Two weeks ago my citrus juicer broke. It had held up well for a couple of years of frequent use, other than an annoying tendency to trip the circuit breaker if I pushed down too hard.

While I didn’t have any complaints with it, I wondered if there was anything better at a similarly moderate price point. Disappointed that Consumer Reports didn’t have any comparisons, I went to Amazon to check user ratings.

Seeking Quality and Value

What I was looking for was a model that would reliably do the job. I was pleased when I found good ratings for a reasonably priced juicer from Tribest. I’m familiar with Tribest because I’ve had the company’s personal blender for many years.

Tribest has created an image of quality for me. The blender is powerful for its size and has performed consistently.  I get periodic catalogs that look highly professional.

And comments at Amazon suggested the juicer would also be a well-made product (good example of the power of word-of-mouth marketing). I especially noted mentions that it was not made of plastic like the juicer I had. Plastic conveys flimsiness and inferiority, so the Tribest seemed superior.

It’s the Whole Package

And the good new is that’s true… at least based on the three times I’ve used it so far. But I had an odd experience with the user manual.

Continue reading A Juicy Lesson In Design & Marketing

Whether you’re developing a product, defining your promotion or designing a Website, you’re going to be guided by your experience. If you’re a raw foods coach, for example, you’ll look to how you went raw, what obstacles you faced, how you succeeded, what you’d want to see from a coach and so forth.

Your experience is a great starting point. But it could lead you and your business down a dead end.

If Your Clients Were You, They’d Already Have Changed!

I’ve spoken for many years at animal protection events, such as the Taking Action for Animals conference. Many of the participants are vegetarian or vegan advocates. They’re enthusiastic about the lifestyle and about helping animals. And given their time as vegetarians or vegans, they see eating this way as easy and natural. But they forget that the people they’re trying to reach may not see veg eating as easy or natural. So they don’t address people’s concerns and their outreach has less impact.

One of the real strengths of raw foods outreach is the number of chefs, coaches and others providing recipes, classes and more to make the lifestyle doeable. But do you really remember what it was like to be a newbie? Are the struggles still fresh enough in your mind? If you’re a life coach or natural healer, are you able to think from the perspective of your prospective clients?

Continue reading You are Not Your Target Audience

Discover how good graphics can make the difference in convincing potential clients to buy. Part 1 of this article is available at http://inspiredraw.com/it-takes-more-than-pretty-pictures-to-get-sales-part-1/

The habit of detecting change.

So if you’re scanning the horizon and a blue tweeting bird pops in, you notice it right away. That blue tweeting bird is the equivalent of a graphic. A graphic puts instant brakes on the reader. The reader stops to examine the graphic. Suddenly you’ve slowed down the scanning, and they’re actually reading.

So yeah, let’s chuck a whole lot of graphics on the sales page, right?

Ha, ha, you know the answer already, don’t you?

Put in stock graphics like ‘globes’ or ‘two people in a suit shaking hands’ or some clip-art kind of graphic, and the reader will just sail right past your graphic. But put in a graphic that explains the concept, or a graphic that give information of your product and services, and you’ve got a winner.

But where do you find examples of such graphics on sales pages?

Continue reading It Takes More than Pretty Pictures to Get Sales (part 2)

With more and more people getting bigger monitors, it’s tempting to design a colossal Website to share as much as possible about your business. But there are still plenty of people viewing your site on laptops or smaller monitors. You want to give them a positive experience, too.

How Your Website Can Get Better Response

Make sure the key elements of your page are viewable within approximately a 780X400 pixel area to accommodate different monitors and browsers. You can do that either with a fixed width of 780 pixels or with a fluid area that resizes as the browser window size changes (Just see that the site still looks reasonable for smaller screens).

That doesn’t mean you can’t have more going on farther down beyond the 400 pixel height (“below the fold”).  You just want to create an impression and make important information evident as soon as people land.

To do that you need to prioritize what you present. Who are the people visiting your site? What do they want to know or do when they come to you? Make it easy for them to find what they need. Communicate quickly what you’re about.

Establish your visual brand right away, too. Should your site reflect your warmth, humor, professionalism, sophistication or other qualities? A distinctive logo, color scheme and graphics will set the tone for you site. At a party, people form impressions of you based on how you look before you even say a word. Same for your site.

Quality – not Quantity – Attracts Clients

Your potential customers are looking for how you can help them solve a problem or achieve an outcome. And they want to know what’s different about you… especially if they’ve tried and failed with other approaches in the past.

By providing a clean, concise statement that your potential clients can take in comfortably on whatever system they’re using, you show that you understand and care about them. And that’s what will give you colossal impact!

I’ve been talking about design as a critical investment in your business success. My last post told the sad story of a humane organization that “saved” $500 on design, but will likely miss out on thousands of dollars in donations.

But People Don’t Give Money Based on My Communications.
Au contraire. Sure, they don’t hand you donations just from talking with you and reading your information. But every piece you put out directly impacts whether people get excited about what you offer and choose to do business with you.

Consider just two examples –

Your Website Invites People to Respond.
When you go into a store, you immediately get a sense of the quality of the merchandise and the buying experience. Is the store bright, nicely furnished and well laid-out? Or is it dark, dingy and disorganized? How does that affect your willingness to shop there and the amount you’d pay?

You’re asking your potential clients to make an investment in what you have to offer. So when they come to your web site, they’re going to evaluate how likely they are to get their money’s worth. Does the site convey quality? Is it clearly laid out? Does it excite them with the benefits they’ll get from working with you? Or do they do the online version of turning around and walking out that front door?

Design can help your site be a place people want to visit, stay and shop.

Continue reading What’s it Worth to Get the Results You Want? (part 3)