Friday, May 15, 2009

Importance of Quality Graphics, Pix and Video

Good afternoon and I hope this email finds you all well.
We've had almost a month of continuous rain here in Tulsa,
OK and it feels more like I am living in Seattle these
days. Rain, rain everywhere. My lawn is like a great big
green, moldy sponge. Everything is sliding and re-arranging
itself. And the suicide rate is climbing. OK, I made that last
part up.

I've been in my new office at the SpiritBank Business
Resource Center now for two weeks, and I've never been more
focused or productive. It's nice getting away from the home
office and being among professionals again. Gee, I'm really
going to miss those weekday summer afternoons when the kids
are whining they have nothing to do and can Dad come and
play.

This week I wanted to continue my talk about the biggest
mistakes businesses make with their web sites. This week we
focus on pictures and video. It amazes me how many web sites
suffer from bad supporting graphics. You can ruin anything,
even a professionally designed web site by inserting poor
quality clip art and pictures and videos.

What do your supporting graphics say about the quality of
your web site, services, and reputation? Now before anyone
starts suggesting that this is a case of the pot calling
the kettle black, I'll be the first to admit that my own
company web site needs a dose of my own medicine. But it's
a case of the cobbler's kids having the worst shoes with
me. I'm so busy making shoes for everyone else, there's
precious little time to make shoes for my own kids.

First, consider your logo, if you have one. Did you design
it yourself? Do you know how to design logos, select
colors, and arrange elements to be effective marketing
tools? If not, then it's time for a new logo. Early on, I
used a cheap service called www.GotLogos.com which promises
to create a logo for $25.00. They are among the best, though
many of their logos look somewhat derivative. They have a
distinct style, but if it works for you, you might give
them a try. Other options might include:

My Logo Maker
http://www.graphicsassistance.com/mylogomaker.htm

Second, how is the quality of your pictures? Many people
use very low quality clip art to illustrate their site or
make a point. There are many high quality graphics
collections designed for this purpose and you need not
spend a ton of money to procure them. Here's a few you may
consider:

Super Easy Do It Yourself Graphics
http://www.graphicsassistance.com/supereasydiygraphics.htm

Web 2.0 Graphics Pack
http://www.graphicsassistance.com/web20graphicspack.htm

Art Explosion 800,000
http://www.graphicsassistance.com/artexplosion800000.htm

Copy and Paste Graphics
http://www.graphicsassistance.com/copyandpastegraphics.htm

Design Dashboard
http://www.graphicsassistance.com/designdashboard.htm

Logo Creator
http://www.graphicsassistance.com/thelogocreator.htm

Web Graphics Creator
http://www.graphicsassistance.com/webgraphicscreator.htm

With regard to photos, make sure they are high quality.
Here I am not referring to the resolution. In fact, your
resolution for online viewing only has to be 72-100 dpi.
Anything higher will slow down your page load and encourage
abandonment.

What I am talking about is the artistic integrity of the
photo should be high. If you own a restaurant and your food
looks like standard fare then it won't attract new
customers. If you shoot a picture of car without a model
beside it, the car loses its sex appeal. Understand?

Likewise, photos of your staff should be professional
quality head shots taken by a professional photographer.
Three years ago I spent hours with a photographer in a
studio, doing wardrobe changes, assuming different
positions, different emotional attitudes, and from different
angles. The result was 300 pix and I only wound up using
about a half dozen to date. It takes time and patience to
capture people in the most favorable light.

Does your site feature a slide show? There are many scripts
available to help you achieve this effect. Here's an option:

Awesome Link Effects
http://www.graphicsassistance.com/ale.htm

Another method is to have someone use Flash to create a
cool "pan and scan" slide show. Here's an example. We took
all of the pix and developed the Flash interface to provide
that neat "pan and scan" zoom effect. The customer can
control the pix through the content management system we
provided with the site. Click on the banner on the left
side that says "Take Showroom Tour":

http://www.heatwavesupply.com

Are you using video? Too many people are posting videos to
YouTube and other third party services and then embedding
these videos in their web pages. While this video hosting
is free, it is amateurish and unprofessional and can
ultimately hurt your business.

YouTube and other video sharing services may enable you to
cheaply and easily add video to your site, but they also
include ads that can encourage people to visit competitors
or abandon your site in favor of surfing. Bad idea. You may
also accidentally serve up a video that is not appropriate
for your visiting audience. Can Girls truly Go Wild on a
plumber's site? You betcha.

Host videos on your own server or through Amazon's new
hosting services. It's cheaper than you think and allows
you control and to maintain respectability.

Always make sure your videos are well edited and include
good audio and music. Always make sure you have the rights
to use other people's images or music or voice. Don't
assume. Copyright infringements in my old cable TV world
could cost us upwards of $100K for each infraction. We were
damn careful. You should be, too.

There's many ways to present video on your site. Here's
some neat ways to dress up yours:

Video Skins Pro
http://www.graphicsassistance.com/videoskinspro.htm

Video Web Wizard 2
http://www.graphicsassistance.com/videowebwizard.htm

Instant Video Generator
http://www.learnonlinevideoproduction.com/instantvideogenerator.htm

Screen Cam Generator
http://www.learnonlinevideoproduction.com/screencamgenerator.htm

Media Menu Producer
http://www.cooltoolawards.com/software/multimedia/mediamenuproducer.htm

FLV Producer
http://www.cooltoolawards.com/software/multimedia/flvproducer.htm

So take a look at your graphics and supporting photos and
videos and ask yourself if you are truly putting your best
foot forward or putting your foot in your mouth!

And here's one more product I'd like you to check out. It
is a collection of vivid backgrounds that can be used on
ebook covers, banner ads, web pages, videos. You name it.
These are cool and very inexpensive:

Killer Abstract Backgrounds
http://www.resellerproducts.com/killerabstractbackgrounds/


Until next time,

Steven

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