Branding

“A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another. If the consumer (whether it’s a business, a buyer, a voter or a donor) doesn’t pay a premium, make a selection or spread the word, then no brand value exists for that consumer.” Seth Godin

Branding is a very broad and complex concept. I could say that it is almost as complex as a human can be. Brands are like the personages in a play. Each character is the essence of a concept. Think to the Shakespeare’s characters. They absorb the essence of a concept, give it a name, a face not only through the face of the actor but trough gestures, through the way that character behave in relation with the other characters, through his role in the play, through his dreams, his thoughts. Creating a character in a play is like creating a branding strategy and setting up his relations with the other characters in a given context (in our case the market). Giving it a name it helps the author not only to distinguish the character but to strengthen its personality. And so on.

Logo design & visual identity

From a communication point a view, a logo is like a haiku in literature or like a message on Twitter: you have to say a story with a limited number of characters. In a logo you have to present the essence of a concept in a meaningful visual way and more than this you have to create around it another story. Actually through all the elements that you create for a brand there is a secondary mission: to open new paths of thinking, to amplify the initial essence of the brand, to involve your audience in your story, to determine them to create around it. From a technical perspective the logo design is a process that starts with a research phase, then it continue with the sketches, mainly on paper and finally going to the final step: digital. But logo design process involve another dimension: the context. Your logo could be amazing from a graphical point of view, to be pleasant to the eye but it has to be relevant to the context, appropriate. Then from a technical point of view, the logo should fit everywhere: on a web site, on a paper, on a banner. All of these and many others aspects are involved in the process of creating a logo and all of these elements in the end will create the perfect logo.

Naming

Naming is part of the storytelling. Think now to the titles of the books that you read. A good name makes a good story better. Naming is in a way similar with the logo design process. You have to extract from the story the essential and display it in a way that makes sense for the message that you want to transmit. But both of them have at the base “the meaning”. Naming process is part techincal, meaning theory, and part creativity. The technical part is very important mainly our days when a name once created should have relevance across cultures. I found once a name for a car type: Nova that was sold in South America where spanish is the main language and it translates in “No Va” – “it doesn’t work”. So, naming is a very important element in the process of branding.

Brand story

We all like stories. We grew up with stories. We nurture our souls with stories. Media companies are selling stories not news not movies not books but stories. We are stories for the others. Good stories or stories to tell to the children to teach them what to avoid in their behavior. But at the end of the day we’ll go at home telling a story: the story of that day. Brands have their stories too. On one hand its about the technical story, let’s name it in this way, the facts about that brand and then the emotional story. But in a brand strategy, these two will end up in a unique brand story that will select the most important elements, according to the brand strategy, and deliver them in a format that will be accessible and relevant to the related audience.

How it’s working

Costs are a key element in the development process of every product but the quality of the code is very important too. Keeping this balance is very important. The web development solutions that I offer to my clients are based on my personal connections inside this industry. How I work: I scale each project and choose the right person or team for each project so my client will pay the right price for each task. For the medium term projects that require the constant involvement of a team I use my connections to select a local IT company for my client. I also partnership with a HR company to select developers when I need to create more specialized teams based on the project requirements.

About Web Development

Building a website or a web application is a complex process. Everybody in this industry is trying to make it simple but the result is sometimes getting more complicated than it was initially. There are platforms built with the idea of making these things more accessible to the end user, to the client, and empower the end user to build its own product but most of time the client will end up employing a web design/ web development company to develop that product or to customize it. This is happening because marketing is not a tool, it’s strategy. A website or a web application is a reflection of that strategy.

CMS

When I develop a new product for a client, first question in my mind will be how to think about this new project in terms of technology, what is the best technology that I should use. Most of the time for the development projects I try to use the mainstream technologies as this choice will reflect in the final costs of my clients: mainstream technology means a good support and this translate automatically in lower costs for my client. This choice of course has its downside too, for example sometimes using WordPress for developing a web application could raise security questions but this depends from project to project.

Custom Web Applications

Most of the time the web development is more about creating custom solutions. Of course there is an important part for each project that could have its foundation built on a standard platform but today web means more than creating a solution better than your competition, it’s about exploring and developing concepts and ideas that will finally deliver a custom new experience for your users. Because of the development high costs I recommend to first create a prototype of the project and test it. In this way you will get a feedback of your application before starting to invest in the development process.

E-Mail Marketing

With an ROI of around 4,300% (according to the Direct Marketing Association), email is still on the top. How to explain this in a world dominated by the “social media” subject? Simple. At least from one point of view. In the context of the social media evolution the email became the most personal place. So, being able to get there is a very important thing for your business. But how to get there? Email Marketing is first of all strategy and it starts in the moment when you design your experience across your website, when you create your content strategy. In order to get an email address from an user you need first to deliver some content that will engage that user. Asking for the user email address is an important step in your strategy. On the other side, while the web technology advanced so much in the last years, the email is still in ’99 so designing a good layout for your email needs a very good understanding of the technical limitations of the email clients. Designing a good layout for a casino or affiliate email marketing campaign has some particularities too. The copy for your email should follow some rules too, and a good copy for an email marketing campaign should start from a very good understanding of the user behavior related to the email content in relation with the technical conditions of the email client. Every piece of design is an experience. The colors, the fonts, the copy, the format, all of these elements at the end of the line creates an experience that we’ll trigger a related behavior from the user.

Search Marketing

Today the consumer behavior is changing permanently. In this new landscape, businesses need to adapt very quickly in order to remain in the focus of the users. Search Marketing through its components SEO and PPC is an increasingly important element in the marketing mix. PPC: Writing a good copy for a PPC ad takes time and needs experience: from understanding your business, research your target audience, competitive research, every step we’ll help at the end to create the relevant copy ad. On the other side paid search is more than the ad copy. Your landing pages are a key element too. The experience that you create around your landing pages will finally influence the decision of the user that arrived there. Related to the design for the casino landing pages or the design for the affiliates landing pages there are also particularities in terms of the user behavior but also general rules apply. Images are very important, so the look and feel of your landing page will influence the final decision. For the ecommerce: the reviews (69% of shoppers want product reviews), the product comparisons, the testimonials, video product demos, live chat are elements that influence the conversions of your landing pages. SEO: is related to the organic search results and because of its complexity it still has the air of a myth. Technical SEO on the other side, refering to the practices implemented on a website with the intention of maximising its usability, search engine crawling and indexing is still gaining ground.

Marketing Analytics

If many years ago a study related that 45% of executives “rely more on instinct than facts and figures to run their businesses” now this situation changed dramatically. In order to survive on the market you have to have relevant information before taking any decision and marketing now became increasingly a more data driven process. This year, in 2016, after I analysed the most usual issues that my clients confront with, specially the online casinos, I team up with InnerTrends in order to give my clients a tool for better monitoring their marketing process and more specifically their user onboarding process. From the business perspective, understanding the user behavior, being able to ask questions and receive precise answers is essential. InnerTrends does exactly this thing in a complex, innovative yet simple way and this is the reason why I choose them as a solution to the business challenges for my clients. For more informations please contact me.

Social Media Marketing

Social media became the disruptive model in the way we are expressing ourselves in the online space. It enabled us to express our ideas in a totally new way and this was the source for the success of marketing through social media channels. Now, social media is no longer just an auxiliary part of your marketing campaign but an integrated part. With a spending on social media that is expected to double to 25% of marketing budgets by 2020 social media is clearly becoming an important marketing channel. In US nearly 80 percent of local businesses have a Facebook page, and 62 percent are buying Facebook ads. Also, social media ranked as a top 3 source for new customers with referrals and websites as the top two sources. As any other marketing channel, social media has its rules and limitations too and building a strategy in this space requires a good understanding of these platforms. I design experiences and campaigns for social media working together with specialists, professionals or companies that knows how to apply all of these rules in order to achieve the success with a very good ROI.

APP Design & Prototype

I choose to quote these words of Walt Disney as they seem so appropriate for what means this marvelous app development space. You can design, create and build the most wonderful app but it takes people to decide about all of these. Your users will be that ones that will decide if the space that you created through your app would be a space that will capture their soul and mind. So, before starting to build an app, actually similar with any other project, product or service, you have to build it having in mind your intended audience. More than this, as you can see some of the app installs are never used or people tend to forget about your app after the first install. The web is miracoulos through it’s connections, being an open and live space and its dynamic comes through the simplicity of a link. An app is a relatively close space so you have to be able to create an amazing experience inside that space that will be enough for a user to come back and visit your app. So creating an app is a very difficult task. My solution to all of these is to first create a prototype and test it before starting a company to develop the concept. Sometimes an idea could seems genial but after you test it with real users you’ll understand that actually they don’t really need it at least in the format that you thought it will be the best answer. Going directly in production with an app development company will put you under pressure and force you to go further. While first creating a prototype of your app will give you time and precious feedback about your concept that you can use further to decide to develop your idea or to change it in a way that is more relevant to the consumers.

Choosing the right Platform

When you decide to build an app, an important decision refers to the platform that you will use. Of course it would be wonderful to be able to build for the most important platforms or at least for Android and iOS but this is a very expensive decision. Actually the decision about the platform that you will target should come from the fist moment as part of your business plan (in 2016, the average cost per app installation was $2.33 on Android and $1.46 on iOS) and app strategy around your targeted audience. First building a prototype of your app will help you to test your idea and gather important feedback from users related to the UX and finally to refine your product to its best status. Having a working prototype it will be much easier to present your idea to a development team as they will be able to understand exactly what features they need to build and trough this to cut lots of costs. Building something and then deciding to change during the development phase will cost you valuable resources. After we have a prototype I could recommend you a company to develop your product at the best rate. Being the designer of this prototype and knowing the team will be easy for me to communicate with them and implement the product faster. If you need more info please contact me.

Ecommerce Web Design

The shopping experience. After all, the products that are sold are almost the same. You can buy a MacBook Pro from several ecommerce websites. So why Apple decided to create a branded store for just 4 products at the moment when they initiated the store concept? Because the selling experience is that one that really matters. As an ecommerce brand, connecting with your customers at an emotional level and creating a story around your online shop will prove the most valuable element during the time.

Think that your ecommerce website is the only interaction point with your customers so you have to give them all the answers from the first moment about who you are, what you are and what is your promise and you can speak to them using only visual stimuli. A Kissmetric report shows that 42% of online shoppers base their opinion of a website just on the overall design and 52% didn’t return because of the design aesthetics.

Designing a shopping experience starts with having a good brand strategy and through this a good understanding of your customers: who they are, what drives them to make a purchase, what are their expectancies related to the shopping patterns, what do they like or don’t, what is their lifestyle habits, what are their problems related to the shopping patterns and how could you solve them and so on. All of these will help you to define a strategy of how to communicate with them and finally to set up a custom shopping experience. That’s why I don’t design websites. I design solutions. I design experiences. Ask for details.

Ecommerce Web Development

The web development process for an ecommerce website starts with choosing the right platform. The web development solutions that I provide are for the two major platforms: WooCommerce and Magento.
Choosing the right platform for your project is essential for your business. WooCommerce would be a very good solution for a small retailer from a cost/efficiency perspective: a well known plugin that adds e-commerce functionality for a WordPress website. If you need more sophisticated tools for your online store like marketing analysis, reporting and so on, Magento could be a good solution for a mid-size online store.
Creating an online store has two major components: the interface and the server side or the back end. I design the shopping experience. For the development of your online store, based on the requirements of your project, I’m using my professional network to find the best fit in terms of level of knowledge, price, availability and so on. If the complexity of your project requires the constant involvement of a team across a period of time I could hire a specialized team inside a company or hire a specialized team just for your project and manage that team. My professional network consists in individuals or companies that I personally know and evaluated before. Ask for details.