Artisan Launchpad. Agency Vista

Feb 4, 2022

The Manifest Recognizes Artisan Launchpad Among Chicago’s Most Reviewed Vendor for 2022

This year, Artisan Launchpad celebrates six years in the graphic design industry. Over those years, with the passion for design flowing through our veins, we ensure that the result is what you are looking for. There’s no challenge too big or too small, and we dedicate our utmost energy to every project we take on. This year, we are incredibly proud to share that The Manifest has recognized Artisan Launchpad as one of Chicago’s most reviewed B2B companies in the graphic design space. Established in 2016, Artisan Launchpad helps businesses grow through a customized approach to every project we handle unique to our clients. Whether it’s a logo design or a responsive website, we’ll sit down with you, listen to your requests, and prepare a plan of attack. Fast forward a few years, an indoor beach volleyball facility reached out to us to work on their website. We handled everything from the website development and logo, apparel, and business card design. With our artistic ability and knack for creating a genuinely symbolic brand of what the company stands for, we successfully delivered the project and satisfied the client’s expectations. 2022 marks another milestone for Artisan Launchpad as we’ve been highlighted as one of Chicago’s most reviewed and leading graphic designers on The Manifest . The Most Reviewed Company Award on The Manifest features the 15 companies on each listing page that have received the most number of new reviews in the past 12 months. Most reviewed companies have the opportunity to show off their new client feedback through press releases, the Most Reviewed Company badge, and content marketing support. This is our passion, and we are excited to help you with yours! Please fill out the contact form if you are ready to start your project.

Dec 29, 2021

How Plugins Can Enhance Your Website

Operating a website is not an easy task. The best websites are user friendly, aesthetically pleasing, and faster than you can believe. And the worst of websites are, well, a headache. They often have confusing layouts. Buggy setups, easy to fix errors, and load times slower than you can believe. Many website owners don’t realize that the solution is right in front of them – if you use WordPress that is. WordPress offers plugin functionality, allowing you to add some truly incredible third-party features to your website that can take your website to new levels of functionality. Here are a few ways that plugins can enhance your website. Make Collecting Visitor Information Easier Most websites involve some form of visitor information collection. Whether it is for a newsletter subscription, user account information, payment information, or even just filling out contact forms. And if you are struggling to make this work easily and quickly, it is not your fault, you just don’t have the right plugins installed. By using plugins like WPForms , you can save yourself time and energy collecting and organizing visitor info. WPForms allows you to drag and drop forms into your website with plenty of easy-to-use templates that look great and work fantastically. WPForms also does the work of organizing this information for you, saving you tons of effort. Make Your Website Faster Many website visitors have incredibly low patience. It is not a reflection on anyone as an individual, just that we have been conditioned to expect webpages to load fast. If your website loads too slow, some visitors will simply leave your webpage and find another site offering the same kind of service. But your webpages speed is more in your control than you think, if you are using the proper WordPress plugins. WP Rocket is a plugin designed to optimize your website caching settings, which helps to improve load times and response speed for your website. WP Rocket can instantly make your website speed go through the roof, and if you are not using WP Rocket then you are leaving website speed on the table. Filter Spam Spam comments and contact form spam is a major time waster for website operators. Having to monitor the comments and contact form spam and filter it out can take tons of time. For the largest websites, up to 85% of all comments and contact form submissions are identified as spam. But if you know how to set up your website with the proper plugins, you don’t have to deal with the same levels of spam, the plugin will clear it out for you. Akismet is the best spam filter plugin available . It uses its AI to detect spam for you and filter it out automatically. And, since it utilizes AI, Akismet is constantly learning and getting better at filtering out spam and determining which comments and form submissions are real and which are bots and spam. Clear your site of spam, and start using plugins like Akismet Add Security Cybersecurity is the most important thing that your website needs to take care of in order to run an effective website. When your server is overloaded with attacks and is being targeted by frequent cyber-attacks, your website speed suffers, and your visitor’s information is compromised. And just because your site may not be huge doesn’t mean you aren’t at risk of an attack. Small to medium-sized businesses are most vulnerable to IT breaches . But, once again, by using the right plugins, you can protect your website from attacks. Sucuri is a brilliant option for a security plugin to protect your site. Sucuri operates as a middleman between users and your server, filtering out spam, brute force attacks, and other kinds of internet attacks to keep your server from being overloaded by cybercriminals. Monitor Analytics More Effectively If you have a website and don’t monitor your analytics , then you are on the backfoot. But using the standard analytics tools that google has available for all website owners and operators. Monitoring your analytics effectively helps you determine what pages are driving traffic, how your engagement is changing over time, and other important data factors that will help you determine how to improve your website. And the MonsterInsights plugin can help compile and display your analytics data clearly and easily. MonsterInsights takes the wealth of data that Google analytics offers and sorts through so you only must deal with the most important and useful data, and you can do it all from WordPress without having to navigate between pages for a seamless integration of analytics to your WordPress site. Optimize Your SEO SEO is the best thing you can do to grow your website and boost your traffic and sales. SEO, or search engine optimization, is the set of principles and best practices that you should follow to increase your pages ranking on the popular search engine. While you can follow and try to improve your SEO yourself, it becomes easier with plugins . For instance, the All-in-One SEO plugin for WordPress allows you to see your SEO rankings and find ways to improve your rankings. All in One SEO keeps all the information you need like page titles, keywords, and metadescripition data and gives you tips on how to further boost your scores for more traffic. Streamlines Backup Functionality Backing up your website frequently is one of the most important care taking tasks you need to perform on your site. But manually backing up your site and dealing with the shuffling around and offloading can be a lot of work. But with the right plugins, like UpdraftPlus, you can automate your backups and always have an up to date backup ready to go. UpdraftPlus backs up your site automatically and offloads it to a third-party source like Google Drive or Dropbox. UpdraftPlus also makes it easy to restore your site from a backup in the event of an emergency. Increase Your Conversion Your conversion rate on your site is the percentage of visitors who enter your site and make a purchase or sign up for emails or newsletters from your site. The conversion rate is essential, as you want to be maximizing your conversions, turning every visitor into a customer or subscriber. And if you are using WordPress, there are some amazing plugins that can help you increase your conversion rate. OptinMonster is perhaps the greatest of these plugins, offering you proven and tested templates for pop ups, welcome mats, spin wheels, and alert bars to help you increase your conversion rate. OptinMonster allows you to even personalize messages sent to different users, so that you are sending the right marketing messages to the right visitors at the right time. Keeping your website running in tip top shape can be a constant struggle. But using the right plugins helps keep your site at the forefront. Try adding plugins to increase the functionality of your website in these keyways and see the impact it makes on your site. Read this next: How to Interact with Consumers Without Being Annoying

Sep 23, 2021

How to Interact with Consumers Without Being Annoying

One of the most important parts of developing relationships with your customers is communicating enough without over communicating. This is a delicate balance that needs to be handled carefully with each of your customers. If you can master communicating without being an annoyance, it will do amazing things for your business and for your ability to be successful in all of your customer interactions. \ Stay Relevant It can be tempting to talk to your customers about anything and everything in your emails and on your website. But irrelevant information is a huge turn off for almost everyone you reach out to. It’s better to make sure that all of your interactions with customers are relevant to your business and their needs. Think about the reasons someone may want something from your business and use those reasons to help you to figure out what content is relevant to your customers. You can even use customer feedback to customize the content you send to each customer. Source: https://bloomcast.pt/en/how-to-create-relevant-content/ Let Them Opt In While you may be tempted to simply send out all your emails to every customer you have ever had, it’s a better idea to give them the opportunity to opt into your emails. More than 60% of consumers unsubscribe from promotional messaging they didn’t sign up for. And this unsolicited communication can leave them with a bad taste in their mouth for your business in general. Giving them a chance to opt into the emails you send, the frequency, and the kind of content they want can help them to have a much better experience with your business. Source: https://www.podium.com/article/mass-texting-service/ Respond to Messages in a Timely Manner No one likes to be ignored and when you leave customer messages unanswered it can make them feel unappreciated. It’s important to always answer emails quickly and as effectively as possible. If it is going to take you time to find the answer to a customer’s question, send them a quick reply to let them know you are on it. Then once you have found a solution you can reach out to them again. Source: https://instapage.com/blog/how-to-avoid-annoying-your-clients Communicating with customers is a huge challenge that can really keep you on your toes. If you are able to manage customer communication well it can help you to keep your relationships going strong. And that gives you what you need to make your business a real success. Read this next: How to Start Seeing Results on Social Media

Aug 18, 2021

How Does Google Impact My Advertising Efforts?

When it comes to search engines, a majority of consumers use Google. The appeal of Google is it’s more than just a search engine. It is equipped with many other useful tools, including tools that can have an impact on your marketing. Creates Visibility Google’s main benefit to your business is it can help increase your visibility. It does this in a variety of ways, but one of the most useful is Google My Business . With Google My Business, you can register your business with your name, contact info, address, and any other pertinent information. When people search for businesses related to yours, your business will appear above those that aren’t registered and it will provide individuals with all the information they need. It’s a great way to increase your exposure, lead people to your website, and collect reviews. Direct Large Amounts of Traffic As mentioned, Google is one of the most popular search engines. Google is a huge advertising force , with 44 percent of internet advertising occurring in search and 62 percent of all search queries going through Google. It sees a lot of exposure which makes it an ideal platform for you to market your business. When using Google, you can know that you will be exposed to a large amount of traffic. This traffic can include people who see your ads on Google as well as people who are directed to your website. There are many ways you can take advantage of the large viewership that Google has. Effective Advertising When advertising on Google, you can see many advantages. Google can help you advertise your business effectively in many different ways. For example, Google can help you reach specific audiences through targeted advertising. This can help you appeal to your audience. As a part of targeted advertising, Google can actually help guide people to your business when they are searching for related content. Google can even advertise based on geography if you are trying to target a certain area. Additionally, Google can help you track your advertising as well as the patterns of your consumers. This allows you to see how well your advertising is going and you can make adjustments as needed. There are many advantages to using Google for your business’ marketing and advertising needs. Google has many useful tools that you can apply to your business. If utilized properly, Google can do wonders to help you advertise your business effectively. To get help with your marketing plan, contact us today!

Jul 6, 2021

Artisan Launchpad Dubbed as one the Best Web Design Companies in Illinois by Clutch

From graphic and web design , our team over at Artisan Launchpad is here to help you! Our team provides amazing graphic design services for small to medium businesses in various industries. Since 2016, our company has been dedicated to delivering beautiful and engaging designs for all businesses. With innovative and modern themes, we make sure to create solutions that are unique to you. We love creating designs and helping businesses! This passion led us to one of our amazing milestones this year. Today, we are very excited to announce that our company has been recently named as a leading web design company in Clutch’s 2021 list of top companies in Illinois. Our team is very excited to share this moment with you, our partners and clients. These are some of the moments in our company’s history that we will cherish forever. Furthermore, we would like to thank Clutch and their amazing team for naming us as a top company in their platform. It is a huge honor for us to stand among the best of the best in our industry. To the Clutch team, we are truly grateful for the dedication and hard work that you continue to bring to the B2B industry. Don’t know about Clutch? Clutch is the leader in connecting global service providers with corporate buyers from around the world. The ratings and reviews platform publishes the most extensive and referenced client reviews in the B2B services market. To our dear clients and partners, thank you for the support that you showered us throughout the years. We wouldn’t be here today without your help. Thanks for choosing our services and for believing in our team. Design shouldn’t be so hard! Let an expert help you. Call us and let’s talk about who we can help you with today.

Jun 14, 2021

What You Need to Ensure Better Customer Satisfaction

Having satisfied customers leads to having loyal customers. Having loyal customers means referrals and continual business growth. This is obviously something you want for your business but figuring out how to satisfy your customers starts with little things. Improve Communication Improving your communication with customers goes a long way in helping them feel taken care of. Nothing feels worse for a customer than feeling like they don't matter or they don't know what is going on. According to Podium , many companies use CRM software to keep track of customers, so don't worry if you have trouble keeping track of a lot of things. Keeping the customer in the loop as you perform your service or in the process of delivery will help the customer feel like you are reliable and that you care about their needs and situation. Manage Quality Having high quality is probably one of the most important, if not the most important thing you can do to improve your customer experience. Having a product arrive that does not meet expectations instantly breaks your customer’s trust and results in dissatisfaction. On the other hand, when a customer is pleasantly surprised by the quality, they will not only feel satisfied, but they will be much likelier to rave about your product. To ensure that you are meeting quality standards, follow the Six Sigma standards. Six Sigma quality means no more than 3.4 defects per million . Get Feedback One of the best ways to understand the customer experience is to get feedback from customers about every stage of the process. Figure out the best way to get that information from customers. Maybe you need to have a solid but short survey that customers take at the end of their interaction with you—try to keep your questions specific and rating-based. Customers are not likely to write out long responses to a variety of questions so cater to that. Try to make surveys short and sweet. Doing the work to understand your customer relationships and improve them takes serious effort. In addition to these ideas, focus your energy on identifying your target demographic and identifying their priorities and concerns with your product. Targeting these things will help you improve customer satisfaction the quickest and will simultaneously demonstrate to your customers that you are trying to prioritize them as the customer. Read this next: How to Attract Gen Z to Your Business

Jun 7, 2021

How Customers Use Your Online Profile to Judge Your Business

When a customer is getting to know your business, they generally do some research on the internet to determine whether to trust your company or not. It’s important to realize that you will be judged for anything that your company says or does on the internet. As such, you’ll want to analyze your online profile to make sure you are sending the right message. They Determine Your Legitimacy If a customer is unfamiliar with our business, they are going to want to determine if you are a legitimate business or a scam. The first thing that they will likely do is to check out your website. If they see a basic cookie-cutter website, they might not take your business seriously. If you have spelling errors and generic images, they may take this as a sign that you aren’t worth trusting. On the other hand, a professional website can help assure them that your business is run by experts. A prospective customer will often look on social media to judge your company’s legitimacy . Most expect that prominent businesses will have a presence on LinkedIn and Facebook. Depending on your type of business, you may also be expected to have an Instagram page or a Youtube channel. They Read Reviews Since you are in control of your website and social media accounts, customers cannot fully trust that these will give them an accurate representation of your business. To get a less biased perspective, most consumers turn to reviews. If your business has only a few reviews, they may be hesitant about trusting you. More reviews will help you easily generate leads . While you can’t control what people s ay in their reviews, you can exert some positive influence by how you respond to their reviews. You should respond to every review. This shows potential customers that you care. While you may be tempted to ignore a negative review, you could resolve the issue and have the review removed if you are willing to respond. They Look at Your Employees While customers may not look up your employees before buying your products or services, they can still be heavily influenced by your employees’ online actions. If one of your employees goes viral for a negative action on the internet, this could reflect poorly on your company. As such, it is usually a good idea for your company to establish guidelines about social media conduct. Warn new hires about your social media policies during their onboarding and encourage them to maintain a professional and appropriate manner when interacting on any public internet forums. If you want to know more about how your company is perceived online, the best thing to do is ask people. Try to conduct surveys anonymously so that people can give you open and honest feedback. Once you get this feedback, brainstorm some ideas on how you can improve. It’s often best to repeat this process at least every year so that you can stay up to date on your company’s social standing. Having a great website is crucial to any business. We can help you make one! Contact us to get started.

May 21, 2021

How to Start Seeing Results on Social Media

Social media is a bit of a misnomer. While there certainly are a lot of social aspects to social media, more and more social media is becoming dominated by business influences. In fact, if you don't have a social media presence as a business you probably won't be very successful. The following are a few tips on how you can get started running a successful social media campaign for your company. Focus on One Strategy According to Post Planner , there are a lot of different strategies that you can use on social media. The key is to pick one. Since no one likes to have their social media feed spammed by one particular individual or business, you are limited to the number of posts you can make in a certain timeframe. If you don't focus on one strategy, you will either be posting too much or not enough for your strategies to take effect. The type of strategy you use depends on what your goals are. Are you trying to do market research? Are you trying to promote a product? By answering these questions you'll be better able to pick a strategy that fits your needs. Partner with Influencers Using social media is all about reaching out to more people. It's about building a following for yourself. However, with all the people out there trying to do the same thing it can be a little bit difficult to get started. This is especially true if you are a business. Most people aren't interested in filling up their social media feed with ads. Using influencers is a way that you can start getting yourself a bigger following. People are much more open to following influencers because although influencers may promote products, they also produce a lot of entertaining content. Your business should not just partner with any influencer. Not all influencers are created equally. According to Podium , the more followers an influencer has the better results you’ll see. At the same time, the more prominent the influencer the more your partnership might cost. Some influencers are happy to promote your products in exchange for discounts or free samples. Others require hefty fees to promote your products and services. Run Competitions According to Kasasa , a great way to get people to notice you on social media is to run competitions. By offering a reward, such as discounts or free merchandise, you can incentivize people to engage with your posts. One of the best ways to do this is by asking competition participants to share your post and tag others in your post. This helps to spread the word about your company to a much wider audience than you could reach on your own. The best part is that depending on the incentive that you are offering, all this advertisement can be done for little to no cost. As you're formulating your social media strategies be sure to pick the right social media platforms. It takes a lot of time to manage social media accounts, so you want to start out focusing your efforts where they matter most. To choose the right social media platforms, you will need to consider which platforms your target audience uses most frequently. To help you get more results, let us help you with your website !

Apr 15, 2021

How to Attract Gen Z to Your Business

Gen Z isn't putting up with your shenanigans, old folks. Lots of businesses are trying to figure out how to connect with and communicate effectively with younger customers . However, many of the older techniques for talking to new customers, based on tried and true methods from before the digital age, just do not work to attract Gen Z. In fact, they're often repelled instead! How in the world do you keep your businesses attractive to a new generation of clientele? Influencer Marketing Using some form of star or celebrity has always been a constant in sales. However, Influencers in digital marketing use a unique visual form of marketing, mingling product placement with their own fabulous lives. Those who already follow their accounts will be more likely to use click-through links to find the amazing products which they're using. Whether your goal is paying big bucks for mega-celebrities, or less for micro-influencers of under 2000k followers, your ability to reach your target demographic is critical to your branding. Offer the Latest Payment Options As much as cash is king, not having it is more likely if you're under 25. Instead, make sure you offer all of the latest payment options available. Regardless of where you are located, being able to accept a full range of mobile payment options gives your younger clients the chance to pay conveniently. Mobile payments speed up the checkout process and are the preferred choice of 80% of customers . Memes and Sarcasm When in doubt, hire “native speakers'' to run your social media accounts. Gen Z thrives mostly on caffeine, gaming, memes, and sarcasm, with a heavy dollop of having excellent humor and a few existential crises. In short: nobody speaks Gen Z like a native Zoomer , and they can spot a poser from miles away. Gen Z loves variation and has a greater joy for diversity, social justice, LGBT+ issues, and stamping out racism and misogyny. By hiring someone to represent your brand who naturally speaks the language, your branding can have the feeling that only a “native speaker” can provide. There's no alternative to appealing to younger clients. Gen Z is a massive cultural influence as they begin their adult lives. Being able to recognize what things appeal to them, and how to tune into their needs in the marketplace will benefit your business, regardless of what it is selling.

Mar 17, 2021

Social Media Marketing Tips for Franchisees

This is the age of technology. Businesses without a technological presence risk falling behind their competitors. One of the best ways to incorporate technology in your business is through social media. Social media allows you to connect with potential customers quickly and effectively. Here are several social media marketing tips that are particularly useful for franchisees. Use Consistent Branding Branding consistency on social media is important, especially for franchisees who should be consistent with their franchisor's branding efforts. Consistency helps improve customers’ ability to recall your business and match it with the service or products that you provide. Purposeful, effective branding also bolsters your business’ and franchisor’s public identity. So, according to MerlinOne , if you want to be remembered, consistent branding should be a top priority. But how can you improve the consistency of your branding? First, consider your business’ values and intentions, as well as the message you want to send to your customers or clients. Next, incorporate those intentions into a social media brand schedule. This brand schedule should integrate your business’ values and apply consistency, lots of repetition, and eye-catching visuals. Take Advantage of Franchisor Materials Part of building an effective social media presence includes utilizing any resources available to you. According to Franchise Gator , franchisors often provide marketing materials or participation in campaigns for their franchisees. This is either as a part of their license for no additional cost or a small fee. Use these materials to help you improve your social media platforms and reach out to potential customers. Learn More About Your Audience A post on social media is a form of writing—just like a blog article or email. It is a message that is supposed to evoke feelings and actions from a certain audience. If a message isn’t tailored to a specific audience, it tends to fall flat. Before creating a social media marketing strategy for your business, make sure that you familiarize yourself with your intended audience. Cater the message to this audience to ensure that they understand it and are affected by it. Social media is a great way to get your brand out there and grow your business. Make sure—as you create your social media content schedule and marketing strategy—that you keep in mind the importance of consistent branding and repetition. This in addition to using all franchisor materials, and considering your intended audience will help your franchise to succeed. We can help you to craft a social media strategy that will help your business to succeed. Contact us to get started!