web design

Welcome our New Summer 2016 Web Design Intern

June 27, 2016 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

Well, would you look at that. DaBrian Marketing Group has a second intern for the summer! (Our first intern, Christian Kline, was announced on social media in May). He was introduced to us through Pennsylvania CareerLink – Berks County’s work experience program called “A Youth Services Employment Training Program.” Once we learned more about him, we knew he was a perfect fit for DaBrian’s team as Web Design Intern.

The first unique characteristic about our new team member, Mr. Jeremiah Ellis, is that he is going to be a senior at Reading High School in the 2016-2017 school year! As he gets started with his new role as Web Design Intern and we start to teach him about what it’s like to work at a digital marketing agency, let’s all get to know him a little bit better with a brief but fun questionnaire!

Where is he from?

New York City, NY.

What are his plans upon graduation in 2017?

Attend a local college, possibly Reading Area Community College (RACC), and major in Computer Science.

What are his interests? ...Besides creating websites, of course

Listening to music.. watching movies.. riding bikes.. playing basketball.. Writing stories & poems..

** This young man does it all! **

What’s his happiest high school memory so far?

Simply, finishing 11th grade.

How did he get interested in web design?

Jeremiah learned how to create websites by attending Reading Muhlenberg Career and Technology Center for Information Technology – Web Design. Once he graduates, he will receive an Adobe Certification.

What’s Jeremiah’s favorite sports team?

Our Philadelphia-area football team, the Eagles!

If Mr. Ellis were to be a contestant on The Voice, which song would he sing?

He would choose to sing a classic: “What a Wonderful World.”

If he could be famous for anything, what would it be?

He’d be a famous actor in Comedy films.

Jif or Peter Pan Peanut Butter?

Peter Pan

If he were Peter Pan and given a chance to never grow up, would he take it?

He says he would, so he won’t ever get old and he could live forever!

If he could buy any car right now, what color would it be?

Dark Green

If he could be any animal, which would he be and why?

A cheetah because they are fearless and relentless.

Something else he would like to share:

Jeremiah’s family originates from South America.

Now that we all know who Jeremiah is, we need to get back to teaching him about StudioPress and WP Engine, designing our intranet, and entering more data.
Jeremiah’s story could be yours! Learn more about our multiple internships (not just for high schoolers) and we could be writing a blog on you soon!

DaBrian Marketing Redesigns South Mountain YMCA’s Website Pro Bono

May 30, 2016 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

30 May, 2016 (Reading, PA) – DaBrian Marketing Group, LLC has developed and redesigned South Mountain YMCA’s website, pro bono.

The South Mountain YMCA provides camping experiences as well as educational and outdoor programs that build personal leadership, character, and life skills while developing care, honesty, respect, and responsibility in young people, families, and communities.

Nathan Brant, Chief Executive Officer of South Mountain YMCA, said,

“We cannot begin to express what an incredible gift this is. As a charity serving kids, families, and schools, a good website significantly increases the positive impact we can have on our community. This beautiful online presence will drive awareness of our programs and services, assist families in learning about transformative experiences for their children, and help educators plan for environmental and outdoor education field trips. We cannot thank the team at DaBrian Marketing enough.”

South Mountain YMCA emphasizes three main goals of their new website: an improved experience for its users, a more effective attraction of their target audience, and the creation of a unique, intuitive aesthetic. South Mountain YMCA’s satisfaction with the new website speaks to the analysis-based, creative web design that DaBrian Marketing Group produces.

Visit the New South Mountain YMCA website to learn more about their youth- and family-oriented programs as well as the most recent work by DaBrian Marketing Group’s team.

About DaBrian Marketing Group, LLC

Founded in 2008, DaBrian Marketing Group, LLC is a full-service digital marketing agency, focused on providing original and strategic digital marketing solutions for businesses, that want to create digital awareness, increase return on investment (ROI), and identify insights that not only will help achieve goals but will also help to increase your business’s efficiencies. DaBrian Marketing Group’s services include email marketing, search engine optimization, website design, web analytics, social media marketing and more. Company headquarters are centrally located at 500 Penn Street, Suite 201, Reading, Pennsylvania 19602. For more information about DMG, visit dabrianmarketing.com or call 610.743.5602.

Branded Assets to Consider When Redesigning a Website

April 25, 2016 by Mark Mapp Leave a Comment

When business executives make a decision to redesign, or give their website an updated look, there are other important branded assets or materials that may also need redesign considerations as well. Not taking these other assets or materials into account can cause a disconnect between your brand and potential customers that may want to use your services. Therefore, before beginning your website redesign project there are some important questions that may need some answers.

Is your logo in need of an updated look or redesign?

Now that mobile accounts for over 54% of the devices used to browse the web, it is important that you understand how your logo will be displayed or viewed at these resolutions. Things such as fonts, colors, and taglines can greatly affect how your logo is displayed especially at the smaller sizes required for most mobile or responsive websites. Familiarizing yourself with up-to-date logo design trends will help you decide if it’s time for a logo design overhaul.

What about the rest of your identity package?

Yeah, what about it? Well let’s see…If you did in fact need to update or redesign your logo based on the latest design trends, then your next step in the process would also include updating or revamping your identity package. Identity package materials can range from business cards, letterheads, envelopes, pens, etc. A decision will have to be made on what design elements are going to be carried over from these materials to the new website design to retain consistency, if any at all. However, this is something that should also be addressed.

Is your brand message going to be the same?

Your brand message is definitely one of the most single important aspect of your business. What you are trying to convey to your customers and how you want them to perceive your business is dependent on how effective or strong your brand message is. Brand messages are usually what drives the design process for most businesses, and what they generally rely on to remain brand consistent. If as a business you decide to change your brand message, be prepared to address all other content being used to promote your business.

Are you going to update the design/content on your marketing materials?

Well, if your business decided it is best to change or update its brand message, then it would be a great idea to review your current promo/marketing materials design and content to see if they align with the new brand message. These materials can be anything from a company brochure, catalogs, folders and folder inserts. This may also include social media accounts as well. If the design and content doesn’t align with your new brand message you may have just added another project to your redesign list. Always remember the goal is to create brand consistency.

As you can see there are other branded assets and materials that may need some attention when a business decides to redesign their website. Taking these other assets into consideration will help your business to streamline the redesign process and prevent any issues upstream that may cause a possible disconnect between your brand and potential customers you are trying to engage with. Maintaining a consistent brand is key especially when it comes to establishing healthy, long-term business relationships.

For more information about branded assets to consider when redesigning a website, contact us or leave us a comment below!

5 B2B Web Design Trends to Consider in 2016

February 15, 2016 by Mark Mapp 1 Comment

Introduction:

Back in March 2015 I wrote a blog which covered “Five New Web Design Trends for 2015”. Although several of these trends have managed to survive 2015, there are some additional trends that could affect the usability of your B2B website. In this blog, I will go over five (5) additional trends that can help improve usability, increase website traffic, and help drive conversions.

1. More Unique & Creative Typography

With the emergence of affordable or free web-safe fonts options like Google Fonts and Adobe Typekit, typography is becoming much more unique, and creative. On many B2B websites, headers are becoming much bolder and body text is appearing much larger in size. In addition to latest evolution of the Cascading Style Sheets language, CSS3, styling typography will offer unlimited options on how it’s presented on the web going forward. Sites like StephenCraver utilizes great use of typography to carry the layout of the site.

According to HTTP Archive, the use of custom fonts has increased over the past year. Bolder, more unique typefaces will continue to be used in B2B web design going forward. While designers may still play it safe when it comes to choosing fonts for readable type and body copy, expect to see more unique and experimental font being used for website headers and supporting text.

2. Cards, Cards, and Even More Cards

As you browse the web, you may notice that many B2B companies are leaning more towards a card design look. This web design trend is most common on social media platforms, and most commonly associated with Pinterest, however many companies have adapted this trend and you should see more of it in 2016. Several other notable sites utilizing this trend are ESPN, Dribble, The Guardian, and Amazon.

3. Less Photography, More Illustrations

Before 2016, they were plenty of B2B websites that were overloaded with stock images as means of telling their brand story. If the appropriate images aren’t chosen, this direction could cause a big disconnect between your business and potential clients. In 2016, you will notice that many businesses will move away from stock photography (especially if they are not personable) and rely more on illustration graphics to tell their story.

You will find illustration being implemented in a variety of ways such as, large-scale, hero images and backgrounds, or on much smaller scales such as icons and user interface elements. Two nice examples of websites utilizing illustrations as it’s main source of graphics are McWhopper and Ice & Sky which combine large background illustrations and animation to tell their brand story.

4. Bolder use of color

In 2015, B2B companies who implemented flat design into their website more than likely utilized a color palette which was just a flat as the design itself. With that being said, 2016 promises to be much more colorful than years past.

Color has always been one of the most single important tools for expressing a company’s brand story or message. In prior years, many B2B companies stuck to “web-safe” palettes because of the some technology limitations. If you are looking for color inspiration websites like Adobe Color CC, Paletton, Coolors can help you put together some interesting color palettes. A couple examples of good color implementation on their websites are Bose and History Of Icons.

5. Keep On Scrolling and Less Reloading

To scroll, or not to scroll. This has always been a highly debatable topic for many. It seems that more people are finding it easier to scroll down a page rather than clicking, and loading another page. This is more relevant to smartphones users browsing on slow or limited data networks. Whether on mobile or desktop, scrolling can be a very effective way of telling a company’s brand story. If your B2B website is accustom to getting a high volume of mobile traffic, scrolling would be a much better user experience than a page refresh on any device.

Websites using a Parallax scrolling effect are often implemented as a way to tell a story and make layouts more dynamically appealing. Scrolling allows the content to be incrementally readable, allowing more options and visibility to other Micro Interactions. One of my favorite scrolling or parallax designs is the Lexus website. This website implements an excellent one-page design with sections that lead to other Call To Actions (CTAs) or micro interactions.

Conclusion

While it may not be necessary to implement every new trend into your website, many of them have the potential to improve user experience. Before following new trends, it is best that you have some knowledge of what they are and how they can affect your business. Once you have a strategy in place, implementing new trends and having the ability to test them will help you streamline that process. This will help you adapt to a trend that best reflects you and your business goals.

Outdated Hardware and/or Software Affect Internet Browsing

January 4, 2016 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

Your Outdated Device Will Affect Internet Browsing

There are a lot of factors that will affect internet browsing and assist in allowing a website to show correctly. Two factors that people tend to overlook are outdated devices and software updates. These two factors don’t stop your device from working, however, they can affect your browsing experience in negative ways. What might seem like a small, or not needed update might be a critical factor affecting your browsing experience whether it be on your Android Smartphone, iPhone or your computer.

During testing one of our client’s website, there were issues with how the site rendered on their iPhone. They were having issues with how some elements on the page were appearing. As most of our clients would do, they turned to us for answers. After hours of thorough mission critical updates that were directly related to their poor browsing experience, we advised them to update their device’s software and that resolved the issues for most. Others weren’t so fortunate however, they had to upgrade or purchase a new device because of outdated hardware.

According to Circle Studio, Internet Explorer is the 3rd, 4th, and 5th most popular browser being used today. The problem with this is that 2 of the 3 Internet Explorer browsers (versions 8 & 9) are no longer supported because of their inability to render HTML5 code which is the new standard for creating websites. Now do you see the problem with using outdated browsers?

Why it matters to you?

Have you ever browsed the internet and stumbled onto a site that had jumbled text or graphics? Did it look anything like Figure 1? If not, congratulations your device’s hardware and software are most likely up to date. If you did see something like Figure 1, then the hardware or software of your device might be outdated and needs to be updated. This can be an issue not only for your company when you are trying to market your website but it can also be an issue if people are trying to get to your site. If these potential customers do need to update their device’s hardware or software, they might find your website hard to use if they are on an outdated browser. Another reason this is an issue is because most people surfing the web are using outdated browsers; about 14.5% of those are using a previous version of their current browser, and 8.5% are using, even more, outdated versions. So let’s resolve this issue.

How to resolve the issue

One way (highly recommended) is to take your device to a professional like your IT tech or a local computer shop and they will update the software on your device. If your device is utilizing Microsoft XP or Vista operating systems then it is time to get a new device as they are no longer supported. Below are some general guidelines to assure your internet poor browsing experience is rectified:

Schedule regular operating system and software updates.
Make sure you’re using the latest browser versions
When a new Windows Operating System is released, your hardware is out of date. Time to get a new computer.

Do you have any questions regarding updating your computer? Leave a comment below or Contact Us today!

Website issues, will you be ready?

May 20, 2015 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

Getting your plan together

You are browsing your site and jotting down changes that you would like to make when all of a sudden your site goes blank. Its not your internet. It only happens when you go to your site. You know something went wrong but you are not sure what your next steps will be.

In that type of scenario you need to know what to do and how to go about it. Most importantly you need to act fast. The longer you have website issues like that you could be losing hundreds of potential customers. It doesn’t take a lot of technical knowledge to fix the normal issues, but sometimes it helps or is required. Lets go through some of the most common website issues and how those are normally fixed. Keep in mind this might not work for everyone.

1. Database Connection Error

“Error Establishing a database connection”

Have you ever gotten this while on your site? If your site has been working perfectly for over 48 hours and you did not edit the database connection file, it could be that the server just made an oops and is waiting a few minutes and refreshing fixes it.

If you were messing with the database connection file and it was working and now it is not. Log into your hosting account to retrieve your database connection information to make sure it is correct. To keep downtime to a minimum when editing files, keeping a backup to replace it if something goes wrong can save a lot of headaches and downtime.

2. The Infamous 404 Error

If you browse the internet then you are most likely familiar with the 404 error. It means that the web page you’re looking for can’t be found. If you own a website, the last thing you want is your site to have a user get that error. To help find them all, start using Google Webmaster Tools. All you need to do is prove you own the site you want info on. Then you will have access to tons of tools including a list of all the 404 error links that google has found.

To fix a broken link, redirect the link to an actual page on your site. The broken link might come from your site itself. Sometimes it’s from an external source, or someone might have bookmarked it, or they might of misspelled it while typing. Sometimes search engines also find weird links to pages that don’t exist. They could be pages that did exist but don’t anymore. The only way to fix them is to redirect them. Sometimes you can find the source of the bad link and delete it. Other times you just won’t be able to find it. In either case, it would be a good practice to redirect it. Just in case.

3. Internal Server Error

If you have a website then you most likely have at least heard of a 500 error, otherwise known as Internal Server Error. It has nothing to do with what you did. Everyone makes mistakes and computers are no exception. The website issue is on the server your site is hosted with. Most times they go away from refreshing or waiting a few minutes. Other times you need to call your hosting provider.

4. White Screen of Death

If you have ever edited a file on your server labeled “.htaccess” then you probably know how easy it is to mess up your site with it. In normal coding if you mess up, something just looks a little off. Editing inside this file, if you mess up then your site goes completely blank. No website issue from the server or PHP error, it’s just a white page.

Whenever you plan to make a change to the file, it is best practices to make a working copy. That way if you mess up and are not sure what you did wrong, you simply load the working version and your site’s back up again. That way your site will be down for as long as it takes you to notice its down and to upload the working copy.