Snap are exhibiting on stands 3 and 4 at the Keeping Business Local Expo on Tuesday 7th September 9am – 4.30pm at Madejski Stadium Royal Berkshire Conference Centre RG2 OFL Reading

Snap marketing are ready to launch 2 new websites one for print partners GL Print based in Aldermaston Calleva Park and SEC Ltd – Specialist Engineering Contracts head office based in Hook.

Watch this space with links to view.

debbi

What’s Matthew on about now?  Actually, in his spare time he makes guitars and the One Basic Rule of woodworking is “ Measure Twice – Cut Once”.

In other words, before you make a cut you need to be damn sure that you are cutting in the right place!

Translated into marketing strategy, and especially web design, you must get the thinking straight (the measuring) first before you start spending money (the cut). Simples!

Like many of our current clients, you are thinking about a new website.  That site you had done is now looking out-dated and you are looking at the options.  Friends and colleagues give you loads of advice – and it all conflicts!  You have read our article on the difference between the various web sites on offer – but where do you start?

Really think about what you want before going to design, or before you brief your web design or creative agency.  Have a plan, written down on one sheet of A4 on what you want the web site to do for your company and your business.  Think about objectives – what do you want to achieve with the website – and this principle applies to any marketing really.
Think about what you are trying to achieve – are you looking for more sales in which case your focus should be on lead generation.  Or are you looking to create better awareness of your brand, to disseminate information about you services or products – to seek information, are you looking for feedback?
Or perhaps you are looking to develop a website that sells on-line in which case there are many other issues to consider such as the shopping cart technology but most importantly SEO – to be successful, you will need a constant stream of prospects visiting your site –and they need to be converted.
Write it all down as a draft design brief and discuss and agree it with your web developer – in advance.  He/she will thank you for it and you will get a better result and thinking about it we might just develop one for you to download – good idea?

Let us know!

We all have views on what constitutes great design.

But your collateral is the foundation of your marketing armoury, and it must reflect you, your brand and products in the best possible light.

So, naturally, we would obviously recommend you have a professional design agency do it for you! But its interesting to understand some of the wrinkles that the professionals use day-in day-out.

But whatever route you choose, here’s some ideas about how to use images.

Worth a thousand words?

They say a picture is worth a thousand words – but in the ultra competitive world of marketing, where you have an instant to create an impression, your images need to be spot on in terms of resolution.
Good images cost money – whether you buy them in from a library or if you get them shot yourself. So you will need to use them as much as you can to maximise your investment.

Always keep the the original, and its layers (if any), as a .PSD file before flattening, because if you need to edit it again, this will not be possible if you do not. As we used to with transparencies – work from a copy of it – always keep the original un-edited –its so easy to click the wrong button and over-write the original.

Work in the highest resolution you can initially. You will need at least 300 dpi (dots per inch) for print and only 72 dpi for the web – its not worth trying to go higher on the web – higher resolutions are slow to load and won’t give a significantly better image on-screen.

When presented with an image that is too large for the area it needs to populate, then this should be reduced in photoshop to the correct TIFF size as a CMYK (if working in 4 colour). Remember you must never increase the resolution size of the image more than 10% than the original as this will deteriorate the image and can cause pixelation.

JPEG is a commonly used method of compression for photographic images. The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and image quality. JPEG typically achieves 10:1 compression with little perceptible loss in image quality. JPEG compression is the most is the most common format for storing and transmitting photographic images on the web.
This is not always necessary for PDF documents, as the size has no impact on the postscript, except the end size when you use them for print.

Give us a call or drop us an email if you need help.