Once, I was urged to immediately start work on a brochure by doing the layout and placing the images; the client would deliver the text later. When I finally read the text, I realized that the chosen images were all wrong for the piece. Either they had no relevance or they actually contradicted the message.

Bottom line: Design, layout and content work together to deliver your message. They cannot be developed in isolation from each other.

It makes sense from the point of view of your audience that the content and the design need to be developed together. Research shows that people absorb information simultaneously using all of their senses. The most effective communication will take advantage of those different ways of learning. It is critical that the reader get the same message with each of his or her senses.

So where do you begin when you want to develop your next marketing piece? Start by answering some fundamental questions about the project. In short, you need to clearly define the message. Ask yourself,

• Who is the audience?
• What do you want the audience to remember?
• What is the point of the project? Are you advertising a new product or a grand opening, or is this an introduction to your business?
• Do you want them to act on what they have learned or are you just putting your name in front of them?
• How do you want to deliver the message – seriously or with humour, subtly or with a straight-from-the-hip attitude?

The next step is to explore concepts and ideas. What style of delivery best reflects your message and style of doing business? What will get your reader’s attention? Will the piece highlight a problem that your product or service will solve? Maybe an impact on lifestyle will be the focus.

With these questions answered, developing a library of images will be easier. Your photographer, if using one, will clearly understand not only what you want a picture of, but what the context is and how will be used. If you are using stock images, it will be easier to find just the right ones.

Each image tells a story. Remember the adage: an image is worth a thousand words? It’s true. Images not only need to be top-notch quality, but they need to contribute to your message intentionally.

Text is critical. There is a skill to getting into the head of the intended reader. What phrases will trigger the appropriate response? An ad aimed at teenagers will be very differently worded from one for senior executives or homemakers. There also needs to be some verbal link to the images, whether the copy actually refers to the image or the images reinforce the words, either thematically or through a visual pun.

Lastly comes the actual layout—bringing it all together. By this time, the designer already knows where the project is headed. Ideas been brewing all through the development process. Bringing it all together is simpler and chances are, everybody will be much happier with the end product.

The creativity of the designer is important throughout the process. Why? Experience. You may see the work of your designer only in the context of the current project or other work that has been done for you. But the designer brings in a wealth of experience for a variety of clients and projects. Chances are, this is not new territory for him/her and has a good sense of how to convey the message you want with the most impact.

Your marketing materials are a major investment in your business. By developing all of the the content and the design together as part of the message, you are sure to develop a winning marketing piece. Remember, it’s a simple formula: Content + Design = Success.

Websites developed by us are all developed on the WordPress platform. Not only is it by far the most popular content management system, it’s also one of the easiest to work with. But because it is the most popular content management system, it’s also the system that is subject to the most attacks by hackers.

According to Wordfence, the developers of the WordPress security plugin, the recent “Panama Papers” information leak from law firm Mossack Fonseca was partly the result of exploiting an out-of-date plugin which had a known security vulnerability.

By the way, all websites developed by us have the Wordfence plugin installed. It does a lot in the background to protect your website. It’s a great plugin — and that’s just the free version.

I cannot say it enough—you MUST perform regular maintenance on your website to keep it secure. Make it and leave it might have worked in the old days of HTML files, but not any more. That sounds scary, and in a way it is. There are some very nasty people out there who would love to get into your website to send out spam, set up phishing scams or use your server as a platform for other illegal ways to make money.

But keeping your website secure isn’t that hard. Here’s my simple take on it—these five things can go a very long way to keep your website secure:

1. Keep the WordPress core and all plugins and themes up-to-date.
   This is critical. Some clients worry that updates will cause their site to break. In the nearly 10 years I’ve been working with WordPress, I’ve only had that happen once and it was quickly fixed. The risk of that happening is far outweighed by the risk of a hacker exploiting a vulnerability in an old version. Research shows that exploiting a vulnerability accounts for half of website attacks.
2. Install only trusted plugins and themes.
   A good sign of a trusted plugin is one that’s being widely used. The WordPress plugin repository shows how many websites use each plugin. Also look to see how long it has been since it was updated. Plugins that haven’t been updated for a year are more likely to have a known vulnerability. When it comes to themes, choose one from WordPress.org or a trusted commercial vendor. Do not trust free themes from any other site. There are too many offering ‘free’ themes that have been programmed to exploit your website.
3. Use an administrator username that cannot be easily guessed.
   NEVER use ‘admin’. That is the first one hackers try. The most common ones that a hacker will guess are ‘admin’, administrator’, your domain name, the first significant word in your company name, and your own name. If you’ve chosen an obvious user name, half the hacker’s job is done. They can set up a script that can guess your password at the rate of hundreds of guesses per minute. These are known as brute force attacks.
4. Use a password that cannot be guessed.
   I’m dumbfounded by people who confide that they still use ‘12345’ or ‘password’ as their password! Many security experts also say that your password should not be: your birth/anniversary date, a pet’s name, the name of a loved one, your phone number — or anything that could be easily guessed. Some experts go so far as to suggest it should not include any word found in the English language. Make sure your password is a mix of upper and lower case letters, numbers, and characters on the upper row of your keyboard. It should also be long.
5. Install a security plugin.
   A security plugin can do many things: Scan for known malware and phishing scams, block brute force attacks, alert when WordPress and plugins or themes need an update, and more. Wordfence Security has saved more than one client website here by alerting us to problems quickly.

See? It’s not that hard to keep your site safe. There are no guarantees, of course. Even the most security conscious web managers run into problems. There are other more “techie” steps you can take, but if you do these five things, you are well on your way to having a continually secure WordPress website.

A client recently asked me to comment on alternatives for online advertising. This was my reply:

Alas, there is no really a straight forward answer. Today, online advertising can include many components. Most of them involve work on your part (or someone you delegate it to), I’m afraid. Online advertising, to be effective needs to be multi faceted and ongoing.

• Search engine optimization (SEO) of your website is basic to any online advertising. Without that, your site can’t be found easily. Include key words or phrases you expect people to search under strategically in your site – including page titles, headings and page content. But don’t over-stuff your site; search engines frown on that. There is actually much more to SEO than key words and is a marketing specialty on its own.
• As part of search engine optimization, I would suggest adding articles about your industry or your products and services to your website so there are more words relevant to what you do to get picked up by search engines.
• Pay per click advertising through an agency like Google is pretty common now. Some people swear by paid search listings, while other insist on using organic listing results. Organic search results rely exclusively on SEO. One nice thing with pay per click advertising is that you can set a budget and test it out. The way it works is that the more you pay the more often you show up in the search result.
• The biggest way to attract attention these days is social media engagement. That means having a Facebook / Twitter / Instagram page and posting to it regularly – and encouraging people to follow it. Then you need to post something rather regularly, maybe a couple of times a week. You know posts don’t have to be long, but they should be something people want to see. It shouldn’t be non-stop, hard-sell advertising, but include more newsy, guess-what-we-did kind of things as part of the mix. Look at pages for other businesses to see what they post. Photos also intrigue people. Today, Facebook will want you to pay to get your posts out there. Twitter and Instagram are also popular platforms for engagement. The nice thing is that you can link your Instagram, Twitter and Facebook so one post does all three.

While online advertising is critical to your overall strategy, print advertising still has legs. It’s costly, but it does work for people. However, it can’t be your only advertising medium. Similar to print advertising is door to door flyers. They can get results if well executed. A limited distribution to a specific area can test the waters.

Bottom line: I tell clients to be constantly asking, “How did you hear about us?” when you get a new inquiry – then track to see if the inquiry turns into new business. (Some advertising only gets the attention of tire kickers.) At the same time, learn where your potential customers get their information. Is it from Facebook, a news site, Google or the grocery store bulletin board. If you don’t know, then ask them. The answers to this research should inform how you spend your advertising dollars. If you get a lot of business (not just inquiries) from one source, then it’s worth it for you. If not, then consider alternatives.

How do you know if your site is mobile-friendly? Google has a mobile-friendly test page where you can submit your website’s URL and it will let you know in a few seconds if it meets their criteria.

The easiest way to have a mobile-friendly website is for it to be responsive. That means the website will detect the browser’s window size and use a different layout for small screens — as in mobile devices — ensuring text isn’t too small to read and links aren’t too small to tap.

Even if ranking is not important for you, it’s good to give your visitors a positive experience when they visit your sit.

We began designing all of our websites to be responsive as of January 2013, so if we developed or re-designed to your website since then, it is mobile-friendly. If it’s older than that, you probably need to make the change.

Remember, the purpose of the legislation is to prevent spam, not kill business. Canada is the last G7 nation to adopt an anti-spam law according to the Toronto Star. It’s about time, Canada has a bad reputation for sending out spam. Legislation aside, do you want to be known as a spammer?

The nerd that I am, I sat down and read not only the government’s CASL FAQ, but the legislation and the regulations too, to try and get the story straight. This is what I learned.

Fact #1: The law relates to promotional emails (in government-speak, a “commercial electronic message” or CEM), that is an email where its purpose is to encourage participation in a commercial activity. It does not include informational articles nor business correspondence where a business relationship already exists.

Fact #2: The law says the sender of an email MUST do three things to comply:

• identify themselves and include contact information, including their physical mailing address, in emails
• have explicitly received the recipient’s permission to receive their promotional emails (opt-in)
• include an unsubscribe process to opt-out

Fact #3: You CANNOT:

• collect email addresses from websites to build your list
• buy or rent a list—don’t even go there. That’s true spamming in my books
• have an opt-in option on a form with the default set to “Yes”

So who can you send to?

• Current customers and prospects. The legislation defines “current” as someone you have done business with in the past two years or who has made an inquiry or request for quote in the last 6 months.
• People who specifically opted-in. You can get permission verbally or in writing, including a sign up form on your website

Fact #4: You do not have to have opt-in permission from everyone on your list by July 1, 2014, or else. The legislation assumes for the next 36 months (3 years) that you have opt-in permission for your existing contacts where a business relationship exists. That means you have until July 1, 2017 to get them to opt-in. But you do have to eventually get everyone’s permission. You must have opt-in permission for anyone added to your list as of July 1, 2014.

Fact #5: The onus is on you, the sender, to prove the recipient opted-in. That means you should probably document when and how the person opted in. Using an email marketing service does a lot of the record-keeping for you. (Disclosure: I sell email marketing services)

Fact #6: While the law applies to nonprofits, registered charities have an exemption if the primary purpose of the email is to raise funds for the charity.The Canadian charity network Imagine Canada (no relation to us) has an excellent FAQ about charities and CASL.

Fact #7: If someone gives you their business card, you can add them to the list with implied permission if you a) only send messages that are related to their role or duties in an official or business capacity; and b) they have not specifically told you they do not want to receive your emails. If you put out a fish bowl for a business card “draw” then add everyone to your distribution list, that may be iffy. Be safe—and courteous—and include a sign that says dropping your card in also means you opt-in.

Just be nice

Asking permission is actually a better way to show someone you care about the relationship right from the beginning. If you don’t, you run the risk of alienating them. Case in point: Once, at a networking event, I exchanged cards with another attendee. I asked if I could add them to my mailing list, but they declined. Fair enough. However, I soon learned they went ahead and added me to their list—without asking permission. Poor form. I will never do business with that person. Ever.

Breathe out, relax.

If you got someone’s express permission when they were added to your list in the first place, you should be good. If you’ve been doing that all along or they are a current customer/supporter, then it doesn’t look like you have anything to worry about. There is nothing in the legislation that says you must now renew that permission—unless, of course, the relationship has changed since they were added. Evaluating every contact in your database can be cumbersome, so it wouldn’t hurt to ask your contacts to re-confirm their wishes to be on the safe side. Besides, I’m not a lawyer.

But I’ll loose a bunch of my subscribers!

Yes, you probably will. But it may not be a bad thing. If you have a lot of people on your distribution list without permission, they probably aren’t good customers (or supporters) anyway. You could, in fact, be saving money by sending to a smaller, better quality list. And those still on the list will be truly interested in you. Sounds like a win!

Do you have more questions? Join the conversation and leave your question.

Click logo to see enlargement

We were approached by Runnalls Industries to begin the process of revitalizing their website. As we talked, it became clear that the company was beginning a new stage in its history, with the launch of a new division. That warranted a fresh look for a revitalized company.

The old logo had done well for 25+ years, but it was looking tired and dated. After a few design concepts and a couple of different colour options, the new logo was born.

Here is the final product, with the old logo for comparison. We hope you like it.

1. Flat design
   Until recently we have lived in an era of “skeuomorphism”.  (I had to look it up, too.) It refers to graphics designed to look like their real-life equivalents: examples are buttons that look dimensional and borders that look like stitched leather. Now the style is flat design. Just look at the latest smart phone and you’ll know what I mean. Minimalist is what comes to mind. Images have clean edges, solid colour (no gradients), the feel of an icon, and—well—flat, with no dimensional techniques applied. Its intent is to make communication simpler. Yes, it looks cool, but feels sterile to some.
2. Colour
   Colour has always been important, but we seem to be in a cycle where the muted tones are giving way to vibrant colours that have a slightly human feel to them like yellow-gold, teal, coral, warm red and cyan.
3. Authentic images
   It seems a bit of a contradiction, but in an age where two-dimensional design styles rule, images that are more authentic are gaining in popularity, according to stock photography site Shutterstock’s 2014 global trends report. We don’t necessarily want people with “retail smiles” in our brochure, but people who are real, experiencing our pain. Images with filters applied, like the ones we see on Instagram are more common, as people identify the style with contemporary culture.

What do you think? Join the conversation.

But when did that happen? Ten years ago? Twenty? It’s best to step back and evaluate your brand’s visual identity every so often. I suggest every five years. That is enough time for it to begin to stick with people, but not so long that they become bored with it. I am NOT saying that you need to change it that often, but you should at least blow the dust off the brand book and see what it says.

As part of the evaluation process, here are five questions to ask yourself:

1. Has your business changed focus or direction since it was last evaluated?
   Does your logo design and brand identity continue to reflect your business, what it is and what it does? Maybe you have shifted your focus from products to service or dramatically changed your product line. Your logo design and brand identity needs to reflect who you are, not who you were. Have you shifted to a more upscale clientele — or reached out to the masses? Maybe your business is perceived as old and tired and you need to inject new life. A word of warning: If the business itself is indeed old and tired, a new identity won’t change that. But if you are pressing the reset button on your business, then a new brand identity is in order.
2. Does the identity look old or out of fashion?
   This can be rather subjective. The owner of a small business may be emotionally tied to the original identity — it’s your baby we’re talking about, after all. Maybe you even designed that original logo. Try to objectively consider elements. A graphic designer or independent expert can help you with this. Look at type styles. Not only do they reflect a tone or mood, but can reflect a specific era. Cooper Bold was really cutting edge in the 80s, but now it reminds people of big moustaches, big glasses and bigger hair! Colours, too, can evoke a specific era. This may be intentional—or not. In more recent years, we have seen a shift from dimensional art, with bevels, drop shadows and gradients, to the new, ultra simplified “flat design” you see on an iPhone today. Sometimes you simply don’t like it any more. There is some merit in that, too.
3. Does it continue to work in all environments
   Have you added products or marketing avenues where your identity doesn’t work well? Maybe your identity was developed for print advertising, where you had the luxury of space and the ability to control colours precisely. But, does the identity still work in web ads or mobile apps? Maybe you now need to include your logo on small products, but it is not recognizable when it’s so small.
4. How has the marketplace changed
   What has happened in the marketplace that will affect how you are perceived? Typical things to consider are: Has your target demographic shifted‚are they aging with you or is it a new generation you need to attract? Is there new technology that affects how you do business? Are you reaching your prospects in new ways? Do you have new competitors and what does their visual identity look like? It could be perceived as more appealing than yours.
5. How much equity do you have in your current business identity?
   Brand recognition is a coveted thing. You run the risk of losing some of that recognition if you make changes, especially drastic ones, or make those changes too soon. That is why many large corporations will make incremental changes to their logo design or overall brand identity. They may feel a need to update the look so they stay relevant without losing their loyal followers. At the same time, maybe you need to shake off outdated attitudes to your business and have a fresh start.

So, are you due to ask yourself those hard questions? Don’t think you have to do it yourself. In fact, it may be better if you got an outside, objective evaluation of your brand identity. Talk to your graphic designer or marketing expert.

Plug-ins add functionality to your site without having to change the core code of the system. Or they might be designed to make the core application behave differently. Regardless, they are often very useful.

There are now well over 29,000 plug-ins available in the WordPress Plug-in Repository. However, there are a handful of plug-ins I install on virtually every site I develop, just as a matter of course. They are my go-to solutions for a variety of situations. So I thought I’d share that list with you.

1. Online Backup for WordPress
   Automatically back up your website—the database or the files on the server or both. Simply create a free account online at backup-technology and set your back up schedule—several options and frequencies from hourly to weekly. This plug-in will also allow you to create backups for local storage. It’s like free insurance. [Update June 2015: alas, this plugin is no longer available, as the supplier no longer makes this service available on theirs servers.]
2. Wordfence Security
   With popularity and success comes the hacker. Highly recommended by web security professionals, this plug-in allows your site to stand up to brute force attacks and helps you keep your core applications and plug-ins up to date (a good defense against attacks). It also allows you to block by IP address or country. It also lets you see where there may be problems with bad links and the like. Paid upgrade option available, but you get a lot of protection just from the free version.
3. Contact Form 7
   This form generator isn’t the fanciest one, but it is still my go-to plug-in for basic contact forms. The form builder does force you to look at and use code, but it guides you through the process and it’s less complicated than other form generators I’ve tried. It only does form-to-email, but does have the option for attachments and field validation. The plug-in is so popular that people have begun creating plug-ins to enhance the plugin! (My favourite of those is Really Simple CAPTCHA)
4. Google Analyticator
   If you want, you can simply insert the ga.js script into the header of your site’s theme, but this plug-in gives you so much more. For example, you can exclude logged in users (such as yourself as the administrator) for a more accurate numbers. You also get a quick snapshot of your analytics right on your WordPress dashboard.
5. WordPress SEO by Yoast
   Granted, WordPress is pretty search engine-friendly out of the box, but this plug-in is considered the standard of SEO helpers. Identify the keyword/phrase you want for the page and this plug-in helps you make sure it is in all the right places. It also helps you get set up for sharing with Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
6. Query Posts
   Say you want only posts from one category to show on your sidebar or you want to show content from a specific page. Enter Query Posts. It allows you to set up in a widget exactly what you want, through a custom search query. Choose a specific page or post, category, publication status, date range, author or who knows what else. You even have some control over how the content is formatted. Note: This plug-in has not been updated in over two years, so no guarantees it will stick around.
7. Dynamic Widgets
   For the most part, what you put in your sidebar widget area appears on every page. That can be limiting. Dynamic Widgets comes to the rescue. This plug-in lets you determine which page, post, category or archive a widget appears on. you can specify page by page or simply mark exceptions. Very handy if you want a different call to action on different pages.
8. Meta Slider
   There are a LOT of slideshow plugins out there, but Meta Slider has quickly become my favourite. It’s simple to use and easy to format. Users with Editor status can add to or update sliders.
9. Email Javascript Cloaker
   This plugin allows you to have email addresses as clickable links on your site without the fear of having the address harvested by spammers. Just enter the email address as a short code. (A short code is a way of inserting a function or element into a page through the normal page editor.)

But how do you convey professionalism in a website? Nowadays, the rules for professional-looking websites are much the same as for any other medium, such as a print brochure.

1. Direct and to the point
   You may think that everything is important, but you need to harness your passion. Consider what the MOST CRITICAL pieces of information are. Then edit that down to the essentials. Remember, website visitors have a short attention span. You need to get to the point right away. As a professional, you expected to know how to communicate well. The temptation is to dump all that extra information that won’t fit in your print brochure onto the website. To some extent, that is true, but the key message points still need to be front and centre.
2. Easy navigation
   This has never changed. Visitors have to be able to find the information they need easily and quickly. Navigation needs to be well-organized and intuitive. Avoid menu labels that use jargon which might cause people to miss what they are looking for. Like information should be grouped together. Also, keep all information accessible with as few clicks as possible.
3. Consistent styling
   Your website designer has taken great care to create a website that is well-designed, with consistent colours, white space, fonts and styling. It needs to be clean and clear. I beg of you, please don’t decide that certain sentences need to be highlighted or your clincher sales point has to be double-sized, bold, italicized and in fire engine red. If important information is getting lost on the page, then there’s probably too much on the page. (see point 1.)
4. Good typography
   We no longer need to rely on Arial, Times New Roman, Courier New and Verdana – the common denominator system fonts – as the only ones that will display properly on a website. Web font technology means your site can use the same fonts that portray your brand everywhere, whether in print or online.
5. Good content
   Show your readers you know what you’re talking about. In today’s jargon, it’s called “content marketing”. All it means is that you show your expertise in your field by talking intelligently about it. This is why informative articles (a.k.a. blogs) on your website are important. This way you are adding information without constantly changing the basic pages on your site. Blogs are also good for making your site more visible to search engines. Keep the writing style consistent and professional. That does not mean it has to be formal, technical or stuffy. You get more mileage out of a friendly, yet well-crafted, informative tone.
6. Good images
   Professionally created images that illustrate your brand are essential. They could be photographs, icons or illustrations. It doesn’t really matter, so long as they reflect your brand, you are consistent in their use and they are good quality. Be consistent and loyal to your brand. Make sure your images are sized properly for the web. Using an over-sized image means your site will load slowly.
7. It works on all platforms
   The number of website views on mobile devices is growing exponentially. A site that does notwork on smartphones and tablets is seen as old-fashioned – not to mention hard to read!

What do you think? Join the conversation by leaving a comment.