How Color Affects Consumer Purchases 01/26/2012
Color has a huge impact on how customers react to a product. Understanding how colors affect consumer purchasing behavior is highly important for marketers. As the following graphic (via Kissmetrics) shows, 93% of customers place visual appearance and color above other factors when shopping. Customers are persuaded by visual cues, the strongest of which is color  So how does color affect consumer behavior? Different colors are associated with different types of products and shoppers. When designing your product, packaging and logo, make sure to consider who your customers are and what colors will have the greatest influence on them.  Now that we know color is important, what about other factors that influence consumers purchases? Overall design also plays a significant role in consumer purchase decisions, particularly for online shoppers. This graphic shows that 42% of online shoppers base their opinion of a website on overall design alone and 52% said they would not return to a site if it had bad overall aesthetics.  Whether your designing a website, product, or logo, make sure you are using colors and aesthetics that speak to your target customers. Have more questions about color? Ask us. Cheers, The Ruby Porter Team Add Comment What's The Hashtag All About? 01/02/2012
 For most of us, the image above is simply the pound symbol. It's what we dial on the phone after making an entry or shorthand when writing down weights. But in the world of Twitter it is better known as the hashtag symbol. So how do you use it? When writing a post or tweet you can use the hashtag to mark relevant words which makes your tweet more easily found in searches. To use the hashtag simply type it and then immediately follow it with the keyword (NO spaces!!!). For example, if you wanted to tweet something about marketing, you could #marketing and someone who searches it can find your tweet instead of it getting lost in the millions of tweets. If you want to use a string of words they need to be all connected. For example #lovemyboss pulls up all sorts of tweets. Hashtags are also useful for building conversations about something. For instance, a lot of events and shows are making hashtags so that viewers can talk about the event/show as it's happening. The NFL team the New York Giants is utilizing fans' Twitter posts during actual games. Learn more about that here. It’s important to not go overboard with the hashtags, though. Twitter recommends using no more than three per tweet. There are many different hashtags used on Twitter. You can visit hashtags.org to see a list of all popular ones used. Cheers, The Ruby Porter Team How To Build A Community On Social Networks 12/19/2011
 It can be hard to gain a following of supporters that are loyal and engaged on social networks. It’s can also be hard to be seen on a social network that hosts millions of people. So we’ve put together some tips to help you gain a better community on Facebook and Twitter. Here they are!
Cheers, The Ruby Porter Team Client Spotlight: Eugene Generals Toy Drive! 11/17/2011
At Ruby Porter, we are so proud to support and promote our clients. The Eugene Generals hockey team is working hard this year to give back to the community. Last month it was raising money for breast cancer research, and now this month the focus is on helping kiddos in the Sacred Heart Hospital Pediatrics Unit with their annual holiday toy drive.  New, unwrapped toys can be dropped off at the locations listed below. All donations will be picked up on December 14, 2011. See more info on the Eugene Generals Facebook page. SELCO YMCA 299 E. 11th Ave., Eugene 2055 Patterson Street, Eugene 3169 West 11th Ave. Suite A1, Eugene 221 Division Road, Eugene WAL-MART 925 Harlow Road, Springfield 2659 Olympic Street, Springfield 5531 Main Street, Springfield 4550 West 11th Ave., Eugene MIKILAS BOOT CAMP 6TH STREET GRILL 4540 Commerce St., Eugene 55 West 6th Ave., Eugene JERRY'S KADELS AUTO BODY 2525 Olympic Street, Springfield 1700 W. 2nd Ave., Eugene 2600 Highway 99 N, Eugene 4350 Main Street, Springfield RITE AID RIVERBEND HOSPITAL 57 West 29th Ave., Eugene 3333 Riverbend Drive, Springfield 1970 Echo Hollow Road, Eugnee 2130 Marcola Road, Springfield     Daily Deal Decline 11/09/2011
 Visits to LivingSocial and Groupon websites Groupon has experienced tremendous growth and success in recent years. But with similar deal sites exiting the daily deal market, it is clear these sites can not sustain the amount of customers that they used to. Recently, Facebook killed off Facebook Deals, its competitor to Groupon and other daily deal sites after just four months. Despite Facebook's 750 million users, they were unable to make their deals work. Perhaps more surprising is Yelp's withdrawal from the daily deal market. Yelp was more knowledgeable of local markets, a large asset in the daily deals market and yet still couldn't pull it off. There are an increasing number of smaller entrants in the daily deal market posing a threat to the big players Groupon and LivingSocial. Groupon is currently working on a location based daily deal program to help them compete in what has become a very saturated market. But will it be enough to keep them afloat? Only time will tell. What do you think? Will you keep using daily deal sites? Cheers, The Ruby Porter Team Source: http://mashable.com/2011/08/30/one-too-many-daily-deals/ Website Winners And Bloopers: All That Text! 11/07/2011
Think back to that time in high school, when you would be sitting in class with a textbook open in front of you, pouring over the words, words, words. Read a chapter of history, a chapter of science, a chapter of this or that, and with all that information comes a whole lot of text. For this edition of website winners and bloopers, we will look at how text can be used as a graphic element, ...and when it should not. Looking at two history websites, we will see how organizing a lot of text can be an interesting design puzzle.  WINNER: Our first website brings us back to good old 1776. PBS has a section on their website devoted to the American Revolution called Liberty. The website is organized into four sections with a black background and “Liberty” written in a scrawly hand. Silhouettes of soldiers and a tattered flag are against a blue bar at the top. What’s really interesting about this website, though, is how the information is displayed. In the first section, the website displays important events as if they were in an early newspaper. The paper is torn and yellowing, and the headlines look as if they were just freshly printed by Gutenberg himself. The article, however, is written in a modern typeface that is easy to read, set up very similarly to a modern newspaper. The key to being able to use interesting and unusual fonts is to not overuse them. Having the body copy in a simple font allows the headline to stand out, making it more than just information and actually a design element on the page. The article couldn’t be easily read if it were in a similar font to the other, and the impact of the headline would be diminished if it were mixed with something else with a lot of character. In this way, pick one thing you want to stand out on the page.  BLOOPER: For our website blooper, we’ll visit The Victorian Web. Now here is a website with a LOT of text. With countless sections and articles and lists of dates, The Victorian Web offers a plethora of info. But it doesn’t offer a lot in the way of design. Does a website devoted to presenting knowledge need to look pretty? Well, perhaps not, but it does have to be organized and easy to read. The visual organization and presentation of your text will reflect on how your reader thinks about and reads the text itself. The writing may be very good, but if it is presented poorly, the reader may question the website’s credentials. The wall of text that sometimes occurs on The Victorian Web could be intimidating and difficult to find information. Be kind to your readers, and use a smaller box to present your information, instead of having it stretch across their browser regardless of resolution. Also, their opening page has little blue blocks set up in a diamond shape, with links to each different section. The text within the blue is sometimes too small or hyphenated, which makes it harder to read. This is a case when an unusual font hinders the overall message of the website, because it is squished into too small a space and against a garish color, so you can’t really derive the right mood from it. When dealing with a lot of text it can be difficult to juggle design elements and the information you need to get out. Have fun with it, though. Just because you have a lot of text, doesn’t mean you can’t have a visually appealing website. Keeping in mind that less is more with fonts, you can showcase the perfect type to create the right feel for your website. Until next time, The Ruby Porter Team 7 Simple SEO Tips For Beginners 10/31/2011
Search Engine Optimization, also known as SEO, is one way for attracting potential customers to your website and it is a critical component for your Internet marketing efforts. Check out these seven tips for beginners via Business2Community.
We hope these tips from Business2Community help you out! Read the full article here. Cheers, The Ruby Porter Team Traditional Media Vs. New Media 10/18/2011
Traditional Media and New Media... Did you know that these two marketing strategies are very different from each other? Or even what they are? Traditional media is what everyone is used to seeing on mediums such as television, radio, magazines, newspaper, billboards, etc. New media is digital and interactive. Some places where new media can be found are on the Internet, websites, social media networks, games on all consoles, mobile devices, etc. The great thing about these two different strategies is that they can play off each other. For instance, it's good to have traditional media pieces running at the same time as new media pieces as they allow you to reach a broader audience and reinforce your brand/message from a variety of touchpoints. Here are examples of brands that do a nice job integrating traditional and new media: Red Bull: Red Bull created a "Red Bull Stash" campaign that went around all over the United States and hid Red Bulls in neighborhoods, behind fences, in gardens, etc. People who liked Red Bull's Facebook page were able to type in their zip code and receive clues to where the cans were hidden. Red Bull created a successful social media scavenger hunt. Starbucks: If any business or brand can learn from someone else, they could definitely learn from Starbucks. Starbucks does an amazing job of communicating with its followers, engaging them and responding to feedback. Take a look at Starbuck's Facebook page here. We hope these examples give you some help when you are trying to integrate new and traditional media. Cheers, The Ruby Porter Team  Typography is everywhere, and, without realizing it, it dictates to us the mood and essence of whatever we’re looking at. Much studied and loved by many graphic designers, typography is more than just the words on the page, it can tell a story. Different fonts are like the different characters, making us read differently, with different tempos, different voices, and different moods. In this campaign from Think! Road Safety from the UK, typography is used to create two different characters and thus a whole back story. The first font looks like one that would be used in a “See Jane Run” book, while the written font looks like the hand of a child drawing with paints. The juxtaposition of the two with the severity of the message creates a compelling argument to be aware of your actions to set a good example for your children. In this example especially, we are confronted with how different fonts have a voice all their own. As you read, switching from one font to the other is like reading a text book to hearing the sound of a child’s voice. When choosing the right font for your branding or advertising, be sure to think of the voice that you want to be heard and how you can play with that to create a strong brand essence. Cheers, The Ruby Porter Team |
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