As I mentioned in my last blog, brand promise is communicated by your logo and it should be carried through on the type of font you use on your website, and its design style as well – is it cluttered and free flowing or spare and highly organized? Whatever style you have determined resonates with your ideal clients needs to be replicated on every single one of your marketing materials. Ideally you want the same graphic designer doing the work. Consistency is king.

You have up to eight seconds (some experts say it’s less than that) to grab a website visitor’s attention and convince them to stay on your website in order to find out more about you. Your copy might be spectacular, but if it isn’t packaged in a well-branded, visually intriguing manner, that visitor will fly off your site and get on to the next one. Does your competitor deserve the business more than you do? Your graphics can help convince them to stay.

Good graphic treatment of your website, altogether, can contribute to:

• Strong brand recognition
• A highly professional reputation
• The symbolic communication of ideas
• The efficient presentation of your information and
• Revenue generation

Really good graphic designers are very special people and they should be a key part of your team. Think of a designer as someone who speaks your customer’s language. You could natter at your ideal customer all day long in the language you yourself speak, and then hope, vainly, that customers will respond. But with just a few whispers, your graphic designer can tell your ideal customer exactly what they need to hear to feel friendly about the idea of having a conversation with you. Which is, after all, the goal of your marketing.

Graphic design involves a lot of emotion and it’s communicated through colour, shape, proportion and white space. A good designer spends a lot of time getting to know their clients and they spend a lot of time staring at the wall, thinking. They dream. They look at a few design magazines for inspiration. They ponder. They go get another cup of coffee. They call their mothers. They look for their favourite pencil. They sharpen it. They shut the door to their office. They do a little deep breathing. They lean in to their blank computer screen. And they start to play with ideas.

Graphic design is a highly creative, and yet often very technical process, and the logo, website or brochure that a designer creates is the culmination of years of training, tons of practice, and probably more than a few mistakes. Different designers tend to have different design styles and some are likely going to be more suitable to your business and your clientele than others. But you want one involved, at the very least, in the creation or updating of your logo, and the standardization of your brochures, letterhead, business card and signage. I love it when a designer is involved in the creation of a website, but not all web design companies will pay the extra freight of hiring a graphic designer who understands visual communication exceedingly well, and who gets the technical side of web development. Some graphic designers have made the leap into the technical side of web design but be aware that there are distinct skill sets involved in the visual and technical aspects of web design and you want a website, ideally, that leverages both priorities.

If you’d like to find out more about how Crossman Communications can help you tell your business story through your online content, please connect with me directly at susan@crossmancommunications.com. You can also book yourself in right away for a free consultation at www.meetme.so/susancrossman.