Web Branding Matters Online

Google is Your Website Home Page

2008-08-02T23:41:00.000-07:00

Most people in the business world don't have a clue that their home page of their website is not really their home page at all. The home page of a website is Google.

Let me explain that statement and expand on the Google Home page premise for your website. The majority of people that find your business online for the first time probably are looking in one of two ways. One way is they find your business online through an online directory with a small snippet of information about your website, or they go to Google Search and type a keyword search term that hopefully your business is showing up for that particular term for which the keyword is related to your company's products sold or the services provided by your company. The person first reads an online snippet of information on the Google Search results page, and this effectively, or for many businesses the case may be — ineffectively tells about a particular business page or website. Businesses sometimes spend thousands of dollars with graphic designers to design a beautiful website, and think wow that looks great! But as is the case the majority of the time, very little thought went into the sales and marketing presentation from the Google Search home page perspective. Words are key for search branding, and not necessarily the words displayed in a graphic image format, but the actual body text written in the web site.

How boring the graphic designers say. "You mean I can't have the pretty font, that sweeps up on the tips of the letters? You mean I have to worry about people resizing the body text in the browser? You mean I can't build an all Flash website and force people to read the text in small print? But I'm a graphic artist, and this is how it looks the best. I can't let people mess with perfection!," exclaimed the graphic designer.

Well folks, let me tell you the truth. You can spend thousands of dollars on a B2B or B2C website design and get very few buyers or consumers, let alone Web site visitors, because you broke the number one cardinal rule for website design online. You did not make the decision to go with a search engine friendly website design. Anyone in business that takes this extreme view of thinking that the graphic design for a website is the most important aspect for a website, is cutting their business throat from a search perspective. There needs to be a balance between graphic design and search engine friendliness.

While the search perspective is certainly key for the sales and marketing aspect of the business's success, there is another very important brand image implication that must be taken into account too. In fact, the brand image may be one of the most important aspects to long term online and offline success for your business. Brand awareness is the process of when people start recognizing your business as you. This can be both good or bad, depending on your brand image; but having the brand association of customers and potential customers recognizing your products or services as provided by your business, are keys to implementing long term sales and marketing strategies for sustainable business growth.

The process of building up a quality brand image online begins with the website structure and the words used throughout. This means not only the words of the text seen, but also the words in the Titles and Description tags of your website HTML coding. The foundation of the website doesn't stop there. The pictures you use, how you name them, and even the Alt tags (Picture Description Tags) are keys to your brand image online. Many of the tags are seen only by the search engine robots. These robots record the underlying information and assign a value to each particular foundation item. Note: These items are only a small fraction of what needs to be taken into account when designing the website and expanding upon what has already been established, in the case of an older website.

Good Internet Marketing Means Not Walking Away From Your Website Design

Don't think that you can put a website together and then walk away from it after you are finished with the design. First off, a website is never finished. You might think it is, but believe me when I tell you that it should always be in a state of improvement. It's not like you have a Pablo Picasso masterpiece hung up in a art museum and all you need to do is sign your name at the bottom, and say, "I have a masterpiece, now come and see it for yourself." No no, that is the wrong marketing attitude. Online marketing and the website itself is all about the art of revision. Revision of both the writing and the foundation of the website needs to be an ongoing work of art. Everything from the brand images displayed to the words used behind the front page scenes needs to be taken into account for properly developing the total online brand image.

When a business understands the interaction between marketing, advertising, and branding online, and develops their website taking into account all aspects; then your business will start to see much more success and sales online.

Are you curious about how your business looks online? Act now, and get a free online branding report today.

Contact Professional Web Services today. Start gaining new customers with Internet marketing services that will get your business found online in the search engine results pages.

Developing A Business Brand Online

2007-05-23T16:16:00.000-07:00

by: Jim Warholic

B2B and B2C companies need to take a concerted effort online to establish their brands in the market place.

Branding begins at all levels, from the logo to the words written on a website and the information released in the public market place. Branding efforts should never stop. Just like in sports, teams need to get better in order to compete at or above the level of their competitors, so to in the matters of establishing a good brand image in the minds of the consumer.

Brands can quickly become tarnished with even the smallest of issues. Sometimes, a company can bring it on themselves by aggressively trying too hard to market themselves through negative aspects instead of promoting the positive attributes. In recent times, legal issues can even become a spoiling of a brand image. Take for instance a company the size of Microsoft, that has a market capitalization of $300 billion dollars, has recently tried to flex its legal muscles by claiming patent infringement of the open source community. Never mind the fact, that they have not filed a lawsuit, nor have they stated what the patent infringements are. While these are legal issues, it is wise to take a look at the impact from a brand image.

I would venture to say that Microsoft probably did not think this latest publicity move out. By bringing up an unsupported claim that the open source community is using patents taken from Microsoft has the air of a big company trying to put the squeeze on the free open source software companies. This reminds me of the neighborhood bully, demanding money from the locals for just being at the community center. Microsoft is not endearing itself to businesses or consumers by their latest patent saber rattling. While Microsoft's brand is known for all the softwares and operating systems that are provided, they have not considered the long term aspect for what they are doing and saying.

Microsoft has tried to sound very open to various partnership arrangements for developing software in the open source communities. One such collaboration effort was Microsoft proposing a group working with and sharing information about the Firefox Mozilla open source software. See the following article: Microsoft invites Firefox development team to Redmond

Microsoft wants to help aid in the development of Firefox. It sounds pretty scary, doesn't it? If you're still here, let me tell you that it's not as bad as it seems. Sam Ramji, Director of Microsoft's Open Source Software Lab, has extended an invitation to the Firefox and Thunderbird developers asking them if they'd like to visit the company's open source research center. Microsoft's hopes are that, in a four-day span, the company can provide the open source developers with enough information to get the popular web browser running smoothly on Windows Vista.

Now, if I am involved in some type of open-source software company, would I trust the Microsoft brand? I can't imagine, after this latest incident, that any company would be inclined to work in a partnership or collaborative development effort. In addition, the consumer will question if they really want to trust Microsoft. Right now, consumers might be thinking that Microsoft is the only game in town. But, that simply is not the case. Apple has shown a brand staying power that has made some inroads into the Microsoft territory. Now with the open-source software Linux being able to run on just about every type of computer built, (including Apple hardware) and other open-source software programs that are being developed that provide a means of running Microsoft only applications on a PC machine running Linux has opened the door for many to at least try out a new software other than Windows.

So it is most apparent from everything that has happened with Microsoft, that their brand image has become tarnished. Businesses and consumers will not likely jump ship immediately, but people have a long memory. If you push the buttons hard enough and tick the world off, it is likely that people will give something else a try. Once a new brand image of a product or service is out of the box, people will remember. This will result in the building up of one brand and the diminishing of another.

Be careful on playing that legal card, your brand image could become tarnished if you haven't carefully thought it out.

Jim the online marketer.

Developing Your Personal Brand Online

2007-05-22T23:58:00.000-07:00

by: Jim Warholic
There are some things that are important to note in the world of online personal brands.

No matter what happens in the news, your name will likely appear in some form or another online. If you have a common name, like Joe Smith, your name will likely be linked on many websites. On the other hand, if you have a unique name, then you will likely see your name on but a few websites, but the brand image on display might not be to your liking. I am not talking about a picture of yourself, (although that may also be not to your liking). What I am talking about is the image businesses or consumers that are searching on your name, have in their minds about the person of who and what you stand for.

With the numbers of new websites being published on a daily basis for all types of groups and organizations, it is very likely that you will find your name online, and in more than one location. Think about all the different correspondences you have had over the years with things like soccer and baseball groups, local business community groups, and donations at public events that were recorded and then published online. All of these are tapped into by the search spiders. We can't really get away from the search engine spiders, and it really isn't the search engine industry's fault for the information on the Web, since many of the items are simply a matter of public record. All of this is important to understand that your name has a brand image, and there are two choices that a person can make in building up their brand online by either, doing nothing, or taking a proactive approach by developing your own brand on the Internet.

How Do You Develop Your Brand Online?

Are you a small business owner? If so, you should consider having a short biography about yourself on your business website. It doesn't need to be an in-depth bio., but it could feature a little history about your business and the background information about yourself. The real estate industry and specifically Realtors for years have understood and developed their brands. Typically it is the Realtor's name that someone identifies as the person doing business with. Likewise, small business owners should develop not only their business brand names but could also develop their personal brand image for a better representation and brand recognition in the market place.

Another way of expanding your personal brand is to start your own domain name website. Corporate CEOs from the fortune 500, down to the smaller organizations, from all over the world are getting involved with creating their own unique brand images in personal websites. They are taking an active approach by making sure they can say the things, the way they want to say them, and not leaving everything to how reporters report it. Many times a reporter will only give snippets of quotes in an online news article, and then write a story of what he or she thinks instead of what the individual had to say. Editors then get a hold of the story and cut out additional information, then slap on a catchy title that may or may not be to a person's liking. Corporate people can now set the record straight in their own websites.

Not an owner of a small business or large corporation? Then, you can still set up your own website, or online blog for free. Consider Blogger.com and get started today, creating the brand image that you want the world to see.

Jim Warholic the online marketer.

The FedEx And amazon.com Logos

2006-11-22T22:49:00.000-08:00

by: Jim Warholic

Corporate Symbols And Hidden Secrets

While waiting on a package of some replacement parts for my Weber Barbecue, shipped by FedEx from Weber.com, I decided to use the tracking option from the FedEx.com website.

The good news is it should be here today. It is on the local truck scheduled for delivery.

The search for FedEx on Google Search brought me to some enlightening reading about a couple of corporate logos and the hidden meanings, hidden items, and subliminal messages in these corporate brands.

Here are several posts from The Sneeze

Secret Symbols

It occurred to me there is a secret arrow hiding in between the "E" and the "x" of the FedEx logo. Look at it! Now that I know it's there, it's all I can see. How could I not have noticed it before?
Posted in The Sneeze on September 23, 2004 07:16 PM

The Man Behind the FedEx Logo

Not long ago, I posted about the subliminal arrow in the FedEx logo. I received several emails regarding it, including one from design student Bobby Dragulescu. Thanks to Bobby and his typography professor Leah Hoffmitz, I was put in touch with the logo's creator: Mr. Lindon Leader of Leader Creative.
Posted in The Sneeze on November 16, 2004 06:47 AM

More Breaking Logo w/ Arrow News

Last week I posted an interview with the man behind the hidden arrow in the FedEx logo, and the interest in it has been astounding.
Posted in The Sneeze on November 26, 2004 01:11 AM

With FedEx having the hidden arrow and amazon.com having an arrow from A to Z, I wonder what other brands have interesting stories to tell.

Well, just in time for Thanksgiving, my Weber Barbeque parts arrived before I even finished this story. FedEx to the rescue. Now I can "Relax, it's FedEx"

Did you see the arrow between the E and the x, in the FedEx logo?

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Developing Your Brand

2006-08-21T17:59:00.000-07:00

by: Jim Warholic

How does good customer service develop your B2B or B2C brand?

In an article by: Chuck McKay, What do your employees need to know before they deal with customers? Chuck's article, Ten Steps To Great Customer Service, is an interesting look at the inside workings of a company and how they interact with customers.

While Chuck goes over the aspects of how employees respond to a customer, there is another aspect of this important article that needs to be addressed. Good customer service develops a brand.

GoDaddy and Dell Computer are two companies that really come to mind in which good, (actually great) customer service comes to mind first and foremost about their brands.

Godaddy.com is the leading domain registrar website portal where domains can be purchased for a very reasonable price along with a host of other online services. But this does not really tell the story of the GoDaddy brand. The strength of GoDaddy is not their great prices but the fact that a customer or potential customer can call up GoDaddy 24x7 and communicate with a real live person for purchases, questions, or help is a testament to how strong their brand really is. This is really what makes their brand strong.

Dell Computer is another company that has built a reputation of great customer service. Many customers of Dell's computers are buying third and fourth generation of computers for personal use and their businesses. Dell has really stood behind their products and extended great customer service. Even in the latest explosive situation with a major recall of Dell laptops for batteries, supplied by Sony, that get too hot and catch on fire, Dell is going to come out of this as a stronger company. It has come to light that other laptop manufactures have also used batteries from Sony in which these other computer notebook manufacturers may be facing the same situation. But, even this recall is really not at the heart of the branding matters. Imagine the financial pressures that a company faces with the largest computer recall in history. This is going to have a short term hit on the company but in the long run customers are going to know that Dell is going to stand behind their products. Businesses and consumers will ultimately stand behind the Dell brand because Dell does the right thing. Yes, doing the right thing is the key. Even the stock market took notice of this. On the day Dell announced the recall the stock went up.

Many B2B and B2C companies talk about good customer service but very few actually live it. Typically management loses sight of the company's foundation. The ethics involved in the company itself becomes glossed over by exuberant business factors both from inside the company and controlling forces from the outside. Many companies have in place an orientation for new employees, but managers and even owners themselves forget the "ten steps to great customer service."

While your company may not be as large as Dell or GoDaddy, the lessons we can learn from these two companies are enormous. Customer service is really the driving force of a brand for companies that deal with consumers and businesses. Certainly good products are the starting point of a brand, but it is the customer service that makes a brand strong.

Professional Web Services builds up strong Web brands for B2B and B2C companies. We provide Internet marketing services, SEO, ethical search engine optimization, online advertising strategies, and web branding solutions. Contact us today and ask for our offer of a free online marketing evaluation.

Tweaking Your B2B or B2C Brand Online

2006-05-14T09:02:00.000-07:00

Snippets of Your Brand
By: James A. Warholic, President of Professional Web Services, Inc.

Snippets sounds like some sort of cereal.

What are snippets and how do they affect your brand?

Snippets in the search engine world are a small sampling of a web page. When someone does an online search; this produces a results page with content snippets of various pages of information from many websites. If the search algorithm determines that a page from your B2B, Business to business or B2C, Business to consumer website has relevant information related to the searched for keywords then a small sampling of the page will show up in the search engine results pages.

It is important to understand that the first contact a person may have with your website is not when they actually go to the website but when they view the search engine results page. This is why from a marketing and advertising perspective that your brand "be the best that it can be" within the realms of a realistic approach to optimizing the page for Readers and the Search Engines.

As a President or CEO of your company you must consider at least two distinct ways another business or consumer views your brand online through the search engines. One must consider that someone already knows about your company name, and uses the search engine search bar to type in your company name to go to the website. The other way is that a consumer or purchasing manager from another company types in the keywords in the search bar, and your website shows up in the results pages. Both of these examples are typical of how a customer would find various businesses online. Each has its own unique approach for management, of the brand that needs to be portrayed to the customer.

Breaking this down further, it is also helpful to understand to which market segment your business is in. For example: vertical markets also known as niche markets are a very narrow or dedicated spectrum of products or services delivered to consumers or other businesses; while horizontal markets cross over a broad spectrum of products or services provided across multiple industries. Each of these business categories and buyers and sellers markets needs to have a particular brand approach to Internet marketing and advertising online that are going to be quite different. This will also be a factor in determining what your goals are for showing up in the search results pages and how your brand needs to be displayed on the Internet.

Search algorithms continue to change and improve. As the search companies fine tune and in some cases drastically change their algorithms this will also change to some degree the way the snippets are displayed for each website. A person can fine tune a web page to provide a better branded snippet while still maintaining the structural integrity of the page for the search engines and the readers. It is important to understand that changes to a web page can affect the page for the keyword search engine results. But, with quality writing, and proper and ethical search engine optimization techniques a person can actually improve both the branded snippets that are portrayed along with the ranking of the page in the search engine results.

Branding on the Internet does take time and effort to improve the image of a company. The days of just slapping a website together and saying, "that is it, and there is nothing more to do," are over. Efforts need to be expended on a regular basis to view and analyze the results in the search engines. As the analysis is made, small or sometimes drastic changes need to take place to the website or web page in order to provide a better Brand for your company on the Internet.

Professional Web Services provides Internet Marketing Services, Online Advertising Strategies, And Web Branding Solutions for your company online. Contact Professional Web Services today to get started toward more sales tomorrow.

Online Branding

2006-05-10T11:09:00.000-07:00

Branding, What Is It?
By: James A. Warholic, President of Professional Web Services, Inc.

It seems as though everyone has an opinion of what a brand or branding is all about. This blog is going to add our two cents worth of information to the topic.

Let's first start with the premise that Branding Matters for a B2B, Business to business, or B2C, Business to consumer company. If you subscribe to that statement then hopefully you will find some useful information here.

Secondly, we need to at least give a generalized description of what branding really is, at least from this author's perspective. The following has been quoted by many, "A brand is a collection of perceptions in the mind of the consumer." That same phrase could be stated for not only the perceptions in the mind of the consumer, but in the case of B2B businesses; buyers, purchasing managers, owners, partners, CEOs and all the decision makers also have perceptions of their own brand as well as the brands of others.

This Branding Matters Blog is going to take a look at how the Internet is affecting the brands of companies along with a more thorough understanding of the various interactions between Internet marketing, Online advertising, sales and marketing, and Web branding. We will be analyzing the differences between the image you have of your company verses the image a customer has of your company. You may be surprised to find out that these are not always the same.

Learn more about Internet marketing services, online advertising strategies, and B2B and B2C Web branding solutions from Professional Web Services, Inc. Email Professional Web Services today.