So what have we been doing through the dark winter months of 2011/12?

Once again the interest in building web sites is increasing rapidly. And most of this time has been devoted to designing and coding client websites. The recent investments in our web hosting platform (a choice shared hosting, VPS or dedicated servers) has made a perfect marriage to our web design production. It's interesting that clients are wanting more dynamic sites and integrated CMS systems to help their web sites perform better. Interest in dedicated E-commerce sites has been strong.

E-mail newsletter templates are also a growing trend as clients explore the benefits of pro-active e-mail marketing to keep customers engaged with their brand and products. We should have some exiting news soon regarding e-mail marketing so watch this space.

So what about the traditional products like printing? Traditional brochures do seem to be in terminal decline as clients opt to spend on web sites. However the person to person marketing material, business cards, mailers, leaflets still persists. It's interesting that business cards especially are increasing in quality with clients opting for lamination and custom die cutting.

Display products like roller banners, signs, posters and display boards are still firmly on the list of must have tools to engage with a prospective client at exhibitions and point of sale area. The key with these display items is to not skip on the design work. Our new range of display products has been a firm factor in this growth. We should have the website updated soon to reflect the new product range.

What about our new services like mobile websites and iPad publishing? It's still early days for some clients. I would recommend looking into how these could improve your business before the competition does. I'll leave that for another day (post).

So that's about it. To sum up it's been a busy design studio. But not that busy! We'd love to hear about that exiting new project your thinking of getting off the ground. Call us.

David Owen.

It's time for Christmas cards again!  We've put together a collection of Christmas Card Designs to choose from.

View all the designs here

A typical scenario; a local business man calls up the printing company and asks, "I need some colour leaflets." Salesman replies "What kind of leaflets are you looking for?" Print buyer confirms, "I need your cheapest A5 colour leaflets. And I've got my own artwork I've done in Word."

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You may asking what's wrong with that? On the face of it not much but delve a little deeper and there are some gaping holes in the logic of this approach to buying printing.

1. The leaflets are to promote a business. Buying cheap will almost mean lighter paper making the final product feel cheaper. Not that this is wrong if that's what is intended here. But what is the final product/service? A leaflet handout for an exhibition, that's sounds fine. A colour leaflets to sell the services of a skilled cabinet joiner probably not. Perhaps a high quality laminated postcard might be more help here.

2. Why colour leaflets at A5? Is this decision made on leaflet content and how and where and why it's being used or simply, it's a size the print buyer knows of?

3. Why seek the lowest printing price of leaflet dismissing every other option? We're making a business decision here. It's all about getting the best return on investment rather than cheapest print cost. To put it at its very simplest it's how much money you make not what you save.

4. Why is the print buyer using his own artwork for his printing when it's done in the wrong format and most definitely produce a poor result? Modern print designers can produce print artwork to a very high standard and at a reasonable cost. Almost certainly saving the time the print buyer took to produce his Word artwork. If he costed his own time it's cheaper to allow a designer do the work. More importantly the print designer knows how to make the colour leaflets look professional and visually market the client products. Thus increasing the likelihood of a sale and make a profit which is the whole reason why the project exists in the first place!

To summarise:

• Decide on a budget for the job.
• Talk to the print company about print options to get the best out of this budget.
• Decide on function (how the printing is to be handled or distributed) before choosing a size.
• Discuss if you have a design/artwork service and ask how the design can be improved to create a better response.
• Don't skimp on the design! Remember it's the printed design/image that the most important part. 

David Owen
(David is responsible for client marketing and preparing designs for printing and web sites).

As with all golf club web sites, good course photography takes a very prominent place in the design and layout. A slideshow gallery of golf course photography appears in page headers across the web site.  The showcase movie is configured to play on mobile devices and the desktop. 

Members Login

The web site also features a private members area where members can share club information.

Client Editable

The site uses our WebEdit CMS (Content Management System) making is easy for the client to add pages, create photo galleries etc. The system also features multiple editors with different levels of access to editing pages.

Re-branding and logo design

The client wanted to re-brand the club so logo designs were prepared with multiple variants to be used in print, media and signage. The final full colour logo is feature in the web site.

Golf Club Web Design

We've re-designed a few Golf Club Web Site which have proved very useful to promote the clubs services to new and existing golfing members. Why not have a chat to hear how we can help you.

http://www.tree-surgeons-leeds.co.uk

The brief was to create a micro site that was "user editable" so the client can quickly update content using our WebEdit system in a web browser. Twitter updates are displayed in the websites home page as part of the design.

A tree surgery gallery is a fun way of showing clients how they work. The system enables the client to quickly add photos.

In addition to the design and build of the website we are also monitoring website visitor activity so we can regularly review SEO optimisation to record overall performance of the web site.

Further work for the artwork and design and printing of business cards and colour leaflets have also been completed to support the launch.

We've created a Facebook page for Printline Advertising, if you'd like to check it out...

Visit Printline Advertising on Facebook

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1. Reviewing website performance and goals

Where is your website headed this year? Reappraise your website and pinpoint where things might be going wrong and areas where improvements can be made.

2. Website bloat

Trimming the fat on a website is always beneficial. Trimming file sizes and reducing the amount of pictures used on a page will allow your user to load the page quicker ~ less chance of going elsewhere whilst waiting. Review your website text and cut the waffle!  Your readers want to know quickly what the page is about.  Make sure the important information is at the top of the page, you can't guarantee the reader will read all your page.   Less photos and smaller photos will make the page load quicker your user will appreciate a quick loading page ~ you can't always guarantee they're on the fastest broadband.

A lean and mean website can get a tiny edge in the google ratings, however sure the relevant information remains don't trim that!

4. Offer optimised content for your users

Your mobile users will grow.  2011 will bring an ever growing army of visitors using mobile devices. The trend will continue the grow. The above measures will help website visitors with a small screen, but perhaps the ultimate would be to develop a mobile website specifically for these mobile user to quickly get to the correct information. Website for restaurants quickly come to mind where this approach could benefit.

5. Email marketing

When was the last time you contacted your website users? A regular newsletter can be a great way of informing your customer base about your product and services they would not otherwise see unless they visited there website. Email marketing can be very easily measured to see who read your email and when, what links they clicked on and which website pages they visited.

6. Offer Expert information

If you're the expert in a particular field, do you client know about this?  Keeping a blog, with regular blog posting, not only help your website have a regular update (the search engines will like this) your customer will appreciate have a better insight into what you can offer them and why.

7.  Social Media

Love it or hate it, Twitter and Facebook is growing. Engaging your customers using these platforms will help traffic find your site.  Create links from your website to social media sites or embed Twitter streams into your web site.

Printline Advertising
If you need to talk to an expert on how to promote your website
~ We design and host websites for UK clients

Another year is drawing to and end and the decade!  We'd love to thank all our customers and wish them Happy Christmas and a Prosperous New Year! 

We look forward to working with you next year and can't wait to unveil the new printing products and website design services we're busy creating for you.

After the responding to the initial web design quote request, the agreed design brief for "stage one" of the website project (to co-inside with launch of a new business) included;

• Logo design work
• Branding
• Content management system (CMS) for the client to maintain the day-to-day web content of text and pictures
• Photo galleries (editable by the client)

The launch was supported by the design and printing of; 
Business Cards, Carbonless Order Forms and invoices.

Ongoing work is to support the search engine optimisation of the site and measure its success.

The website and domain was hosted on the Printine Advertising web servers.

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If you're struggling to adapt or create business card artwork for yourself, talk to us and our studio can help set up the business card layouts ready for printing.

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Pressed for time customers are already overloaded with information. Resist the urge to fill your printing or web page with too much information. Just because there is space, does not mean it should be used. Use space wisely.

The more you say, the less is heard.

David Owen

A noticeable trend has appeared over the last year or so (which is probably in part due to the changing competitive business landscape), in that, as work is getting harder to come by, the colour leaflet is called in to action as a “quick fix” to drum up extra trade.  No harm in that I hear you say. Of course not, any publicity will help your cause.  Work is quiet, so let's advertise.

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This is my point, why on earth wait when work is slow, you should be keeping your pool of potential customers informed about your services all the time. This could be the reason why work is slow in the first place.

The urgency to get orders from your “drum up trade” leaflet effects the way you perceive the results of your leaflet marketing. You want immediate sales there and then. The wider thoughts of informing your market that you're there when you need us, and pinpointing a campaign to particular sales points, tend to be lost in the “we do everything approach” and “hurry, buy now” at a discount.

Stop, and think!

Why do you need the leaflet? identify the reasons why its to be sent out, who its aimed at, and where/how its going to be distributed. Then you will have some idea of how the leaflet imagery and its message is going to increase the reply results.

Some points to consider when preparing leaflet campaigns:

• Keep your main message short and to the point
• Consider different sized leaflets or use a postcard
• Have prominent call to action (message, bold telephone, web address)
• If you're giving an offer, make it something genuinely useful. Don't skimp!
• Don’t skimp on design or quality of the leaflet ~ create something interesting!
• Consider following up with a sales call
• Send more than one campaign over a period of time, changing the pitch, test which gets more response

Finally, some leaflets will always fall on fallow ground. Sales is a numbers game, the more you send out, the more likely a reply. The absolute worst thing that might happen is that nobody will return a call to your leaflet promotion (obviously not everyone will need your services the same day of a promotion). That does not mean it has not worked.  Consider, 1,000 good leaflets sent out equals 1,000 customers are aware of your products, how invaluable is that!

David Owen

• Do you have a website?
• Does it perform for you?
• What would you do to improve your website?
• Do you have a budget for your website?

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Even though we singled these websites out purely because they had obvoius flaws the results were worrying.

Apart from the one business who was not actually sure they had a website, almost exclusively (about 80%) the website owners did not have any method to measure their website performance. They had no plans for improving their website. There was no budget for online advertising. In fact their website was produced at no cost by either the website owners themselves or members of owners family who were not professional website designers. They were completely unware of their website problems, and did not understand the potential of what a good website can do for them and how a bad website could damage enquiries and orders.

This information was a real eye opener. These businesses obviously needed many thousands of pounds to run, and would surely make good use of extra income from online advertising. Their website's were crying out for some love, yet nothing was spent or planned for their website in the future. It was as if they just did not care.

Please make sure your website does not fall into the above category.

After listening to all the Buzz about the iPhone 4 launch today and thinking how popular and commonplace Apple's products are now. I can't help thinking  how Apple has changed the design and print industry over the years and in particular helped our business from the early years onward.

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We looked at our first Apple products (Macintosh LC and Apple laser printer) back in 1992, this kick started moving design and printing away from preparing artwork on drawing boards and cameras to fully digital printing workflows today. We've always used Apple computers ever since.

There were times when clients used to scoff at us using non-compatible expensive equipment, commenting that "you can't run a business on non Microsoft products". One year we very nearly weakened to buy cheaper PC's, lured by low prices, and the fear that Apple would not survive in the face of Microsoft. We knew the Apple products saved more money than they cost so stuck with them long term and still use them today.

Apple market value recently overtook Microsoft, how the tables have turned from a small computer company to now, as many (nay, everybody) now realise the benefit in investing in Apple kit.

The way design and marketing material is produced has merged between print and online web applications, Apple machines are very much at the forefront of this technology for us, I'm sure we will be using them well into the future.

This post was written on an iPhone app. It's been an interesting journey Apple

The design brief for "stage one" of the website project (to co-inside with the shop opening) included;

• Logo design work
• Branding
• Photo gallery
• Content management system (CMS) for the client to maintain the day-to-day web content of text and pictures

The launch was supported by the design and printing of;
Swing tickets, Business Cards, Carbonless Order Forms.

Ongoing work is to support the search engine optimisation of the site and measure its success.

The website and domain is hosted on the Printine Advertising web servers.

Importantly we will have tips for you to get the most out of marketing material be it real world design and printing or web sites online.