I will be the first to say it, I love Apple. I love how they market their products. I love how they package their products, and I love the innovation they have created, much of which has changed the face of the world forever. AT&T, not so much, but it’s a package deal. In doing so, they have also created new type of consumerism like none who have come before, and all during a recession at that.
This time from the WWDC, Apple comes out with another technological landmark product, or an update to a landmark product, the iPhone 4 with iOS 4. Not just fabulous eye candy, which Apple always seems to achieve, but innovations to a cell phone that have never been seen before, and as Apple does so well, they made it a must buy item, with even more help from AT&T.
To Buy In or Not to Buy In
That really isn’t all bad of course, but, from a Christian perspective, there has to be a reality check somewhere along the way. The arguments you could make on both sides of this debate are endless. The huge, broad, range of reasons why we as Christians should or should not consume, and how much, and of what products, could contain volumes. I just wanted to touch on one specific aspect, AT&T’s early up on their contract dates.
In the information age of 2010, we are now the most instant and disposable consumers the planet has ever seen. We can’t wait for anything, ever, and most of the time we don’t have to. The comment above from WWDC on MacWorld’s live stream just hit the nail on the head.
You mean I have to wait two and a half weeks to get an iPhone 4? Augggggh!
He was kidding, but, not really, and AT&T agreed. [Not trying to pick on Jason Snell from Macworld, I loved reading his live updates from the keynote, and I can't imagine how many tweets I read that said the exact same thing... except they were tweets from pastors of large evangelical churches, worship leaders, seminary students... in other words, the church body (yes we love our Macs)... all clamoring to buy Apple's latest.]
Buy Now, Save Later, Sign Here
At the same time Steve Jobs was giving the keynote, news from AT&T started surfacing that they would graciously allow almost anyone anyone who had a contract with them (that would be everyone who uses an iPhone in the U.S.) that extended beyond 2010, to upgrade to the new iPhone 4, right now. [For those unaware of how cell companies work, AT&T dings you for a 2 year contract every time you get a new phone, but after one year, you can get another new phone, at a discounted price, and up your contract again for 2 more years.]
By the time the keynote was over, yes, even Apple made it official. AT&T was going to allow their customers to spend money on a new iPhone, right now, instead of having to wait for the contract upgrade date to come up (mine is in August and my wife’s is in October). All it will cost you, besides the price of the phone of course, is another two years of your life, in bondage to AT&T. [Of course you can break the contract but AT&T also upped the ETF (Early Termination Fee) to $325 PER PHONE starting June 1 for anyone wanting to free themselves from Ma-Bell, and at the same time did away with their unlimited data plan.]
When Does the 2-Year Curse End?
So, where or when does it end? I started looking at it from my own point of view. Both of our phones are actually, banish the thought, only 2nd generation iPhones (old iPhone 3G’s, not the 3G-S). Our one year contract date (stated above) comes up this year and we could just wait and upgrade then. But if we do that, we will actually be EXTENDING our contracts to October 2012. If we upgraded right now, we would be out of our AT&T contract in June 2012. But hey, even Steven Jobs carries an old phone (or hasn’t updated the OS), so maybe we could do the same.
Either way, we end up committing to a 2-year relationship with AT&T (not that we have a choice in the matter), at some $2,000+ a year. A commitment that not even many parishioners will do for their own church. We could say no, enough is enough, and just sit there and read 2 Corinthians 6:14 over and over until we convince ourselves that life is possible without a 2 year contract?
I guess it is possible to be without a cell phone contract? Two households in my immediate family actually don’t have one (my sister’s and my uncle’s), so I know it’s possible. But me, I have been “under contract” in one form or another to a cell phone company for more than 15 years, that’s something like $36,000 give or take, and longer than many marriages last today. As it turns out, those contracts never do expire. Once you are in, they’ve got you, and there’s no way out. It’s like trying to quit the gym.
It’s legal, immediate, addicting, consumerism Meth, AT&T & Apple style, except an intervention won’t work. You either pay a lot now to get out ($650 for a household of 2), or you pay a ton in little 2-year chunks until the next must have device comes out. To bad I don’t actually have AT&T cell coverage where I live, then I could actually get some use out of my AT&T never-ending contract. Oh well, at least I can upgrade to the new iPhone 4, who cares if I can actually make a phone call.
Thanks, Paul of Tarsus
Or, maybe Paul actually knew what he was talking about when he wrote to the Corinthian church way back in the mid 50′s. Even though it is such an ingrained part of our culture, such an integrated part of our lives in the 21st century, maybe we should, at least question, whether we as believers in Christ should be “bound together” by such terms.
In the end this looks to be one of the best updates to the iPhone Apple has made, especially when you take into consideration the display resolution. I will probably trade my older phone in for the new version, but there is probably an iPhone 5 around the corner somewhere.
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How much importance do you put on using high quality images for your products and services? You have heard the saying, image sells? Well, you can increase your sales by using professional looking images. Over several articles, I am going to examine some ways we can improve the images we use to promote our products and services.
This particular article is geared more to the ecommerce side of things where you would need to use an image for product based sales.
Producing high quality images does not have to be expensive, and it can be done just about anywhere you run your business, but the finished product also reflects on your business, blog, or website, so you want to put forth the best images you can produce.
Importance of High Quality Images
I have been a photographer for about 15 years now, so one thing I always pay attention to on my own ecommerce sites is the quality of the images I use. But, you don’t have to be a great photographer to get good results. Below I will look at some simple steps you can take to improve the quality of the images you are using on your website, blog, or ecommerce site.
There is a great correlation to the quality of images you use and the ASP’s (average sales price) you achieve, or even the traffic you generate. It is easy to gage. Just put up some run of the mill (or bad) images and see what stats you get on sales, then put up a great image of the same product and see what changes.
Most people don’t want to take this approach of course, they already use the best images they have, so we should really just be trying to improve on those images, but good images draw a person into the site, they hold attention, and can also repel.
Some Photography Basics
Photography is a method of allowing light to draw on a medium to reproduce something you see. There are of course a few basic things you will need. You need a camera. A digital cameras are not too expensive now, but if you can, I would recommend getting an inexpensive SLR (single lens reflex) camera over a point and shoot type camera. The image quality will be better and you will have more options if you want to go beyond the basics.
Nikon has several digital SLR cameras for under $500, the D40 is one, and B&H Photo is a good reputable online camera dealer with good prices. I have ordered from them for years and their prices are very competitive. Another good basic piece of equipment to have is a tripod, especially for product images. The slightest movement will create a far less sharp image and if you start with a poor original you end up with a poor finished product as well. If you buy only one other item outside the camera, make sure it is a tripod.
Some Quick Tip Basics
I will expand on each of these ideas in later posts, but some things that you should remember when trying to improve on the image quality for your products.
Light on the Subject Please
You can’t have a good image without good light. Pay close attention to the light and try to use natural light, either by taking the image near a window that has some reflected light (not direct sunlight), or use a flash. The light is what makes an image, so using a light tent (more about this later) will produce a professional looking image with no background to worry about.
You can make a simple light tent out of a one gallon milk jug that works great. Cut out the bottom to place over the image and the top to place the camera lens. Then use some shop lights or other lighting sources to cast an even soft light all around the product.
Backgrounds Can Be Distracting
You don’t want a busy background on a product image. You want a clean, preferably solid color background with some good contrasting color. Try to illuminate the background as much as possible. Anything that shows other than a solid color is going to take away from the subject. You can use a simple cardboard sheet like you used in grammar school. They come in several colors and you can get them almost anywhere.
Use a color for the background that is a contrasting color to the subject matter. For the image above, I used a white liner that came with the Swarovski cyrstals I was photographing. It made a nice background, and also had the company name imprinted on the paper, which was faintly visible in the shots I used for the website.
If you are taking a photo of a book with a dark blue cover, don’t use a black background, use a white background. You want your subject to jump off the screen when someone looks at it.
Proximity So You Can See
Get close. Then get closer. You want to be as close to the subject matter as possible. This is for some obvious reasons but when you are editing an image on the computer, the closer you get, the higher the image quality is going to be if you have to crop the image at all. The smaller the subject matter is on the film plane, the smaller it will be and get as you crop the image down in size.
If your camera takes a 6 mp image size, you will have an image area of something like 3000 px wide by 2000 px tall. If you take the subject in full then you have a subject that is about 3000px wide. If you take the image from a distance, it will be smaller on the file, more like 500px to 600px. When you are editing the image, you want to work with the biggest image possible.
In the image above, I was trying to show how to measure the size of a crystal using a caliper. It was important to get in real close to the subject matter to be able to show a clear and clean image of a subject that was only 10mm’s tall. I used a specialty lens called a macro lens to do this close up.
Each camera lens will have a minimum focus distance. This is as close as you can get to a subject matter and still have it render in full focus, find this and get as close as you can. Get in close and your image quality will be greatly improved.
Editing is an Important Step
I am only going to touch on editing briefly in this post, but this is an important step in producing a high quality image. You probably can not just take the image from your camera to the website and have it look the best that it can look. You will need to adjust and fine tune the image in some image editing software. If you can learn how to use Photoshop I would highly recommend using this program to edit your images. It is what the pros use, for good reason.
Don’t go overboard on the editing. You want to crop out the edges that are just blank space. Make sure the subject fills the entire image, adjust the levels (more about this later) and then save the file. You will want to save your final image in a form easy to use on the Internet and stick with it. A .jpg, .gif, or .png are all good file formats to use. A .png will produce a small file size with good image quality. If possible, start with a RAW image on your camera, then save it to a compressed format.
Coming Up
Coming up I will go a little more in depth about these topics discussed here and more specific how to details. If you have specific questions please post them below and I will be more than happy to answer them.
I did find some other good blog posts on the subject of image quality, like Taking Better Pictures by Lumberjocks, Ten Tasty Tips for Photographing Your Food, 5 Tips for Taking Better Photos of Landmarks and eBay’s Photo tutorial, but there wasn’t a whole lot of information out there about the subject as it pertains to blogs and ecommerce, so I will try to continue this series for those who are interested.
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How much have you worked on the branding of your intellectual or product information? So you have created a website, product, or a small business but you don’t have an identity yet?
There are many ways a customer will remember a small business. Good customer service, quality products, and reasonable or competitive prices are all practices that will make your business stand out and succeed. One that is often overlooked by small business owners is the importance to building company recognition, or branding. It could possibly be just as important to build a strong brand name as a small business as it is among the large corporations. You are smaller and harder to see, harder for your customers to remember. We can all remember who The Home Depot is without seeing a giant orange square logo but what person spending about 60-90 seconds on a page is going to remember what company that was a week from now. One way is to develop a strong brand name.
Logos, Icons and Colors
If you look at some of the higher traffic blogs you will see many of them have professional looking logos, icons, and colors. The color scheme and other design elements used becomes part of their brand. If you don’t have a logo yet, create one or hire someone to make one for you if you are not the graphics person.
A good example of this would be Vandelay Design. He has a logo and colors to match, and it is easy to recognize, even if you were just looking at the “V” in the blue background color. He also has a good article titled Who is the Focal Point of Your Design?, which also gives some good pointers on design, which is another important aspect of branding for your company.
It doesn’t have to be the most expensive thing to do. You can look at some different graphics designers, but check out who your competition uses, it may not be very expensive. I just ran a contest where I gave away a complete logo set to the winner, for free, can’t beat that. You will find a great difference in professional looking designs and someone trying to earn a quick $20.
Either may be acceptable depending on your budget, just expect to get what you pay for (except when they are free).
Use a Tagline or Slogan
Using the same company as an example above, they also use a slogan (or tagline), Website Design & Customization Services. A tagline should be a very brief set of keywords that adequately describes your company products or services so your customers can quickly gage what your company. Another eCommerce store example would be Etsy. If you haven’t visited their site before, their slogan is, Your place to buy & sell all things handmade. You don’t have to visit their site to have an understanding of what type of business they operate.
You may not know that they host individual marketplace stores where businesses sell their wears, but you can get a general idea of what they sell.
Trademark Your Company Name and Logo
Something many small businesses fail to do is register their trademarks. This is not hard, but does take time and money. Start at the United States Patent and Trademark Office if you are operating within the United States or check with your country’s government office that deals with trademarks.
You can register your trademark for your company name, logo, slogan, graphics, whatever you would like to protect legally. I registered a previous company name we sold last year, Pieces of the Past, and a product we invented and sold within that company name. The business name took almost 3 years to complete because we had someone who contended our mark, and the product took about 18 months.
Each application was done online and cost about $500 USD. You do have to follow directions and file the correct paperwork. If you don’t it just adds to the time it takes to complete the process. Once completed, you can add the familiar © symbol after your mark, but that’s not all you can do with the registration. Once completed, you can protect your mark from being used by your competition or from cannibalizing use on the Internet. A great example of this was when Shoemoney completed his registration of his company name and was able to keep others from bidding on his name in Google Adwords.
See the entire article titled, Stopping People From Bidding On Your Trademark – At Least On Google Adwords, here. If you have been successful at building your brand name, don’t let it become a generic name, protect it legally.
Get Some Merchandise Made
This is not only an outward marketing program for your company, it is fun. You can have all kinds of shirts made from just about everywhere today. My previous company attended conventions all over the country so we ordered several custom golf shirts from Lands End with our logo, product name, and slogan. Customers came to recognize us from our shirts with our logos on the lapel.
You don’t have to be a huge company to have merchandise made with your company information. I think we were charged $25 for the design work submitted to Lands End via their website, and we could buy all the shirts we wanted after that with our embroidery work included. ProBlogger and Shoemoney have a few photos that shows shirts with a logo for their company and even a great XML sitemap plugin. Some other suggestions might be:
- Lapel Pins (these can be great fun to design and very unique)
- Hats, Bags, Jackets
- Coffee Cups
- Mouse Pads
Use Your Created Materials
Once you have created your brand name, you need to use it. Put it on all your customer invoices and shipments and on your packaging if possible. Use it on your online profiles. You can use a logo on just about every social networking site and most any site you create an account when signing up for the service. Market your brand just like you would market your products or services.
When customers come to your store or blog you want them to remember you after they have left, right? Branding is one way to do that and with a little effort you can create and market a successful brand name for your company, products, or services.
What are some other ideas your company has for branding?
