The Brand Surgery - Branding Agency, Graphic Design and Website Design in Worthing, West Sussex

At The Brand Surgery, we like to practice what we preach, and we have been saying for several months now, how important it is to ensure that your website is easy to use and navigate on different devices, cross-platform and cross-browser. That’s why, we have been working away producing a ‘mobile-friendly’ version of our website, for mobile phone users.

Mobile Website Pages

The mobile website provides an easy to use layout, with controls that mimic the styles of your mobile devices operating system. Our website is excelling in search engine search results due to our secret recipe SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and blogging skills, not to mention the huge catalogue of pages thebrandsurgery.co.uk has archived away. The mobile website does not affect this though, it simply switches into place if a mobile phone user is detected. This is extremely important, so if you are in a similar position, your fears can be relaxed, implementing a mobile website with The Brand Surgery will not affect your SEO.

Now, the mobile website is considerably smaller than the full website, with only our key services and information available, as well as the most recent etchings from our portfolio and our news. However, if visitors wish to view our full and main website (including our extended portfolio), they can do, simply by clicking the link at the bottom of the mobile website.

To give you an idea of how both versions of our website look on a mobile phone, look at the screenshots below:

As you can see, its extremely hard to read the text on the desktop site (when viewed from a mobile phone) and would be even harder to click on the right links. Yes, most mobile phones allow you to zoom in and out, but doesn’t the mobile site look that much easier to use? We think so, and we’ve had some great feedback already.

If you would like to make a mobile friendly version of your website, contact us on 01903 824229 or use our online contact form to arrange for a FREE no obligation quote or meeting.

Quality Services Hygiene Supplies came to The Brand Surgery after they saw our email campaign about our ‘Website Refresher’ service which we were offering at a reduced rate throughout December and January. They came to us with a website, which despite performing excellently in search engine rankings, wasn’t converting as many visits to sales as they wanted.

The Brand Surgery analysed the website, and despite the obvious outdated design, there were several other key areas we highlighted to Quality Services for improvement, which were unanimously agreed upon and our website design and development team got to work on a brand new look and feel for the website.

First off, The Brand Surgery tidied up the navigational system, which was set into two separate nav bars, providing a confusing and untidy user experience for any visitors to the website. This was altered to provide a consistent set of navigational links at the top of every page.

The main banner across the top of the website was holding the design of the website back, so after a few tweaks of the Quality Services logo, a fresher logo was produced which in place provided a cleaner, more attractive banner to greet all website visitors.

After introducing some rounded corners and complementary colours to the left-hand column and ensuring that the same left & right-hand columns appear on most pages, the website looked completely transformed. The Brand Surgery design team then added a faded background colour and a simple animated image on the home page to complete the look and the Quality Services website looked brand new.

From a more practical view, the ‘Powered by RBS WorldPay’ image and the images of accepted cards were moved towards the top of the website, to install an air of security and safety with the visitor/customer as we felt that perhaps conversion rates were low due to people not trusting the website.

You can view the website by clicking here and take a look at a side-by-side comparison below of the websites before and after The Brand Surgery undertook our ‘website refresher’ work (click the image to see an enlarged version):

Quality services said: “We asked The Brand Surgery to undertake their ‘Website Refresher‘ service on our website and the transformation in design of our website is incredible, you can barely recognise it.  It’s like having a brand new website. The Brand Surgery has been helpful and professional throughout the process and we will be using them for any further web related work we need completing in the future. Our website was ranking high in Google searches, but performing low when it came to converting visitors to sales. The Brand Surgery gave us practical advice and suggestions about the importance of emphasising the security and legitimacy of the website, and also ensuring that the website functioned as customers expected.”

If you feel that your website needs some work to it to release it’s full potential, but don’t want to invest in a brand new website, then get in touch with The Brand Surgery by calling us on 01903 824229 or by using our online contact form. Alternatively, if you think you could benefit from a brand new website, then get in touch as well, just check out our web design portfolio to see some examples of our work.

Last month The Brand Surgery unveiled the new branded Facebook page for Tuk Tuk Kitchen, part of The Pan Asia Group and located in Manhattan Furniture’s car park on Lancing Business Park. This month we are extremely proud to have launched their brand new website which gives them an excellent web presence in an active fast-food marketplace.

To give you an idea of how much difference a website redesign with The Brand Surgery can make, we took a few screenshots of the website BEFORE it’s makeover (click on the image to expand):

Tuk Tuk Kitchen - Old Home Page

As the design of the new website developed, Tuk Tuk Kitchen decided that their logo also needed to be updated and modernised as they felt their current logo was looking dated and complicated, so they asked our design team to come up with a new, simplistic logo design which can be seen below alongside the old logo:

As you can see, the new logo is much cleaner and it matches the new brand that the Tuk Tuk Kitchen is now rolling out thanks to The Brand Surgery’s design team.

The new website created by The Brand Surgery, features everything that the old website featured, but in a cleaner, slicker and fancier way. The menus are all still displayed under the same navigational link, but they have been split up into easier to read ’sub-menus’ rather than being in one, long, horrible list, which was unreadable before.

The home page features a set of appetising images of the food’s that can be found at Tuk Tuk Kitchen, which are shown in a slideshow manner, giving the website more visual impact. The home page also has a set of four buttons which can be edited to suit seasonal changes within Tuk Tuk as well as any other more permanent changes, for example, at present they are used to advertise free wi-fi, the resident Parrot ‘Lucky’, the healthiness of the food and The Pan Asia Group’s other fast-food restaurant, Mr. Toy’s Flying Wok.

Despite it’s simplistic nature, Tuk Tuk Kitchens new website is still fully cross-browser compatible – having been tested in Internet Explorer (7+), Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Apple Safari and Opera – it also ensures it ticks all the boxes from a legality point of view with the included Terms & Conditions, Privacy Policy, Disclaimer and Copyright statements, and it provides suitable links to the relevent social media pages.

The website also features a sophisticated, custom-built Content Management System (CMS) allowing the chef’s to update the menus with ease, including their daily specials for Monday to Friday within a couple of minutes.

So, without any further ado, below is a screenshot of the new Tuk Tuk Kitchen website, you can view the full website by clicking here:

Tuk Tuk Kitchen - New Website

If you would like to take advantage of our logo design, web design, branding consultancy, rebrand or any other service we offer, please get in touch by calling us on 01903 824229 or by contacting us using our online form and we will arrange a FREE, no obligation quote or meeting.

Making sense of Brand Management and Brand Equity

As some of you may well be aware, Vicky Vaughan, the Managing Director of The Brand Surgery is studying to become a Chartered Marketer. So far she has passed the first two units: Managing Marketing (introducing a performance measurement standard into a company for increased competitive advantage) and Marketing Planning Process (creating marketing plan for an SME).

Now she is working on Project Management in Marketing and the subject is Brand Management. Naturally Brand Equity is the subject in Vicky’s mind and as such she wanted to get back to the origins of the term ‘Brand Equity’.

In the dictionary ….

brand:

• kind, grade, or make, as indicated by a stamp, trademark, or the like: the best brand of coffee.
• a mark made by burning or otherwise, to indicate kind, grade, make, ownership, etc.
• a mark formerly put upon criminals with a hot iron.
• any mark of disgrace; stigma.
• branding iron.

equity:

• the quality of being impartial; fairness 2. an impartial or fair act, decision etc. 3. Law, a system of justice and fair conduct. It supplements common law, as by providing a remedy where none exists at law. 4. Law, and equitable right or claim 5. the interest or ordinary shareholders in a company. 6. the value of debtor’s property in excess of debts to which it liable. 7. Brit. The Actors trade union. 8. Another name for ordinary shares

Put the words together, and what do you get? Brand Equity – and what does that mean?

• “A brand can be said to have brand equity (also called consumer or market equity) when consumers respond favourably to it. This depends upon a combination of recognition, associations and judgements made by the consumer. Brand equity can be regarded as an indicator of the success of a brand.” (Untangling Brand Equity, Value, Assets and Health by Chris Grannell)
• Keller (2008) defines brand equity thus: “A brand has positive customer-based brand equity when consumers react more favourably to a product and the way it is marketed when the brand is identified than when it is not”.

It seems the branding bar is always being raised higher.

Even the marketing professors of this world have raised branding expectations over the years.

• Aaker (1991) said that: “A brand is a distinguishing name and/or symbol intended to identify the goods or services of one seller from thos of competitors”.
• Keller (1998) says: “that a brand is a set of mental associations that add value to those already created by the product itself”.
• And in my book, Do a Madonna, published in 2010, my definition is: “Branding is your potential customers’ experience or memory of your service or product – and your business”.

The definition of brand and brand equity has evolved even further. They emphasise on consumer loyalty and repeat purchase. Kapferer (2012)  says: “A brand consuming no loyalty is not a strong brand  …. Thanks to Web 2.0. A brand cannot be reduced to a benefit; it has to create a community. No fans, no brand! Today’s dominant role of social media is visible here. To exist on the net, a brand must have friends, followers, adepts and proselytes.”

The ladder of customer loyalty

There are all kinds of customer loyalty – from forced to loyalty through inertia to engaged (Kapferer 2012), however, the main aim, is to encourage your customers to make repeat sales and move your potential customers up the ladder of loyalty. This will be discussed in the next blog article.

It’s official – SMEs’ (in general) perception towards importance of marketing = zero

Studying towards CIM Chartered Marketer status has been enlightening especially in one area. We thought we were just unlucky with attracting SMEs who don’t value the power of marketing. However, research has proved that due to lack of resources, the importance of marketing and branding is often overlooked by SME’s.

Here is an extract from “SME brand building and management: an exploratory study” by the European Journal of Marketing available from Emerald Research: “Owing to their resource limitations and the owner/ manager’s powerful influence on decision making, small firms’ behaviors follow different patterns than their larger counterparts when dealing with marketing issues (McCartan-Quinn and Carson, 2003; Carson, 1990). Moreover, in the present global competitive environment, especially in regards to consumer goods marketing, brands provide a differentiating statement and a competitive advantage if used appropriately. It is through the development of a specific brand identity that a company makes a brand unique and conveys its distinctiveness (Srivastava and Shocker, 1991), leading to a positive brand image in consumers’ minds, and ultimately to high brand equity. It has, however, been demonstrated that SMEs have so far put little emphasis on branding (Inskip, 2004; Gabrielsson, 2005; Ojasalo et al., 2008).

If you are an SME, or you know of an SME that doesn’t want to get left behind because of lack of understanding in the subject of branding and marketing, Vicky is offering a two-hour 1-2-1 marketing strategy consultation for £170 (ex VAT), or 2-2-2- (£245 ex VAT) in the comfort of your own offices. She will relate the importance of branding to your own business and give you a prescription to follow to get you on the right track.

Call Vicky on 01903 824229 or email to register your interest.