Here are a few trends and examples of “meet the team” pages. One trend worth mentioning is the most popular:

1. Employee photos.

One idea for employee photos is to make custom avatars – like we did on Adcuda’s site. This is a great way to let an employee’s personality shine through while keeping the design professional and consistent. Our team page holds a little biographical line beside each employee photo – We like to show our creative personalities by sounding not-so-serious on our about page.

2. Social Media Links

As you know there are many professionals out there that have linkedin, facebook and twitter accounts. Why not have your potential clients connect with your employees? It is a great way to lead your clients to current events/thoughts and it builds strong relationships. Before doing this, make sure your employee’s content is appropriate. You do not want to damage your company’s reputation. There is also a way to add in a team member’s latest tweet to the page next to their profile. What fun!

3. Expanded profiles

While many sites only include basic information about each of the team, others include extended profile info. this is done through the uses of pop up windows, sliders, new pages, etc. Extended info is a geat way to give clients more insight into the employees behind a company. The simpler the layout, the more effective. You do not want to bombard your prospective clients with too much info – but it is nice to include info like “our story” or “what we bring to the table”

Here are some visual examples:

Th_nk

Blue Sky Resumes

MW Design Interactive

nGen Works

glue Isobar

Etsy

kudos smashing magazine

I heard the story a few days ago on NPR and was taken aback by AT&T’s approach to their data plans. Citing that 2% of their users use more than 2gb of 3G bandwidth a month, which is bogging down their system, and that justifies limiting the “unlimited” plan for everyone. Now don’t kid yourself, 3G across all companies has always been capped at 5gb, but that’s high enough to not count bytes every day. Remember the days of getting upset that your conversation didn’t end at 4:59 instead of 5:03, charging you 6 minutes? Well, say hello to that stress again!

I’m on T-Mobile so this change doesn’t affect me… yet, but AT&T being the 800lb gorilla with 71.3 million users, what they do sets the stage for the industry. Which brings me to why this could impact websites.

My wife and I used a shocking ~700MB of bandwidth last month and we don’t stream episodes of “Lost”, or spend all day checking out viral videos on youtube. That 700megs is just normal checking email, stocks, tweeting, surfing the web and using the GPS navigation systems. The trend was leaning away from mobile sites because it can be frustrating to re-learn a new site and with smart phone browsers being full-featured and user-friendly it’s easier to navigate the real site. But full sites burn significantly more bandwidth, so to combat that I think you’ll stop seeing the flat, watered down sites and start seeing “mobile” sites that have been significantly sized down and compressed but still operate identical to the real one.

Well, fear no more mighty wordsmith.  WordPress 3.0 has introduced the cure for what ails you: custom post types.  With custom post types the admin level user experience can now include any post type that you feel like creating.  When you visit the WordPress dashboard instead of just seeing the familiar “Posts”, you can have “Recipe Post”, “Camera Post”, or any other type of post you’d like.  With theme customization these post types can then be styled to look a certain way, and entering meta data becomes a much more user friendly endeavor on the backend.

After having created a few custom post types myself for current projects, I believe that this feature will provide a surge in the already formidable install base of WordPress.  But as is usually the case, with great power comes great responsibility.  While WordPress 3.0 makes tremendous strides towards creating these custom post types, the actual creation of them is still in the realm of the theme or plugin developer.  That said, I would expect to see several plugins released within the next month or so  that will make this process very easy for the end user.  When WordPress flashes that “Upgrade Available” banner at the top of your dashboard, go ahead and click “Upgrade Now”.  You won’t regret it.

There are tons of categories incentives can fall through. Here are some types – hopefully from this list you can choose what may be a best fit for your company and consumers.

Material incentives: tangible rewards often monetary — wages, fringe benefits, patronage

Solidary incentives: intangible rewards from the act of association — sociability, status, identification

Purposive incentives: intangible rewards related to the goals of the organization — e.g., working on an election of a supported candidate

Bonuses -One of the most popular sales incentives is cash, and a great way to offer it is through incentive-based raffles. Use a chart to identify defined goals, and each time an employee achieves one of the goals she is given a raffle ticket. Hence, the more goals an employee reaches the more raffle tickets she receives and the better the chances are she will win.

Gifts – Offer the winning staff member a gift from your store’s merchandise, which could be a new flat-screen television or an all-expenses-paid vacation. They key is to ensure that your staff members all continually want to make a sale.

Promotions -When a position becomes available you can hold a sales incentive competition to award it to the highest seller. In this case, it’s best to run the competition for several months so you see who can sustain a high level of performance and deserves a position of more responsibility. Typically, these competitions are limited to a small group of employees.

It is important to understand how much incentives can affect your company – both positively and negatively. With this economy it might be tough to gain positive influence to your company by using incentives, so it is best to start mildly with an incentive to see how much influence it may gain. Keep reports of your progress.

When you want to attract new customers creating a mailing list is a nice option to promote your incentives. A newsletter is a wonderful incentive that allows your company to show off honesty, credibility and trust. These newsletters should mostly contain sales and coupons. Give people a reason to sign up – for some valuable information. Also, be sure to keep your content fresh, The biggest reason that people unsubscribe to newsletters is that they don’t feel the information is relevant to them any longer. A handy tip to get more exposure: keep your incentives personal. Keep track of your specific customers. If you have a large amount of customers who go in your store and only purchase outdoor items, offer an incentive that goes out to them only. Identify your target markets and keep them organized within your newsletter/email campaigns. Make them personal.

A free download is another great incentive to include on your web site, email marketing or newsletter. A free download means instant gratification and is perceived as a ‘must-have’ item. Make it valuable to your customers. Pay attention to your graphics as well. I personally like buttons that look ‘click-able’ or ‘touchable’ make sure you choose a nice graphic that has a nice ‘call to action’ mood to it. See don’t you just want to click it?

Kudos answers.com & rockstar affiliates

(1)The most practical, unique designs come out of sustainable packaging. The less material used the more unique the product is – and of course this has a less of an impact on the environment – A win win. Here is an example

(2) Re-using recycled material for your product or packaging creates a familiar, unique and personable essence for your company, as well as create sustainable trust. Here is an examples:
1                                                                                       2.

5. Sustainability / CSR Reporting

Depending on the size of a company and its public profile, it may make sense to develop a formal sustainability report. Go with Web versions to save paper. Have an online database that others can access and have meetings over them – to also save paper.

6. Integrating Sustainability into Your Brand

Green marketing doesn’t have to be a niche product or service.If sustainability is integrated into a company’s operations,sustainability can be the main selling point of the whole product line. Having corporate culture that fosters sustainability is the most constructive way of seeing sustainability permeate the product or service line.

kudos thedieline & environmentalleader

As long as your numbers prove your design works (with either purely images or live text, also), then there’s no problem. This example, sent by Urban Outfitters yesterday, shows the email marketing trend that many large brands are going with. Without the alt tags (which just say a quick message about what the image is, if not displayed), the email would just be one big white box. A company like U.O. can certainly use their audience to their own advantage when sending emails: they are generally young and probably tech savvy, or at least understand that if you want to see the pretty pictures, you have to take that extra step to ‘Display Images’. It’s a gamble, but it looks like U.O., along with so many other companies, are willing to take it.

So once you get past the ‘Display Images’ issue, what should your all-graphics email look like? It should be worth the extra click, and I feel that Urban Outfitters accomplished that with this email. Their marketing is usually edgy, integrating popular art trends, and with this email they’ve decided to show that using a beautiful color scheme with bold letters is all it takes. Of course the words ‘Free Shipping’ are always a good attraction, but the graphic was only as busy as it needed to be, and as a customer I appreciated that.

The moral of the story: don’t over-stimulate your audience with tons of pictures. The message should be clear, and the graphics should only be used to add to it, not distract.

Even though a “brand’ is intangible, it refers to the reputation behind your company’s name. A carefully built brand is worth more in actual dollars than all the tangible assets put together. To start, you must decide how you want people to perceive your business – visually as well as internally. Create a mission statement.

I have some experience myself with brand loyalty, as many others do in their shopping. For instance, many people purchase only a certain kind of shampoo and have been using it for years because they trust the brand. Whether it has been in the family for years or just because the product is very efficient, the level of comfort your brand is very important for prospective and long term customers. So how do you go about creating brand loyalty?

Create a logo! Take Nike and Mcdonalds for example, you do not need to read the company’s name to understand what it is. Your logo should allow your brand to be instantly recognized by those familiar with it. To this extent, your logo helps create and reinforce brand awareness. The logo you create should be able to be used consistently in a variety of different media. It should be suitable for corporate letterhead and business cards, as well as for your website and corporate signage (if any).

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http://www.brandbucket.com/ ( We offer a selection of quality hand-picked premium logos and domain names available for sale as ready-to-use brands for your business startup, new product name or blog name. ) My Brandbucket Profile – Need a domain/logo? Buy mine!

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Identify and Describe Your Target Market- Decide whether you want to target lthe entire webhosting community or only a segment of it such as small business websites. Describe your market.

For one, you need consistent advertising. Decide what you can do for your customers, what is the true beneficiary of your product or service. Create a ‘sell line’ that defines your company in a nutshell.

Customer Service – Employ people who can get on board with your brand  – One small non cooperative experience with a customer can greatly affect your business by word of mouth.

Public Relations – Keep the promises you make! Make it easy for your customers to do certain tasks (like return an item, buy online, etc) See what your customers are disappointed with, and make it better/easier

Use the internet – A company with no web presence is archaic. Even if you’re only interested in local sales right now, your customers are on the web, and they’ll want to see you there, too. Get it done now.

Kudos entrepreneur.com

In both Photoshop and Illustrator, you’ll find in the File drop-down menu an option for ‘Save For Web & Devices’. When you click this, a box comes up with a variety of options. Don’t stress! Make it easier on yourself and in the top left corner, click ’4-Up’. This will separate your image into 4 boxes, which will show you the quality for the size.

You’ll notice in the above screen shot that the drop-down menu on the right, labeled ‘Preset:’ is currently on PNG-24. This is where you can choose the different file extensions and then see their qualities and sizes.

PNG
PNGs are great for transparency when you choose the highest quality, but they are known for their large file size. If you use one or two colors, the size will be smaller than those images with every color of the rainbow. Keep this in mind when saving for web.

GIF
GIFs also do transparency, when you choose the highest quality, but they tend to put a white outline around your object or text.

JPGs
JPG is best for small file size, but you cannot do transparency at all. They are also notorious for pixelating or blurring text if you don’t choose the highest possible size.

These are certainly not ‘The Rules’ – as you’ll see in the comparison below, the JPG ended up being the largest file size, when usually it’s the other way around. When there are more colors in the mix, the JPG will almost always be the smallest size, but again the quality sometimes lacks.

Comparing the End Product
Seeing as my example was only one color, the file sizes are comparable. To show when transparency worked, I put the original image (the purple text) over the orange background.

The PNG file size was 10KB with great quality, and was able to do transparency flawless.

The GIF file size was 12KB, and although the transparency works, there is a white outline around the text. Unless your image will be on a white background, transparent gif isn’t usually the best option.

The JPG file size was the most with 19KB, and transparency was not an option. Here it shows that you are forced to have a white background around your image.

Hopefully this quick tutorial helps to clarify when certain extensions should be used, and what their shining qualities are.

Day by day, blogs are getting extremely popular. More and more are getting addicted to updating ones thoughts, writing logs and sharing miscellaneous activity. There seems to be no indication of trend reversal.. but now with increased awareness more and more are becoming aware of this new phenomenon. If you are competing for a popular spot in the blog running, here are some tips to get your blog on that high pedestal.

First of all it is important to get your name out there. Social networking, like blogging, is extremely popular as well. The more public accounts you have online the more exposure your profile/blog will become.

You could start a controversy. Current trends in news are one of the most popular and active blogs on the internet. You could start a contest, and give away prizes. It is important to keep people actively involved. Asking questions, encouraging opinions and creating polls can bump up your traffic as well.

Dressing up your blog is also important too. Making your blog visually pleasing will keep them coming back to read. Branding your blog will also give it an identity. Make sure it has a catch-phrase, or a logo.
Advertising is also a bump for your blog. You could make bumper stickers or tshirts that may lure some people to your site,  or maybe post your blog’s ad in the local newspaper or the yellow pages.

Also, it is very helpful to keep a track of websites that pick up your articles or press releases, Offer them exclusive news or content. Other possibilities are starting a newsletter, podcasting, get featured in print magazine, start a blog comic strip, build tools that your visitors may find a use for, and publicize!

But with so many options out there (size, color, shape, placement), how do you know what will work the best? First off, you need to give your audience some credit. Don’t make your button the size of Antarctica, because then it won’t even look like a button anymore. Feel the flow of your layout, and place your CTA in a reasonable spot. After they’ve read the copy, they’ll want to go to the next step, so give it to them.

Color
It’s best to make your button a complementary (opposite) color to the rest of your layout. If your site is yellow (hey, what an awesome color!), maybe you should choose purple or blue to bring attention to your CTA.

Shape
Conventions exist, because they work. The shape of your button should reflect what’s popular and known: this doesn’t mean you can’t have fun with it, it just means you should acknowledge what’s functional. Generally, buttons have rounded corners and emulate 3-D. Try adding in gradients so it looks like it’s catching light. The more ‘real’ it looks, the more people will want to touch it.

Placement
White space is your friend! The more open air you have around your CTA, the more attention it will call to itself. Try using your site without the button, and see where you as a user would want it. Above all else, it should be functional.

See Some Examples of Good and Bad Button Practices

Smashing Magazine

Best Design Tuts

Create Your Own Button

This tutorial will help you make your own eye-catching button: Site Point