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Skin care packaging design Melbourne.

If you are reading this article, then odds are you already own an e-commerce store. And like so many of us you wish to grow your beloved business through social media, AdWords and enticing promotions to showcase your products. But what are you doing about brand design?

Branding isn’t a logo, it’s not your name, not some meaningless press release to the world. Branding cannot be seen, it can only be felt.

Think about where does that excitement come from when trying on the latest fashion? Why do Apple products alleviate stress and allow for a state of delighted bliss? This is branding. It is a story of emotion and ideals, mission and action all rolled into one.

Great branding is the most powerful currency a company can have. People purchase products because of a story, an emotional connection they feel with a brand.

1. Consider the customer

Always consider who your business is being built for. Remembering the wants and needs of the consumer will dictate your actions as a company and set you on the path of success with your audience.

If you’re unsure about who your audience is, you’re not alone. All to often, we forget our audiences and focus on the product or our catalog, potentially missing out on valuable information that can increase our business.

This can remedied. Take the time to truly reflect on your past purchasers. Look for trends in the analytics and reflect on experiences you’ve had with your customers. Look for patterns that clearly point to the heart of our business, why people buy our products. Take these buying behaviours and their demographics and reverse engineer your ideal customer.

2. Share your story

Tales have been told throughout the history of mankind. As people we are better suited to remember and emotionally connect with others through storytelling than any other medium. You must tell the story of your brand. Tell it in a way to build trust with prospective customers and allow them a glimpse into the oft hidden life of corporate clatter.

3. Champion change

What does your company stand for? Every brand is built around a certain set of ideals. Convey these to the world. Build a following of faithful fans dedicated your cause. People will join in the fight when then find a vision which matches their own and will associate your company with the efforts of hope.

4. Extreme expectations

Never over-promise on your company. People absolutely hate disappointment. Creating an untenable situation where you promise more than you can always deliver will alienate your audience and destroy the trust you worked so ardently to attain.

5. Ignore others

This is possible the most powerful of all pieces of branding. By tailoring your solution, messaging and marketing to your customer you instantly eliminate hassle and heartache of pleasing all. You also come from a more intimate and ultimately appreciated place by offering them your full respect and attention.

6. Reflect and refine

Work to refine your ideal customer and place yourself in their shoes. What challenges do you, the customer, face? How can you build trust and truly add value to their lives. With a narrow view of your target market this becomes infinitely easier and more successful.

Building a truly great brand and creating a close relationship with the target customer is an art in and of itself. This crucial piece of the entrepreneurial puzzle is what separates the haves and have nots in the avenues of industry. With the challenges of bootstrapping a business, sourcing products, serving customers, and fulfilling orders this can often be placed upon the backburner in efforts to advance.

Do your best to avoid completely normal but rather shortsighted approach to business. If client work has taught me anything, it’s that in order to create a lasting asset of enduring value, the importance of branding is infinitely amplified.

Ready to start a new online business? Talk to us to build a memorable brand design.

Before

After

Ferrari Interiors director Bernadette wanted to redesign her website so it reflects the quality of her work and creates more leads. She is a luxury residential interior designer and decorator who has been renovating beautiful homes in the southern eastern suburbs of Melbourne but she felt her old site didn’t appeal to her demographic.

Ingredients used:

• WordPress
• Hubspot CRM
• Google analytics
• Campaign monitor

First we redesigned the website with a minimal interface and bright, airy colour pallets for visitors to feel comfortable.

The old site had a single images with a top navigation. By increasing the realestate of the site vertically, it allowed us to display more images and content on the homepage. This resulted in users staying longer on the page and clicked around to learn more. In this case, they were learning more about the client’s projects.

We added a project query form so that it’s easier to identify the quality of the lead before she responds to them. Bernadette use to get a lot of low quality query phone calls, which she wanted to move away from.

The query form was also integrated to an inbound marketing tool – Hubspot for further insights (specific page views) on customers behaviours so that Bernadette could personalise her email response and continue engagement with email marketing. This strategy maximises her traffic to lead conversion rate.

We created digital marketing on number of social media sites especially Pinterest where most of her demographic target spends a lot of time. We also ran some ads on Facebook with geo targeting towards groups using their age, income level and specific behaviours. We also made sure to boost traffic to highly engaging editorial blog articles.

Each blog is carefully drafted with target keywords and finished with a strong call to action. This was enough to keep the site active and optimised organically.

If you like to hear more about how our website redesign strategy and see if it could benefit your business, feel free to fill out the form below for free consultation.

Few animators got together and started Loop de Loop, monthly animation challenge making loop animations. 

Ever since I met my bestie Rubber House Studio at our old shared office in Fitzroy, I’ve been attending Loop de Loop since their first event here in Melbourne. Loop de Loop has now made Melbourne an animation central and become a global organisation with submissions all around the world, screening from Melbourne, Sydney, LA and New York.  However, in order to keep them alive, they need a little help. Visit their recent Indie Go Go campaign Loop de Loop by ordering limited edition prints, t-shirts or artworks made by super star animators like Neil Sanders, Ivan Dixon, Greg Sharp and heaps more. Get behind this folks! 

Checkout the video we shot for Loop de loop crowd funding campaign.

LoopDeLoop Indie Go Go from LoopdeLoop on Vimeo.

5 years, can you believe that? I started 5 years ago after my 1.5 month trip to New York from my bedroom in my Hawthorn apartment. I still had a full time job, but soon after I used all my annual leave I started working for my own and my first client was a big one that gave me a great start, and I haven't looked back since.

I’ve studied a bit of business and marketing, contracted some awesome talents who could build, design, photograph and together we have worked with some of our dream clients. 

We’ve worked on some major corporate and retail jobs.

We worked on some music videos for some awesome bands, 

We work with a women’s shoe brand (squeals)
We’ve worked with a chocolate brand !!!

Made projects that are really really meaningful,

Been on a front page of newspaper,
Done some really horrible speeches in front of a big crowd.  

Took a selfie with Michael Kirby. 

..and now we're designing our first publication with former Vogue editor.

We haven't entered competitions or awards, but each and every job we complete to the clients satisfaction is our own unique trophy. We cannot be happier with our achievements.

Our passion is to continue to work with startups and small businesses to help them create a brand that one day will becom their history, story and valuable asset. We will always learn and be inspired by them.

It has been an amazing journey and experience so far and I’m about to take another big step forward this year. I’m opening a new business this summer which I’m sure you’ll all know about. Stay tuned!

Thank you for all your support and to all our clients, you have all our hearts! xx

Dear architects,

We love what you do and we love your creativity, but why do you have such bad websites?

Some are really hard to navigate or take forever to load. Some of them have no content or say coming soon for years. Some have images only and some have no images at all. I won’t point any fingers but some architect sites still use Flash.

From the architects I’ve spoken to, a website is low priority and not worth much time. Whether you are a famous superstar with an established folio and fans or whether you’ve just graduated from your design degree, there is no reason why you wouldn’t build an online platform to use as a marketing tool to show your work and develop leads. Even if you have a profile and folio on other sites such as Architizer or Houzz etc… people will still google your name and check up on your website.

Here’s a few things that you must think about for your website as architects or architecture firms:

1. Focus on showing your best work. Nothing else.

Your portfolio is no.1 and you need to present your work in best way as possible to your prospective clients. Not in a distracting animation, not in a crazy experimental way, but clean and straight forward, let your work do the talking.
Hire a web designer / developer who can build a stable website as well as balance your creative vision. Remember your work is not for other architects or students, but for someone who wants to build their dream home or commercial space, and for agents and developers who will refer you to their extended network. Your folio must cater to this audience by allowing them to easily find what they want.

2. Make it more accessible and searchable.

Think about how people could find you? Do they know you are capable of working internationally? Have they found you from their phone or iPad? Optimising your website is such a powerful tool because it allows you to target a specific audience based on where they are and what they search. We recently helped a client of ours who wanted to continue working on council projects by providing her with content that was specific to that audience, and by placing strategic keywords as well as emphasising her previous credits. This meant that she could engage more meaningfully with her own select audience.

3. Have a clear call to action.

Be clear and describe your principles. Tell your potential clients what makes you awesome and what sort of clients you want to work with. Then you need a clear Call To Action that leads them to take that next step; whether it is to call or email you, or to connect with you on LinkedIn, Pinterest and other social media.

4. Start blogging.

Give people reason to come back to your website and see what you’ve been working on: the process, behind the scenes and details that you can’t include on the press shots. People want to know the talent behind the company. Not only will blogging help develop your online presence, but it also helps you with backlinks to be more searchable.

Here are some example sites that we think are well designed and built:

http://www.quinnuk.com/projects/

 http://www.mellbye.com/

http://rtastudio.co.nz/

www.room11.com.au

If you absolutely can’t afford to do any of those, then at least create a Tumblr blog or Pinterest page and link your URL to those sites. Seriously. We’ve turned a few websites into beautifully crafted simple sites that are clean and easy to use on all mobile platforms, and we’ve witnessed their traffic increase significantly, leading to many more project inquiries.

"If people see a professional and good looking website, they realise that the company behind is serious, has a certain value and cost, and is not just 'any company'. A good looking website will scare off bad clients. It’s worth it. "

Truly yours,
Symphonic