out of each month! If at all possible, choose a host guaranteeing up to 99.9% uptime.

SIZE  What size, or how many pages will the website have?  One of the determining factors for the price of most hosting plans is the amount of space required to store the website on their server’s hard drive.  Most websites do not require much space but if you’re planning on having a large site with a lot of multimedia content or an ecommerce site selling multiple items, you’ll probably need additional disk space on your hosting plan.

LINUX OR WINDOWS  Which operating system should your hosting plan use?  BTW it does not matter what operating system you are using on your personal computer.  What programming language was used in the Web site design?  For example, if you designed a website using ASP or ASP.NET, you’ll need to find a Windows hosting plan. If you have a Web site that uses CGI or PHP, you’ll need to get a Linux hosting plan.  For the novice user who is building a simple html website the above may not be a consideration at first, but may become important later on as you become more experienced and add more features to your website.

TRAFFIC  How much traffic or how many visitors do you expect monthly?  Hosting plans are usually sold at different level plans according to the bandwith that will be required.  Bandwidth = Traffic.  Obviously more bandwidth is better because it allows more visitors to visit your site, but at the beginning this will be hard for you to gauge.  The best advice here is to start off with a low cost, low bandwidth plan and upgrade it later as the traffic to your website grows.

SHARED OR DEDICATED HOSTING  The question of shared vs. dedicated hosting is really answered in a very simple way:  A shared hosting plan is exactly as it sounds, and means that your website will be stored on a server along with lots of other websites.  In this hosting format you generally have no ability to make changes to the resident software on the system, meaning you cannot change or upgrade the operating system, or the database management system, etc.  You will have to work within the software structure provided by the hosting company.  Dedicated or virtual dedicated hosting is different in the sense that you will have full control over the environment that your website resides in, and you will have the only access to that space.  In other words, you would determine what operating system to use, what type database management software, what type of blog software, what type shopping cart, etc., etc.  This type of hosting is definitely geared to the more advanced user, and usually you won’t be able to get as much customer support because it will be a custom setup.  The bottom line:  start off with shared hosting if you are a beginner, until you are advanced enough to progress to your own controlled dedicated hosting environment.

At StartYourWebsiteToday.com I offer 99.9% guaranteed uptime and offer customer service 24/7.  The hosting plans that are offered include a variety: shared hosting, virtual dedicated hosting, and dedicated hosting plans with either Linux or Windows operating systems for every need and budget ranging from the small personal website to large online multimedia sites to those interested in ecommerce website building. To review the options we offer, click HERE: Hosting plans.

Ask the top level executives at Exxon Mobile or Toyota regarding the importance of having a good logo design and they may probably end up giving you a lecture for an hour or two. To put it briefly, good logos are good for business.

If your business is just getting of the road, you would likely need all the help you can possibly get beginning with a good logo design. In your search for logo designers you would have come across many sites offering custom logo designs as well as DIY logo designs. Which should you decide on?

To help you come to a decision, here are a few points to reflect upon on both options.

DIY Online Logo Design Programs
By employing ‘logo design software’ users are offered the opportunity to ‘design’ their own logo. To put it accurately, customers end up assembling pre-fab designs and customizing them by fidgeting with the colors and placements of the images provided. These cookie cutter designs only takes a few hours to to produce and are really cheap but they do incur other costs.

To begin with, these logos would not be entirely unique especially if someone else has used the same image sample from the same source site. To help alleviate this concern, these sites do present thousands of images to choose from to reduce the chances of the same images being utilized by another party.

Having mentioned that, all it takes is another party using the same image, to put paid any trademarking prospects. Companies with logos utilizing public domain image samples would find it hard to have their logos trademarked.

Designs By logo design pros
Usually, custom logo designs by logo design pros are more professional looking than those produced by DIY sites. Many net based designers charge between $50 and $250 to design a unique company logo for you in under 3 days.

However, the net is filled with custom logo design companies rendering services at around the same prices. Here are several pointers to help you ascertain the ones that provide the best value for money.

Revisions
Make certain you choose a design firm that affords unlimited or at least 12 revisions with your design package. Certain designers only offer a single revision and charge you for any additional changes.

Satisfaction Guarantee
There have been cases, no matter how much effort they put in, designers just cannot seem to satisfy their customers. A 100% satisfaction guarantee would ensure the client gets back his investment in the unfortunate event of such cases.

Final Files
Sadly, there are several design companies which charge the client extra for high-res files. Read the fine print and make sure you select firms which give you multiple file formats together with your final logo design at the price stated when you sign up. You would require these files if you should decide to use your custom logo for print purposes.  

To put it succinctly, always appoint a professional logo designer save unless you really cannot afford to spend $50 – $100 on design fees. Considering your company’s image would likely be at risk if you don’t, it is money well spent. 

Rex Hunter has been in the advertising industry for the best part of 15 years. He argues the importance of affordable quality image and branding for new businesses. Click here for custom logo design at only $69.97. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed. View Logo Samples Now!

It has been long debated whether a professional logo is necessary for professional practices such as vets, dentist, doctors and many more. The answer for it is definitely a “Yes”. A logo presents your target clients the first impressions about your company. If you have a professional logo, it will evidently communicate who you are and what your company offerings. The first impression is the one that sticks, and it couldn’t be any different in the business circle. A logo design that stands out will certainly contribute a positive first impression about your company to your customers and even your rivals.

No profession requires more esteem than that of the dentist, and having a good dental logo design in place for your medical practice is a have to express the type of professionalism from your doctor’s office that you need to retain patients. There are more than 4000 dental care in San Francisco area itself and competition is definitely stiff. How do you want to differentiate yours with others? Most doctor’s office are genuinely small businesses, but being a small business does not inhibit you from the need for an effective dental logo design that will aid you promote your marketability and grow acknowledgement for your own personal “brand”.

Are you striving to come up with the perfect design for your medical office or dental office? A good medical logo design can make all the difference between the success of your marketing efforts and just a so-so marketing campaign that falls short of your plans. By acquiring an effective dental logo design in place, you make your clients and patients to easily figure out your signage, mailings, and other items that support to boost brand recognition that is so crucial in the strong competitive medical industry.

Your logo should consist of design text, symbols, and elements that are distinct to your dental practice and that give you the maximum amount of brand recognition and at the same time reflect a professional yet friendly image. Many dental practices include some type of symbol that is common in their field, such as a tooth, a toothbrush, etc., but you can use your creativity to come up with a symbol to ask for in your logo design that is various from those of your contemporaries. Having a logo in place that is unique is a great way to stand apart from your competition while marketing your business. You are limited solely by the limits of your imagination  when it comes to purchasing a great logo with affordable logo design price to boost and intensify your marketing plan.

Your dental logo design causes your medical practice appear to be focused, unlike marketing materials and logos that are not customized that may make your business look like it’s enveloped in a complicated atmosphere – this is particularly unappealing in health care.

For these reasons and others, it is important that your dental logo design be professionally crafted in order to promote the type of reputation that must be developed in the health care industry.

Scott has been helping professional businesses build their brands and raise awareness by producing affordable dental logo design and logo design for new start ups on a budget.

Anyone who uses or in particular works on a computer is going to need to understand about data backup, what it is, and why it is so important. When you backup your data, you are storing your files on a disk or other device that is completely separate from your primary computer.

The purpose for the data backup is so that in the event anything were ever to happen to your computer, for instance if it were to get a virus or something else were to happen that disrupted or even completely deleted any of your files or personal information, you would have the data backup and so you would be able to get all the information back.

There are a few different options that you can choose from when it comes to data backup, including online data backup for one because it is so convenient and because it is often free as well.

What is Required

There are many different methods that you can choose to use to backup your computer data, but regardless there are a few things that you are going to require. All that is required to store your information on a drive or disk separate from your computer will depend on the method that you choose.

For instance if you operate on a home LAN system, you can transfer your files onto the other computers on the network so that if the computer you use primarily even went down you would have the information still stored on these other computers.

If you want to go with the online data backup option, there are a couple of online companies in particular that you are going to want to consider for their data backup services. This includes Storage Pipe for one, a company that is known for providing world-class corporate data protection solutions including online backup and recovery.

They allow for small to large businesses to decrease operations costs and complexity, and for affordable prices.

Another company that you may want to consider here is Data Protection, which is a privately held company that offers effective data backup solutions. They are focused solely on backup and storage for business clients and they have designed an easily managed and affordable solution that is scalable.

They understand that the handling of data has evolved significantly in the past few years in response to security threats and legislative acts addressing privacy and financial reporting issues and they have made the proper steps to keep up with these advancements.

Just how much you should pay for a custom logo design depends on several factors. A fast internet search will show that logo prices range from $50 to $50,000 depending on who you decide to hire.

There is a good reason for the big difference logo design prices. A $50,000 logo price tag would usually be part of a detailed branding campaign strategy custom designed by branding consultants. The campaign cost itself may reach 7 figures.

This kind of package is more appropriate for Fortune 500 companies who can afford such a large fee. Branding campaigns like this are the reason for the global recognition of Nike’s Swoosh logo. Big multinationals like Samsung and Nokia spend millions annually on branding and rebranding initiatives.   

Not surprisingly, a large number of businesses are unable afford the expertise of branding consultants. A more reasonably priced manner would be traditional logo designers. The logo design rates from such designers are around $1000 to $2000 per custom logo design. A big chunk of their time is spent researching the company, its philosophy and its past. Since all this takes up valuable time and time is money, they thus have to charge for it. This kind of service is ideal for those who prefer to speak at length to designers and are not in a rush to receive their designs.

Unfortunately, many businesses could still find that a logo price of $1000 is still beyond their budget. Therefore, many taken to the internet searching for more affordable alternatives.

Online business logo designers charge the lowest for their services. At logo prices of $50 to $500 per logo, their logo design rates are undoubtedly the lowest around. The reason for the low logo price is rather simple. There is no red tape, no long winded proposals and no hundred page manual explaining why they chose red instead of purple.

In addition to better logo design rates, clients can look forward to speedier turnaround times as well.

But here is the catch, however. Not all online logo design agencies provide you the same value for money services so it is vital that you read the fine print. Certain low cost design firms have a tendency to limit the number of revisions permitted. They might offer cheaper logo design rates but they will charge for every revision made. Sneaky way of making money indeed.

Keep an eye open for designers who offer low resolution file formats which are not good enough for print. Be certain that the logo design price includes high resolution final file formats. You would probably need them if you want to print business cards or marketing collateral in the future.

By the way, be sure your logos can be trademarked. Many clients find themselves in a tricky situation when they find out their logo is not completely one of a kind due to use of a public domain clip art. And this can have a negative affect on their efforts to have their logo trademarked.

Rex Hunter has been in PR and advertising for over a ten years. He has written and co-written many articles on branding for small businesses where he shares his ideas on logo price, internet marketing strategies and best products to market on the internet.

In business, even the smallest details can make a big difference. Your company’s website design is a public presentation of your enterprise to the world. Here are five urgent guidelines to check to assure that your business website performs in the way that it should.

1) Don’t even think about using splash pages

Always remember that we attract our site’s visitors for a purpose, and we want nothing to stand in the way of achieving that goal as efficiently as possible. A splash page, which you probably have come across at some time, is a landing page that is nothing but decoration. Usually, splash pages are meant to be visually attractive. The only meaningful content they have is a phrase such as “click here to enter this site.” Why add the frustration of one additional click between your landing page and the desired outcome on the part of the site visitor? Get those visitors through that virtual door immediately.

2) Do not use excessive banner advertisements

Eye tracking studies indicate that, while such banners might distract visitors to a website, modern visitors are accomplished at not noticing the content that the banners contain. Unless your business plan is advertising, the last thing you want to do with your visitors’ time on your site is to direct their attention away from your content (and the action that the content is designed to achieve).

3) Make sure your site navigation is intuitive

Your navigation menu should mimic what your site visitors have used many times before. Make it evident that your links to other pages are just that; they should be like directional sign posts on a highway. If you insist upon an animated, dynamic menu or a multi-level dropdown, also provide a tradition, text-based static menu in one of the traditional menu locations, such as along the left panel of the site. Besides, the static menu will contribute toward your search engine optimization efforts.

4) Provide a clear indication of where the user is

When visitors are deeply engrossed in browsing your site, you will want to make sure they know which part of the site they are in at that moment. That way, they will be able to browse relevant information or navigate to any section of the site easily. Don’t confuse your visitors because confusion means “abandon ship”!

5) Avoid using audio on your site

If you are determined to have sound automatically load, be sure that it a) makes a meaningful contribution toward meeting your objectives, b) allows the site visitors to control and volume levels and c) is not on a page on which all of their attention should be focused upon reading the exquisite copy. If your audio does not meet all of these guidelines, err on the side of caution and disable it.

Your http://www.99sites.us/>online business will benefit from attention to details such as these.