I don’t like any of the samples I have received! This company must be terrible! Sometimes you can receive a group of samples that just don’t appeal to you, it happens. Most of the time a client doesn’t know or can’t precisely describe what kind of logo he wants or what image he is looking for. For that reason, a good designer will try to question the client as much as possible regarding their preferences and tastes in logos, but this is not always sufficient. Also note that sometimes an idea may seem good at first thought, but looking at the results on paper you could realize that you don’t like them at all. It is natural to get upset if you have received a package of samples that don’t suit you, but it`s important to understand that since you are not buying a premade product, bad surprises are not impossible nor improbable. Look at a batch of bad initial samples as just another step towards a great final design. It is highly unlikely that you will utterly hate everything about the samples presented. You can pick and combine different elements from them - font, color, object, layout – into one great logo. Even if the samples are really terrible, you could tell the designers precisely what you don’t like about them, which will help them avoid similar mistakes in the next samples. A bad batch of samples, depending on your view of it, can be a glass half empty or a glass half full. It’s a setback, perhaps, but the second round has a much greater chance of success.

Read the rest of this entry »

Starting An E-Commerce Business: Baby Steps Starting your own e-commerce business can be quite the adventure. There is nothing wrong with falling head over heels in love with your ideas and plans and becoming overly excited. But always remember, feet first. Creating a business from scratch is like a child learning to walk. You need to grab on to something solid, feel around, get a sense of balance, and take baby steps. Risky Business Before running full speed ahead with your brilliant business brainchild, proper planning is required. Being an entrepreneur is risky business, however you can improve your chances of success with preparation and development. First, you need to research your target market, products and services, competitors, demographics on your potential customers, popular key words associated with your business and the probable costs involved. After compiling all this information, you need to ask yourself, 'is it worth it?' If the answer is yes, then carry on. "It's All in the Name" You have your business idea, you've conducted your market research, your preparation is complete and now you are beginning to get butterflies in your stomach from all the excitement that comes with starting your own business. So what's next? The Name. You should start considering names for your company in the beginning stages of the development of your business. Use a serious name for a serious company and a fun name for creative company or a company that markets towards children. But keep in mind that the name of your business must earn the attention and trust of your potential customers. While selecting your company's name, bear in mind the qualities you would like your company to portray. If you want to represent a very aggressive, high tech, corporate and cutting-edge company, you should not come up with the name like 'Sloopy' or 'Scroochy'. Important Points to Consider In Name Selection:

• Shorter is better. It is easier to remember names like LogoBee or Nike as opposed to 'Kransferst Bayer Colombo Association of Michigan'.
• Make sure the name is easily pronounceable. It's very hard to pronounce 'Shmakhtnik', 'Kchichkus' or 'Xsassassas'.
• It may be helpful to have the name associated with your company's philosophy. For example, a strong solid company should use a strong, bold name such as 'Bamm,' 'CastleDom,' or 'Gong.' A high-tech company could use a more creative name such as 'Ampex,' 'Freebee,' or 'Ciriu'. Design companies can use even more creative names such as 'Venturius,' 'BlueFrog,' 'BlackInc.'
• Try to relate the company name to the field of business. For example, a food company - 'Bacon House,' an office supplier - 'BluePin,' a construction company - 'GoldenBrick.'
• Create a recognizable image. Come up with a meaningful name by combining nouns, adverbs and adjectives such as: 'Penguin Solutions,' 'Flying Frog,' 'Walking House,' or 'Yellow Pot.'
• Do not forget your business's target market. Home insurance companies target a more mature market. It would be absurd to use a name like 'HipHop BangBang Solutions.'
• A good way to test out your company name is to tell it to your friends and ask them if they remember the name in a week.

Website Design Marketing should start immediately after the company is created, the name chosen and officially registered. You want people to remember your company in a positive way. You need to make an outstanding first impression. So, the first thing you have to work on is your name and the image you portray. In the e-commerce world your website is the name and face of the company. The website is the most important marketing tool for an e-commerce business. The website needs to look legitimate and provoke a sense of trust. It needs to be appealing, simple to use, eye-catching, competitive and unique. Therefore, it is worth it to spend a good amount of time and money on your website design. If you aren't savvy with website design and development, then invest in a talented website design company or independent designer. Website Marketing Search Engine Optimization Search engines use algorithms (mathematical formulas) to rank website listings in response to a particular keyword query. In order to protect themselves from webmasters and search engine optimizers manipulating the search engine results to their advantage, search engines do not reveal their ranking criteria. However, there are many factors that are speculated to be important influences in determining the position of a website on search engine result pages. For example:

• Content counts!: Search engine spiders and bots like websites filled with informative articles, relevant text and content.
• Incoming links: Build up incoming links from relevant or complimentary sites. The more relevant and authoritative the incoming sites, the better your site will be in the eyes of the spiders and bots.
• Keywords: Try to place as many keywords in the content of your home page as possible without losing the sense and aesthetics of the page.
• Meta Tags: Meta tags are html text containing information about the website that is not seen by human viewers. Meta tags include title, description, and keyword tags. Considering that a title tag is the text that attempts to describe your site, it is very important to choose a title tag that emphasizes keywords of your page.
• Header tags: Header tags (H1, H2, H3, H4, H5…) are used to designate headers and titles. H1 tags should be used to represent the first and most important header, H2 as the second and so on. Search engines give importance to text that differs from the text on the rest of the page. Bold, italics, underlines, and various font sizes are useful as well.
• Make the site simple, easy to surf and navigate, and eye-catching.
• Keep your website updated with fresh content, new pages and information.

Free Advertising Search Engines: As a business owner, your first priority should be to get your website listed in the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN and Alta Vista. This can be done simply by submitting your website to the various search engines. Directories: You can also submit your site to web directories, which are databases of categorized listings of websites. Focus on directories that are popular and that specialize on your industry. Link Building: Considering that the World Wide Web is a huge network of interdependent links and connections, link building is an important factor in optimizing your website for search engines. Effective link building consists of exchanging links with authoritative and informative websites that relate to and/or compliment your e-commerce business. Search engines such as Google believe that when web page A links to web page B, web page A is casting a vote for web page B. The more votes web page B has, the more important that page is perceived to be by search engines. The value of the web page linking to the web page B also determines how important that vote is. Google determines the importance of a web page by giving it a Page Rank (PR). Page Rank is another factor that plays a significant role in determining the position of a website on the search engine result page. To view the Page Rank of websites, you can download the Google toolbar at http://toolbar.google.com. Building a network of links is not difficult, however, the challenge is to develop links that are relevant and compliment your business. You can join link exchange websites which are a venue for webmasters interested in building valuable links. Don't exchange links with just any site though, as relevancy is very important. Try to exchange links with sites that can be associated with your industry or that compliment your business. And stay away from online gambling sites and pornography sites, these will not reflect positively on your business. As well, you can do a web search for relevant businesses and simply contact them and suggest a link exchange (some sites may have a section with information pertaining to link exchanges). Check out the backward links (inbound links) of your top competitors. Articles If you are quite knowledgeable about your industry, then publishing articles online is a good start to building a reputation for your site. You can submit articles to free submit directories (where others can download your article as content for their own sites, giving you full credit), online magazines, ezines, and websites relevant to your business. If you are quite knowledgeable on your business's industry, then publishing articles online is a good start to building a reputation for your site. You can submit articles to free submit directories (where others can download your article as content for their own sites, giving you full credit), online magazines, ezines, and websites relevant to your business. Paid Advertising Pay-Per-Advertising: a. Pay-Per-Click: Pay-per-click advertising consists of a search engine or directory that places your website in their database, and charges you a specified amount every time your website comes up in a search and is clicked on, thereby, generating traffic to your site. The amount of the fee is usually determined by bidding on keywords and ranking. b. Pay-Per-Impression: Similar to the concept of pay-per-click advertising, advertisers pay the affiliate based on the number of consumers that view their promotion or ad. c. Pay-Per-Sale: The advertisers pay the affiliate based on the number of consumers that make a purchase based on the direct result of the promotion. d. Pay-Per-Lead: Advertiser pays for each sales lead generated from the direct result of a promotion. Leads include a viewer filling out a survey, form, downloading a demo, software, etc... e. Pay-Per-E-mail: Similar to pay-per-lead advertising, pay-per-e-mail affiliates receive a commission for each consumer's e-mail address they refer to a mailing list or newsletter. Paid Directories: Some directories will charge a fee for increased visibility and is associated with a higher cost. If you choose to place your site in a paid directory listing, consider the offer carefully. Compare the price with other effective methods of advertising. Make sure you get the biggest bang for your buck. Banners: A more popular marketing mechanism consists of banner-style advertisements that are specifically positioned on a web page in order to promote your website. Costs vary according to the placement of the ad on the web page and the size of the banner. Try to advertise on websites that contain relevant content, receive a significant amount of traffic and have fair banner advertisement rates. Ezines: Ezines (electronic magazines/newsletters published online or sent via e-mail) have been experiencing explosive growth in the past few years. There are thousands of ezines covering a vast number of topics. Considering that ezines cater to readers sincerely interested in the topic covered, you should get a higher response rate to your ads. For new businessess, publishing your own ezine right away may be too overwhelming, therefore paying for exposure of your website in online magazines and through ezine ads may be your best bet. Ezines can provide you with valuable traffic at a smaller investment than with banner ads. Ezine advertising is more likely to attract a significant response because the readers trust the editors and are more trusting of the ads. Monitoring Your Site Almost all server providers have counters and tools to monitor your website traffic. You can find out where the traffic is coming from and the regions from which the visitors are originating. You can also find out daily visitor statistics, and other useful things such as how they entered and how long they stayed to browse. You can learn about the demographics of your website visitors and track trends and patterns. By gaining a better understanding of the popular pages on your site and your site's overall performance, you can plan your sites future development, and even focus on specific aspects of your site. Depending on how precisely you wish to track your site's success, you can also purchase software programs to assist you as well. The first few years of an e-commerce company is usually the make or break period of the business. Revenues may be stagnant and expenses may seem overwhelming. It takes time, patience and determination. Sometimes you just need to take baby steps, then be patient and pray.

It seems that one of the hardest things to get right in web design is creating proper layout and navigation. Sometimes a web site will be very rich in content, except that traffic will suffer due to poor navigational structure. In other words, navigation has become one of the key ingredients in developing sustainable, long-term traffic to your site. Your site tree: Often before you even get into the graphical aspects of your site, it is useful to think about the content that you will have for your site and brainstorm possible navigational schemes, otherwise known as site trees. These trees describe the way in which your site branches out into articles, products and services, and any other additional sections you may have. You would be surprised how different tree layouts can be created, but not all are created equal. As an example, let's say that you have a site that has the following pages:

• Home page
• About us
• Products
• Services
• Contact
• Clients
• News

Generally speaking, the root of your website will be your home page or index page which serves as the main landing destination of your visitors. From here, they should be able to easily reach many parts of your site, often within 2 clicks or less, and be able to return to your home page with ease. Depending on the size and nature of your site, you may need to create 'deep' links, (3 or more clicks away from your homepage), but they should only be used for very specific information. As an example, there is no reason why the 7 pages listed above shouldn't be accessible from your home page, as they are very broad categories. Content Layout What is essential in laying out your content is that from every portion of your site your visitors should know where they are (through the use of titles and graphics), where they can go (using navigational and contextual links), and how they can get back (either to previous pages or back to the home page). Once you have developed your site tree it's time to think about where to place your links. There two most popular are header links and sidebar links. Many sites use a combination of these two. Others use only header links. Drop down menus can also provide readers an easy way to get to a number of different pages in one click. This is particularly useful when you have a variety of content, as it saves people from 'drilling down' through multiple pages to get to a variety of content. This also helps you avoid the problem of deep links, pages which are three or more clicks from your home page. One of the best ways to provide a way back to the home page is to place your company logo in the top-left left corner of every page in your site, and have it link to your home page. Not only is the logo a well-known way of getting back to the index page of a website, but it also allows you to consistently brand your identity throughout your site. It's important to remind your readers that the pages and content were created by you! For top and sidebar navigation links, try to stick to common names that people are used to. You will have the opportunity to get into more detailed subjects within your content, but it is often better to provide your readers with easily recognizable buttons and names which they are able to intuitively understand. Anchor links can also be a useful way to contextually link to other pages in your site. If you have a paragraph that alludes to another product or service, you can simply anchor link some text in that paragraph like this. While this is a common way to link to other sites of interest, it's also a great way to link to other pages within your site. These shouldn't really replace your header or sidebar links, but serve as a supplemental means of navigation. Adding a good site map will place the finishing touch on your site. Site maps are a summary of the entire layout of your site, and often use text links to allow your reader to get to any part of your site. Readers who are searching for something specific in your site will sometimes refer to site maps. Graphics Eye-catching graphics, when combined with a strong layout and structure will ensure that your visitors stay a while. It is also one of the ways you can separate yourself from the competition, as there are many websites out there with very standard layouts and just a few short paragraphs. Do not underestimate unique photo stills when designing your website. When integrated properly, they can be one of the most effective ways of personalizing a web design. Photos and graphics are sure to add visual eye-candy to your information and content. And of course, a well-designed logo is a must! It should be one of the first things your reader sees when entering your site. It can also be useful to have your logo integrated into a banner-style graphic and add it to your header for a more integrated feel. When it comes to graphics however, you should be careful that you don't overdue things. Bandwidth intensive video may turn away some of your potential visitors due to slow loading times etc. Because of this, you are often better to go with simple flash animations that will spice up your website without placing unnecessary demands on your readers' computers and connections.

Internet search engines exist to organize the seemingly immeasurable amount of information available on the web. They direct people to pages that are relevant to their searches, pages that discuss the exact keywords they are looking for. For businesses that receive the majority of their clientele from search engines, search engine rankings can make or break their business. Search Engines Search engine optimization (SEO) is a marketing technique that enhances a website and its content in order to increase the chances of achieving a high rank the search engine result pages (SERPs). Search engines are very secretive about their criteria and ranking systems as they continuously update and revise their algorithms (mathematical formulas used to determine which web pages are displayed in search results), and therefore there is less likelihood of webmasters and search engine optimizers being able to achieve higher rankings by manipulation and spamming. Every search engine has its own formula and criteria for indexing and ranking pages. One can analyze SERPs and backward links (all the links pointing at a particular web page) and attempt to determine a search engine's indexing criteria, however there's a lot of risk involved in relying on a limited number of optimization techniques. Because of the unpredictable nature of search engines, websites can easily move from a top ranking position on a SERP down to the third or fourth SERP or even be banned from the search engine altogether.

LogoBee logo design has recently taken it upon itself to start the cleanup of the OSCMax Shopping Cart Suite. This project was intended to accommodate web developers and programmers in general.  The final version has been released in the hopes that the web community, and LogoBee clients, will benefit  from their best efforts. OSCMax is a derivative of osCommerce which is the world’s most used Shopping Cart. It comes with a lot of extra functionality pre-installed, while osCommerce requires you to install them manually.  Many articles have been written on the fact that this open-source solution is not W3C compliant and that it would be a large job to resolve this. These articles point out that a full cleanup to bring the code up to speed with the W3C compliancy expectations would be quite complicated. LogoBee logo design has done their best to make the OSCMax Shopping Cart Suite code W3C compliant. The code was quite extensive and the clean up was a time consuming process; but LogoBee is proud to release the results of their best efforts.  Now website developers and programmers from the global web community will be able to benefit from their hard work with the new OSCMax shopping cart suite which can be found on LogoBee.com. The final version produced by the LogoBee team has been released and the web community is encouraged to try it out. This final version of the OSCMax Shopping Cart Suite can be found on the LogoBee website at this location:  http://www.logobee-web.com/demo/oscmax/.