Category: Design

When you have a brilliant business idea and have been hard at work creating your products, your next step is to make sure that your products get noticed and receive the attention that they deserve. The question is, how do you get your business noticed and start selling your products? If you are looking for ways to market your company and get your products out there, these ideas will help you to do just that:

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Know Your Market

If you want to get your business noticed, you need to know who you want it to be seen by – who is your target audience? Having a target audience in mind is crucial, as this forms the basis of your marketing strategy. Knowing who you want to reach will make it easier to identify the best methods of reaching them, and getting your brand noticed by them.

Work on Your Brand

Does your brand have a strong identity? If not, it is beneficial to try and establish one. Creating a brand is all about thinking about what your business stands for and the values that your company holds. Having an identifiable brand makes it far easier to market your products and will make them far more appealing to your target audience.

Your business’s brand is what makes it stand out from competing products, and adds value beyond the tangible value of the product itself. Consumers will pay significantly more for a product if created by a brand that appeals to them. This is why many people will happily pay far more for designer products; the brand’s equity adds value beyond the value of the product itself.

When creating a brand, you will need to think carefully about what you want the brand to say about your business and then build the brand around this. For example, do you want your brand to communicate that your business is environmentally friendly, or perhaps that you are a maker of luxury products? You will need to use your branding to communicate this visually via your logo, and packaging, etc.

Once your logo and packaging have been created, you will have the perfect visual representation of your brand. One of the main benefits of building a strong brand is that it is easier to build up brand awareness, as your brand will be easy to identify. A strong brand with high levels of brand awareness will ensure that your business gets noticed and stands out from competing brands.

Build the Best Website

Your website is an essential tool when trying to get your business noticed. But merely having a website is not enough; your site needs to work alongside your branding to raise awareness of your products and to encourage your target audience to purchase them.

A successful website consists of several elements, each of which has a vital part to play. Firstly, you need to ensure that your site is well-designed from a technical point of view so that it offers an excellent user experience (UX). Your website also needs to be search engine optimized so that it ranks highly on the search engine results page (SERPS) and can be found by your customers.

Your website also needs to be visually appealing so that you can convert visitors to your site into customers. Designing an attractive website is not easy, so it is wise to get some help from a website designer to help you achieve a professional-looking website that will impress visitors.

As well as creating a site that is attractive to look out, it is crucial that your website showcases your products in the best possible way. In the absence of being able to view your products in person, your website needs to provide all the information that your potential customers need to buy your items. Product photography is crucial here, so it is a wise idea to hire an experienced freelance photographer to capture the best images of your products.

A visually appealing, easy to navigate site will help to increase your conversion rates.

Start Networking

Networking is an often overlooked way of gaining exposure for your business. Networking is an excellent way of meeting like-minded business owners and to make contacts that could potentially become customers. Networking is incredibly useful for getting your business noticed and can throw up opportunities that you have never considered in the past. It is wise to have business cards to take along to networking events so that you can exchange details with your new contacts.

When trying to grow your company and create a business with impact, it’s important that you are aware of the different factors that can contribute to your success. This could include: 

• A thorough, flexible business plan.
• Budgeting and expenses. 
• Customer satisfaction. 
• A strong marketing campaign. 
• Employee satisfaction/retention. 

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From the above list, employee satisfaction can have a much higher impact on your company’s growth and development than you would initially expect. This is due to the fact that when your employees feel respected and valued in the workplace, they are likely to work harder and more effectively.

With that in mind, here are some tips that you can use to take better care of your employees. 

• Retain current staff members, and draw in new employees by providing them with plenty of opportunities for professional growth and development.For example, this could include training programs, assessments like cognitive assessment tests, or even a shadowing/mentorship scheme.
• Improve employee loyalty by ensuring that you view each employee as an individual, as opposed to a tool through which you can earn money. One way in which you can do this is by ensuring that you get to know them and provide them with the appropriate, tailored support as and when they need it.
• Focus on creating a warm and welcoming work environment that boosts creativity and productivity. One way in which you can achieve this goal is by creating a non-judgmental environment, where everybody feels confident to voice their opinions. Embrace the concept that no idea is a bad idea, and you’ll soon notice an improvement in employee performance and productivity.
• Ensure that each employee is fully aware of all of the health and safety guidelines and regulations that exist within your workplace, and provide them with the appropriate support and training where applicable. For example, if your employees are HGV drivers who spend a lot of time on the road, ensure that they are aware of the HGV parking and truck stops along their route where they can rest. Following all guidelines is the easiest way to take care of your employees and avoid accidents or injuries.
• Have an ‘open door’ policy in your workplace, and encourage your employees to reach out should they encounter any problems or have any questions. This is a great way of forging a quality relationship with your employees, which will often help them become better at their job as a result.
  
• Reward good work. Where possible, provide employees who go above and beyond with the recognition they deserve. This could be in the form of a raise, promotion, or even a simple acknowledgment of their efforts and your appreciation.
• Provide your employees with regular feedback regarding their performance – ensuring that your criticism is constructive as opposed to harsh. This provides them with the insight they need to improve without knocking their confidence – which is a win-win for everyone involved. You can also use this time to set them regular goals and targets – which have also been known to increase productivity.

Contemporary homes have changed drastically over the past couple of years. While minimalism and clean lines have mostly dominated the past decade when it comes to high-end homes, these days, we’re starting to see a common theme of “fun” house styles that are much looser in definition and more difficult to pinpoint. Contemporary houses don’t seem to follow a trend anymore, making it hard to describe the aspects that make a house seem progressive and explorative in terms of design.

So in this post, we’re going to take a look at some of the aspects of contemporary house design and how you could potentially transform your home into something completely different.

Source: https://unsplash.com/photos/xx0oSB1YxRE (CC0)

Exploring different surfaces, textures and materials

Most modern and older homes focus on a handful of established surfaces, textures and materials. In a contemporary home, a heavy emphasis is placed on the textures and patterns that a surface has, in addition to the style and type of materials and even the surfaces they are used on. It’s not uncommon to mix different grains of wood, types of concrete or even irregular tile patterns that aren’t commonly seen.

Minimalism is still a factor, but it’s far from sterile

Minimalism seems to be a constant when it comes to high-end home design, but there are different styles to keep in mind. In the past, sterile design with neutral colors and a focus on removing items from rooms was the most popular choice. These days, contemporary house design focuses on a more playful style of minimalism where mismatched furniture and interesting textures and patterns are more commonly used. You can be more experimentative with minimalism on contemporary house design, breaking norms that you might be used to and being more expressive with your furniture and color choices.

Mixing form and function

Another common aspect of contemporary house design is the equalization of form and function. Good architecture and design no longer sacrifice practical features that make our homes more comfortable to live in. Designs today will incorporate all kinds of house-wide features, such as a central vacuum system, HVAC features, ventilation and even focus on lowering energy consumption to make the home cheaper to run. These features aim to increase the quality of life in the home while also being friendly to the environment and saving you money.

Playful staircases

Staircases are difficult to design because they need to be functional and architecturally stable. This is a great example of form and function being equally as important, but also a great example of how simple features and structures in the home can be overhauled and styled in unique ways to give the home a completely new and interesting look that hasn’t been imagined before. You can have a lot of fun when it comes to unique and creative staircase designs, provided that they are stable and make sense in the context of your home instead of having a statement piece for the sake of being different.