Want a Reason to Go Responsive? Here’s FOUR!

Posted on by Ken Granger

Having a responsive website has become one of the most important things you can do for your online presence. Some may think that it would make sense to leave their older website that way it is, but to allow mobile users to access a secondary website, just for them. Below are four primary reasons to consider taking your website responsive.

One Website For It All

Responsive websites have the ability to viewed at their best from all platforms. Not only that, working to maintain one website is a lot better than having to maintain a static and mobile website.

It Pleases Google

We all want to rank higher with our websites through search engines, especially Google. Having a responsive website is a serious consideration that Google makes when giving search results. If you’re using both a mobile and static website, you’re getting hit with penalties. With more than 67% of all searches being done on Google – it’s extremely important to have a mobile friendly website. You can test your website by clicking this link.

Think About Your Mobile Users

20% of Google search is done from mobile devices like cell phones or tablets
75% of Americans take their phone with them to the bathroom
25% of users in the US only access the internet from their phones
Astoundingly, over half of social media visits happen on a mobile phone or tablet.

These are all reasons why making sure that your website caters to these numbers is so important. Having a website that properly responds to being pulled up on a smart phone, tablet, desktop, or laptop is crucial to giving the best experience possible. experience.

Keep Them Happy, Keep Your Business Happy

By creating that trust with your visitors when you give each different device the same website experience, you’re building a relationship with them. Easily finding what they’re looking for will make them happy. When you have happy visitors, you will see a lower bounce rate and an increase in business!

Logo Spotlight – Jishi & Associates

Posted on by Ken Granger

Hot off the presses, ladies and gentlemen, BrandCo is proud to present the new logo for Jishi & Associates. Chad Jishi was looking for something simple that could help him appear more professional and help him grow his real estate business. Having never really had a logo before, at least one that wasn’t created by himself or close friends, the logo team knew we had a special experience in our hands.

Chad Jishi's Alternate Icon

Starting the process with sketches, we explored a couple different styles including icon based designs and monograms. Originally we were going with “Chad Jishi Group” as the name for the company, and after working on that for a bit, Chad realized “Jishi & Assoc.” was the direction he wanted to go in. Eventually, we settled on a more typographic logo, using the elements and shapes of the letters to make something unique. We went with a more bold, modern style to the text, as we knew Chad had a somewhat younger audience. Using the serif style ampersand, we brought a touch of the traditional to contrast the modern so that it didn’t feel too clean cut or alienate a certain segment of the market.

One of the final pieces we put together was a small icon that Chad could use in lieu of his new logo. Using the lowercase “j” and “a” from his name, we created a nice circular mark, and even added some depth by overlapping certain elements and curves of the shapes. We are firm believers in logos that are responsive and could adjust to whatever medium you are applying it to. Maybe there’s not enough space in the corner of your stationery for the entire text treatment logo. Having a small icon you could use instead will save space and ease up on the stress of forcing things to work. Icons also make a great watermark, and look perfect on social media platforms.

A BrandCo Family Thanksgiving

Posted on by Ken Granger

At BrandCo, we consider every team member and client as family. So, it is only customary that we wanted to spend a Thanksgiving with our work family, too. Yesterday, we enjoyed a delicious pot luck with Turkeys prepared by our fearless leader, Ken. We had everything from green bean casserole to pecan pie to accompany. During the holidays, and throughout the year, it is important to slow down and appreciate being able to surround yourself with such amazing people.

The day before Thanksgiving was a very big day for us.

IMG_9974It marked David’s last day with us. We’re very proud of our boy and his new opportunity at US Today and his big move to New York. We’re happy to have been part of your journey, David!

We also celebrated the day that Eric was born with a Birthday cake…on top of the pecan pies, pumpkin cheese cakes, and pumpkin pie.IMG_9973

 

We asked the team what their favorite part of Thanksgiving is:

IMG_9965James E: “I love Thanksgiving! Its that time of the year that you realize how blessed you are to have your family and friends.”
Jessica: “Spending time with my family 🙂 ”
Bianca: “Food…Oh and I like the Macy’s parade”
Trey: “Grandma’s pecan pie”
IMG_9967Emily: “My favorite thing about Thanksgiving is getting to see family and eating yummy foods that I don’t get any other time of the year.”
Denika: “Cooking for a crowd.”
Trevor: “Over the last few years Thanksgiving has been getting to know my girlfriends family better and shown me how great it is to have a close family and to stay in touch often. I hope to bring the same traditions and family values to own one day”
IMG_9969Max: “pumpkin pie”
Mackenzie: “Hmm It’s hard to pick just one thing. I like that Thanksgiving reminds everyone what they are most Thankful for. For one day we are grateful for the people we are spending Thanksgiving with and the things we take for granted on a daily basis.”
IMG_9959Zenadia: “Family.”
Marc: “My favorite thing is sharing your hard work and culture through a feast”
Vincenzo: “Postdinner coma”
Hector: “My favorite thing about Thanksgiving is….being with family and people I love (and the fact that most people have better attitudes)”
Jake: “Post-dinner naps”
IMG_9962Gesenia: “Having a day to gather with family and reflect on the good things in our lives. And of course, getting to eat delicious food and drink some wine.”
Eric: “My birthday is near it, so I almost always am off work”
Tracy: “Getting to visit my family. When it comes to food, my mom is amazing and her dressing is to die for! Im usually already full from snacking on everything while she’s cooking before we even make it dinner with the rest of the family”
Phil: “Drinking at 10am on a Thursday”
Juan: “My favorite thing has to be the food… definitely! and of course sharing with your family and friends…but the food… I’m telling you xD”
IMG_9966Jonathan: “Hmmmmm… being about 5.000 miles away from them, I’m gonna go with spending time with the family…”
Tony: “Taking time at the beginning of the meal to remember all of the positive things that happened that year”
Amie: “The drinking, the laughing and the story telling with family 🙂 And pie. I love pie.”
West: “Helping others”

Hope your Thanksgiving is just a GREAT!

Bringing The One Thing to BrandCo

Posted on by Ken Granger

Have you every thought about what your definition of Success is? Here at BrandCo, Ken is constantly trying to strive to create happy and secure employees. Part of this is the reason why we had a special guest speaker join us last Friday here at Headquarters. You may be familiar with Don Hobbs, he is the co-founder of MAPS Business Training, which focuses on success through business models and systems. Along with many other accomplishments, Don is also the 1986 co-founder of Hobbs/Herder Advertising, which is a $20+ million powerhouse in the real estate marketing and training space.

“Success is getting what you want.”

 

We all have the same 1,440 minutes in a day, some just spend them a lot more efficiently. We learned that due to us having the most energy at the beginning of the day, that this is when we should focus the most on our “One Thing.” But what is my “One Thing”? I think this is the biggest question that most of my fellow employees walked away from the talk with. Another question that I have been plagued with recently is to try to discover what I actually want for my future. The BOLD laws laid out by Don is a great stepping stone system get us all to the same place in order to plan our futures and set our goals.

“Change how you look at things and the things you look at change.”

 

When discussing the items covered with my significant other the night after, we argued over the “Lies” that Don busted for us. As a self-labeled EXCELLENT Multi-tasker, I still find it quite difficult to believe that multitasking is a figment. Essentially, Hobbs allowed that it order to multitask, we are training our brains to de-focus. We all engaged in an activity where we wrote down 1-10, then wrote down a-j, and then attempted to write down 1, a, 2, b, 3, c….While looking up and making eye contact with out partner after each alphabet letter. Needless to say, we were much slower at the tasks at hand when it required us to rewire our brains to put letters and numbers together rather than separate.

“Money is not a cause, it is an effect”

 

I love the quote above because it brings home everything that BrandCo teaches its’ employees. Do what you love and everything else falls into place over time. The issue with most of modern society is that we are working in order to make money, not doing what we love and just happening to make a living at it. This is something that has resonated with me since starting here and being first given the book The Go-Giver. If you haven’t had the pleasure to read this book by Bob Burg and John David Mann, I definitely recommend that you make it a mission. By giving, you gain more, essentially. Just as similar as working for your cause, your going to gain success.

The end of the talk brought up the information that the team asked for at the end of our company-wide meeting earlier this morning: time management. To begin, we were asked to explore what our GPS would be.

G – Goal    P – Priority     S – Strategy

 

What do you want to accomplish? What do you need to do to make that goal happen? And a strategy to make it all come together. Once you have your GPS set, then your next plan of action would be to create your 4-1-1, which then leads to time-blocking. Time blocking was one of the largest take-aways for managing our time at work to accomplish the most in the least amount of time.

I will definitely have to say that the talk was enlightening and motiving for the whole team. I, personally, came back to my desk and began planning out my day thanks to the power of post-it notes. However, defining my goals and my “one thing” by the end of this year, will be my main mission moving forward.

Here’s what our team had to say about The ONE Thing:

James Estebanez “That presentation was amazing! How planning can influence the outcome so much. Aligning actions with your goals and what you want to achieve.”

Amie Sanders “I’m feeling the same way…sooooo good! I took away so much from that. Ready to start time blocking and setting goals!”

 

Responsive Refresh for Juli Facer

Posted on by Ken Granger

When Juli Facer came to BrandCo for the custom design of her website, she knew she would be in good hands. Juli works KW Success office, located in Utah. No surprise then that her website would showcase a beautiful mountain scape, embodying everything we imagine from that area. With BrandCo Headquarters being in Orlando, Florida, our team is always excited to work with images of mountains and snow.

Juli’s journey to her newly designed website began with a phone consultation with designer, Denika. These phone calls take place so our designers can learn about our clients’ business, likes, and focuses.  This gives our designers the information and creative direction they need to hand-craft a design specifically for each client’s business.

Once the call is concluded, the designer is able to take their notes and create a website design from scratch. Within a few days, the first proof is sent. Now then…there’s always a chance that the first concept may not be a bullseye. In the case of Juli’s project, that is exactly what happened. Juli and her team wanted a change and decided to take this opportunity to fully rebrand their company. They wanted to update their logo and change their color scheme to better represent them.

After a few more rounds, Denika and Juli found the perfect combinations, the design was approved, and the website handed over to development. One of our developers, Eric, took great care in building out the design in an updated, responsive format. When you look at julifacer.com on any device, you are getting the same experience. This is really important nowadays with the growing number of mobile devices being used to browse the internet.

Did you know that “more Google searches take place on mobile devices than on computers in 10 countries including the US and Japan.”? That means that your website needs to cater to all the possible platforms that can visit it and now, Juli’s website does!

Exploring JuliFacer.com, you can see a multitude of great information. Above the fold, you’re presented with the opportunity to search for properties. With a slight scroll, you get introduced to Juli herself and encouraged to join their team or to follow them on social media. Below, you have the ability to choose a popular community within the area. Something like this would be particularly beneficial if you’re wanting to know more about communities in this Utah area. Lastly, you’re given a set of three calls-to-action for resources and to get an estimate on your home value.

This website is an amazing next step for Juli, her team, and their business. Their web presence is now head and shoulders above what it used to be. They have the ability to rank on Google’s new mobile-friendly algorithm and to cater to their mobile-savvy clients. We wish the team the best of luck and we are so happy that they chose to allow us a stake in the success of their company.

Web Design Tips

Posted on by Ken Granger

At BrandCo, We treat your business as our own, and in doing so, take pride in providing helpful design suggestions to everyone we work with. The following is the first list of many Web Design Tips we will be sharing with our valued clients:

Web Design Tips

Think about your user.

Even though your website is yours, it isn’t for you. Keep in mind your clientle and what makes the best user experience for them. Make sure to put yourself in their shoes when reviewing or designing your website. What do they want to do? How hard do they have to work to get what they need? How much information do they have to provide to get their desired results? What do they respond to aesthetically? Really knowing who your clients are and what they want from your website will make it great and increase their interaction with it!

Too many buttons.

You may work in an area with over 100 sub-communities, but having each one listed out isn’t a great idea. Options are great, but too many options is confusing and frustrating. Have you ever had to sift through a long list of items to find one thing you want? Once your site is on a mobile phone, each one of those buttons you requested will stack in rows. More buttons = more scrolling.

Headers should be clean.

Making sure your website is easy to use is one of the most important aspects to the web design process. Headers in particular should be clean, and not over cluttered with information. The top of your website should be reserved for all the important information: navigation, contact info, company name, or logo. Things to avoid putting in the header of your website are personal photos, social media, and anything non-essential. These things can all be added to the website, but try to keep them further down the page.

What’s the Big Deal About Blogging?

Posted on by Ken Granger

If you do anything on the internet these days, every one is talking about blogging, but really…what’s the big deal? Why are people blogging at all? What does it do? Why should I waste my time?

What is blogging?

verb
gerund or present participle: blogging
  1. add new material to or regularly update a blog.
    “it’s about a week since I last blogged”
    • write about (an event, situation, topic, etc.) in a blog.
      “he blogged the Democratic and Republican national conventions as an independent”

Why should I blog?

The best way to encourage yourself to do something is to know -why- you’re doing it.

Search Engine Optimization

Simply put, blogging’s main purpose is for SEO. Search Engine Optimization, the ability for people to find your website within searches on websites such as Google, Bing, or Yahoo, is usually the end-goal for all of this work we put into our websites. Every page your website gains due to a newly-updated blog post adds to the pile of results search engines can provide their users. The more content and pages, the better your chances are of someone finding your website in their search.

To Keep Your Website Current

Isn’t it the worst when you get to someone’s website and it hasn’t been updated in years? What are you most likely to do in that instance? Probably leave and go to another website that has current information. That’s what I would do. You don’t want this to happen to you. Be the one with that up-to-date info that your current and future clients can come to rely on! Updating your website on a consistent basis is what blogging is all about! Content Management Systems (CMS) like WordPress came about to make it easier for non-tech savvy people to maintain and continuously add information to their websites. This has removed the -need- to know HTML and other forms of web-coding, and instead put the website owner in the driver’s seat.

You just need to start driving.

Logo Spotlight – Roldan Real Estate Group

Posted on by Ken Granger

Starting a brand new business can be incredibly exciting. Getting all the ducks in a row, establishing and defining a client base, and venturing out into the world of branding for the first time is both exhilarating and terrifying. Creating a logo helps lend credibility and trust to companies both large and small. Debi Roldan of Roldan Real Estate Group is doing just that, setting out to make her own identity, and one that will carry her business into the future. She put out a call, seeking the perfect logo to encapsulate what she stands for. BrandCo’s Logo Team was there to answer that call.

Debi was looking for something that she hadn’t seen before. We talked about trying out something simple, something real estate related that would invite people of all walks of life to come to her with their business. There was a definite desire to appeal to all audiences, but also be able to fit in with the luxury crowd. So we knew we had to create something modern and classy, and simple enough to fit in with the big leagues.

DebiRoldan_InteriorImage_11-6-15

Using a modern type face, we integrated the roofline imagery into a nice monogram shape. Letting the right side of the roofline complete the leg of the R is something that might not be very obvious immediately, but once you see it, you can’t unsee it. When it comes to the colors, purple can help a brand look more regal, elegant, and professional. The color was something Debi decided on from the outset, and honestly we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Logo Design Tips

Posted on by Ken Granger

At BrandCo, We treat your business as our own! In doing so, we take pride in providing helpful design suggestions to all of our clients. The following is the first list of many Design Tips & Tricks we will be sharing with our valued clients:

Logos Design Tips

 

Say less, mean more.

When it comes to your business name it can be tempting to put everything out there. You may want to use “The Johnathan Doe Real Estate Consultants” or something to this effect – Don’t! When it comes to the name of a business it should be short and sweet. It is vital to have a name that people can both remember and spell easily. Your clients could hear your name in passing or drive by a yard sign without stopping, and trust me when I say you want to make it memorable. People these days get information thrown at them from every direction and attention spans are shorter than ever. Make sure your business stands out from the crowd even with just a glance.

Thinking outside of the box.

Clients all the time tell us they want to have their logo spell out exactly what they do everyday. Although this seems necessary, it’s not. Look at some of the top companies in the world such as: Apple, Nike, Target, and Coke. These companies are wildly successful and don’t have obvious imagery. We will use Apple as our example, they have the very famous fruit on everything they do. You may wonder why this is the case. Well…Steve Jobs worked in an apple orchard when he was younger. During the process he believed the apple to be the ideal nutritious fruit. They also did not damage easily and held up to wear and tear, thus Apple Computers was born. This is a great example of how not using a computer as their imagery can still make sense and speak loudly about their products. Keep this in mind when considering a logo to represent your business. In a world of oranges, be an Apple.

Say no to taglines.

Sure taglines can be great and help describe what you do best, but you don’t have to use them in your logo. When it comes to logos they should be timeless and represent your business for a long time. Taglines may need to be changed as your business grows and this isn’t possible when it is part of your logo. Just like a tattoo, choosing a tagline can sometimes be regretful as the company matures. Maybe your business grows out of the old, dated slogan, and now you have an irrelevant statement attached to your logo. The logo itself should be timeless, but your now defunct tagline dates it. We suggest keeping taglines to marketing pieces such as a website, business card, or flyer – this way they can be easily switched out at a later date.

Employee Spotlight – Meet Zenadia

Posted on by Ken Granger

Zenadia has been a valuable asset here at BrandCo for quite some time now. She’s constantly designing custom Email Stationery for BrandCo’s clients, making it possible for each person to send a personalized message to each of their clients. Z, as we all call her, is a snappy dresser and a great friend. Let’s learn more about her…

What do you do here?
I am a graphic designer for the emailStationery team. My duties include Consulting, developing and implementing custom email stationery designs for clients.

What got you into developing / design?
I was inspired to become a designer as a young teen. There was a small photo gallery in the Bahamas, seeing all those life-size Interior_ES1230photos that captured the subjects true emotions ignited a passion inside of me that moved me to become a designer. I always loved how art inspires and moves its audience.

If your co-workers could describe you in 3 words…
Easy-going and a little mysterious

Favorite resource / place for inspiration / brand:
My favorite place for inspiration is nature and people. Everyone is so different (unique) in there personalities, their personal style and their life stories I find that inspirational along with how the world (nature) is constantly changing (the colors, textures, aromas and sounds) all that is so beautiful.

Best thing about BrandCo:
Best thing about B-Co its a non stressful job and we have a great leader that is encouraging that fuels growth and positivity in each individual.

If you had a super power…
I would want to be like the guy in the movie limitless, I believe he had an abundance of knowledge just by taking a smart pill. (that would be cool)

What is the defining cartoon of your childhood?
Bobby’s World & Winnie the Pooh

When you’re not at BrandCo, what are you up to? (Interests, Hobbies)
When Im not at B-Co I’m spending time with friends, usually trying eating at a new restaurant, YouTubing beauty / health and wellness, at the gym at Zumba class, or helping out with graphics at my church.

 

Stay tuned for another Employee Spotlight coming up soon!