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Lots of resources exist online for digital marketing. By working with printed material you are opening your world to a number of similar topics which could draw attention from users or advertisers. But how do you know which print services are worth the time and effort? Well in this article I want to outline a few online resources which I feel are great for print marketing.

The various solutions can range from printed posters, pamphlets, posterboard, bookmarks, and other nifty crafts. People who are interested in your products may purchase these items to support your cause. It is a show of affection towards companies and individuals who build great products. And I hope this collection of online products may be just as helpful.

UPrinting

People who have been into marketing for a while should know about UPrinting. It is a fantastic service which allows for expedited shipping and quicker delivery times. But I also feel UPriting has a lot to offer typical small businesses and online ventures.

You want to select a product which can help your audience and keep them engaged with your site. It should also have memorable branding so that people recognize your website immediately. This can be tough, so I would recommend working with a designer whenever possible. But the UPrinting service is easy to understand yet still complex enough for publishing any media.

24 Hour Print

Here is a wonderful competitor which offers printed jobs within 24 hours of service. The website 24 Hour Print explains more about their 24 hour printing service. Their help and support lines are always open, and you can easily get in touch with members of the company through e-mail too. I have been really impressed with their work and it is astounding to see how they can manage so many orders.

Check out their products page if you want to learn a bit more. The sheer number of items you can order is quite exhilarating. And you will have the opportunity for uploading your own custom graphics into the site which can be manipulated for marketing purposes. The design itself is not very difficult and working with 24 Hour Print makes the whole process a lot smoother.

I would recommend reading up a bit more on the company and how they operate. For people who need a quick job completed on time, 24 Hour Print will do what you need. They are not a complicated launch which requires too much effort put into marketing or development. Plus their costs are very reasonable for any small or medium business.

Granted there are some other competitors in the same market niche. But I think 24 Hour Print has an enormous following of business clients. Their turnover time is almost unrivaled among similar services. It is worth the time and effort to get everything running smoothly. I would suggest digging through the website templates page and see what else is possible.

Final Thoughts

Print marketing is not useful in every business venture. You will need to spend a lot of time picking your audience and figuring out the best way to approach your users. But overall, printed materials can be shared a lot quicker and also digested when off the computer. They do not require an Internet connection yet still provide links to your website. It is a great point of management which many people do not take as seriously as they could.

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Advertise here with BSA

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The online webfont service Typekit by Adobe is a fantastic business model. Their premium accounts are very affordable in yearly billing cycles and you have access to over 700+ different fonts. These can be loaded directly into your CSS and used as a regular font-family value. Typekit is a quick way to dramatically improve the layout of your website.

I have put together this showcase of 30 personal favorites from Typekit. You can use these fonts in so many different places like your navigation, footer, header text, and even body content. Custom typefaces will take a bit of time to load – so there is a tradeoff for using all custom web fonts. However when used sparingly the Typekit library is a colossus unmatched anywhere else on the web.

Proxima Nova

Chaparral Pro

Adelle Sans

FF Meta Web Pro

FF Meta Serif Web Pro

Iskra

Museo

Minion Pro

Ratio

Brevia

Bello Pro

Kepler STD Extended

Rooney Sans

Alternate Gothic

Kepler STD Caption

Utopia STD

JAF Herb

Acuta

Cronos Pro

Bickham Script Pro

Coquette

FF Market Web

Droid Serif

Skolar Web

Fertigo Pro Script

Foco

Krete

Brioso Pro Caption

Modesto

Cubano

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A look at real A/B tests across several large enterprises suggests: everything.

Designing a navigation bar can be a humbling exercise. We want to consider our visitors’ natural orientation when browsing a site, along with their short attention span, and lay out a navigation structure that’s logical yet elegant. So what’s most important when designers think about navigation bar and sub-navigation usability practices?

In this post, we’ll examine several A/B tests conducted by large enterprises with plenty of resources, great attention to detail and a hunger for answers flanked by scientific method. Looking at this type of data, it quickly becomes clear that minutia such as link style, sub-nav structure, list order and the like, aren’t minutia at all. They can prove critical to the success of the site.

To sub-nav or not to sub-nav? That was Dell’s question.

In this first case study, a clever and meticulous team of Dell marketers discover that 5 pages in particular on their website correlate highly with visitors who complete a lead form. Their hypothesis becomes: if we put these pages in front of new visitors, perhaps they, too, will be more likely to convert, as it seems something about these 5 pages is compelling to them.

The A/B test Dell ran involved a baseline version of the site as it was already set up, with the B version offering visitors the 5 critical pages as sub-nav items. That move yielded 39% more leads.

Version A

Version B

What type of sub-nav increased engagement for IBM?

This test sheds light on the importance of presentation when it comes to a sub-navigation structure. IBM looked at engagement metrics, measured as clicks on topics or images in a given section of the website, to determine whether on-site links or a drop-down box would be more successful as sub-navigation.

Here’s what that looked like.

Version A

Version B

The on-page links crushed drop-down sub-nav in the test, increasing site section engagement by over 219% at more than 99.9% confidence. That is a huge win. Does this mean we should always design sub-nav with on-page links? Not necessarily, but with this test, IBM makes a pretty strong case for considering that route.

It’s possible the users’ response was so strong in this case because the page in question was a category page, intended to help visitors find their way around a site section. From that perspective, this might make a good usability test for content-heavy sites and large e-commerce players.

Don’t ignore nav header copy

Does header copy really matter? The debate is open as to just how much impact minute changes can have, but according to this Autodesk study, it can make a major difference to your user.

Version A

Version B

Version B

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