So you've been busy building your business. You've concentrated on marketing. You've gotten out there and posted to Facebook and Twitter. You've posted your story on all your sales pages. You've created your blog. You've even written articles and posted them all over the web. You've hung around forums and posted 'till you were told to stop. You've been building your brand like gangbusters.
But have you forgotten something?
The biggest brand success factor isn't marketing. It's delivering on your promises. It's delivering a quality product to your customers.
And for those of us creating learning content that means your biggest success factor is product creation. You see it's in product design and creation that most of your quality is going to be built in -- or left out.
In the short term, people listen to your branding efforts. Your marketing is a key factor in developing their opinion of your quality. They listen to your promises -- both stated and implied -- and then make a decision. Your marketing will convince people that you do know what you are doing. And that you will deliver a quality product.
But in the long term, they will judge you by how well you actually deliver on those promises. They judge you by the quality of your products. By the quality of your services. And by the quality of the relationship they develop with you. And in the internet marketing business developing a long term relationship with your customers is a key to success. That's why list building is so important.
And when creating courses and eBooks and other information products the biggest influence on your quality is how you design and develop your products.
Quality in a learning content product is measured on three levels.
The first is content. But your customers -- your target audience -- are taking your course precisely because they don't know the content. They are there to learn the content. So their judgment of the quality of that content is different. It isn't based on how well you know your subject.
Instead your customers will judge your content based on how well it meets their needs and expectations. Did you design the product to solve a specific problem they are having? Did you design your product around their motivations? That's how they will judge your content.
The second thing they will judge you on is organization. Do you seem to understand the topic well enough to present it so they understand? Do you go off into odd regions? Do you make logical sense in your presentation?
Finally they will judge you based on delivery. Does it look professional? How is your spelling? How is your grammar? Do you seem to be friendly and easy to speak to?
But it's not that simple. You see the way you deliver quality content involves closely identifying and targeting your customer. And that same target customer you defined in the product design and creation process will be used for all your contacts with your customers. Including making your marketing target your desired customer. So your short term influence ultimately also depends on the quality of your product design process.
When you decide to design your website or get it designed by a professional web designer, it is important to consider the factors including navigation, quality of content and the aesthetics of the website. While the web designer has to take care of all these factors, the graphic design for the website should be given equal importance. Graphic images are the first thing a visitor notices on a website and it is because of the attractive graphic images that the reader is enticed to read the text.
A website designer, who may also be a graphic designer, has to blend the graphics in his web design to create an attractive websites that can hold the interest of visitors and compel them to revisit the websites. In the web design, 傢俬佬 the web page layouts, site plan and content are directly related to the graphic design created for the websites. The graphics have to be as good as other aspects of web design.
Let us see how the graphic design is linked with various factors of the web design-
Home Page- This is the most important web page of the site. It can make or break the website and so the graphic design on this page should be most attractive and effective. If the Home page is not attractive enough, the bounce rate would increase and the whole purpose of the website would fail. So it is important to have graphics that are attractive as well as informative enough to hold the visitors' attention. Using colours and images that blend with the core message of the website is best way to make the website most effective.
Content- It is the content which talks about your company, products, services and work but reading long content can sometimes be boring. In order to make it interesting, the web design should be such that the readers are compelled to read the content. With the help of attractive graphic images, you can engage the customers and direct them towards the related content.
Brand Reputation- A good graphic design incorporated into the web design can lead to improved reputation of the company and its brand. The graphics such as logos lead to creation of brand identity and reputation building and so they should be designed carefully.
If the graphic design is blended with all these aspects of web design, the website owner can enjoy the following benefits-
A) Added visual appeal of the website: Colours and images are more attractive than texts and so the visuals are an important aspect of a website. It appeals to the aesthetic sense of the viewers and helps them to connect with the site.
B) User-friendly website: The aspect of usability is supported with the help of good graphic design. Besides other tools, graphic images can also make the website user-friendly.
C) Makes the site look more professional: Many times, despite a good web design and informative content a website fails to achieve the desired results. This is possible in the absence of a good graphic design. With effective graphics, the website can add a touch of professionalism.
Graphic images can be of different types including logos, graphic text headings, background images, photos, bullet points, image maps, divider lines and navigation buttons. The key is to make the graphics effective enough to induce the visitors to visit the website and revisit it.