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Why is Brand Storytelling So Important?

Storytelling has been an innate part of the human experience since the beginning of time. Stories have long captivated us and left lasting impressions. Communication and stories are a basic part of who we—humans are driven to tell stories and to listen to them. It makes all the more sense that storytelling has evolved tremendously over time and still persists today not only for entertainment purposes but also in business marketing and brand building.

At its core, a brand is essentially the story of a business. Storytelling is a timeless way to emotionally engage audiences, create personal connections, and to overall expand engagement. Unlike any other marketing technique, storytelling invokes the power of human emotion and connection, creating a deep sense of trust and shared experience.

Brand storytelling is no longer just an option but a marketing must in a world where consumers are swamped in a sea of content. How can storytelling build your brand?

Stand Out and Be Remembered

A business could offer the best solutions, services, or products. However, if their marketing and communication feel impersonal, it will most likely leave a lackluster impression. Consumers are continually flooded with statistics and facts, and they are getting tired of the same old marketing experience time and time again. Strong storytelling will instantly distinguish your brand from the pack. It offers a refreshing and engaging perspective consumers will remember. Consumers don’t always remember the fine details of products and services, but they will always remember a good story and how it made them feel.

Build Authenticity and Emotional Connections

Nothing connects a business to their audience better than stories. Storytelling innately allows people to connect on a deeper level because it focuses on shared human experience. When people see authentic characters and real-life conflict, it is difficult not to form a personal connection. Characters and conflict an audience can truly relate to create memorable emotional connections. The most successful brand stories evoke positive emotions that resonate with the viewer. This type of evocative storytelling allows brands to mean something more to the audience beyond what they are selling, humanizing the brand.

Build Trust and Loyalty

Brands simply cannot grow without trust or loyalty. If an audience finds the characters, conflict, or resolutions to be disingenuous, chances are they will remember your brand but not for the right reasons. If the audience finds the people and struggles in your story to be authentic and perhaps even reflective of their own experience, they will immediately feel a deep personal connection to the brand. If an audience can rely on a brand for genuine portrayals of the human experience, they feel they can trust their entire brand. Building this trust and credibility through accurate storytelling is the beginning of building enduring loyalty and strong customer bases that will last a lifetime.

Build Long-Lasting Relationships and Endless Engagement

Great stories create deep bonds between the characters and the audience, ones people often visit again and again. The audience’s feeling that they have been through the same struggles allows the story resonate deeply with them. Even when a story ends, it still lives on through the audience. Stories are a timeless medium that allow endless engagement and interaction. The ability for the audience to place themselves within the story is what truly can make a story and brand last forever.

 

Do you have the creative tools needed to build a strong brand story? Contact Sun Sign Designs to learn more about our video, photography, custom animation, and graphic design services.

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How Can You Turn Website Speed into a Competitive Advantage?

You wouldn’t think something as small as page loading speeds would impact something as big as the success of driving forward your business’s mission—but it does.

When a user first decides to visit your website, the first thing they notice isn’t your colorful web design, clean layout, savvy content, interesting  products or services—it’s your page loading speed. And for better or for worse, the way they perceive the rest of your website and business will depend on this first impression.

Research has shown that the modern user expects websites to load in three seconds or less. In fact, some users will even leave before the three second mark. These studies show that, when forced to wait longer than three seconds, the users will leave the website and look elsewhere. As a result, slow page loading speeds are directly correlated to lower traffic and conversion rates.

Imagine this: someone visited your website with the intention of reading your content or purchasing purchase a product or service—but you lost them, not because your website was unappealing, but because it simply didn’t load fast enough. It’s a shame that slow page speeds are what prevent users from enjoying the creative web designs and content businesses work so hard to create for their customers.

Consequently, business owners do not have a second to lose. Here’s how fast page loading speeds can immediately secure a competitive advantage for your website and business:

Capture and Maintain Consumer Interest

As we noted above, it isn’t enough to simply spark consumer curiosity—you have to also maintain it! Creative web design and strategic marketing will do the heavy lifting to get the traffic to your website, but fast page loading speeds will be the secret edge that maintains and boosts it.

When pages load quickly on your website, users are not distracted by inconvenience and don’t become frustrated. Fast loading times lock in visitors to your website. They won’t have time to think about leaving when you have a website design and layout that makes users explore. As a result, they won’t leave your website and can form their opinion based on all the hard work that went into the website’s design, layout, copy, and offerings.

Create a Positive User Experience

Even if your web design and content are more engaging than your competition, it won’t matter if visitors won’t stay long enough to interact with it. Every visitor is a potential customer. When page loading speeds and general performance are slow and clunky, it is an immediate turn off to the modern internet user.

You can put all your time, money, and energy into creating the perfect, most seamless user experience. However, it will all be for naught if you have slow page loading speeds. First impressions are incredibly lasting. Also, with so many options on the market, there isn’t a big reason for visitors to return and try a slow website again. Ensure your visitors’ experiences with your website are positive and lasting for the right reasons.

Build Loyalty and Trust

People expect lightning-fast loading speeds and an entirely frictionless experience. When they receive this in a website, they immediately feel taken care of and appreciated. They will see a website and a business that prioritizes their experience and appreciates their support. Customers will perceive the website as a quality business they can trust and that they can return to.

Even though design, content, and product and service offerings will certainly have sway in their overall opinion, fast loading times will tip the scales in the right direction. It is far more cost-effective for businesses to get loyal repeat customers to make another purchase than it is for businesses to obtain new customers. Consequently, fast websites will instill trust and build loyal customers.

Boost Conversion Rates

Slow page loading speeds could be killing your conversion rates. According to one study, improving your page loading speeds by 1 second can lower bounce rates and increase conversions up to 27 percent. Unhindered by slow speeds, more users can complete the business’s desired action, whether it be reading a blog post, filling out a survey, providing an email address for a newsletter, or purchasing a product. Page loading speeds clearly have an impact on businesses’ online revenue potential.

Ensuring your website has fast page loading speeds is a critical first step to growing your business and maintaining a competitive advantage over your competition. What are you doing to boost your website speed?

How Fast Are Your Pages Loading? Find Out Where Your Website Stands Today

What’s slowing your website down? Let’s find out and fix it together!

Regularly evaluating your website will keep your business on track to meeting your objectives. Sun Sign Designs offers a free audit of your website’s loading performance and provides the solutions needed to further improve it. Discover how your website is performing and learn ways to optimize it now.

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Website Speed: Why is it Essential for Your Business’s Success?

Website speed is often the last thing on people’s minds when they are designing the perfect website for their business. While page design, layout, content, and imagery play large roles in a website’s success, optimal website speed actually takes precedent. In a world where our search engines often bring up our desired results in less than a second, people today are not willing to wait for slow websites to load—even if the website has attractive design, layout, and content.

Believe it or not, optimal website speed is the solid foundation that makes everything else in a website work. Engaging copy and content becomes functionless if visitors will not stay long enough to read it. Let’s look at the four core areas that website speeds directly affect.

First Impressions

In the world of the web, first impressions are lasting. This critical first look hinges on the time it takes for your page to load.  Someone’s first encounter with your brand is incredibly important because it determines if it will be their only encounter. If your website loads slowly, they will likely move on to competition and not come back.

This may seem fickle, but there is no reason for these customers to stick around when they have so many other choices to explore. Despite quality web design, graphics, or content, slow load speeds can immediately alter a visitor’s perception of the website’s quality and their decision to use its services. When pages load quickly, users are not distracted by inconvenience. As a result, they can form their opinion based on all the hard work that went into the website’s design, layout, copy, and offerings.

User Experience

While it is incredibly important for businesses to attract new traffic, it’s also incredibly important for businesses to retain first-time viewers and repeat customers. New traffic doesn’t always mean better traffic—maintaining the traffic you already have by providing excellent user experience is the key to thriving long-term. Consistently slow page speeds and poor response times deter users from coming back and halt the beginnings of customer loyalty. Retaining loyal customers and regular users of your website is a critical first step to growing your business.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is much more than certain keywords. High search engine rankings are critical for your business to be found organically online, and slow website speed will push any business to the bottom of the list. Websites with better load speeds are prioritized in search engines, particularly websites with excellent mobile performance. Search engines are meant to pull up the best websites that will quickly satisfy the user. If a website is slow and not compatible with mobile devices, the search engine will not suggest it, which is dismal for growing businesses that rely on organic discovery. Mobile speed in particular has now been prioritized by search engines since people are less likely to make searches from their desktop.

Traffic and Conversion Rates

It goes without saying that the more people who are able to easily view your website, the more likely they will explore multiple pages, discover and remember your brand, and become a customer. Of course, high traffic doesn’t always mean quality traffic, but it undoubtedly increases the business’s potential for their return-on-investment. Unhindered by slow speeds, more users can complete the business’s desired action, whether it be reading a blog post, filling in a survey, providing an email for a newsletter, or purchasing a product. As a result, traffic and conversion rates often go hand-in-hand. When there is higher traffic, there is more opportunity for businesses to convert these leads into sales.

Regularly testing your website’s speed is necessary maintenance just like getting an oil change for your car—it ensures your entire website can function and run as best as it can. Don’t let slow website speeds hinder your business’s growth and success.

How’s Your Website Performing? Find Out Where Your Website Stands Today

Regularly evaluating your website will keep your business on track to meeting your objectives. Sun Sign Designs offers a free audit of your website’s loading performance and provides the solutions needed to further improve it. Discover how your website is performing and learn ways to optimize it now.

Check Your Website Speed
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Sun Sign Designs Launches NHA Development’s Website

NHA Development LLC is a fully-licensed and insured development and construction company based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They offer full turn-key solutions and services to real estate developers, investors, and homeowners in the greater Philadelphia. They specialize in custom-built, new construction single-family and multi-family residential spaces.

From design to construction, NHA Development’s priority is to achieve their clients’ unique goals for their spaces with attention and consideration to their lifestyle and budgetary needs. NHA Development seeks to bridge the gap between quality craftsmanship and affordability to give Philadelphia homeowners beautifully-built homes at the best prices.

NHA Development recruited Sun Sign Designs to build a high-quality website that could house its extensive portfolio. Sun Sign Designs started with building a strong foundation by writing the relevant website copy needed to increase SEO, engage online visitors, tell NHA Development’s story and mission, and explain the company’s services.

The copy created a strong foundation to build a website design around. Sun Sign Designs designed NHA Development’s homepage to open with moving, panoramic views of their recent developments to give online visitors a virtual tour, indoor and outdoor, of NHA’s homes. As visitors scroll down the homepage, Sun Sign Designs achieves the perfect balance between beautiful visuals and relevant copy to keep people both engaged and informed.

Sun Sign Designs created a separate page for visitors to easily explore NHA Development’s entire portfolio. Visitors can simply select the property they are interested in viewing and then scroll through the relevant pictures. Sun Sign Designs reliable hosting services allow NHA Development to house as many pictures as they want without affecting their website’s load time and speeds. In addition, Sun Sign Designs created the ability for visitors to easily request a quote and to view the typical lifecycle of a new construction development.

Sun Sign Designs knows a strong and professional online presence is essential for businesses to convert leads into sales. We have all the tools you need for the perfect website—get started with us today!

 

Visit NHA Development’s website at https://nhabuilders.com/and let us know what you think in the comments below!

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Sun Sign Designs Launches Via Roma’s Website

For over 50 years, Via Roma Italian Restaurant & Sports Bar has proudly served Eagleville, Pennsylvania. Since opening in 1969, they have been committed to serving up the most authentic Italian cooking for their community to enjoy. They prioritize great service, hot, made-to-order cooking, and outstanding value for the best possible dining experience. All of their dishes are original family recipes that have been passed down from generation-to-generation and lovingly preserved. When they serve you, they are serving family!

With over 50 years of excellent service, Via Roma knew their website also needed to be first-rate, so they turned to Sun Sign Designs to cook up an amazing website!

Sun Sign Designs understood Via Roma needed reliable e-commerce solutions for their new website, so they could cut out expensive delivery apps that took commissions from their sales. With a complete online menu available, Sun Sign Designs gives customers a taste of what Via Roma has to offer with easy-to-use menu navigation.

Via Roma’s customers can now easily navigate through appetizers, entrees, pizzas, salads, subs, and more. With an easy-to-navigate online menu and secure check-out options, Via Roma’s customers can effortlessly order and complete their meal purchase online and pick-up in person. Sun Sign Designs also ensured Via Roma’s website is mobile-friendly, so customers can view and order from the website no matter what device they use.

In addition to adding an online menu and e-commerce solutions, Sun Sign Designs also cooked up an appetizing homepage that features a colorful and visually-appealing gallery of Via Roma’s delicious dishes. To complement the visuals, Sun Sign Designs wrote new engaging copy that shares Via Roma’s offerings, events, story, and mission. Relevant website copy and content building drives successful SEO results and helps get more customers ordering online and coming in the door.

Sun Sign Designs knows a strong and professional online presence is essential for restaurants to get customers coming in, ordering online, and sharing their experience with others. We have all the ingredients for the perfect website—get started with us today!

Visit Via Roma’s new website at https://viaromapizzasb.com/ and let us know what you think in the comments below!

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Sun Sign Designs Grows Tampa Succulents’ Website

Tampa Succulents is a succulent greenhouse and shop based in the Seminole Heights neighborhood of Tampa, Florida. Owner Lisa Kimball’s love for succulents and gardening bloomed at a young age. She was continually fascinated by plant propagation and creating new succulents from fallen scraps. She now helps others discover the joys of planting succulents and cultivating greater community connection!

With Tampa Succulents, she has the pleasure of sharing and teaching the art of gardening and succulent therapy! Through fun virtual DIY events, pop-up markets, and collaborations with local businesses, Tampa Succulents shares the process of potting, arranging, and growing your own succulent planters or living wreaths. Tampa Succulents also ships their DIY succulent kits nationwide, so anyone can build and design the perfect planters for their home or garden.

Tampa Succulents knows growth is key, so they turned to Sun Sign Designs to help their website thrive! Tampa Succulents switched to Sun Sign Designs’ reliable hosting services, which boast high loading speeds, minimal downtime, and secure encryption. Sun Sign Designs ensures that all their clients’ websites are fast and user-friendly for their customers in order to quickly convert leads into sales.

Sun Sign Designs enhanced Tampa Succulents online platform and marketplace with new website design and copy. With the endless varieties of shapes, sizes, colors, and textures of succulents, Sun Sign Designs made sure Tampa Succulents’ website was bursting with the same color and greenery to engage site visitors. Similarly, Sun Sign Designs revitalized Tampa Succulents’ online shop, so customers can easily sort through DIY kits, succulent favors, living wreaths, and more. Finally, Sun Sign Designs is boosting Tampa Succulents’ SEO and creating new points of entry to their website by writing engaging blog content. Websites that are regularly updated with fresh content stay relevant in search engines and climb higher in search results, bringing more business to the website.

We think strong website design and digital marketing strategies are essential for businesses to grow and thrive for the long-term.

Check out Tampa Succulents at https://tampasucculents.com/

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Sun Sign Designs Launches PEAQ Procurement’s Website

PEAQ Procurement is a strategic advisory firm focused on helping mid-sized companies grow and perform by delivering value through procurement. Through its name, PEAQ promises Procurement Excellence Achieved Quickly and bringing their clients to the pinnacle, or “peak,” of success through strategic procurement.

PEAQ is action-oriented and focused on accelerated savings and results for their clients. They intimately understand what mid-sized companies need at each stage of the procurement process having walked in their clients’ shoes and faced the same challenges. With PEAQ’s down-to-earth, action-oriented approach to procurement, Sun Sign Designs designed their website to visually convey this message and approach.

PEAQ’s homepage opens with a paneled slideshow that immediately engages and hooks visitors of the website. The images feature breathtaking, rugged views of mountains, deep valleys, forests, and rivers—but these are not uninhabited, empty stills. They present adventurers hiking trails, climbing uphill, and scaling craggy rocks. By showcasing individuals who are physically ascending rough terrains, Sun Sign Designs infuses PEAQ’s website aesthetic with advancement and achievement in the face of adversity—or in the face of an intimidating procurement process.

Sun Sign Designs visually helps push PEAQ’s action-based mission to keep their clients moving forward and reach their procurement goals with the carefully-selected storyboard of images. Sun Sign Designs makes the majestic imagery approachable by inhabiting it with successful, hardworking individuals. As a result, Sun Sign Designs makes PEAQ’s procurement process appear more accessible and approachable for the mid-sized companies PEAQ works for.

With several images of individuals standing at great heights, or peaks, looking down below, Sun Sign Designs emphasizes PEAQ’s promise to guide their clients through difficult obstacles to reach the summit of their procurement goals.

At Sun Sign Designs, we believe strategic visual communication and quality website design are essential for speaking directly to your target audience and strengthening your business’s brand and core mission.

Check out PEAQ Procurement’s new website at https://peaqprocurement.com.

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Sun Sign Designs Revamps Snyder Law’s Website and Business Model

Snyder Business Law is a boutique law firm based in Radnor, Pennsylvania. They proudly represent small businesses, start-ups, family-owned businesses, and their leaders, presidents, and CEOs. Snyder Law knows firsthand that small-to-medium-sized businesses traditionally serviced by large city-based firms are often disappointed by the lack of attention they receive as well as the soaring rates they are forced to pay. Snyder Business Law never lets their clients become afterthoughts and provides the same quality services for a much more affordable price—and they needed a website to effectively convey this to potential clients.

Snyder Law turned to Sun Sign Designs to host and create a sleek, professional website that visually communicated quality and affordability while providing ease of use at the same time. With these design goals in mind, Sun Sign Designs created a high-end aesthetic with cityscape backgrounds and professional figures and then balanced this design by adding images of people smiling and working together. As a result, Sun Sign Designs conveyed that Snyder Business Law offers the same quality services that large city-based firms do while being much more approachable and accessible. In addition, the website is easily navigable, so potential clients can seamlessly find the information they need to continue.

In addition to marketing savvy website design and SEO enhancements, Sun Sign Designs also helped Snyder Law pivot their business model to solve this common problem within the legal world: business owners needed to be able to contact their attorneys with time-sensitive questions about business decisions, potential risks, and potential opportunities on an affordable basis. Though Snyder Law knew this need was apparent, they didn’t quite know how to create a sustainable business model and website to fill this need.

Sun Sign Designs helped Snyder Law create a recurring revenue model that satisfied this need and streamlined it through their new website. Sun Sign Designs assisted Snyder Law in crafting its monthly subscription plan as well as scaling its operations and automating its processes to thrive in an online environment. As a result, Snyder Law’s Scribe subscription service satisfied the consumer demand for legal advice—available via phone, email, text, and Zoom—while also creating a stable revenue stream for Snyder Law that could grow without restraint.

Through the three different Scribe “Law on Call” subscription levels, Snyder Law has helped clients start their businesses, manage agreements and employment contracts, set their businesses up for sale or succession, and grow them with trademarks, licensing, and franchising. For low monthly costs, business owners can schedule a monthly virtual conference with an attorney to answer all their business questions and concerns. This opportunity to affordably problem-solve with a legal expert and receive ongoing communication is truly priceless for any business owner, and Snyder Law, with the help of Sun Sign Designs, was able to effectively create a profitable solution for both parties.

The affordability of the subscription-based model combined with the value and low-risk for potential clients to try out the service immediately attracted and retained more long-term clients in a cost-effective manner. Consequently, both the clients and Snyder Law saved money. Additionally, Snyder Law was able to diversify their monthly revenue streams and have a revenue stream that could increase without restriction. The recurring revenue model through a subscription service gave Snyder Law the opportunity to build strong relationships with their clients on an ongoing basis, creating stability and long-term sustainability for its boutique law firm.

Check them out at https://Snyderbusinesslaw.com

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Shutter Up! New Website for MackCam

Since 1938, Mack Camera and Video Service has been one of the largest independently owned and operated repair facilities in the United States and has been a trusted leader in the industry for over 80 years. They work with customers from retail, schools, hospitals, and more to find new and innovative ways to provide their customers with the absolute best extended warranties and repairs available.

Mack’s reputation for outstanding customer service, repairs, and innovative extended service contracts has made their name internationally renowned—but Mack needed their website to match their already impressive standing in the repair and warranty industry, so they turned to Sun Sign Designs.

Sun Sign Designs refreshed MackCam’s website with new marketing-driven graphic design to boost Mack’s online visibility and relatability among modern clientele. The new website graphics consist of black-and-white, newspaper-style cartoon drawings that are cute in their simplicity and attractively modern in their minimalism. The graphics consist of home-centered scenes with refreshing pops of bright blue to focus the viewer’s gaze on the common electronic equipment found in the home.

On Mack’s new home page, viewers see a cozy living room that is relatably cluttered with stacks of books, house plants, and decorative throw pillows—there is even a cat nestled on the couch! But in the midst of this twenty-first century scene, viewers are immediately caught by the blue flat screen TV, the blue headphones slung on the couch, the blue laptop on a side table, and even a blue drone flying askew in the air.

The scene is fun and engaging, but Sun Sign Designs also cleverly infuses it with this marketing message: technology inhabits our homes, so why not protect it?  This marketing message is reiterated again in the graphic of headphones swirling in the blue water of the washing machine. Sun Sign Designs successfully shows how Mack’s warranties protect home life. Our technology is so embedded in our everyday routines we often forget we need to protect it until an accident happens!

Sun Sign Designs also created new page formats for MackCam’s site. Instead of forcing an online visitor to click through multiple pages to find what they are looking for, the stream-of-consciousness-style pages slowly guide the viewer down the page and through the storyboard graphics. This new page format secures focus and engagement—it also complements the fun, newly written copy that is meant to jump out and grab readers’ attention.

Website refreshes can be needed to update marketing messages, graphic design, the website’s format, the written copy, or all of the above! Focusing your business’s attention to your online content increases website performance, secures new clients, and converts more sales.

Check out their new site at https://mackcam.com