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When every brand looks the same, do you follow suit or stand out? It all began with Silicon Valley startup brands who came of age, and wanted to be perceived as the big players that they now are in our lives. From Google, to PayPal, to Airbnb, this generation of companies grew from zero to hero at speeds completely unlike the mega brands before them. In the span of only a few years, these up-and-comers came to not only match, but in some cases eclipse, the cultural reputation of past goliaths such as Unilever, Sony and Nestle. EVERYBODY FALL IN LINE! pic.twitter.com/B9JU5nvpMu — OH no Type Co (@OHnoTypeCo) February 13, 2018 With that historic growth came a unique problem. Many of these brands started out with logos created at the hands of scrappy talent with scrappy strategic approaches. To become fully-evolved and established...

Digital properties today face a tricky balancing act with quality and speed: users expect the utmost visual experience to consider a brand credible, regardless of industry, and they expect it to be delivered immediately. When asked what influenced their first impressions of a company, 94% of respondents indicated basing their opinion on the design elements of the company’s home page, while only 6% referenced specific content. Meanwhile, 2 seconds load time is the threshold for website acceptability, with every additional 1 second delay in page response time resulting in a 7% reduction in conversions....

The social media landscape is oversaturated for the real estate industry, both commercial and residential. For real estate companies looking to build their brand and take advantage of the highly targeted nature of social media to drive sales, it’s easy to look at the landscape and wonder, “Should my organization be on 14 social media platforms, too?” The short answer is no. In our new white paper we evaluate and analyze data from the top 50 residential and commercial real estate companies (by transaction volume) on social media. The resulting insights are instructive for both commercial and residential real estate companies spanning a variety of functions looking to enhance their digital marketing strategy. In this post, we explore three key insights from our research. Residential is on more platforms, but commercial has greater following   The top 50 residential real estate brands operate 218 total...

Food, fashion, and home are among the most popular board categories on Pinterest. If you’ve ever checked them out, you are sure to have witnessed the “I want these!” comments. It’s no secret that users want to own what they pin. Lucky for them, Pinterest will soon be granting their wishes. Pinterest announced that by the end of June, users would start to see a blue “Buy it” button next to the regular “Pin it” button (1). While pins have always been linked to websites, they haven’t always been e-commerce or retailer sites. This has made it difficult for users to find and buy the products they pin. Pinterest wants to improve the user experience by shortening the time it takes between initial product discovery and purchase (2). With the use of the Buy button, users will be able to buy directly...

As internet usage trends increasingly towards mobile devices, having a mobile-friendly web page is essential to maximizing your website traffic. 60% of online traffic is now coming from mobile users, but those users may not find your web page as easily as before (1). In mid-April, Google made changes to their mobile algorithm to adapt to the shift in browsing methods. With these changes, mobile-search results now give preference to websites Google deems mobile-friendly, while penalizing those that are not. For the search engine which has traditionally focused on content relevancy, it is a big shift to see user-experience hold such weight.   So, what is mobile-friendly? There are several factors to consider, but the overall emphasis is on having a webpage that, when viewed on a mobile device, fits the screen, is easy to navigate and runs well. To ensure mobile-friendly...

Last week we looked at the top reasons why small businesses need a website, from ensuring your company pops up when people search for you on Google to establishing credibility. This week we’d like to help you ask a few deeper questions you’ll need to answer before crafting a solid site.

What is the purpose of your site?

To begin, what kind of business are you? An ecommerce site will want features that a community site probably won’t, and vice-versa. Are you selling a product on your site? Do you need for it to work with social media to engage with a community? Will it need a calendar to advertise frequent events?

It’s easy to see why a larger company might need a website, but it can be hard to see why a local shop or consultant might need one. If you’re running a locally-owned shop where most of your customers come in from around town, or if you’re a one-person micro-business acquiring clients through word-of-mouth or social media exclusively, what more could a website add?