Early last week I wrote an article from a Salesman's perspective in sharing with you my top 10 list of features all design portfolio websites should have. Today, I'm writing this post from the shoes of your potential client.

When I decided to develop the Styleapple website, I spent a lot of time searching for the right web designer , which has given me a lot of hands-on experience when looking for a web design company.  The experience has thought me a lot, and I wanted to take some time to share with you how an informed client might select your design services.

Decision 1 - First. He'll look at your website's homepage to get an immediate feel for your company. First impressions are alive and well, even on the internet. So make sure your homepage is intriguing enough for your potential visitor to want to dig deeper. One effective way I've seen this done is the Amalga Media website: http://www.amalgamedia.com, where their About Us page was their homepage, introducing the company and people in a fun informative way, immediately drawing you into their website.

Decision 2 - Next, he'll take a look at your previous projects that are hopefully featured on your website. The 1st and 2nd impressions will be mostly visual.

Decision 3 -He'll then look at your About Me or About Us pages.... briefly. Just to get an idea of who you are and what you do (your design expertise).

Decision 4 - Then he will go back to your previous projects to find a project you have done that's similar to the one he needs you to work on.

Decision 5 - If he finds one, he will want to know more details about that particular project (if he doesn't he will look at individual details of all your projects to find similarities in style and functionality between what you have worked on and what he needs done).

TIP:
Assuming that he finds a similar project in your portfolio, he will want to know if you've done other projects similar to that one. So grouping projects together is a good idea, maybe having links to similar projects nearby or suggestive links of similar projects. Your goal here is to direct the client to exactly what he's looking for.

Decision 6 - If he's impressed by what he sees, he will then check your references. I would recommend having your references easily assessable. If your references have sufficient contact information, he may contact them before even speaking with you... allowing your references to help you sell your services.

Decision 7 - If your references are satisfactory, he will want to read more about you, or your company, i.e. quote information, brand philosophy, location, pricing, etc. This can be satisfied through an About Me page, FAQ, or your company blog.

TIP:
I would stay away from having website visitors download your resume. People are finicky about downloading anything from the internet. You can give them the option of downloading your resume, or an online alternative.

Decision 8 - Once he has finished reading about you or your design company, he may want to contact you personally. Having a phone number and/or an instant message contact on your site would be ideal... esp. if your design company is global.

Decision 9 - After he speaks with you, he may still have some questions, which will lead him to your blog. In sales, this would be your closing argument or statement. This is to confirm that you are indeed what he's looking for. Hopefully you have been blogging about your industry and have engaged the creative community in some worthwhile discussions on design.

Decision 10 - If you blog closes the deal, your potential client will pick up his phone (again) and give you a call, or send you an email, fill out your form, instant message you, or send you a text tellingquote you that he would like you to work on his project. The rest is up to you... Your website has now effectively done its job. Congratulations.

Keep in mind, this is only one scenario. You'll find that your clients are more informed, and will use your design blog as their introduction to your design services, so make sure to write articles that will appeal to your potential clients.

Remember: The goal is to engage your potential clients early. You want to pique their interest and keep them engaged right up until they contact you. Consider my 4C's to website conversion when developing a website for your design portfolio or company. Contact. Connect. Convince and Close
The bottom line is that you have to think like your clients in order to get their business.

What other techniques do you use to improve your website conversion?

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Being that my primary job responsibility involves working with designers and design firm brands. I get a chance to see many design firms websites, portfolios, taglines, logos, advertising, social media avatars, etc, etc.

There are literally hundreds of thousands of design firms and designers going after the same market, especially now in a recession. What is it that sets you apart from your competition? Are you giving enough thought to what your design firm brand promise is? Is your company's brand promise different enough be remembered and relevant enough to your clients and customers. Allen Adamson, author of the book BrandSimple suggest that finding an obvious area that is not being addressed in your industry is a good place to start.

On our social media site, Styleapple.com - the branded designers social network. We give designers and design companies the opportunity to promote themselves primarily through there brand idea or tagline. By doing this we force designers who haven't thought about their brand promise to do just that; think about what they would like their demographics to know about them in 45 characters or less. It is important, especially now that your potential customers or clients know what you stand for in a simple easy to understand statement or promise.

What is your design company's tagline or brand promise? What is that product or service or guarantee that will get your clients emotionally attached to your brand?

Here is my brand challenge to you. Find 10 companies in your industry that you respect and consider your direct competition, figure out what their brand ideas are; whether it's their tagline or type of clients they market to (should be simple to find if they are effectively branding themselves). Then look at your brand idea or tagline or client roster and ask yourself. Am I offering something different and relevant enough to compete or am I just 1 in the 10,000 plus design companies hoping that my clients will choose me from a coin toss...

What is your design company's brand promise?

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Does Social Media Networking Really Influence Your Brand Reputation?

According to the latest  Marketing Sherpa “Chart of the Week”  Social media networking absolutely influences your brand reputation. 92% of companies polled said that social media marketing is effective in building their brand reputation.  Some of the other interesting numbers included:  Increase Brand Awareness? :  91% said yes, Increase search Engine Rankings? : 87%  said yes, and Increase Website Traffic: 87% said yes.

Building your company's brand reputation can be both tricky and fragile in today's social media driven economy. However, if managed correctly building your brand image online can be both interesting and potentially lucrative for you. Even in an economic downturn your clients and customers are still actively looking for you online. Effectively utilizing search engine marketing coupled with the right social networking tools can advance your business from startup to simply becoming a star in your industry.

As you know I’m CEO of Styleapple - The Branded Designers Social Network.  We help designers and design companies with their online or digital branding strategies.   Recently I’ve come clean admitting that I am indeed, a social media junkie,  which on the web is almost impossible to stay sober.  Social Networking sites are everywhere.  The trick is to know which ones are best for your business. 

Some of the social networking tools I currently use for marketing and promoting my business are Twitter, Twitterfeed,  LinkedIn, Flickr, Styleapple (A social networking site we've developed to promote and market design companies brands), The Branded Designers Blog, Designfloat,  Digg, Small Business Brief, and Sphinn to name a few.

Your first step is to find social networking communities where the members are either the demographics of your customers, clients or potential business contacts. Take an active role in discussions and really make an effort to be ‘social’ , offer your help and expertise in asking and answering group questions. A great resource on social networking do's and don'ts is  Eric Brantner Article on the 10 Secrets of the Best Social Media Users 

You can also find a great list of social media sites with descriptions of the kind of industry and benefits of each site from the following two articles:  48 Social News Websites You Can Use and 10 Great Places To Promote Your Designs.

Social media marketing has been tried and tested, no more excuses. This is a great time to build your design company’s brand, whether you’re a startup or have been around for a while.   Take the time to learn, engage and reap all the benefits of becoming  ‘SOCIAL’

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Your Blog Articles Are Your Design Company's Assets. They Must Be Protected At All Cost.

Last week I received a Google Alert for my domain name styleapple.com. I use Google Alerts to follow my brand online. Great tool to use to get updates on keywords, people, products.... Need I say it... competitors... you know the important stuff.

Anyway Google Alerts usually gives you a summary of the content and selected keyword with a direct link to the site that published the content. I was expecting to find a simple link referencing the article back to my website. Instead I found my entire blog post on their website, graphs, pictures and all. here

All my referral links vanished. Except for a link on the very far left corner of the page hidden amidst advertising with the word LINK on it. As I'm scrolling down the page the very next article was also mine , here. So naturally I got concerned.  I decided to write a quick email to the web host or contact information I saw on the website:

-----------------------------------------------------
From: Calvin Cox
Date: Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 8:55 PM
Subject: Please Remove My Blog Content From Your Website.
To: visualtoo@gmail.com
http://www.oxadox.com/article/menhealth/2009-02...
http://www.oxadox.com/article/menhealth/2009-02...
Thank you.
--
Calvin Cox
Styleapple, Inc
calvin@styleapple.com
www.styleapple.com
Create & Promote Your Own Design Portfolio Website In Minutes.
| Our Goal Is Simple, To Build Your Design Company's Brand By Effectively
Utilizing Social Media & Inbound Marketing Techniques |
------------------------------------------------------

The following day another Google Alert showed up with 2 more articles hijacked from my blog. So I sent another email including all links to the stolen articles on their blog with a little bit more edge to it. You know " this is illegal" and yes I twittered it as well, I had to blow off some steam, @calvincox. I've included the follow-up email below

----------------------------------------------

From: Calvin Cox
Date: Fri, Feb 6, 2009 at 12:01 PM
Subject: PLEASE REMOVE MY CONTENT FROM YOUR SITE
To: visualtoo@gmail.com
To whom it may concern.
Please remove my content from your site. It is illegal to copy entire
content of someone's blog.
This is my second email request:
http://www.oxadox.com/article/menhealth/2009-02...
http://www.oxadox.com/article/menhealth/2009-02...
http://www.oxadox.com/article/menhealth/2009-02...
http://www.oxadox.com/article/menhealth/2009-02...
--
Calvin Cox
Styleapple, Inc
calvin@styleapple.com
www.styleapple.com
Create & Promote Your Own Design Portfolio Website In Minutes.
| Our Goal Is Simple, To Build Your Design Company's Brand By Effectively
Utilizing Social Media & Inbound Marketing Techniques |
--------------------------------------------

The next day I got an email from my brother with a link to a blog post on how to report duplicate content to Google, which I found to be a valuable piece of information. Now I'm sure you are all SEO experts by now, Google can and will penalize you for having duplicate content on the web, regardless if you put it there or someone else did. It's your job to police and protect your intellectual property.

The next morning Pro Blogger posted an insightful article from Devoracles with specifics on dealing with this sort of thing, titled: How to Defend your Blogs Copyright. I'm not a big fan of writing about these kinds of problems unless I believe I can provide the solution to deal with it .

So after reading all this stuff, I was ready to go to battle one more day. Before I placed my armor on, I decided to check one more time on the blog articles stolen from me earlier in the week. And to my happy surprise my posts were removed from their site. Woohoo.

Remember: Your ‘content is king' and should be protected at all cost. Every article you write about your business and your industry you are investing in your advertising and inbound marketing campaign. Don't let anyone steal your money.

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I've  been terribly busy lately with the development of the Styleapple website that I haven't had the time to do much of anything else... until I was reminded of the past. Where I started my business and neglected everything around me including my fiancé at the time. I figured once I got the business up and running,  I would do everything else.  BIG MISTAKE.

Being consistent is important in building a business but it is not equivalent to being narrow minded and obsessive ultimately neglecting everything else; the latter can lead to both business and family failure.

As designers we tend to be very passionate about what we do, which is fine.  Just be sure to balance your work life with family and friends. Sometimes your best ideas and breakthroughs come from the outside and when you're not so focused.   The article that pulled me out of the black hole was by Eric Shannon of Internetinc.com who wrote an interesting top 10 list on ‘How to Fail in Business on the Internet'.

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Let's face it, we all want to achieve some level of success as designers.   We work very hard in pursuit of the  inspiration and the right balance of creative genius that commands rave reviews.  We design and redesign and redesign right up to our deadlines, second and third guessing our color palettes and line thicknesses,  looking at the finished product from all directions,  all for what,  some level of success I assume. 

It's interesting that I get into heated discussions with my web designer/developer over the art direction of my website - and I'm the one paying  (He could easily say OK, if that's what you want? I'll do it, but he doesn't- after all he's an artist/designer first and a businessman second, so I can't blame him for the passion he has for what he does)  Which bring me to my question,  as a designer how do you define success, or rather how do you measure it?   Are we after the money or fame or is it the satisfaction of our work  appreciated by others enough?   And if it is both, can we really  have our cake and eat it too?   

I'll be the first to admit that when I thought of being successful, it use to be about money for me.  The things that I'd be able to do and the places I would be able to go with my new found financial freedom, and even though I still seek the satisfaction of a beautifully design project,  I never equated that to  being a part of my success repertoire. As more freelance designers enter the industry looking to carve out their own niches,  I'm reminded that our views of success vary from designer to designer.  But should it be that different?  Tara from Graphic Design Blog wrote a great article on "when do you consider yourself a successful designer", where she answers most of the questions I proposed above from her point of view and experience, who by the way, prompted this post on designer success, but I wanted to take it one step further to try to clarify something for myself.  I know that good business practice tells us that we need to track our progress, gauge where we are and grow our  business systematically.  So if that's the case, don't we need a solid measure of what a successful  designer is?

I would like to know  if we can measure success as an industry and if we can what are the parameters on which we should measure it?  is it how many clients we have,  or our ability to stay in demand,   or is it the amount of money we make or how popular our websites or  design blogs are? Or did I simply had too much caffeine and is over analyzing something that simply cannot be rationalized or summed up into a simple solution.   How do you define success and is it necessary that we measure it? I'd like to get your feedback.

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I am a strong supporter of design companies that stand by their names and have a strong sense of value and integrity. I know it sounds like the beginnings of a speech for the Small Business Owners of America. But seriously, I've been at the other end of a well spoken and polished salesman backed by a less than stellar design company with accolades anyone would have agreed was good enough to trust from sources like Inc. 500 and the Better Business Bureau. I say all that to say that no longer is a company's validation and reputation left up to bureaus with no faces or awards with no merit. Companies now have to prove to their consumers directly, that they are who they say they are. Having said all that, it's the companies that are most transparent that will become super successful going forward. The companies that are willing to expose themselves to their clients and customers are the ones that will really benefit from this social media surge. Which, in a cool way lends itself to a better more honest business relationship between client, customer and company. Isn't that awesome, a customer-company relationship with honesty built in. The Genius of Social Media.

Please share with me your thoughts on this.  Can the social media really change the way businesses do business?

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I talk about business marketing a lot for one reason only - I love it.  Finding ways to market and grow my design business comes second only to my wife, seriously.  I started following Gary Vaynerchuk after my wife showed me his website winelibrary.com, and was so blown away at how wonderfully creative he was in presenting wines.  After doing more research I found out that this young entrepreneur was the fuel behind growing his family business from $4 million to $50 million dollars after only a few years.  As a businessman in the creative industry it's great practice to go outside your industry and find ways of implementing ideas from the outside, breaking up the monotony, giving you an edge on your competition. "It's always helpful when you get three or four trade magazines from another industry, and look at the stories and their issues and think, 'How can I adapt that to my world?'" said Jim McCann, founder of 1-800Flowers.com in an Entrepreneur.com interview.   Below is Gary Vaynerchuk on The Big Idea talking about the exact reason he became by thinking outside the box and effectively leveraging the social media Network.  Cool Interview

and here's an example of one of his wine tasting shows online:

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