SAVANTNews | November / December 2003 - For Small Business Owners ................................................................................................................................................................ 1. ECS|DC Insight Lisa & Andrew, the executives at ECS|DC, want to wish you and your families a wonderful holiday and bright new year. You've got that Web site, you're selling products, and now you want to augment it by making your customers feel at home. You'll want to read, Personalization Not the Secret to E-Commerce, since only a mere 14 percent of consumers are really driven to buy more often online. Should one or two spaces follow a period? SAVANTTips | Design Tips for Non-Designers identifies your spacey confusion and paves the proportional path. Millions of colors and thousands of fonts! So many choices! Lisa's View explains why choosing simplicity keeps your customers coming back. Featured Question Why do I need a branding system if all I really want is a logo? wins K.Smith of Raleigh a $10 Barnes & Noble gift card! Thanks for subscribing and enjoy that turkey!
1. ECS|DC Insight 2. SAVANTTips 3. Recommended Reading 4. Internet Surveys 5. What's New on ECSTEWART.com 6. SAVANTQuote 7. How to Get on the Mailing List 8. ECS|DC Contact Info ...................................................... Additional Issues: Main ......................................................		................................................................................................................................................................ 2. SAVANTTips | Design Tips for Non-Designers Space isn't Bliss Should one or two spaces follow a period? This designer will tell you that only one space should follow a period. Two spaces dates back to typewriters and monospaced fonts, where the extra space was needed to differentiate the end of a sentence from the space between words. Two spaces are no longer necessary, and are in fact distracting, with today's proportional fonts. What is a proportional font? A font in which different characters have different pitches (widths), thus, each character is not the same size. Proportional fonts are also called proportional-pitch fonts. The opposite of a proportional font is a fixed-pitch font. Very few monospaced (i.e., non-proportional) fonts are used today on the Internet, except for perhaps Courier. ................................................................................................................................................................ 3. Recommended Reading: Lisa's View Millions of colors and thousands of fonts! This quick topic is for many of you non-designers out there. How many of you enjoy the tacky tinsel tours during the holidays? Yeah, me too. If we lived in the same neighborhood with competitive spirit like Chevy Chase in Christmas vacation, it would be an opportunity to support our local power and light plant. Print and interactive materials in the hands of our neighbor Chevy could be disastrous. Millions of colors and thousands of fonts lead us into a quagmire of choices. The rule of thumb for this power plant is to present a clean, concise look. This is accomplished by creating a color scheme of three, but no more than 4 colors and the use of two - three fonts. The idea is to reassure viewers of your stable and solid presence, not to reveal that you enjoy inflatable Santas on your roof. ................................................................................................................................................................ 4. Internet Surveys Personalization Not the Secret to E-Commerce [Internet] Basic Web site improvements would serve e-tailers a whole lot more than personalized offers and recommendations, according to a study released by Jupiter Research. The analysis shows that only 14 percent of consumers say a personalized Web site leads them to buy more often from online stores. And just 8 percent say personalization makes them more apt to visit news, entertainment and content sites more frequently. These low consumer responses are in direct contrast to the number of consumers who say they would visit a site more often or even buy more if the company made basic site improvements. Jupiter Research analysts found that 54 percent of respondents cited faster-loading pages and 52 percent cited better navigation as greater incentives. [Our Take] The fundamental key? For real estate, the mantra is 'Location. Location. Location.' Your Web site mantra should be: 'Simple. Simple. Simple.' Currently, the incentives to drive key business metrics are focusing on basic benefits: usability, information architecture, and making key tasks easy for users to accomplish. Research is disproving what our industry has always assumed: a personalized Web site was a better one, both for the visitor and the site operator. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Assaulting your customer with pop-ups for wedding ideas long after she bought just one gift for a friend last month is not only damaging to your company —it's negligent. More than 80 percent of the time when customers get to your Web site, they already know what they want to buy. Your site's job is to help them accomplish the tasks. Checklist for Basic Web Site Fundamentals: How easy is your site to navigate? Just how easy do you believe it is to find your product online? If you insist on playing cat and mouse with your customer's patience, you may want to seriously reconsider your underlying architecture. Cleverness isn't key, simplicity is. I need to call you now! Where do I find your contact information? If I want to purchase a product off your Web site, can I find contact information, or better yet, a phone number easily? I Googled your company, but couldn't find you. Including the basic top search engines in your repertoire of armor will, at the very least, secure your position among your competitors. Remember, online advertising isn't the end-all of your effort, cross-media marketing gives your company optimal chance for success. Read: Is Search Engine Marketing Right for Your Company? Where is your company's FAQ? Who are you? What is the reason for your product? Can I reach you easily? What about privacy issues; will you sell my email address? Before I do business with you, I need to be ensured that you're not a fly-by-night company to whom I flagrantly pass over my credit card information. If you're not sure how to proceed with an objective audit of your interactive or marketing materials, we can help. Depending on your needs, services, and clients, we can conduct a basic, high-level overview or a comprehensive, multi-media analysis. By reducing redundant copy to cross-pollinating collateral, our various-range audits provide leverage for your company's performance and successful customer satisfaction. Audit Inquiries | Lisa Stewart ................................................................................................................................................................ 5. What's New on ECSTEWART.com
		Featured Question Why do I need a branding system if all I really want is a logo? Katie S., Raleigh Good Question, Katie! When you think of companies with famous brands chances are that you think of more than just their logo. Take for example: Disney. Everyone knows the Disney logo and their various trademark images (Mickey, Donald, Goofy, etc.), but people also recognize Disney properties and products even when they don't have the logo present. They have developed one of the most effective branding systems in the World. From their use of typography and imagery to colors and layout everything they produce says Disney. This is the purpose of a branding system, to grow recognition of your company and brand through consistent presentation of elements to your customers. While these elements include the logo, they are not limited to it. So you can think of the logo as only one element of the system. In its most basic form, a branding system consists of the business basics: logo, business card, stationery, business forms, collateral materials and clear usage guidelines. The guidelines set the parameters with which you can use and display the brand and provide guidance for developing new brand elements. New forms, advertisements and brochures are just some examples. The guidelines also outline what colors, fonts and styles can be used in conjunction with the brand as well as acceptable logo alternatives. The initial stage in developing a branding system is research - lots of research. As a starting point we need to know your mission and get an understanding of the position you wish to hold in your customers mind as well as your competitive landscape. In addition, it is very important to understand who your target audience is and what other brands they use. Through this research we are better able to develop a profile of your company and start pulling out key words and images that can be associated with your business. This in turn leads us to the visual elements that make up your brand and eventually, through creative exploration to a logo and branding system. This may all sound pretty complicated, and it is, but remember that developing the right logo up front can save you a lot of time and energy and should help make you a familiar name and brand to your customers. For submitting her question, Katie has been endowed with a $10 Barnes & Noble Gift Card!      Got a design dilemma? Send Lisa a quick note, she'd love to address your design issue. She can't promise she'll answer each one, but she'll do her best. Even if you've only got a comment we'd love the feedback. If your question gets featured, you'll be endowed with a $10 Barnes & Noble Gift Card. C'mon! That's 10 bucks! No whammies! You can't tell us you're library doesn't need updating!!
		................................................................................................................................................................ 6. SAVANTQuote "You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus." - Mark Twain ................................................................................................................................................................ 7. SAVANT Subscriber Tools To get plugged into SAVANTNews, send email to: subscribesavantnews@ecstewart.com To unplug from SAVANTNews, send email to: unsubsavantnews@ecstewart.com For additional questions or more information, send email to: savanteditor@ecstewart.com ................................................................................................................................................................ 8. ECS|DC Contact Info Snail: ECStewart Design & Communication PO Box 6383 Raleigh, NC 27628 Email: SAVANTNews | Editor Marketing & Consulting Inquiries | Andrew Hayden Print & Interactive Inquiries | Lisa Stewart: Workshop Inquiries | Lisa Stewart:
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