Tag: why design costs

Warning! Devalue designers and creatives at your business peril

I am regular subscriber to several marketing email newsletter from various sorts and one caught my eye. It discussed how businesses fail and half of the points raised relate to the creative industries I am in. In this post I will discuss with you why every business owner shouldn’t see designers as expensive commodities but as creative geniuses that can add real monetary value ( with examples) to your corporation and prodigious intrigue to your potential business leads.

The three creative parts of your business that if not invested in will doom your business to fail

By refusing to pay a designer for a professional logo, they looked amateurish. People don’t trust amateurs.

Before even developing an online presence, website and marketing collateral, probably the number one key element of a brand is its logo.

Without a professionally designed logo that has taken time to develop and evolve by a consummate creative professional you ARE damaging your business. Sure, you can ask your friends kid to have a go, they learn that kind of stuff at school or why not employ someone on the infamous bidding websites like freelance and get someone in India to do it for a cut of the cost a western creative would cost, they look good enough… don’t they?

The best creative professionals will have been trained in the arts by other creatives with many years expereince and taught to think differently than an average person. Everything in a creatives mind is thought about on a deeper level than just whether you like something or not. To a creative everything has a story, a meaning and a message that needs to be communicated with the medium they know best.

A great creative will know that particular symbolism will have strong influence in your business industry as will the colours and composition of your logo.

You really should value the work of the creative not as an expensive commodity but as a product enhancing necessity.

I ask you, consider three brands right now and what comes into your mind? McDonalds? Apple? Nike? Do you see a description of these companies in your minds eye or their logo when you read the above text? That is the power of the corporate logo, we are visual creatures and a logo is the heart in your business monster, without a well designed one your monetary blood simply won’t flow as easily.

 

By refusing to pay for a professional looking website, they lost sales leads and looked like amateurs.

Every brand or company whether providing a service or product needs a website. I don’t care whether you are an app developer, an alternative therapist or a builder and ‘things simply aren’t done that way in your industry to generate leads’ because basically that is a load of old hat!

Most people now ‘google it’ to find products or services

google it business

Most customers and businesses now look online or ‘google’ it to find what it is they need to solve their problem and if you aren’t online targeting these people then you are missing the opportunity to be found and make sales.

Not only this but your website should be generating new content weekly, if not daily so you can share it on social media ON EVERY PLATFORM. A lot of social media organisers may disagree with me and that is fair enough as some social media platforms are used more by different target markets than others but it is in my belief if you generate content and then share it everywhere you are allowing your potential customers a chance to find YOUR BUSINESS regardless of gender, creed, colour or class which surely is a good thing if not just for increasing brand awareness.

Websites are a business asset

Owning a website can seem expensive but again THATS A LOAD OF RUBBISH!!! A website is NOT expensive, the designer might charge you, for example, $2000 to set it up with a domain name, hosting, a designed UI, navigational structure that works, code it with html, css, php, add graphics and functionality, include social media AND show you how easy it is to add new content to the site without worrying you will mess up the design, look and feel of the site and NOT NEEDING TO KNOW ANY CODE!

A website might sound scary but it shouldn’t be, a website designer can sit down with you for a small fee to just show you that a website can be the best and most enjoyable part of your business to manage and you will never look back once you own it.

Website adds value to your customers but also to your business valuation

Plus it really DOES ADD REAL MONETARY VALUE to your business. My website, only 10 months old is worth around $7000…as I designed it myself I had no initial outgoing in terms of design but even if I had paid $2000 for a months work to develop a good website I would still have made made a $5000 increase in my initial investment.

(If you are interested to see what your website is worth type into google ‘what is my website worth’ into google)

By refusing to hire a copywriter for their marketing, their response rates were 100′s of percent lower than they would have been.

As a dyslexic man copy writing is not the skill I write home about ( dya see what i did!? Huh! Huh!? 😀 ) but I still see it as a creative and highly skilled talent. The right words really are the write words and these guys know how to communicate your product verbally like a master word ninja.

Work with a copywriter to get the content ‘write’

Of course, YOU SHOULD EXPLAIN YOUR BUSINESS AND WRITE THE CONTENT FOR YOUR WEBSITE but you should also consult a copywriter to ensure the words you are using are not too complex for your market. It is really important you get your message across in a simplified manner, the best website will give the visitor the information they want and need without having to think too hard. I think the key message is to explain things like you were speaking to your grandma, another words simple words, simple comparisons and simple call to actions.

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Wow, now I understand why creatives are so important, what should I do?
The answer of course, is as easy and  hard.
The hard part is that creative skills cost money. Designers just like you need to make a living and they have worked hard on developing their skills to be able to understand all the elements to make your business excellent.

Example of a website design cost and breakdown

It may seem  that they charge the earth but if you break down what they are adding into your business then it is actually a cheap service in relative terms. For example lets use the website example again; I suggested that a website designer charges you £2000 for a website that takes a month to make. Wo! You think that is so expensive!

But let me break it down for you : –

That designer is going to spend 40 hours a week on your website, they are going to create a photoshop mockup, design navigational systems, create a backup incase of emergency, improve your website security, improve your web speed performance, help gain a basic seo score for your intial pages, they will design a UI optimised for your customers experience, they then have to create all the graphics and marketing messages, they then have to code it in html, and css as well as possibly php, java, ajax, j-query and other languages that takes a long time to learn. They then will get your approval before making changes you want to happen and they may even show you how to update it and provide you with a user guide too if you are lucky.

Good design takes time

time

Now imagine how long all that takes? Yep a long time and they have a vast array of skills that is hard to find in just one person so you are likely paying for a web coding developer and a graphic designer.
You don’t care if your designer gets food on the table you just want an affordable design that brings new customers into your business don’t you.
Its okay, you can be honest, we all live our life to try and make it better for ourselves first and then if we help people along the way make their life better then that’s a great feeling too. So how is £2000 a great fee for something when you are waiting for customers to arrive at your door?

Breaking down the cost

A website should stay in vogue and technological style for at least two years so lets break the $2000 down.
$2000 divided by 24 months equals $83.33 per month. If your product is around $50 and you sell an extra 10 products due to your website you are gaining an extra $416.67 you weren’t before having the site ( i’ve included the monthly cost of the site) improving your business turnover.
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So my final message is this give your business the resources it needs. As a business person learn the difference between a cost and and investment… not on a surface level, on a deep level. Think about the ultimate cost of starving your business of what it needs.

Just as importantly, you need to start asking yourself why you’re not investing where your business needs it. If your answer is “to save money and avoid risk”, I urge you to reconsider.

In the 21st century your business is more likely to fail without an online presence and there are so many ways you can market yourself digitally at a much cheaper rate than the old 20th century ways. I hope I have helped you see the importance of the creative industry to business progression. How important do you think trained creative people are to your business and how do you improve your business through creativity? Please comment in the box below