Wieting Design

4 Popular Feel-Good Design Trends

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While design typically varies greatly from business to business, there are design trends that gain popularity and are used across a wide range of industries. Because these popular design trends have a common element of making people feel good (remember rule #1 of marketing: make a connection before making a sale?), their application can be relevant to many types of businesses.

Shutterstock analyzed its users’ search data to determine creative trends that will continue to grow throughout the year. The full list can be viewed here. Our team at Wieting Design scanned through the list to see which of these trends are gaining popularity in the digital design world and why these design trends are effective for branding and marketing. Read through and watch the videos to get a better idea of each design. Maybe you’ll even discover a style that speaks to you and your brand.

Shutterstock’s Creative Trends

1. Fantasy Design – Think imaginary people and places that make you feel oddly content; this includes colorful clouds, mythical creatures, dreamlands, etc. There’s a bit of mystery in the air brought on by the unexplained feeling of happiness made possible by this design. Naturally, people want to see more and learn more about things that they do not understand, which is why Fantasy Design effectively draws viewers in. Feel-good factor? Check.

Watch a Shutterstock video showing samples of Fantasy Designs:
Fantasy – 2018 Creative Trends | Shutterstock

2. Punchy Pastels – The soft, sweet color scheme of pastels is mixed with in-your-face bright colors that demand attention. The bright colors work like neon lights to invite viewers in, while the pastel colors are almost nostalgic with their familiarity resulting in a feeling of calmness. This makes the Punchy Pastels Design effective in being simultaneously eye-catching and soothing. Feel-good factor? Check.

Watch a Shutterstock video showing samples of Punchy Pastels Designs:
Punchy Pastels – 2018 Creative Trends | Shutterstock

3. Ancient Geometrics – These intricate patterns are mesmerizing. The retro yet cultured feel of the symmetrical shapes draws in with the feeling that there’s a deeper story to be told. Shapes such as these are often associated with history, discovery, spirituality, and peace; and in marketing, these shapes can showcase the beginning of an amazing brand’s story. Feel-good factor? Check.

Watch a Shutterstock video showing samples of Ancient Geometrics Designs:
Ancient Geometrics – 2018 Creative Trends | Shutterstock

4. Holographic Foils – Shiny with a hint of old and new, this visual design is everchanging with a wide color palette that allows this design to suit a range of styles. The foil feels like something new is being unwrapped, and coupled with the changing colors brings a perfect balance of today’s quirky digital age. It’s almost like a celebration of the 1980’s and Y2K. Feel-good factor? Check.

Watch a Shutterstock video showing samples of Holographic Foil Designs:
Holographic Foil – 2018 Creative Trends | Shutterstock

Your Company’s Branding & Design

While the ultimate design for your business will be determined based on many factors such as business history, brand messaging, target audience, industry, etc., there’s one factor that should remain the same and that’s the feel-good factor. When your target audience looks at your company’s deliverables, from the website to the paper brochure, they should feel good and in turn comfortable with your brand.

The above creative trends teach us that despite these wide varied looks, the resulting feeling is the same. By incorporating these trends into a business’ design, these good feelings could be that connection that’s needed before making a sale. If you’re seeking graphic design, website design, logo design, video production, or other marketing assistance, contact Wieting Design or view our past projects for inspiration.

If you have any questions please email us or give us a call at 203 414 9692

Wieting Design | Website Design CT

Wieting Design is a full-service, graphic and website design agency based in Fairfield County, CT and serving all of Connecticut (CT). We are committed to sharing our experience and expertise in website design, graphic design, social media marketing, search engine marketing (SEO), and video production to help build powerful tools and campaigns that work for your Connecticut business. Whether your objective is to grow your reputation, create client loyalty, drive traffic to your website or set up a marketing strategy, we will adapt our approach to get you the results you need with the services we provide.

What Is A Website Redesign And Why Do I Need One?

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What is a website redesign?

A website redesign is a complete overhaul of the code, and look of your website. You may decide to keep the concept, but the text content, layouts, and user experience is all totally new. Why does your site need a website redesign?

Websites can last forever BUT there are signs when you should start thinking about a website redesign. If your website loads slowly, is difficult to navigate, isn’t mobile friendly, and your competitors have new websites its time.  Your website is the most important asset to your business, when someone is searching online for a service you offer or a product your selling you need to found, and it needs to load fast, be mobile responsive, and have a modern clean feel.

Websites establish company credibility – meaning if you take your business seriously, you will want it to be informative, easy to navigate, engaging, and attractive.

Why does your site need a website redesign?

• Search Engine Rankings Are Low
• Low Revenue Conversion Rates
• High Visitor Bounce Rates
• Slow Website Load Times
• Your Business Has Grown
• Your Branding Has Changed
• Poor Mobile Experience
• It’s Been 2-3 Years Since You’ve Last Updated.
• User Experience Is Lacking

If you’re not sure if you need a website redesign, ask yourself these 8 questions. Make notes along the way of how you’re website is doing compared to your goals.

Why do I need my site to rank high on search engines?

At one time, the key to winning at SEO was to plug your content with as many keywords as possible. But thanks to Google’s ever changing algorithms, it’s all about original high quality valuable content. Google’s search engine algorithms are aimed at helping people find answers from trustworthy sites. If you want to see how your site is ranking, you should be using Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics to monitor search queries, click through rates, and your position in ranks. If you want your website to rank, you need to give value on this topic and make it easily accessible.

SEO is one of the best assets you can leverage to grow your brand online, but it’s a slow steady and painful process. First you need to build trust with Google, then you build a healthy authority profile, lastly focus on delivering dense well written content that engages your readers and solves a problem they have. Once you have the content, make sure your site is designed for users to easily access it.

Why do I have low visitor conversion rates?

A conversion rate is the term used to define how many website visitors take a defined action like subscribe to your newsletter, add to cart, or pay for your product or service. What’s a low conversion rate? That depends on your point of view and your industry. The only way to benchmark yourself is to compare yourself against others selling the same product or service. For example in a generic ecommerce industry the add to cart conversion rate is 8% in the United States.

Do a quick Google search for “(your industry service or product) CVR average” and compare to your stats available on your Google Analytics Dashboard. If you are falling short, it may be the visuals, the navigation, or the content on your pages. Are you considering your ideal customer profile and speaking to them directly? Are you creating content they care about or trying to accomplish a hard sale?

Why do I have high visitor bounce rates?

Your bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who come to your website and leave without viewing any other pages on your website. Google Analytics houses this data and will show your bounce rate month over month or year to date. Take into consideration the pages your customers are bouncing from, did they fill out a contact form, did they call your telephone number, or did you refer them somewhere else? If your visitors left on these avenues, your bounce rate might not be a bad thing. On the other hand, if your customers are leaving unplanned, you need to drill down your content, calls-to-action, and create more sticky content. Add links to to more pages on your website and think of where a visitor might want to go next.

On the other hand, if your customers are leaving unplanned, you need to drill down your content, calls-to-action, and create more sticky content. Add links to to more pages on your website and think of where a visitor might want to go next.

If it’s a blog, do you have additional content on a similar topic to recommend? If it’s a product page, do you have similar products that are frequently bought together? Lastly, not all visitors are ready to make a decision about your business, so offer them ways to stay connected with you whether it’s social media links or subscribing to your newsletter. Don’t lose your visitors permanently.

Why is my website experiencing slow load times?

Did you know that 47% of consumers expect a website to load in less than 2 seconds? Web page loading time is a major contributing factor to page bounce rates. If a potential lead hears about your company, visits your site, and waits…and waits…and waits… for your website to load, they already have a negative experience. They’re going to bounce and write your company off because of the traction they experienced before ever learning more about your company.

Your visitors care more about page load time than they do about all the bells and whistles on your site and it affects your SEO too. If you want to know how your website is stacking up, visit PINGDOM.COM. If you’re ranking is low on either desktop or mobile, you have lots of work ahead of you and should work with your website developers to reduce the friction for your visitors.

Has your business grown?

Take a look at your business last year, and the year before; it doesn’t look the exact same year to year. Your business has a unique story that’s always evolving and your website should communicate your growing story. Maybe there has been a shift in the market and you have picked up a new product or service line. Maybe there have been updates in your target market. Whatever the reason may be, business goals can change over the years and your website should reflect the goals of your business as it is today.

We’re all familiar with the saying “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, but this mentality can be hurting your business’s bottom line. If anything has changed in your business, a website redesign can highlight how your business looks today. Too often, companies see the launch of their website as an end point. It’s something that’s constantly in motion, growing, improving and developing.

Why should I re-brand my company?

Your logo is everywhere; from your website, t-shirts, water bottles, baseball hats to your business card. It is there to identify, not to explain. Your website is one of your most important business assets and your branding should be consistent. Your website is your digital business card and in many cases the first impression a potential customer will have of your brand when they visit your website.  If the look and feel of the site doesn’t line up with your current brand, then it is time to redesign your website. Consistency is key.

Has the technology on websites changed?

Pretty much everyone owns a smartphone these days – in fact, over 80% of internet users own and regularly use a smartphone. And what’s more, according to Google 61% of users are highly unlikely to return to a website that doesn’t work well on mobile, with 40% visiting a competitor’s website instead – all because the original website they intended to visit wasn’t mobile friendly.

Was your website built in Flash? This trend used to be very popular, but is now highly outdated and is unsupported on mobile devices and tablets. It’s also hurting your rankings for SEO, because search engines cannot read and crawl this content. If your website was built on flash or not designed with a mobile experience first, your website will not rank as high, and the user will take their business elsewhere.  MOBILE RESPONSIVE WEBSITES ARE KEY.

How do I know if my website user experience lacking?

Is your website producing the results you want? If your navigation is too long, you don’t have room for calls to action, or visitors have trouble finding the pages and content that’s relevant to them, chances are you’ve outgrown your current website. It’s crucial to put user experience (UX) and functionality as your top priority.

Use data to define what your customers find interesting about your site, where do they spend the most time, where do they drop off? Next, you need to work on gathering feedback. This includes insights from those within and outside your company. Those within will the company will give you a good idea of what is and isn’t working below the surface, while customers and focus groups can provide feedback regarding visual appearance and functionality.

In the end, you should redesign your website as much as you need to as often as you need to. But the only way to know whether you need to is to know your business inside and out. Have your business goals changed? Has your ideal customer profile changed? Having a website can be both a good visual reminder of how much time has gone by since you last examined your business and a way to track how successful your efforts have been.

You should feel completely proud of your site and have 100% confidence in it. If your site feels tired or unexciting to you, chances are your visitors probably agree. A fresh design can be just the change you need to stir up some excitement and liven up your website. For a redesign to be effective, it must stem from the understanding of what does and what doesn’t work on your current website, and how user needs have changed since the last redesign.

If your thinking of redesigning your website give us a call at 203.414.9692 or email us! to learn more.

Wieting Design | Website Redesign Connecticut (CT)

 

 

4 Reasons Why You Should Choose A Web Designer With SEO Knowledge.

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4 Reasons Why You Should Choose A Web Designer With SEO Knowledge.

Why are you considering creating or updating your website? To help your target audience find you and choose your business to service their needs. Hours spent curating visuals and content will be wasted without traffic to see it. Hiring a web design company that’s experienced in SEO will clear the path for your customers to find you and help you convert traffic into sales.

Here are 4 reasons why you should choose a web designer with SEO knowledge:

  1. Mobile Friendly Web Design with SEO  – Industry trends are reporting 60% of all searches are performed from a mobile or tablet device. When designing a website, it’s important to consider the mobile user interface or you could be slashing your traffic in half. Don’t settle for a secondary simplified mobile site, choose a web designer that creates one stunning site, optimized for every platform.
  2. Quality Content Focus & User Engagement – Traffic is flowing to your site, what are you going to do with it? An SEO experienced web designer not only considers what looks good but anticipates on page SEO that creates a clear path for your audience to see who your are, what you do well, instill trust,  and encourage doing business with you.
  3. Image Optimization  – With platforms like Pinterest and Instagram gaining in popularity,  visuals are speaking volumes over lengthy text content. An SEO knowledgeable Web designer knows which tools and tactics to use to help users relate a viral image to your brand. If you’re creating visually stimulating pieces, you need to make sure you’re bringing users back to your website.
  4. Social Media Integration – User sharing is still King in marketing your brand. Are you making it easy to share your content with social share buttons? Is your content optimized when it’s shared, every blog has a featured image sized for social media?  The best Web designer with SEO knowledge anticipates this dilemma and ensures all your pages and content are optimized so your content is getting the eyes and recognition it deserves.

Web design and SEO are two entirely different beasts, so please do not assume every web designer is also an SEO expert. Wieting Design specializes in optimizing websites for SEO in Hartford & Fairfield County, CT because we know that the best website, is one that attracts website traffic and helps you convert visitors into lifetime customers. Not all companies are alike and not all web designers are created equally.

Give us a call at 203 414 9692 or email us we would love to help your business grow.

Wieting Design | Website Design Hartford, CT

 

What makes a good password. By The TNS Group

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One of my clients wrote this great blog, and I thought I would share it. Great information.
Written by: The TNS Group

Computer PasswordWith the continued exposure of hacking and security breaches in the news, it seems that nobody is protected from being hacked and that even professional hackers are not immune when it comes to using poor passwords. So what makes a good password?

There are num
erous guides on how to create a good password. From the method of using familiar phrases that select the first initial and lengthen the phrase with characters and punctuation, to the “correct horse battery staple” . With the power of hardware continually advancing it is becoming easier for attackers to crack passwords more quickly, even using purely brute force attacks.

Passwords are converted into hashes using a variety of cryptographic functions. The purpose of these functions is to prevent the results of the encryption being converted back into the original plain text word or phrase. In the case of a security compromise each hash would have to be reverted to the plaintext value. For instance using the MD5 hash function, values “d0cd793c2bc50fd0e4dd2b3b0db1fcb3” and “6a72c76a9261562bc80d10d6051a6374” would have to be converted to “TNSRocks” and “TNSRocks1” respectively.

General purpose hash algorithms like SHA1, SHA3, and MD5 are built for speed. They aim to handle large amounts of data and convert plaintext into hashes with minimal computation times. These properties make them favorable to attackers who are able to try several billions of hashes each second. The faster the hashing algorithm, the more it is viable to this type of attack. In contrast, the slow hashes, like SHA512, considerably increase the amount of complexity and reduce the number of guesses to a few thousand per second, making them harder to exploit using brute force attacks.

Professional crackers use several methods to defeat encrypted phrases. The basic methods use brute force attacks on smaller strings to try every possible combination of characters from “a” to “z”; generally up to 6 characters or less as the computational time exponentially increases with each additional character and larger sizes can take days, weeks or longer to crack. Lists of plain text passwords which contain deciphered hashes for commonly used passwords like “123456”, “password”, “qwerty”, “ninja” and “abc123”, or more complex phrases like “1@ml337”, “p@$$w0rd” and “pass!word1” are also used. Combinations with slightly different words combining words or phrases like “hero8dad2015!” or “meanwhileback@theranch!” which are easy to remember but also less challenging to crack are used as well.

Ultimately attackers use more sophisticated tools that give insight to patterns within the hashes. They apply specifically tailored rule sets which utilize knowledge of the requirements used to generate the passwords and use statistically derived patterns using mathematical systems such as Markov chains. Empirical behavior methods are also exploited; knowing that many passwords start with an uppercase character and end with a number or symbol.

So what can we do? Ultimately there is no secure password. The best we can do is make it as difficult as possible for attackers to compromise our passwords for the longest amount of time.

To that end, the answer is to use truly randomized passwords which are of considerable length. Using truly randomized passwords reduces the exploitation from hash dictionaries and increases the time required for a brute force attack to be successful.

An effective truly randomized password needs to:

  • have a minimum of 12 characters
  • contain upper and lower case letters
  • contain symbols and numbers
  • have no discernable pattern or meaning

Many password managers are now available and are making this process easier. They facilitate creation of random passwords with a number of selectable criteria; length, upper, lower, numeric and special characters. The most important criteria with password managers is to have a long truly randomized master password and use uniquely generated passwords for every application.

Website Design Hartford, CT

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Website Design Hartford, CT

Over the past few years, many new businesses have opened up in Hartford,CT. The website designer you choose will help to play an important role in the eventual success of your company.  As you may already know, consumers often base their final decision on whether to do business with a company by how easy that company’s website is easy to navigate.  The easier it is the more likely the visitor is to take action (buy, call, email, subscribe or signup). If you own a business in Hartford, CT and you’re in the market for a new website designer, here are few important things to consider first.

Experience

Make sure your prospective web designer is up to industry standards when it comes to web design and development. A designer should be able to create a website that is aesthetically pleasing to mobile users (mobile-friendly) as well as desktop users.

If you’re hiring a design team, find out who will be designing your website. Is there an experienced web design team in place or is it a one man/woman operation?

A well-structured team should consist of the following components:

  • Project manager
  • Web designer to design the interface
  • Web developer to code the website
  • Online marketing consultant

Custom Design or Templates

A custom built website design is built from scratch. The main advantage of a custom built website is that your site will stand out from your competitors – this is important for branding.  With a template, there could be hundreds of other websites with a similar design. If your desire is to have a custom built website, make sure you confirm that your website will be built as such. There have been many instances where a consumer expected to have a custom built website only to discover (at the last minute) that the designer used a template instead of building a website from the ground floor up.

Another important aspect of web design is graphic design.

• Does your prospective web design company provide custom graphic design services?
• Graphic design plays a very important role in your company’s brand image.
• A good graphic designer will create a design that will set you apart from your competition.

At Wieting Design, all our websites are custom designed and developed in Wordpress.  Take a look

Culture

Does your web designer fit into your company’s culture? Does he/she have the same beliefs, values and attitude? A good web designer in Hartford, CT will consider your needs as well as the needs of your web users. He/she will also possess good business acumen and good customer service. Most of all, a good designer is a good listener – this is an important part of business etiquette and helps to ensure the end result is exactly what you originally had in mind.

Research

Make sure you do a little research before making a final decision on who to hire. Browse through at least 2-3 website designs. Compare the designer’s work and the services he/she provides. It is also a good idea to test out, from your wireless phone or tablet, the websites they have created,  to make sure their designs are mobile-friendly and what you have in mind for the look and feel of your website.

Portfolio

Every web designer has his/her own unique level of creativity – no two designers are alike.  Before hiring a designer make sure you review his/her portfolio. Ask for examples of websites that they have designed that are similar to the type of website you would like to have built. An experienced designer should be able to send you verifiable links to websites he/she has previously created.

Online Marketing

Once your website is complete, the next important step is to drive traffic to your website. Most web design companies provide both web design and online marketing under one umbrella. For example, at Wieting Design, we provide web design, graphic design and a variety of marketing services that range from SEO to social media marketing and more. View our additional online marketing services.

Reviews

Consumers tend to base their buying decisions on two things: word-of-mouth and online reviews. If the web designer has a number of negative reviews, consider that a warning sign to potentially avoid him/her. Make sure you read the company’s reviews before making your final decision. If you know other businesses in Hartford, CT who used a web designer, ask them for a referral.

Last but not least, make sure you get a ‘signed’ contract/agreement from the web designer prior to starting a project. Often times, many business owners are so anxious to get a website up and running, that they will sign the contract without getting a copy of the designer’s signature. Also, don’t forget to ask for a project schedule to help you stay on top of the progress being made on the development of your new website.

Give us a call or stop by and check out our website design work, graphic design work and our branding, we would love to hear from you!

Website Design | Hartford, CT

3 Website Design Mistakes That Could Harm Your Brand Image

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design

Whether you are in the process of having a website built or thinking about having an existing website re-designed. There are plenty of web design mistakes you will want to avoid. The following are three common mistakes that could ruin your company’s brand image.

 1. Inconsistent Corporate Identity

What does Amazon.com, Louis Vuitton and many other popular brands have in common? They are all consistent.  When your brand is consistent, it becomes more memorable in the mind of your customer. Regardless of whether you own a large corporation or small business, your brand should be consistent. Your website, logo design, online and offline advertisements, and print collateral should mirror each other. A company with an inconsistent brand will have a difficult time competing in the marketplace.

 2. Failure to Hire a Professional Web Designer

There are so many options available to business owners today that there is really no excuse not to have a website.  Unfortunately, not every option is the right choice. It can be tempting to hire an inexperienced freelance web designer that offers the best price in town or the web hosting company that offers DIY website builders (with free templates) at a low price. Both options may sound good on paper, but in reality, it will cost you in the long run. It can cost you more money to fix someone’s mistakes or cost you potential business.

A professional web designer will not just build an attractive looking website, he or she will build a website that is marketable and user-friendly.  A visitor is more likely to remain on a website if it is a breeze to navigate, visually appealing and offers something of value.  A professional web designer will not just take the latest trends into consideration when designing a website, he or she will take your target audience into consideration. The purpose of having a website is to have visitors land on your page and make an informed decision (i.e. buy, call, email, sign-up, register, etc.).  It’s a lot easier to accomplish your goals when your web design project is in the right hands.

 3. No Clear Call-to-Action

Many business owners struggle with this particular one. The scenario usually starts off the same. They have a well-designed website, a great product to offer and traffic. However, no one is buying.  If you don’t have a clear call-to-action, your visitors will not know what to do next. Your call-to-action should be obvious from the time a person lands on your web page.

Another mistake that many people make is providing too many options. When you provide people with too many choices – it causes confusion.  Having a clear and concise call-to-action will increase conversion ratings and even increase returning customers.

Hopefully, the above tips will help you avoid the three common mistakes that could potentially harm your brand.

CONTACT US

Wieting Design, LLC
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