Creative Director, Graphic Designer and Entrepreneur

Redbox Design

You get what you pay for “Simple Better Design”

When developing your website, focus first on what you can offer to the general public. Be certain with what you can do to maximize or increase the potential of your site with your offer. Keep updating your site or adding new applications, briefs, reviews and other information loaded articles in your site. Once you decide to do this, you have to make sure that you do not only have the necessary parts for your site to run through the internet but you also know how to make people know you.

What can make your site search-able is SEO or search engine optimization. You can also have your website listed in directories depending on what your site offers. Another way is through submitting your website name to major search engines. This way you are directly inviting users to visit your site. However, once you choose to do this, make sure that you have the right content and necessary applications to avoid wasting the time of the user. You can also increase visitors to your site by buying and getting links to your site. You can also do this by creating an advertisement which can be seen and posted in chat rooms, social networks and other websites affiliated to yours.

It is indeed the fastest way to make money online if you know how to optimize all the things that can be used in your internet business. If you already have these resources, you can also offer visitors free stuff and even points which they can earn every time they use your site for research or other purposes. Offer membership and run contests which can promote your site. Visitors or users really like websites which are interactive. They also tend to visit your site more often if you recognize your users as members or valued customers. This way you are not simply offering them a chance to be part of your site but you recognize their efforts as well.

We will be posting regular articles and designs to our blog. Some will be about our ideas and opinions but most of them will reflect design, design trends, what’s hot in the market and the work we are working on. We will be showing you websites, logos and videos of work and various interesting topics of graphic design and the wider impact it has on our everyday lives.

John Cowper

Creative Director

Redbox Design

If you create a website today you need to create a website to make money for you or for your business. This is the whole point to get people to see, read and either buy or make an enquiry that will lead to a purchase and therefore make money online.

Now as a designer I spend a lot of time researching, preparing, designing, visualising and then building websites for a varied number of clients, companies, organisations or indeed private individuals. As I prepare my designs I always tell my clients that the purpose of a website in today’s market is to make money. Many people in the past got websites created uploaded them and sat back and waited, these types of brochure sites are no longer going to make money for businesses online.

The trick is to constantly update your site, change it regularly and add things to it to make it non static. In this way Google and other search engines will rank your site higher, therefore getting more hits and making more money. Adding a blog or forum to your site adds rich content that changes on a daily basis by other people, Google loves this. If you are getting a website designed, get your website designer to create a CMS or Content Management Site (System). This is a piece of software which is added to your site, so that you can physically manage your own website content by logging in with a username and password and simply update your site daily with new content.

The best way to do this is to get yourself a WordPress website or blog, this is buy far the best solution as WordPress has a great CMS and allows for really easy access and user friendliness.

The first thing to look out for in regards to online marketing for business are free options. You’ll save money overy time if you start out with the free options available to market your business. The easiest free options include writing blogs, and submitting articles to article websites. The free options require some commitment and quality information, but if you’re an expert in your given business, you’ll be able to come up with words to explain services and opportunities easily.

The second major component to marketing online for business is to look for paid opportunities. Advertising options on the Internet abound in a variety of different places. There are many low cost solutions like sponsoring a podcast, banner placements in websites, or PPC campaigns through large networks, that can be effective in getting your name out there.

The one thing you’ll need to remember is, in order to maintain longevity within the Internet community, you’ll have to be in it for the long term. There are some flash in the pan success stories, but few of them have extended success over time. It’s important to always be prepared to stick around and help people throughout your business plan. By utilizing online marketing for an extended period of time, you’ll be able to garner success with relative ease.

Before you move forward with any sort of web marketing plan, make sure that you answer some simple questions. The first thing you need to know is that you need to understand the target market you’re looking for. If you can’t answer generalized questions about the general public that you’re aiming for, you’ll fail. You need to understand that thinking your audience is the entire world wide web, is only a delusional point of reference, and isn’t realistic. Once you narrow down your target audience you can carefully plot where to go next.

Web marketing should not just be a cut and run type of scenario. You have to invest quality time into outlining the information you’re going to use to get people to your site. Whether you’re writing reviews, building websites, paying for PPC campaigns, or others, you’ll have to make sure that you’re in it for the long haul. Many start up and experienced marketers have given up too soon, and yield little to no results. The winning marketers are the ones that stick around and analyze each phase of their preliminary plan.

The Internet has provided a wealth of shopping opportunities for people, and the most travelled web stores have clear and easy to use design. The same is true for marketing, affiliate networking, and other forms of informational portals. Without proper design, you can’t relay your message and entice the general public to engage with you.

Website design doesn’t need to be a complex and expensive endeavour. In fact, most often, a clean, well-tuned design can be limited to only a few colours and have a clear distinction of information and visual aesthetic. There are many pitfalls that can pop up for business owners looking to get an edge in regards to design, therefore it’s important to find a professional firm or freelance designer that has a track record of simple, clean design. Just because something looks flashy, doesn’t mean that the end user will intuitively know how to interact, so make sure you make things simple for them.

For those that are looking to do things themselves, website design templates could help, just make sure that you invest in a good WYSIWYG editor. That type of editor literally translates to, “What you see is what you get”, and is a visual design helper for those that aren’t necessarily experts at design. Remember, a solid design will help you stand above a crowded market of online businesses.

One of the most important components to online business and marketing of websites is graphic design. It is often overlooked and it is one of the crucial components to winning over people online. Without a properly designed graphically enhanced website, people simply wont stay on your website long enough to create the conversions you want.

While most people focus on the content, others find that a good design can go a long way. Graphic design doesn’t have to hit you over the head financially, if you play your cards right it wont cost you an arm and a leg. Simplicity is key to winning a new fans, and it doesn’t cost that much.

There are two schools of thought in regards to getting graphic design. The first step is to do it yourself, the really cheap way!. There is a wealth of tutorial based websites that offer a whole load of information for people to learn and implement graphics on their websites and beyond. It’ll take some time, but it can be done without formal training, just in the same way you can do DIY within your house. Many DIY stores offer training videos and so on, however not everything is as simple as this and in the end there are always problems.

The second school of thought is to hire a professional. Professional graphic designers charge either job flat rates or by the hour. If you have some preliminary content written and a general direction in which you’re headed towards, you’ll find that the costs aren’t quite as much as you might have thought. If you have thought it through and know what you want with everything ready then the cost can be lower than you think.

Remember, no matter what you do with regards to your business, you need to match content with graphic design to stand out. If you can combine the two, you’ll have a great identity and presence on and offline.