Friday 16 September 2022

How to Launch a Graphic Design Studio

 

If you're interested in launching your own graphic design studio, you'll need to choose a business structure that suits your needs. The most common business structures are a sole proprietorship, partnership, limited liability company, or corporation. In any case, it's important to choose a legal business structure that will protect you from personal liability. Most businesses that run out of a physical space need a CO, or Certificate of Occupancy. This document confirms that the space meets government regulations, building codes, and zoning laws. A CO is obtained from your landlord. It's important to understand that major renovations might require a new CO. If this is the case, make sure your lease has provisions that allow you to delay payment until you've obtained a new CO.

While many graphic design studios specialize in a single service, many offer a variety of creative options to fit the needs of your business. For example, a typotherapy studio will focus on the use of typeface to create a brand's identity. The studio will work with you to create a brand identity that is both creative and functional, and will make it stand out amongst the crowd.

The Graphic Design Studio software lets you create a variety of designs and vector graphics. It supports a variety of image formats, including SVG, PDF, PNG, JPEG, BMP, TIFF, GIFF, and EPS. It also allows you to scale your designs without losing their sharpness. The software can even be used to create a transparent background to help your designs stand out.

A graphic design studio can help you create an effective, unique brand identity that can help increase your sales and brand awareness. Whether it's a print advertisement in a magazine, a direct mail marketing campaign, or an informational brochure, a high-quality graphic design can enhance any type of marketing material and increase brand awareness. A good agency will be able to handle all of your graphic design needs, from digital to print design.

When choosing a graphic design studio, look for a company that has a stable, long-term working environment. Agencies usually have experienced designers who can mentor new designers. This experience can be invaluable in the long run, and the quality of your design work will be higher. You should also look for a design studio that offers flexible hours and a full-time staff of graphic designers.

 

Saturday 10 September 2022

Bore-proof your website! 5 website design tips for service providers to spice it up + increase conversions

 

Websites can be an absolute beast but it is considered one of the most important marketing tools for service providers. Whether you’re a coach, interior designer, copywriter, consultant, hair stylist, bookkeeper, strategist, or someone offering some kind of service to people - you fall under the category of a service provider and that means your website works for you even while you sleep! Or so it should. Have you been looking at your website lately and feeling blah? Bored? Does your website feel uninteresting and unattractive to you like it lacks something? Something that you can’t quite place a finger on? If you are nodding your head, then there’s a fat chance that your target audience (those super dreamy clients!) is feeling the same way when they land on your website.

Not getting the right vibe from a service provider's website can be a huge reason for potential clients to bounce and that’s bad news :(

Nope! Let’s not let that happen, shall we? Let’s bore-proof your website right away. Read on to uncover 5 website design tips for service providers to spice up your biggest marketing tool + increase conversions while you’re at it! So let’s get started.

 

1. Play with words

One of the top website design tips to spice up your boring website is to focus on the words you’re using. Website copy plays a really important role in pulling in your visitors. If you are a service provider who wants your website visitors to get attracted to your brand and take an interest in your services, start with your copy. 

Replace boring, jargon words with personality-packed words that do a good job of piquing the interest of the website visitors. You do not have to go overboard with a whole lot of text to make this happen. Stay on point with your messaging. Use words that your ideal clients can easily understand. Another great website design tip here is to create sections making your content scannable. No one really has the time to go through each word, so make sure that people can skim through the content and wherever possible add relevant imagery and/or graphic elements to support the words. Just adding some freshness to your copy will spice up your website and increase conversions!

BONUS website design tip: while we’re still talking about words, peppering your website pages with strategically chosen SEO keywords truly boosts conversions. To choose keywords when designing websites for my service provider clients, my all-time favorite tools are Google keyword planner and Neil Patel’s Ubersuggest. Happy word-sciencing!

You might also like: The one page on your website that opens wallets + how to make it promising!

2. Make your CTA’s interesting

This website design tip kind of piggybacks off the last one. A CTA is a call to action which you normally find in a button or link form all throughout the website’s pages. Your visitors use these CTA’s to engage with your website, view different pages, see your offerings, download content, and even book introductory calls with you. As a service provider, one thing that you definitely should do is - add clear and actionable CTA’s wherever applicable across your entire website. Next, swap boring CTA’s with catchy and interesting CTA’s. What this does is, it adds an element of freshness to your website that makes you stand out from the other service providers in your niche (trust me, these little details psychologically make a big difference in the minds of your audience when it comes to choosing one service provider over the other!).

To see examples of interesting non-boring CTA’s, head over to digital marketing queen Jenna Kutcher’s website and see how she does it. Now, who wouldn’t want to click on those buttons and links?

3. Use your branding elements

People visit a ton of websites each day to get their dose of content like reading blogs, and looking at services offered by service providers is another reason people why visit different websites to land on the one they connect with. A plain and boring website is a definite no-no in today’s world where attention spans are quite short. Number 3 on this list of website design tips is to use your branding elements creatively. By doing so you will be able to create a strong visual appeal. When visitors see a well-done, consistent website that is easy to navigate and beautiful to look at, they instantly get an impression of professionalism and trustworthiness. Your website’s job to offer a seamless experience to your visitors is done! The rest of the work that is increasing conversions - is done by the content on your website which we have discussed in-depth above.

This website design tip is geared towards making your website as appealing to the eyes as possible with the use of a high-resolution logo design. You can add your logo mark to the footer section and also overlay it on an image you’re using on your website. Your brand pattern and graphic elements can be used as section backgrounds to create an interesting statement and direct the visitors' attention to important information. Don’t have a strategic, consistent brand identity design for your brand? Check out how I can help you!

 

4. Use your brand colors creatively

Another good one in this list of website design tips for service providers is colors! As interesting as it sounds, sometimes this is the area where service providers don’t get creative. When I’m designing websites for my service provider clients, I develop a brand color palette that I then go on to use creatively in the website design process. I create a palette consisting of 5 colors ranging from a primary dark color to a soft color for backgrounds. The idea behind having a brand color palette in website design is to mix it up in a way to create interesting, high-contrast, visually appealing sections that catch the attention of the visitors. By making good use of colors, you can bore-proof your website and spice it up! 

A good rule of thumb is to design each section of your website with colors being used in a 60-30-10 ratio. One color should be dominant followed by another one that is used in a lesser ratio, and finally if necessary for example you have a button that needs highlighting - use the final color for such purposes.

Take a look at how I used colors to make this health and transformational coach’s webpages pop.

So go ahead, play with your brand colors but remember to stay consistent, and use a lot of whitespace!

5. Add movement to your website

It’s the law of nature. Our human attention naturally gravitates toward things that are moving more than the ones that are still. This same concept applies to the world of the web. This brings me to the last of my website design tips for this post. Wherever applicable and appropriate, do add some movement to your web pages. Movement can be in the form of animated buttons, sections that reveal on scroll, gif images, background video, etc. Making dynamic web pages does not mean that you have to animate each and every bit of every page. That kind of overdone work can put visitors off rather than increase conversions. So be mindful of how you make your website dynamic. Remember, even subtle movement can go a long way in making your website go from boring to super interesting. So add some animation to spice up those flat-laying web pages!

CONCLUSION

Hope these easy, actionable website design tips help you move your take your brand and website beyond the ordinary to the next level and also help attract dream clients increasing conversions for your service-based business! If you’ve been looking for a website designer to partner up with to design a cohesive online presence for your service-based business, I’d love to chat with you! Book a complimentary discovery call with me :)