Typography is the most valuable asset of your blog. It doesn’t matter if you have a colorful blog design, an awesome online publication or a plain simple blog. The main focus always stays on the content and the readability of your text. That is where the importance of good typography comes.

Google Font API  is a new and innovative concept from Google that aims at providing a helping hand to all web design and development pros. Google Font API  helps you add web fonts to any web page.

If you use Google’s Open Font’s API, you have many advantages like:

1. Huge collection of Font Typefaces to choose from Google’s Fonts library.

2. All the bandwidth load is on Google as you are only using their resources in the API.

3. The speed is blazing fast as Google’s CDNs are faster than your site.

4. You can hotlink the font file so that there is a less file and bandwidth request.

 The world of web typography is quickly evolving but this evolution means that your web developement team and end users now have more choices than ever before.

Do you use any web font services in your websites?

Dear Best Web Site Designers: 

We need social media  advice. Our marketing director has banned anyone from using social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook, during company time. Since many employees were abusing it and a hacker compromised our company email system; social media is forbidden at our office.  How do I convince our director that social media is important for our company without being fired?

-Anonymous Marketer

 ————————

Social Media Advice  

Not that Ashton Kutcher,  Gary Zuckerberg or Apple’s new iPad are the only living testaments that social media drives profitability, but tens of thousands of companies could not be wrong.  

As safeguarding a company’s technology is necessary for streamlining productivity, most companies cannot afford the downtime that some hackers can inflict upon an entity’s enterprise system. Just think of the magnitude that Google’s 30-minute plus outage caused in 2009. While most managers are not going to sacrifice safety for a marketing whim, social media networking is too paramount to overlook.

Some executives still consider the old school of nurturing relationships to be the primary catalyst for business cultivation. Social media is slowly, but surely replacing traditional advertising and marketing mediums. Open forums, online networking events, market research, sweepstakes, and games typify the interactive characteristics of social media.

An article published by the Harvard Business Review indicated that Intel provides guidelines and stipulations, encouraging their employees to post technology topics pertaining to their department on the Facebook page. Intel is not the only company promoting such social media interaction.

With the right social media design, strategy and security, any organization has the capacity to fortify consumer loyalty. While Best Website Designers cannot provide your manager with a cogent reason to incorporate social media with the rest of the web marketing strategy, the best recommendation is

Hire a web design company to develop the Twitter and Facebook pages. Request that the social media design incorporate all security contingencies.

For professional advice, please click on social media.

Is logo design really relevant? With the gazillions of Web sites on the Internet, not having a logo is tantamount to having a faceless spokesperson promote an organization’s offerings. In other words, logo design is emblematical of the company face.

When consumers think about Apple ®, most don’t  visualize Steve Jobs. The image of a translucent apple comes to mind. Google conjures a white space punctuated by six rounded, colorful letters.  A red bull’s eye symbolizes Target’s logo.

In a recent post, reported by The Net Impact, the web design company attests to how the company logo influences the Internet marketing strategy. Logos possessing recognizable features, instilling trust and reflecting leadership are the types of icons wielding effective brands.

While Apple, Google and Target are prominent logos embedded in America’s psyche, another brand successfully inculcates trust, recognition and leadership attributes: Facebook. Visit any Web site with the familiar white lowercase ‘f’ encased in a violet blue background, and consumers feel an immediate “connection” or trust of sorts with the site embedded with the ‘f’ stamp.

The ‘f’ icon is virtually the face of Facebook. The social media’s logo design appeals to the human psyche. From the color and font, the logo design conveys an amicable style. Rounded fonts signify sociability. Facebook’s azure hue background represents truth and friendship. Moreover, Facebook’s logo exemplifies how a simple logo design is related to a welcoming interactive technology.

• Is your logo design tackling the company image in a positive viewpoint?

• Is your company logo recognizable?

• Does the logo evoke impact?

Is the logo design effective across all marketing channels?

• Website design
• Merchandising
• Social media networks
• Traditional advertising (TV, Radio and print)

For those who are unable to answer, “yes” to all of the aforementioned questions, contact the Net Impact for a logo design facelift.

Now that Google is giving Facebook higher precedence in  search engine results, it’s a reminder of the dominancy that social media has on Internet marketing. Signaling the need for professional web design on Facebook, the underlying advantages to brandishing a fan-page include the following:

• Make an impression on  prospects
• Initiate the dialogue with the target market
• Conduct your own market research 
• Be organically exposed to major search engine action

In recent news, Google broadcasted new plans to include Facebook’s public status updates among other real-time search results. This proves the benefits of a having a fan page. It further gives credence to presenting the company brand on the world’s most renowned social networking site. 

So what this means for any company using a Facebook page to showcase their products, and services –is sheer Internet exposure. However, ensuring that online visibility requires a recipe of regular:

• Announcements and status updates
• Links to the company Web site
• New photos on the fan wall
• Video uploads

With Google including Facebook’s real time updates, this is only advantageous for the corporation, planning to expose their products and services to a fresh audience. At the same token, it makes the web design of the Facebook page that much more an integral component of the Internet marketing strategy.

In other words, companies that do not jump on the social media networking bandwagon will have to work that much harder to vie for Internet visibility.

Remember your Facebook web design should match the rest of your online marketing materials. That means that the Facebook page should maintain the continuity of the brand. And if your company is trying to target  a special market niche, it’s important to have a separate Facebook page to feature  those other products.  Thinking in the mind of your target audience, the web design of the Facebook page  should outperform  your competition. 

Effective  web design  is not only an awe-inspiring presentation, but it engages the audience.

Maxim: Better web design achieves more face time on Facebook. In the meantime, get social with  The Net Impact on Facebook. or stop in for a visit, by clicking on “website design.“

The web design renovation calls for a rudimentary online strategy. Prior to embarking upon a web design update, remember to coordinate your company’s marketing strategy, internal operations and other benchmarks with the site renovation. Use the following questions and statements to refine the market agenda:

• Define your target market. Based on your organization’s products and services, the core competency reflects the target audience.

• What is the underlying marketing purpose of the company Web site’s design? Effective web design generally inspires an action:

> | > subscribe to a newsletter
> | > request more information
> | > inspire new fans or followers on Facebook or Twitter
> | > conclude sales transaction

• How will the site serve or provide value for the site traffic as in your target audience?

• What sets your products and services apart from the online competitors?

• What are the distinctive characteristics of your site’s Web design?

•  Who will ultimately manage the sites updates? Since, the company Web site is not only an extension  of the marketing strategy, it is an efficacious  marketing tool. Given the popularity of social media networking and microsite,  regular content updates are a vital accessory to the SEO and Internet marketing DNA. 

In order to vie for any online business, maintaining a social media, or company blog is imperative to attracting targeted traffic. Moreover, social media sites and blogs are as mandatory marketing accessories to building awareness.

• How does your organization delegate the responsibility of making site updates? While the IT and marketing departments may not be in sync about security issues and avoiding Web site glitches,  a content management system eradicates these potential outage nightmares. For instance, the Auctori (tm), is customized to accommodate the unique workflow, ease site and page updates, but maintain your site’s branding specifications.

• What web design company can you entrust to deliver all your specifications? Contact The Net Impact

Why not wear the same blue suit, red tie and shiny shoes that all the contenders are wearing? After all, most people don’t base business decisions on attire. While that maybe true of the prospective client meeting, it is not applicable to a company’s microsite design.  Which company is the standout: the one clad in the peace evoking bird, associated with Twitter or the company bedecked in its own images and logos?

Obviously, the later will leave an indelible impression.

Why?

Humans tend to remember the unique.  Microsite design, dressed in Twitter’s logo insignia does  not brandish much for the company advertising on the most popular social media networking site in the world. As for managing the online brand identity, it encompasses developing the nuances, which distinguish one brand from the next.  With a gazillion microsites on the Internet, a microsite evoke impact. 

Microsite design is crucial to distinguishing an entity, or person from the millions of other Web sites, offering the same product or service. 

Here are a couple reasons why  miscrosite design matters:

Test New Products

Twitter and Facebook afford a cost effective solution for testing products via specific social media campaigns.For a new product launch, the underlying advantage of  microsite design is its flexibility. It does not detract from the tone and core competencies of the company Web site. Also, different  microsites can be designed to attract and appeal to for specific consumer segments.  

Affordable Internet Marketing

More importantly, microsite design serves as an economical catalyst to etch new niches and the extension of  a brand to another target market. This means that the company does not have to use its normal brand identity. 

Please click on “social media” to read more about microsite design and other Internet marketing topic.