Month: July 2018

Name It Right: How Your Brand’s Name is (Apparently) Important for Your SEO

Posted on by Mario

SEO tips

Ever search for a restaurant you want to visit on Google, and then what appears next is a number of totally different places instead of the restaurant you are searching for? If that has ever happened to you, then the restaurant you were looking for has made a bad decision in choosing their restaurant’s name. Why? Believe it or not, a brand’s name plays a crucial role in SEO. If you are a business owner hiring SEO services to help your business grow, then you must consider naming your brand properly and uniquely. This article will tell you how important your brand’s name when it comes to SEO. Keep reading to find out!

How important is a brand’s name?

Well, most of you may already know Vin Diesel from his big role in Fast and Furious movies. Did you know that his name used to be Mark Sinclair? Surprised? Yeah, me too, when I first found out about it. But, have you ever wondered why he changed his name? Apparently, according to the information from people.com, he changed his name because Mark Sinclair wasn’t tough enough in Hollywood. The same goes with a brand’s name. A name can either make or break your brand, because the name of your brand will represent your brand’s authenticity, originality, characteristics, and uniqueness. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, if your brand’s name is still similar to other brands, or if your brand’s name is too general, then it will be difficult for people to find you. For example, you own a hair salon, and you recklessly name your salon “Beautiful Hair Salon.” Well, it might be a nice name, but when you search the name on Google, there will be plenty of salons using similar names and therefore making it difficult for you to rank high. Aside from that, “Beautiful Hair Salon” has ambiguous meanings that it can translate into “a hair salon that is beautiful” as well.

Then, how do we create a proper brand’s name?

First, think of a name that represents you but in a unique way. You can also use your own name for that. For example, if you own a cake shop and your name is Sharon, maybe you can use this name: ShareOn Cake by Sharon. However, be careful with the space. If you separate Share and On, it would be a general phrase with common and mixed ambiguous search results. Therefore, it is better for you to Google it first to make sure you are not creating any ambiguous or similar names with other things found on search engines. This will also let you know whether there are cake shops with the similar name or not.

The next step is to decide the targeted keywords that you will be focusing on for SEO purposes. When you type specific kinds of keywords on search engines, chances are, you will find millions of results. For example, if you type “delicious cakes” only, you will get millions of results. But that is not necessarily a good thing. Why? That is because you will get tougher competitions in terms of ranking. Therefore, it will be difficult for you to start up. On the other hand, if you type “delicious cakes in (your region and more specific region)”, though the results may reach to 800-100.000, it is less competitive and you will get more chances with the rank.

Last but not the least, shape your brand’s name with brand identity that will also explain the real origin of your brand’s name choice. This will strengthen your brand’s name and boost your brand awareness.

That’s how important a brand’s name for your business and how to make a proper brand’s name. I hope this gives you insights on what to do before starting out a new business. If you have any question about SEO or brand shaping, feel free to contact us and our professional team will be glad to help.

Practicality vs. Creativity in Web Design: This is Why You Need Both for Your Business’ Website

Posted on by Mario

practical and design thinking

When it comes to design, especially in web design, there are two crucial parts that complement the process of design; practical thinking and creative thinking. Maybe most of you already know about creative thinking, but how about practical thinking? If you have a business and want to make a website, then you have taken the right step to grow your business, but if you are creative, you should be practical too. Why? That’s because your web design needs both! This article will help you find out more about it. Keep reading to learn more!

Being creative and practical when designing a website

When it comes to designing a website, there are some of the several things that you have to keep in mind:

  • Uniqueness
  • Colour choices
  • Quality in users’ perspective
  • Easy-to-use website
  • Website’s responsiveness

Creativity brings together harmony in design. With creativity, you can deliver your interesting ideas in a form of content and appearance that can make your website “a sight to behold.” That being said, appearance is not everything, and thus, practicality comes into the picture. When you are designing a website, combining creativity with practicality is a must. A website should be easy for users to access, but has to be beautiful at the same time. It is easy to find so many websites that are beautiful but not many can provide responsiveness in a website. Why do we need practical thinking in web design? That’s because practicality brings balance to the creative design. When you creatively design a website with more ideas, practicality helps in simplifying the website. In short, you make your website interestingly easy.

When there is a problem with your website, both creative thinking and practical thinking can work together to solve it. With creative solution, you can achieve practicality. Let’s take a mobile application as an example. Nowadays, people can transfer money right away using a mobile application. While the application is creatively designed using creative solutions, the features that help users navigate easily are based on practical thinking. So, basically, creative solutions can turn into practical approaches in design.

Where creativity comes in is not only about aesthetics, but also finding solutions to potential problems. At that point, creative solution can grow up to become a practical one. The key of successful designs is that you think about your problems and how to approach and solve them. You should think about it first rather than go for the first idea that pops into your head. If an idea pops into your head, keep it and write it down, but don’t act on it yet until you have got enough ideas. After collecting ideas, look deeper into the potential issues and see if your idea can resolve it or not, along with any unintended consequences that will go along with it. In the end, make your decision based on what makes the most sense for users and remember that when you are designing your website, you should put yourself in users’ perspective first. At that point, it’s time for your creativity to kick in. Carrying out the choices you’ve made will require a creative touch to make things better. For that reason, creativity needs practicality, and practicality needs creativity.

That’s how creative thinking and practical thinking are needed in web design. If your web designers have used both when designing your website, then don’t worry; you are on the right path. If you are still confused and need to know how to properly design a website, feel free to contact us and our team will be ready to assist you anytime.

Design Language: 4 Things to Consider when Choosing a WordPress Theme

Posted on by Mario

Design Language tips

As of 2018, WordPress remains far and away the most popular content management system in web development, with the platform capturing a sizable market share of 31%, far eclipsing the second-placed Joomla, coming in at a measly 3.1% market share. WordPress owes its popularity mainly because of two reasons, its sheer versatility and the simple fact that at its most basic version, it is available for free. There’s just no denying free stuff.

Technically though, WordPress works under the ‘freemium’ model, in which plugins and themes, the very reasons for WordPress’ versatility, are separated into free and premium ones, just like with mobile apps and games. These themes and plugins come for the most part from third-party developers, owing to WordPress’ open-sourced nature and as such, WordPress is an embarrassment of riches when it comes to the number of options available. Some might say there are way too many options.

Finding the right WordPress theme

Choosing a theme is usually one of the first and primary decisions you’ll have to make when starting out with WordPress. Themes aren’t just about looks. Basic functionality, layout, aesthetic impressions, the overall design language of your entire website is going to be heavily informed by the theme you’re going with. Apple didn’t merely stumble into their cohesive design language, shaping every piece of product in their lineup, both software and hardware, by accident. They did it through careful research.

Now, due to its open source nature, it is actually possible for you to design and develop a customized WordPress theme of your own, either from scratch or working from what’s already available but for most small businesses, this is usually unnecessary. The decision then, boils down to a choice between the plethoras of themes available for WordPress. In one marketplace alone, Themeforest from Melbourne-based Envato, there are over 10,000 themes available, packed like sardines in a crushed tin box.

To help you navigate and differentiate between this overly crowded market; here are some factors to consider when choosing a WordPress theme:

  • Choose between simple themes or a comprehensive framework

To put another wrinkle in your decision process, WordPress framework is the current trend in web development. Remember at the beginning when I said that WordPress themes also account for functionality? WordPress framework works by pushing all of those functionalities within the framework itself while themes consist solely of stylistical options. In a WordPress framework, you basically have two themes; parent themes dictate the functionality while child themes dictate the actual aesthetics.

The benefit of going with a framework is that it makes WordPress more in line with full-on web builders like Wix or Squarespace by allowing easy, drag-and-drop codeless customization and seamless theme switching but with the caveat that you can’t perform under-the-hood modifications as freely as you’d like. Usually though, framework already has a lot of functionalities and widgets built-in that you normally won’t have to add one yourself.

  • Just the right amount of functionality

First, consider what functionalities you’d like to have with your website right now and those you’re considering in the foreseeable future. Now, choose a theme that fulfills those needs with the minimum amount of baggage. A feature-rich theme might sound attractive but if it consist of features that are irrelevant, don’t bother. Those extra functionalities are just going to slow down your website and since load speed is now a Google ranking factor, a slow website isn’t something you want to be burdened with.

Technically, you can still add functionalities with plugins but again, adding more baggage is going to slow down your website, so try to go with a theme that already has the functionalities you need built-in to the theme.

  • Responsive web design and mobile-friendliness

Mobile web browsing has overtaken the conventional desktop experience in 2016 and you need to adapt your website for optimal viewing on diminutive displays and gesture-based navigation. The one method of solving this is by using responsive web design, in which the webpage detects the medium it is being displayed and adapts itself. Choosing a non-responsive theme in 2018 is akin to connecting to the internet with a 56k dial-up connection. It’s just too anachronistic of a choice.

  • Finding the right aesthetics

Take a glance at the selection available in Themeforest. On the left-hand side, there are a lots of different tags you could use to filter out just what exactly what kind of website you’re looking for. Food & beverage? Technology? A design portfolio or a resume? There are tons of themes available for various specific needs and choosing the one that fits the aesthetic you’re looking for should not be a problem. There are various considerations to factor in before you jump the gun, however.

First is the available color palette. Assuming you’ve already settled on a logo for your business, you need to find a theme with a color palette that could complement your logo. Some themes are available with unlimited color options while some, usually the free ones don’t. The second factor is legibility. If you’re working in the creative and/or visual industry, this might not be a primary consideration but for businesses working in professional services, you should always balance style with substance. Fussy, visual heavy design tends to not work with law and accounting firms.

Additional considerations

The example marketplace I gave here, Themeforest, deals exclusively with premium themes. If you’re looking for the free ones, the directory on WordPress website is a good place to get you started. Here’s my advice though, try to avoid themes that are made by an individual. Those tend to be extracurricular excursions and since there are no professional obligations, questions of supports and updates are always going to be on your mind.

There are a lot of organizations dedicated to making WordPress themes and most usually offer free themes to go with the premium ones. The free ones are usually restricted in some ways, with less functionality and a limited color palette but if you can live with those restrictions, those free themes are a definite bargain because getting support will be much easier than from an individual designer.