Designing a website for an Introducing Broker (futures brokers website design, forex broker website design, commodities brokers, equities brokers website design) requires understanding how IBs and Clearing firms work, basic understanding of financial markets and experience designing websites for many firms. Look no further, LightMix was designing websites for introducing brokers for over 10 years. What makes our services different is that we design each website custom, nothing is made from template and each customer received personal attention and large agency quality service at reasonable cost.

When designing a website for introducing brokers, we suggest to foloow following basic guidelines to create effective web presence that converts website visitors into leads and accounts.

Basic rules for website creation for introducing broker:

1. Do not try to copy other IB websites. All introducing brokers are in similar position and often we see that many want a site like somebody else. Each project has to be done custom to your firms objectives, be built around your strengths, so you can capitalize on that.

2. Try to take advantage of the content you are provided by your clearing firm, but do not base your site content exclusively on that. Often clearing firms will offer educational website content or any other marketing content at no cost. Use that, but only as supporting content. There is limited value in that, it does help you build up credibility, but also same to content on other brokers websites.

3. Always go with custom website design, never try to use templated websites. We wrote an article hereon why templated sites are not be used, make sure you read it.

4. Pay special attention to branding. In tight competition with other brokers, generic name and branding will mean customers won’t remember you.

5. Build your own lead generation section to store all leads in multiple forms in your database. Do now rely exclusively on provided open account section provided by your clearing form. Create generic lead gen forms that allow you to capture customers leads. Use that later to extract leads for email marketing.

6. Create full scale campaign, do not try to limit eforts to website only. Banners, ads in print, media all will help to promote your brand.

7. Most importantly, do not expect that a site can be designed with all of the conditions above for $1,000. Money you put into your branding and website design turns back multiple times as it helps you to close more accounts. When we suggest website design we stress VALUE above all, and in case with introducing brokers website design, value is perceived partially by how the site looks, how serious it is, effective marketing message is. Think about price of a website as investment in your own property’s equity. 100% of the cost is going toward your equity.

Contact LightMix to receive a proposal for your website for your introducing broker site for commodities, futures, equities, forex brokerage business

Everyone is aware of recent popularity and necessity of social media marketing. There are many ways how a marketing professional can approach social media. Ability to customize approach and change direction depending on the trends is most critical and valuable asset in promoting a website especially after it is redesigned.

Marketing website on popular networks comes down to populating your content with keywords targeted to the right audience and selecting appropriate language, keywords and conversion mechanism that enables you bring customers to the website and converts them into leads and later in clients.

Tweeting about subjects related to your prospects search items will make your posts and tweets appear in search results in various systems like tweetdeck and others. API access to twitter and other social media networks enables rapid development of applications and integration mechanisms that take content from the networks into many other places thus spreading reach of relevant posts. Post often and on important subjects.

Click here to request an estimat efor professional website design and marketing consultation

How much you want to spend to create or redesign your web site? What are the fees associated with website design or website redesign?

Partially, this depends on the company and on the industry, but mostly, on knowledge of a person who is interested in services. True professionals of online marketing realize enormous possibility to increase business in just about any field by creating web presence which compliments and expands their brand reach to users online. Customers that have more traditional brick and mortar businesses rarely possess such in-depth understanding and, therefore, look for services provided at a discount or low cost. They try to find somebody who will offer services at lowest cost with “acceptable” quality, not with highest value to their business. The problem on this approach is that acceptable quality is a relevant term. There are options for any budget, and it can be hard to know the difference. Don’t settle for anything less then 1% of your revenue, best options are 5-12% for website budget.

Our recommendation is that before anyody even starts vendor selection process, its critical to educate yourself about process that it takes to create a typical website and what options exist on the market today. Decide what tier of professional design companies you want to work with. Go for value above all. Professional portfolio, references and open ended design process without fixed number of reviews is important.

Contact LightMix to receive a custom proposal for your site redesign.

How to redesign dashboard to represents all key data and still fits into current framework?

It’s often a question that many companies have to struggle with due to ever increasing complexities of today’s reporting and statistics. Struggling to combine results form multiple processes, operations and at the same time enable key users of the dashboard to be able to make necessary actions can be a challenging task. Basic training is not enough to foresee problems and propose solution that can accomplish multiple goals.

Dashboard design organizer / dashboard checklist:

1. Assess that dashboard needs a redesign.
2. Key executives of the organization must come to joint conclusion that a current presentation of the data is poor and doesn’t work to present key statistics.
3. A management decision should be reached to engage consulting firms to help coordinate and facilitate dashboard redesign process.
4. Generate requirement documentation and list all current functional characteristics of your application.
5. Consulting firms submit bids, a vendor is selected and redesign process is under way.
6. Upon first series of prototypes, management decides to choose one of the design directions that reflects organization current and future requirements and consulting firm develops dashboard, coordinates or does technical integration.
7. Final dashboard design is delivered for integration or installed on live application.
8. After initial installation iterative design process can occur, larger organizations may go through multiple review stages before launching redesign with targeted focus groups to gather feedback on dashboard effectiveness, consistency and so on.
9. As a result of this final design is reached and new application dashboard is enabled.
10. Short term usability testing and long terms usability studies are done to generate report showing effectiveness of redesign.
11. Redesign effectiveness is measured.

 Are you interested in professional dashboard redesign or redesign of your intranet or web application interface?

Contact LightMix for more samples and a free proposal.

Will we see exceptionally bold advertising similar to ones used in other countries in the financial services industry? Take a look at this post by The Financial Brand about Virgin Money. Ads are filled with provocative, seductive, direct and often obnoxious messaging all targeted to stand out from the rest of the sector. You are certainly guaranteed not to see many of these in the US.

http://thefinancialbrand.com/2009/11/09/branson-launches-virgin-bank/

Dashboard designer

In this port we want to examine differences and benefits of custom design vs ready to use dashboards. There are many applications and providers claiming easy to use and plug and play dashboard functionality that easily integrates in framework of your application. True, to some degree ready to use products can correspond to many needs of users that are not particularly interested in getting to the bottom of the real problems of operation of their organization. Due to recent cost cutting and constrains many companies dramatically reduce budgets and custom design services often first to go in favor of ready to use applications that provide some sense of information, intelligence despite lack of custom and well thought out approach.

But lets concentrate for a moment on such approach and see ow theoretically a typical organization can sustain growth and development of customer satisfaction with their products when relying only on partial and often not coherent informatics about key performance indicators and drivers of business.

Dashboard designer, capable of laying out effective informational architecture that is tied to the organization infrastructure and helping reduce analytical costs b optimizing methods with which executives make critical business decisions is far more effective and important then saving a few thousand dollars and going with of the shelf package that come with ready to use dashboards.

Same analogy can be applied to template-based websites. Templatemonster.com, many others devalue creative cost to 0 by essentially offering walmart of pick your own ideas that don’t to represent anything in particular. Customers and being sold on their own lack of knowledge and this can be a dangerous mistake when enterprise performance is involved.

Retain capable interface and user experience dashboard designer to avoid costly mistakes. Your shareholders will be thankful in the long term!

Contat LightMix for custom proposal for dashboard design

reRebranding a company

Rebranding an existing company’s branding is always a difficult assignment a it takes experience, understanding and knowledge of branding strategy, marketing and advertising to suggest effective method and best means of implementing rebranding. It is often confused with logo and identity redesign, but rebranding is a widest an most significant update of the company communication system and marketing approach compared to all other steps.

Rebranding of the company isoften executed by branding firms, which determine new business and marketing direction. Organizations with significant budgets can afford engaging top advertising agencies and corporate branding firms to establish a new vision, define new marketing goals, review input from man customers and create new brand.

Smaller size organizations attempt to execute rebranding of a firm o a limited budget and while saving a lot of money try to follow same principles as large companies do. This however is often left to the discretion of the inhouse marketing teams, often not experienced enough in redefining core branding characteristics.

So how a smaller size organization can accomplish difficult transition of from old to new with minimum amount of risk and greatest potential?

The answer is in finding narrow range of small marketing, advertising and niche design firms that possess spot-market expertise and at the same time have multidisciplinary inhouse expertise to foresee and lead client through process of rebranding while avoiding common missteps.

Are you interested in rebranding our firm o organization? Contact LightMix for custom proposal.

Is it a good idea to negotiate price for creative services such as website design or professional products? 

What can work in the market while buying tomatoes doesn’t work in the professional services fields. By bringing the cost down, clients eventually devalue services and bring quality of work and workmanship down. Even during the recession, the emphasis should be on doing less and doing better with it, rather then wanting more and paying less for it. Website design services, graphic design, accounting, legal services and many other fields are all fields where investment done in the professional expertise turns out in the product quality. You want a discount on website design project?

Watch this video to reconsider next time you try to bring the cost down too much.

How website design rates help to understand type of provider

This questions is based on type of a provider and quality of work. While freelance designers can offer design services for $20/hr, top design agencies do not work for less then several hundred dollars per hour. Depending on the type of your organization, you need to select first of all, an appropriate level of a provider to work with. Medium and large design organizations will never be interested in bidding on small scale projects with limited budget as they can not modify their pricing and approach to compete with small firms. Small firms also can’t typically adjust website design rates low enough to compete with freelance or off-shore providers.

Website design rates – setting the right expectations

Most important is to have a right expectation of design rate and total cost when contacting a design company. If you shop around for cheapest rate for web design services you will likely find it, but will sacrifice quality. At the same time, highest priced providers are not always providing the best services. In today’s market, many companies operate on different levels, leading to different overheads and expenses associated with running a company. Despite these differences, a right expectation should be such that a billing rate for a professional designer working for a firm should never be less then $75/hr. At the same time highest rates for typical design services should be under $150/hr in most cases. What is important to note is that many times proposals are done based on overall value of a project and not hourly rates. This means that a design company takes on risk to have higher or lower rate, but in its turn providing a customer with a fixed cost rather then hourly estimate.

What is the benefit of fixed cost vs hourly rate for web design services

Many organizations are choosing value-based proposals as they allow to focus on the total budget as opposed to try to maneuver the rate of a provider. From the provider’s prospective, website design rate still is included in the fixed cost estimate, just not obvious to the end client so they are encouraged to make work faster and better, which is a goal of every project.

Are you considering fixed cost value proposal or hourly based website design rates estimate?
Click here to receive a proposal from LightMix

Advertising in recession – what messages work

In tough economic times companies are starting to focus their advertising on messages that stress continuity, longevity and survival despite bad economic situation. Take a look at the latest ad from Bank of America:

Key messages used in the advertising that tries to refocus audience toward positive outcome include messages of “no matter what”, “still going” etc.

Great research on this subject was conducted by BusinessWeek.

Its a consistent effort by top brands to indicate survival of the fittest and at the same time to aggressively capture new customers from companies that do not do the same.

The same approach was in fact taken by many companies during the Great Depression when many organizations completely stopped advertising and brands started to loose ground. At the same time more aggressive companies like top auto makers, etc went after consumers and established solid trust that lasted long time. We may be witnessing the same trends 70 years later.

Should you advertise in a recession?

Absolutely yes! It is best not to stop but rather expand your marketing and advertising during a recession and try to think creatively how to open new markets, aggressively pursue clients that may loose loyalty to other brands and try to establish your firms foundation for years to come.

Following are most notable data visualization examples for the past week

How different groups spend their day

This interactive map shows different patterns of work vs sleep and other activities in different demographical groups.

Homocide and murder statistics in New York

Interactive map of New York homicide statistics

CongressSpeaks

Impressive visualization and interactive map

What people do online  – visualization of online activity

Choosing a right data visualization consultant and technique for your application might not be easy. There are a lot of considerations that need to come into play, such as selection of appropriate technology provider and aligning internal and external IT resources to enable smooth collaborative environment to make the development and integration process run effectively. What is also very important, is finding a right consultant to create and consult on selection of appropriate data visualization methods based on types of your data, your area of business,  to create most optimal and clear result.

In general, data visualization has different meaning in different fields. In engineering and science, it can be used to represent complex data and arrays of data relationships and identify patterns that are not clear in any other form. In business environment, data visualization can be used to represent business process, work flow and interrelationships between parties. In all, it is a critical component in analysis of the information, which helps make right conclusions that can’t be done without visualizing it.

Data Visualization  -  Business data and work flow and software
From visual perspective, data visualization requires design and layout to be consistent with overall application yet stand out to provide informative and clear view of key data points. Design of the data delivery visuals should not distract users from the key information and should be sufficient enough to generate effective response to the information. Choosing the right style of data visualization elements or creating new ones becomes critical aspect in application’s user experience. In business applications, dashboards and performance charts are often primary examples where data has to be visualized and presented in graphical format. Oftentimes, common mistakes are made in selecting absolutely ineffective tools and methods to display information. For example using any of the below graphically heavy elements is ineffective in terms of data visualization because emphasis is no longer on the data but on style and also gear and circular device approach is not clearly presenting true value which is more clearly shown using simple bar chart graph.

Resources:
Great example sof complex data visualization:
http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/06/50-great-examples-of-data-visualization/

CLick here to receive a free estimate for your visualization project

What contributes to best results in web interface design?

Usable, functional and accessible design approach allows web users to interact with your web site or application at a different level. Lets consider scenarios where user A attempts to proceed through a typical path through a website from home page to confirmation screen. Our typical path will consist of the following screens:

a. Home page
b. Product listing or search result screen
c. Product detail screen
d. Shopping cart view
e. Checkout screen with login
f. New users – register screen
g. New users – register confirmation screen
h. New users -payment screen
i. Conformation screen
j. Thank you page

Following sequence is what is typically used when creating web interface design for ecommerce applications. What is important to note is that the process described above is a more or less standardized. Typical visitors have accumulated between 5 to 10 years of experience in online shopping many have certain level of expectations that web interface design will not deviate too much from the path they know. Move any of the steps around and the results will significantly vary.

What can be done to improve or at least not to lower results of your website or application?

a. Always establish if the application or your type of website is a common or unique. Do users have expectations when using your website based on similar sites?
b. Determine typical paths of movement of users through the site.
c. Draw a diagram of movement of users through your competition sites and try to identify weak points where users can leave the site
d. Draw your diagram in 2 versions -Version A and Version B. Make version A be consistent with standard or most logical scenario and Version B as an alternative path
e. Make necessary coding changes to ensure you can test A / B options
f. Explain your users from the first page to expect how many steps they need to go through to reach final result
g. Ensure that last screens in your process have fewer and fewer distracting information to reduce % of users that do not go all the way
h. Include google analytics code and set applicable goals to be able to collect statistics.

After running your campaign and website for certain period of time web interface design may need to be altered and it is better to be prepared for that from the start. Typical A/ B testing approach should be followed and will reveal more or less effective solution.

Click hereto receive a quote for your custom web interface design for your web site or web application

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Why is it critical to understand that website design sample work or what is called speculative work is bad

Read an article by AIGI

http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/news-090527

This essentially confirm that designing anything before designers are contracted to design it is not going to turn out well.

LightMix amongst many other professional organizations highly recommends against usage of practice of requesting of what is commonly called “speculative design work”. This means requesting design samples prior to the real start of the project.

Most professional organizations employ professional designers, which do not like to waste their professional time without compensation. Having said that, its important to note that it is not just about money. The entire premise of the logic that some types of work like competition, volunteer, pro-bono work means that the effort that design team puts into a project is assumed to have high degree of risk or done entirely at designers expense. In the professional design field, where clients expect real results and designers are to provide real services, this type of work carries significant risk to everyone as correctly stated by the AIGA article above. Indeed, if the client is expecting that website design samples for example are to be submitted before selection of a vendor, only low quality and unprofessional design work will be received. And as a result only vendors that fall into this category will be chosen leading to poor quality and bad outcome of any project.

What we strongly suggest is that the customers never attempt to save or start a project without commitment to a specific design team that has trust and authority over the project. This assumption is critical as only this puts on real requirements on the creative team to provide top quality output and produce best work without an sacrifice in quality. Being website design samples, print samples or logo samples, all clients should never expect that any of them will be done at no cost. Evaluate strength of designer portfolio, experience and references to make final judgement on the vendor, but never make it based on hastily provided samples of something that can not be done to the professional level.

Click here to request a proposal for professional design services by LightMix

Who is an interface designer you may ask?

Is this somebody who is putting together UI in Visual Studio to get the application work finally, after 3 weeks of delays and boss screaming on top of their lungs? Is this somebody who thinks more then does and never gets passed the stage where he or she actually need to do and show and deliver actual interface? Or maybe this is who is all involved in theory, usability studies, attends all seminars and wastes no time in buying all available books and reports from Nielsen?

Real interface designer is today’s Internet’s architect. Having architectural background, we understand how typical principles of human interaction with objects now apply in digital media. Interface designer is not a geek, but must know and understand technology well. Interface designer is a digital architect, and thus, must understand and cultivate and perfect human interaction with other objects, in this case, applications, websites etc. And like in real architecture, interface designer is a person who works with builders (programmers) to make sure that the construction is done according to the design.

Today, fields of user experience, information architecture, human factor, usability have bloomed due to increasing amount of proprietary tools available that help us work and live. Interface designer is now a key person, what website designer used Tobe 10 years ago. On this stage however, a significantly higher amount of training, experience and understanding.

If you are an organization considering engaging interface designer on your project, consider versatility of expertise, breadth of experience, education and overall knowledge of a person not just ability to draw nice buttons and having long client list.

Contact LightMix today to request a quote for UI design and analysis of your application

Many wonder what is the real value for business of twitter or facebook. For large organizations and those with substantial fan base, twitter, facebook and other social media networks are becoming the easiest, fastest and most effective focus group tools that allows gather quick results for new product launch or rebranding. Recently, Tropicana rebranding effort was launched and this resulted in people complaining and as a result changes back to original packaging of the orange juice maker.

Read more samples and details at http://tinyurl.com/atcqk8

Indeed, rebranding and major changes to the marketing and communications strategy can be delivered with greater impact, lower cost and fewer overruns if organizations are efficiently using tools available at no cost to greatest potential. Primary benefit of the technology of social media is in ability to immediately engage audience and gather feedback. While in non-commercial fields, social media is a primary tol of communication, in business, this serves as a prerequisite to well-balanced marketing and communication strategy.

Washington DC web design firms are divided into following categories

Firms that work for Federal government and their contractors
These companies have ongoing accounts sustaining their operations and expand adding additional resources depending on the contracts. Firms in this category generally are not interested in working with smaller clients and they are all on GSA schedule. Many work with military and its contractors and all appropriate clearance levels.

Firms that have narrow specialization such as companies working with associations, trade shows etc

Companies that service large corporate clients
Washington DC web design companies often work with high level corporate clients as well as government due to proximity of all major forms headquarters in the Dulles corridor. Large consulting firms such as Accenture engage smaller and medium size organizations to participate on large scale projects.

Companies that service medium to small size businesses
There are web design firms here in DC area that focus mostly on medium size commercial projects and do not participate in bidding for Government or top level corporate accounts

Design firms that serve small business and start ups
There is a last category of firms that service small organizations and start-up businesses. Due to the number of small businesses this category also breaks down into firms that have specific marketing budgets or companies that do design on the shoe string budget.

No matter what type of organization you have or level of your engagement, selecting a right web design company in Washington DC area is difficult due to different skill sets present in each firm. In reality even company that focuses on one of the markets can provide an effective design solution to small or large firm depending on the specific task and type of work.

Contact LightMix to receive a proposal for your web design project as well as branding, identity, interface, web development and other visual communication services.

Creative services or design consulting firm in Washington DC, Virginia or Maryland

There are many choices in this area and many companies offer different sets of skills. Non-profit organizations tend to go with firms that have experience designing associations websites while technology companies look for hands-on design and development expertise. There are many hidden values though in providers such as LightMix which offers full range of design capabilities to customers in Metro Washington DC (Virginia Maryland DC area) yet due to boutique size can keep prices low while still providing quality of top design agencies.

One important note is to know the difference between design services offered by marketing firms and services provided by companies who do exclusively design and development. True, many firms in Northern Virginia and Washington DC may be looking for full package solution and are not interested in solutions that are more narrow as this requires more understanding of the process. On the other hand, marketing forms provide lower quality, generic and too sales oriented design services sacrificing design, usability and leading to diminished branding.

We strongly recommend while searching for web design and creative services provider in Washington DC area consider following aspects for your organization

• How much experience actual designers on the team of design company have and what other projects outside of the region have they completed
• Demonstrate not only marketing and sales expertise, but also purely creative services expertise, make sure that portfolio is memorable and covers many disciplines
• Examine client list to find companies which business is doing projects that you are considering
• Check for companies with hands-on approach, not too much sales oriented strategy to pitch every service you may or may not need. Best values are were small size firms treat your organization as their top client no matter what size you are.
• Check off-business hours availability. There are many firms that provide creative or design services, but most will not really care about your business and will not answer your call after 5pm or respond to email before next business day. Today’s business requires 24/7 support and responsiveness, make sure your creative services company in DC and Virginia area is able to accommodate your schedule.
• Check to make sure that creative and web design services provider you choose has expertise and experience in fields not only related to design and development. Best results and most creative solutions are designed by those that have multi-disciplinary background. Sales people aside, creative director and art director of a company must have extensive education and professional experience with top level clients an start-ups alike.

Are you interested in the proposal for your creative services project? Contact LightMix for more information

Numerous usability studies conducted by top agencies indicate that main properties of effective user interface design are simplicity, ease of navigation and effective information architecture. True, while many other factors play a significant role, few can be a detrimental factor in how application is received by the users. Assuming all functional elements of the application are working, good design and nice graphic style by itself will not make software any more usable.

To significantly improve main usability aspects its important to think of application as an appliance. Can you operate microwave with your eyes closed? Same should apply to program in sense of of ease of use.

Over the last few years penetration of user interfaces of various applications in daily lives is becoming more and more visible and noticeable.
Despite common assumptions that users by default are not proficient, general level of users is gradually growing. Nevertheless, applications are still be designed for general user not familiar with the application, technology. Users are not familiar with application ui design and need to learn it quickly. User interface should be designed with this in mind making learning curve not too steep. Training and presentation technologies became easy and affordable spurring growth in education and mentoring fields in all industries. This has adverse effects on the UI design as users often rely on the training as opposed to good usability.

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Does your organization struggle in determining where to go to get pricing and an estimate for website design project? The information below will help to understand types of providers.

There are 5 levels of pricing for website design services. Typically services offered by 5 tiers of providers which include:

Tier 1

Top advertising and design agencies
Typical cost for such services ranges from several hundred thousand dollars to several million dollars. Clients have a great deal of money, have well established marketing plans, large teams and can afford going through many steps to come up with only the best the industry can offer. Examples – top auto sites, sports brands like Nike, Adidas and so on

Tier 2

Highly acclaimed design and marketing agencies
This category includes firms that have top client portfolio, but do not exclusively serve only most wealthy brand names. Budgets for projects are still likely to be in the $50-$300k range. Creative firms offer wide range of design and marketing capabilities and have unique skill set capable of managing complex brand relationships that top clients require.

Tier 3

Medium size marketing and design firms

Marketing, PR and highly specialized design firms that do top quality work for small, medium business and government clients will be in this category. Companies that hire firms in this category can expect budgets $25k-100k for creative assignments

Tier 4

Small size creative design companies and boutique-size marketing firms

Small creative companies (staffed under 30 people) will have many winning propositions to those trying to consider them versus Tier 3 providers. Yet they may not have such extensive network of providers or highly specific expertise, small creative firms will in fact offer better value due to significantly lower fees for creative and marketing services compared to larer organizations. Pricing the same scope of work as larger organizations, small size creative firms will offer still comparable range of experience, good portfolio and solid client list leaving final decision be based on preference of small to large company approach. Smaller design firms also have much more hands-on approach to all tasks and can accommodate changing business requirements much faster then larger size companies. Website design pricing or typical engagements will vary from $5k to $50k

Tier 5

Freelancers and off-shore providers

Last category is an industry by itself. The past 10 years were critical in establishing network of providers across the world offering lowest cost creative services with real price wars at sites like elance bringing the costs down to ridiculous figures. Unfortunately, same is a primary problem of these companies as they are unable to compete for higher quality clientele and are stuck with low cost projects and most frequently provide low to very mediocre quality services. To some extent, latest trends in blogs and social media help end clients minimize some of the deployment costs and even low cost providers can offer fully functional products. Despite this, credibility and established client list play critical role in development of such firms and their abilities to survive for more then 2-3 years. Pricing for website design services will vary from $50 to $2000 for typical projects.

Are you interested in obtaining an estimate from a small size design firm with very extensive expertise? Click here to learn more..

How important is it to find the right provider of creative services for your financial organization?

Financial services companies are going through tough times this year. Not only different financial institutions received really bad rep, many one man operations such as brokers, advisers etc have suffered significantly. Many firms however take advantage of low business activity to reformulate their branding, redesign their visual and marketing materials to be prepared to reversal and gain market share.

Some consultants will answer that in fact it is not important to find a creative design firm that has extensive experience and understanding of the industry and its better to get someone with outside perspective. True, many companies have tendency to shift toward product-oriented approach to be able to survive and after .com boom product development was critical to many investor-supported businesses. This resulted in range of companies that provide packaged services, packaged sites for $30, $50, $100 per month, package hosting, data and other elements and claim custom design. The end result is such that clients are facing account managers, rarely designers, need to live with little flexibility and don’t feel that their money is well spent.

The alternative solution to packaged sites is engaging custom design company, a real creative services company that will help to redesign and prepare your visual materials for successful marketing campaign. Marketing for financial services companies rarely done by creative companies and organizations should stay away from firms that claim they do both – marketing and design unless it is a significant advertising agency. Small or medium size firms will likely sacrifice quality over result as highest margins of their profits lay in one or the other category.

Most importantly, the custom design creative services firm with relevant industry experience will in fact be beneficial to your organization. In the financial services industry, creative and marketing services can be powerful weapon when used wisely. Right consultants will help navigate design strategy and maintain close relationship with inside knowledge of the field. Inappropriate usage of color, text, format and style in the more conservative and function-oriented field can significantly reduce businesses ability to operate and convert leads to customers.

Click here for free estimate for your financial creative or marketing task

Top 10 recommendations for best results from your creative design services provider and online marketing

1. Hire only professional company to execute creative design services for your organization.
2. �Find industry-specific marketing firm for marketing only, do not go with design services from marketing firms.
3. Avoid low cost service providers. Creative design means iterative design approach. Low cost providers are not designed to offer such flexibility.
4. Creative portfolio is a must and it should show wealth of relevant design work.
5. Testimonials list is a must. Any creative design company will provide list of recommendations.
6. Proposal completeness is important. Consider how well company organizes their formal proposal when deciding on creative design services provider.
7. Speak with actual creative director. Accessibility of creative talent is a key.
8. Prepare enough material to be able to work form. Often, organizations do not have adequate resources prepared before beginning of the project.
9. Trust yourself, but don’t try to micro-manage creative design if you are not qualified�.

Marketing company and design team may push your project different directions. You must maintain an independent perspective from your client standpoint at all times. Creative design services is a subjective matter. Many times aesthetics can confuse clients. The reason why you may or may not like some design aspects are not as important as the fact whether or not it works.

Why not to use template websites

The reason is simple, templates are too generic and have less value then custom made design specific to your company goals and subject matter. Template web sites are designed to be sold to you and not to your customers, and many business owners get into the trap thinking that if the template looks good to you it will look good to your clients. This is not true. Designer of a temaplate had very little to do with your company. They never talked to you, never asked you a single question. The only creteria by which you select good or bad template is based only on your assessment of what is good or bad. If you have great expertise in the design field, you may be qualified to make such assumption, most do not. The time needed to customize a template of your choice to your liking and entering appropriate changes will be also close to what it will take to create custom design. The benefits could not be more obvious. Template site with bells and whistles in wrong places and no emphasis on things that you really ned to offer or custom designed site with consistent branding and clear message supported by relevant design.

Other then obvious problem above the following main problems are frequent in template websites.

Over designed templates
Template websites are over designed with al possible features, whistles, sounds, icons, gadgets etc to make them ook finished polished and sellable to you. A god web site doesn’t have to rely on this, rather is based on good design that supports the content and branding.

Usage of images
Many template buyers don’t realize that the images used in the templates may not in fact be all legal and technically it will be a responsibility of the new owner. A potential copyright issue may cost business a lot of money. Incorrectly used image can bring law suite or cost later a lot of money.

Inconsistent Branding
Many templates have placeholder for your logo. A design that can be used with any logo is too generic to support and work together with your logo to create positive result that’s good for your branding. Design process starts with logo design and to web site design, not other way around as it is the case with all templates.

Excessive use of flash
One of the main selling points and totally useless elements is overuse of flash technology in many templates. Many times customers will be wowed by all the sound effects, visual effects a regular navigational bar makes! Your website should not looklike Vegas slot machines. Subtlety is your friend, not 25 effects used to sell YOU the template and how helping your customer make decision to buy or ot to buy your services. Stay as far as possible from templates that are using flash for navigation, body or other functional elements. The designers that make them think of selling to you more then anything

Click here to receive a free quote for custom design

Visit our site to view portfolio of our work

User experience design for online applications and relationship to online behavior

Why is it important for an IT company to hire a usability consultant? Today’s web applications pose significant challenge to users of all fields. Few organizations go an extra mile to engage professional usability experts and go only through limited usability group testing before releasing online applications to wider audience. User experience (or lack thereof) is becoming more and more tangible online as companies compete for loyal users of their web sites, applications and long term customers.

User experience in the first place is often referred to any type of interaction between users and products/services. Online user experience in mainly associated with how users interact with range of web marketing and functional informational products, sites. Results of such user interaction are analyzed and used by design teams when building complex web applications and web sites.

Lets define what user experience in online web applications consists from. First of all User experience is based on the brand. If the brand is well known, such as ATT or Verizon, user experience is immediately adjusted to certain level associated with quality of services provided by the company. Usability and ability of users to perform certain actions online without distraction become part of that extended branding.

User experience in online applications with smaller not well known brands is more limited to specific line of products, partners associations, industry penetration, and usability of actual products.

Positive user experience

In order to establish positive user experience from services or online products companies attempt to go extra mile to create products that are user friendly, welcoming and functional. User interface design, aesthetics, information architecture, marketing message and visual design all come into play in order to achieve these goals. When supported by quality services and quality products, users are turning into loyal customers.

Negative user experience

Lack of one of any of the above steps contributes to a negative perception of users from your online services and products and thus influences brand.  One of the best ways to avoid it is eliminate obvious usability problems in online applications and use professional UX / UE design studio to create most functional online application design.

Human Factor, User Centered design

Much of the online terminology originates offline, same is true with user experience and human factor, and user centered design which have roots in architecture and technological fields.  Over last decade an exponential growth in online applications have shifted many of products and services online and users became aware of most and least functional products. Designing online application with concept of user-centered design and carefully considering human perception of the online experience is now part of obvious rules for best user experience.

Click here to receive free quote for your UE and UX project

Website design consultants, how to chose a right website design company.

Its critically important to select a qualified and experienced�group among all �website design consultants you research. Pay special attention to years in business, client list, samples of work, relevance to your industry and past references. When selecting website design companies, you need to realize that you are creating long-term relationship with another organization to which you will trust your online presence. It’s important that website design companies of your choice are willing to provide ongoing services, are interested in your ongoing business and will consult you along the way on best practices of the design and development of a website.�

What makes website design consultants different from each other?

Many website design companies are focused on short term objectives rather then long term client goals. Many are focused on fitting many clients into their standardized process and are not very flexible to different project requirements. Many companies will attempt to up-sell or offer services that are not really necessary. �Work with web design �companies that provide enough flexibility, have common long term objectives and can adjust to your requirements.

Law website design

Is your law firm lacking consistent and clear marketing message, campaign? The easiest way to bring visual consistency in communication materials for legal services organization is to upgrade corporate website which will correspond to corporate branding and complement it. What is important is to have a professional and clear design, focused entirely on your strengths and core marketing messages. When hiring a design company for your firm’s website redesign, evaluate firm’s ability to create unique, custom design as well as their understanding of the industry and prior work for law firms.

Our award-winning� samples of legal websites. Contact us for�a quote

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Tips for creating effective legal web site for your law firm

1. Conduct effective research to identify active and inactive local online competitors
The nature of legal services is local. One of the most critical pieces of information is identifying the competitors who are actively engaged in online marketing and aggressively promoting their online presence. Discect� their web sites from point of of organization, SEO friendliness and call to action.

2. Plan on writing a lot of content or hire help to do so
To justify online presence, your website needs to produce leads. Sometimes organizations want websites only as presence , supporting their offline marketing , but more and more firms turn to online marketing as supporting mechanism. Search engine optimization and comfort of a client will be based on your content. More relevant content your website will have the better.

3. Hire professional design firm, stay away from the low end shops and template sites
Never hire companies advertising $1000 websites, packaged deals�or anything which is less then 20 hours of work at average $75/hr rate. No professional result will be produced at that time and no packages will give you truly unique and professional presence, your marketing dollars will be totally wasted. Best method is to try negotiate with firm you know performed well in the past and stick to quality. Stay away from web site templates as much as possible. Those will produce only mediocre, brand less designs.

4. Plan on multi-media marketing following website launch.
Its important to cover all channels of legal services marketing from inclusion your site address in all appropriate legal services directories to local craigslist advertising. Keep your offers current and advertising up to date to gain maximum exposure. Remember, users will only notice your advertising after viewing it many times.

5. Invest in creating professional brand image, logo
One of the main ways to differentiate is to create professional branding for your firm. Hire designer and don’t use online services that advertise $100 or $300 logo design.Professional logo and identity will pay off in the long term.

Co-branding and how to co-brand your company products or services

Much of the .com and post .com period can be characterized by wide use of co-branding. The definition of the term itself is:

“Co-branding is when two companies form an alliance to work together, creating marketing synergy.” per Wikipedia. 

More profoundly, online co-branding means offering your products or services under somebody elses brand to a joint benefit. 

History of co-branding

The actual practice of branding products and services by other party is not new and was around for as long as we can all remember. Off-line retail examples of co-branding are

– intel co-brands with pc manufacturers and now mac
– starbucks co-brands with various chains such as safeway
– verizon co-brands with bjs club and on and on

Today, online presence is critical component of marketing campaigns and no true co-brand can exist in digital economy without clear co-branding online.  

Typical methods of co-branding

By online technique

– Whitelabel / Private Label
– Graylabel
– No label

By type of relationship

1. Internal co-branding 

Internal co-branding means that company users variety of their own products and services to expand sub brands by using them in conjunction with primary brand. 

2. External co-branding

Exnternal co-branding means a synthesis of products and services by different organizations(2 or more) that together create final product or service.

3. Mixed co-branding

Mixed co-branding is when any combination of internal and external ventures and partnerships is used to achieve the final product or service or a complete package of services or products. Often mixed co-branding is used as a method for internationalizing brands byt linking parent brand to a more locally known smaller brands or brands in parallel industries. Example is Coca-Cola and Axe in Argentina

Most common examples and strategies in online cobranding

Most common methods of co-branding online is offering your services, data, products under different company’s identity, while preserving your own brand in less dominant format. The later is done for your own benefit and is commonly the primary reason for the entire product or service offering. Frequent business development methodology for technology and IT forms lies, in fact, in development suite of products that can later be cobranded while preserving the identity and link back to the initial provider. This frequent technique services as a viral marketing pyramid if the service or product reaches certain level pf popularity. It gradually increases public awareness of the primary brand leading to deeper market recognition, affiliate and sponsorship opportunities and solidifying initial service or product provider’s overall business.

Contact LightMix for consultation on how to create effective visual design that communicates the nature of your co-branding

Corporate website design and corporate branding.

Website design or redesign is an important step in upgrading your organization’s marketing campaign. It is important to plan in advance and engage key decision makers to define vision and direction for what you would like your website to do. It’s important to set realistic marketing goals and break down the process step by step of how your corporate website new design will help your organization to achieve it. 

Planning for new corporate website design

1. Start by researching corporate websites of other companies in your field and take notes on what key informational elements are commonly used. See if it is common to use news, press releases, marketing and sales messages and so on

2. Identify your primary audience. Its critical to know what your corporate presence will help to achieve and who will be primary viewers of the web site. Even thought your initial marketing plan may not rely on the website as traffic generator, plan in advance on how your website can scale to support more of online sales and lead generation

3. Review your internal communication materials and branding. If you haven’t already done so, review how your other marketing materials are organized and designed. Is there a consistent style, design, is there a well-established branding and identity style guide?

4. Identify vendors. Do research to locate vendors to provide site design service. This can be difficult process, you will have to objectively review portfolio and client list of many companies. Check references, but don’t put too much value it them. Most importantly, try to find companies with hands-on experience, not ones that will try to sell you just about anything. Look for long term partner. Look for understanding of how design and approach can solve your marketing and branding needs.

5. Define RFP and select vendor, selecting corporate website design company.
After creating a list of vendors for your corporate website design, write a formal RFP and send to not more then 3-5 companies. Never send out email addressed to a list of to all emails at once.  A good practice is to call each company and speak with them in detail before sending RFP. Evaluate RFPs from deliverables stand point, not how well written they are. You need final result not polished sales message from the design firm. 

6. Work closely with the design company to go through all stages of the corporate website design process to accept initial design, produce website templates and produce the actual website with all underlying technologies and database programming.

Recent examples of LightMix corporate website designs:

http://www.vitalspring.com
http://www.ascendhealthcare.com
http://www.actimize.com
http://www.insiderscore.com
http://www.optimusfutures.com
http://www.psbresearch.com
http://www.customvault.com
and more at http://www.lightmix.com

Software GUI design

Application interfaces shift to the web from typical desktop environment. Latest tools allow ever more detailed and sophisticated application prototype development. While tools enable technical teams to perform many tasks without resorting to hiring off site consultants, how can a typical IT company benefit from hiring a professional user interface consultant and somebody with extensive user experience analysis and information architecture? Hire a professional design studio to provide user-centric design.

(LightMix UI design samples. Click here for more info…)

In-house UI design

Software development companies often resort to using in-house resources to perform most complex design assignments. As a result, internal teams cut corners and focus primarily on functional aspects with less attention to usability of the applications. 

To improve performance of software, specific software GUI design is required. Software GUI design and design of all of your application interfaces will significantly improve if a professional development is complimented by professional interface design.

Landing page design

Each company with a web site loses potentially significant percentage of leads by not employing basic strategy of landing pages. This does not require a marketing department to figure out that landing pages are tools that can save your business when no other methods of lead acquisition work. Specifically, strategy of channeling prospects to a specific page with a  promotion is a good way to get leads without distracting them with other offers on your site.

In the Financial services industry, landing pages are frequently used to create a CPC targeted promotion and convert users to free and later to paid subscriptions. Many companies employ financial landing pages free-to-paid offer conversion strategy by providing free or trial subscriptions initially and then up-selling customers to premium services.

Today, landing pages come in all different sizes and colors. There are long pages and very short ones. There are pages with no graphics at all and ones that have elaborate design. Depending on the context, content, keywords, industry and offer one of the strategies can produce better results then another. What is important is to conduct thorough A-B testing to see real landing pages performance and make necessary changes to the copy, offer or the  design.

Review sample landing page designs below and contact LightMix to assist you in your next landing page design project.

Futures Commodity Broker website design

Our latest project for derivatives brokers�-� redesign of Optimus Futures Website.

New design features friendly informational layout, functional navigation that supports and balances design in the pages. Website also includes blog matching the site in the design. Commodity brokers website design has strong call to action content and lead generation oriented design and layout.

Click here to view the website

Professional user interface design services are offered by specialized firms who’s expertise in the field of information architecture and user experience makes them more qualified to perform highly complex tasks of designing interfaces for variety of web or desktop applications. Typical web design company that also mentions UI design services with little to prove it will only cause problems and not perform adequate usability assessment and design something that not necessarily most usable, most effective for the end user.

When choosing ui design company, professional interface design usually shown by a specialized section of portfolio dedicated only to user interface design work across different media. Wider the range of firms expertise, better it is as they can employ methods used in different types of applications for your benefit.

Professional web design services or professional logo and identity design will not always translate in professional ui design expertise. Amateurish mistakes, lack of experience will be demonstrated by somebody designing booth displays and web sites, if given web interface design task.

Always perform due diligence and perform the following checks before selecting professional ui designers:

1. Check portfolio for sampels fo relevant ui design work

2. Check references when available. Keep in mind that many companies are not able to show publicly many samples of UI design work as that work is under NDA. Private demonstration may reveal wider angle of work

3. Talk directly to people responsible for interface and user experience. Professional ui designers are able to quickly adjust to project requirements and provide immediate feedback.

4. If you have existing system always have PowerPoint or demo access ready to show what you have. Professional ui designer will also be able to provide a feedback right away on basic usability aspects of the application

5. Check illustration capabilities of a company. Professional interface designers are also great illustrators and can design custom icons and buttons that create unique style for the application.

6. Check length of experience of the ui designer. He or she must be at least 5-7 years in the UI design field to be able to provide professional service.

Above all, make sure that the company and people you talk to are able to understand your business and have ongoing interest in having your business. Discuss potential future projects and ongoing work arrangements.

One of the most popular methods to advertise is via email marketing. For many years email list rental and email option marketing has been a driving force behind many successful businesses. How to create an effective email marketing campaign is often a difficult question. We want to share our experience on how to correctly approach email marketing subject and how to ensure best results for your upcoming email marketing campaign.

What is important to understand is that email marketing is like architecture. Without a plumber and electrician, event a great designed house won’t work. Same with email marketing, without key marketing message and right offer even great design won’t convert users.
It is critically important to have a winning proposition that clearly differentiates your business from your competition. Strengthen your key marketing points, stress what makes it different and finish the offer with strong call to action content and why your business has all expertise your customers want.

Make no false claims.
This will be difficult to maintain, yet long term you r customers will thank you. Only propose what you really are offering and what you can deliver.

Find good mail list providers.
Locate what lists your competitors are using. Many list providers will rent lists despite conflict of interest with other customers. Use this opportunity to gain intel on what methods other companies are using in your field. If your field isn’t relying on email marketing yet, use trade shows, common events to solicit for list rental. Most organizations will happily rent out mailing lists for a fee.

Have a good plan of action after initial marketing.
It’s critical to think what will happen after first round of marketing. Have a sequence of customer conversion defined before you start. Create appropriate landing pages and conversion offers that will move customers from one offer to another.

Find a design company that has understanding of multi-step conversion process.
Find a design company that understands all intricacies of the marketing business, done this for other clients and can advise you during the process on how to efficiently create and launch your email marketing campaign.

Click here to contact us for estiamte on your email marketing blast.

Designing identity and logo for small business is more important then any other visual element. Here is why:

Logo design for small business is important for following top 10 reasons:

1. Small businesses are often in disadvantage versus larger more developed companies. Good identity can level the field and help win projects.

2. Logo is one of the most important communication components of the marketing system. Having professionally designed branding and identity will allow to leave best impression on prospective customers, many of which will understand value of branding.

3. Small businesses need to establish or expand brand awareness on local or national market. Because of saturation of market with other brands, it is critical to have brand as memorable as possible and as often used as possible to establish or solidify logo and brand recognition. Remember that it takes many times (over 7) for your advertising to be remembered by people.Branding should be prominently used across all types of advertising.

4. To ensure effectiveness of ongoing marketing campaigns, branding and logo design must exist in a form that allows some room for change. To have that, initial design must be done with due effort allowing change sin usage, configuration depending on usage in different media. Consider that small size logo used in small web banners still must be easy to read as well as large sign logo over your entrance or on the street sign.

5. Competitive analysis of direct competition will most likely demonstrate that significant percentage of the other companies in your field already have logo design and branding systems developed to some degree. Not having that, your company automatically will appear behind.

6. Clear logo and branding identity will ensure that your own team stays efficient and can sell and execute your own services with best quality. All small businesses struggle with personnel issues, but for small companies it is more critical then larger ones. Even slight increase in efficiency or performance can have detrimental effects on the profits. Make your team be proud.

7. Vendor performance for small businesses can also be stimulated by demonstrating how well our organization is managing marketing aspects of your business. Good and clear branding and identity will reduce incorrect usage of your brand and more importantly limit mistakes to some degree when provided by other companies.

8. Many small businesses operate as networks of more then one organization. If your design company is able to provide good logo and branding design services to your organization, your own small business can generate income and expand business by referring your design company to others.

9. Local and especially remote customers may feel higher level of comfort by interacting with organization, which logo and branding is well designed. Many business decisions are done based on the level of comfort. Logo design for small business provides just that opportunity – make a lasting impression on your prospects.

10. Digital presence of your business often involves frequent usage and integration of your logo across different media from press releases, blogs, forums, postings, signature in email and so on. A professionally designed logo that can be used without sacrifice in all fields. Small business owners value time and well designed identity will save time in day to date operations and ensure best results.

Click here to have LightMix provide professional logo and branding identity estimate. Review our design portfolio

 Small business needs are very different from large corporations. Small organizations (under 50 people) have needs for flexibility, high end result, yet value efficiency more then any other. To make sure that the expenses are kept to minimum and your company receives best results, you need to plan from the start of the year so that your marketing include certain percentage allocated to web site design, web site maintenance, search engine optimization and advertising. Many companies recommend 10-12% of total revenue, we believe that the number will vary by industry and by year depending on economics of each organization and existing market share. More importantly is knowing what percentage of our marketing budget will be allocated to what segment of advertising, what keywords and what industry. This will directly influence the leads and inquiries. Selecting a right design company to do website design for small business is more important then ever. When selecting a design company to create your web site for your small business make sure that you evaluate expertise of the company and review portfolio of how they handled other small business projects. Also make sure that the design company selected has expertise across wide range of services as best result for small business will be reached when a design company can ensure consistent visual style across different materials, not just website.

Click here to have LightMix evaluate our small business website design project and provide a free proposal

Important items to ask when selecting a design company to create small business web site

Industry Experience
Discuss if a company has experience designing projects in your industry. This is one of the most critical items. If you run a financial services firm, you’d be better off with somebody who has done dozens of projects for other financial companies so you don’t need to explain all aspects of your business.

Review portfolio
Its important to evaluate design company portfolio not from perspective of coolness or hwo YOU like it, but rather from perspective of how it performs for a typical customer.s Put yourself in the shoes of a prospect of a site and try to easily get from A to B.

Check experience in other areas
It’s more important to review actual design experience in various fields and across different media. Do not assume that if a sign shop or local printing company provides website design services, this will help to ensure good result. Print and sign design companies are rarely offering professional design services. Do not also go for organizations with many employees. Many account managers, staff flow and changes in personnel can critically affect your project. Small business web site design needs are very unique. Your business should in a way become a business of your design company. Your interest should be directly in line with their interests. Closest analogy is a relationship between lawyer, doctor, accountant and a client.

Collect references and check on similar experience
It’s still important to talk to other people yet references these days are not as valuable. Everybody has some contacts that can talk great about other company.

Be prepared
Most importantly, be prepared for your project. No matter what company you choose to design a website for your small business, if you d not have content and information prepared to go on your web site, good design will not help your marketing goals. Spend adequate time researching your direct competitors and creating initial content for the web site. Design companies can offer copywriting services, but from our experience we found that small businesses are best served when owners lead copywriting as they have best understand of market, operations and specific details.