Your user experience can’t be the only thing that’s customer-centric

Not so fast, responsive-design wizard! The job’s not done. Your contribution is essential, but in terms of responsiveness, the work has just begun.

The responsiveness that technology has brought to websites and apps has created an upturn in real-world expectations. Customers want businesses, their products, and their attitudes to provide highly-customized real life experiences, too.

The technology is perfect, but the people aren’t

It’s not enough to give your customers a positive online user experience because your content is responsive to their device. All of those perfect pixels come crashing down if your customer service department doesn’t provide the same kind of satisfaction.

Technology has become a crutch. Install a sophisticated phone system. Provide real-time order tracking. Make it possible for Siri to give customers a reminder when it’s time to order again. Automation complements good products and customer service. Yet, some businesses today behave as if technology is the sole solution, rather than an essential component of overall strategy and execution.

Aligning all the levels of responsiveness

It doesn’t take long for a business to get lopsided if they make the user experience their holy grail. In their desire to excel, they lose sight of the fact that in the end, it’s still going to be a human interaction.

People run your business. People buy what your business produces. Technology can’t replace that area of responsiveness. Here are a few ways to capture the essence of responsiveness and instill it in your people so that the products you make and their attitude towards customers rises to the same level as the technology.

Take aim

Does your business know the reason for its existence? Don’t go running for the company mission statement. Stop and ask yourself what you do that inspires or captures imagination.

That’s your purpose. When you distill this into a short phrase that can roll of the tongue, you’ve got the code that instills a sense of pride that’ll propagate through all levels of your organization. Everybody owns it.

What are you worth?

When your purpose is a mantra, your value proposition lines up behind it. When you know your why, the behavior to guide you becomes obvious. People discover they seldom need to be told what to do.

This used to be required only of company leadership. Today, every employee, especially those dedicated to serving the needs of customers, needs to understand what the business stands for and how to communicate value through actions that demonstrate purpose.

Out with the old

Behold, the business model. It outlines how your company intends to make money. Is it rigid?

Nothing today can survive in a static mode. Ask Garmin. The company pioneered the automotive GPS market. Then Apple introduced the iPhone. In less than 3 years, revenue at Garmin dropped by nearly $1 billion. The company lost close to 90% of its market value.

Garmin didn’t change their technology, but they did change their thinking. Today, the company specializes in high-end wearables. It earned them nearly $565 million last year, which is 8 times the revenue of just two years before.

Push innovation to the bottom

Flat design works well in places other than your website. Try doing the same thing to the hierarchy of your business. Innovation requires open collaboration. Some of the most successful companies have made it a mandate to banish bureaucracy, as they know this outmoded command and control system stifles initiative.

The idea that rank and status confers salary is outmoded. People today aren’t ruled by money. They’re also looking for ways to feel that their contributions are meaningful. Fulfillment for them creates value for your business.

What organizational obstacles can you eliminate? Each one pushes you closer to new ways of responsiveness. It happens because more information is shared.

The art – and science – of letting go

Responsive apps and websites have the look and feel of deep flexibility and customization. It’s as if they rebuild themselves for each customer. Can your products and business practices follow suit? And is your overarching strategy and execution – whether it involves the user experience on your eCommerce site or the interactions a customer has with your employees – designed to make your business thrive?

If you’re looking to integrate your business strategy with responsive web applications that fulfill your goals, turn to Creative Technology Partners. We create solutions that integrate with every step of your business and the strategic goals that drive it. For more information about our services, reach out to us today through our online contact form.

Your brand logo has to be ready to represent itself on a variety of screens, and it might have to shed some of itself to do that.

Life for website designers used to be easier and simpler. The world came to visit branded sites with a computer browser. Just about the biggest concern was designing content for smaller laptop screens.

Then along came smartphones. What works on computer monitors doesn’t work on the smaller real estate of mobile devices. Responsive design takes care of this, but you must be careful with your graphics when they resize. What happens when your logo reduces down to a fraction of the original? Intricate designs don’t always work, and this is why brand logos are changing.

Made for a different age

Brand logos are considered sacred to some folks. Mess with them and risk catching the ire of the company, and even some its customers. Before the Internet, companies only had to be concerned about what their brand logo looked like in print or television advertising. They had control over their logos, many of which used lots of detail in their designs.

But traditional media is no longer the gatekeeper. The Internet has transferred control. Now, each user decides how and where he or she will view your message. And the biggest platform of choice is now a lot smaller.

Mobile is king

You’re way behind if you don’t have a mobile-friendly site. Mobile usage has overtaken desktop, and Google now prioritizes mobile sites in rankings. It’s never been more important for companies to ensure that their logo and branding are consistent across the spectrum of full-sized computers to mobile devices. In fact, it’s crucial.

Subtraction

Alas, an intricate logo suffers within a responsive environment. Major companies discovered this early. Take a look at the detailed logo designs of popular companies such as Coke, Chanel, Walt Disney and others. These logo designs just don’t work when they’re reduced to, say, a width of 30 pixels.

If you’re not sure about what’s meant by a logo created for responsive design, head here with your browser. Then you have a choice:

-Bring up the website on your mobile device, and compare what you see there to what’s on your computer’s browser screen.

-Resize the browser screen on your computer. Keep shrinking the size.

Now you see the value of responsive logo design. It pushes logos to morph. They become simple and flexible, losing details as their sizes reduce but retaining brand identity.

The changing state of logos

After you look at what’s required to be responsive, you might wonder if it will push us all toward flat, simple icons with sans serif fonts (if fonts are used at all).

There’s no denying that responsive web design has a major influence on how brands have modified their logos to live in the new environments of mobile screens. The sacred rule of rigidity has been banished and it’s led to a new kind of design freedom.

Living in a smartphone world

Logos now must respond to living in on smartphones and even wearable tech with screens the size of a postage stamp. (And there are now consumers alive who might have difficulty identifying a postage stamp.)

No organization is immune. It’s not just the companies that were born in the cloud, or those that require technology to exist. Every business has increased online exposure, and needs it to thrive. Your brand identity will be impacted.

A professional design service can implement the principles of responsive design while keeping your logo and overall branding consistent. You’ll simply need to make sure you’re comfortable with how your logo appears when it’s reduced in scale.

The role of your brand in our responsive world

Keep these things in mind when envisioning your logo for the responsive age:

- Your logo is not a brand. It’s your perceived emotional image.
- Your brand is not a logo. A logo is nothing more than a reminding identifier of your brand.
- That identifier is a series of elements that continue to represent the brand whether they are added or subtracted.
- Your logo is a memory hook.

Have you made your logo responsive yet? It’s an exercise in scalability. What can it shed and still be familiar as an unmistakable representation of your identity?

There’s another option

Relax. Understand that you don’t own your brand. It exists in your customers’ minds. They want to take your product or service and fit it into their worldview. What do they want to do with your logo? How can you distill it as a scalable memory hook?

There’s a limit to this flexibility. But maybe the only thing you want to make sure of is that you’re not wasting valuable space on the screen. As long as it represents you in an unmistakable way, it communicates your brand.

If you’re looking to implement responsive design for your website, including a logo and brand identity that will adapt to all online environments, contact the professionals at Creative Technology Partners. We have the expertise to meet all of your content needs, providing expert software engineering, strategic user experience, and design services.