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Branding Your Business
You now have all of your
products, categories and supplemental pages built for your site!
It is time to give your site an attractive, customized look. In
this chapter you will be creating banners and logos for your
website, setting up your website colors and building a business
card.
It is extremely helpful to have an
image editing program to design
your logos and banners. The most popular image editing software
is Adobe Photoshop. Adobe has just
released their CS4 program and it is more powerful and feature
rich than ever. You can download a FREE 30 day trial to setup
your logos and banner. If you are unfamiliar with Adobe
Photoshop it is extremely beneficial software to learn and
utilize. You can visit and utilize
Photoshop tutorials to learn the basics of the program.
To begin, browse to the following section of your Volusion
admin panel. Here you will see the default logos and banners
installed.
Next, click the graphic button. The next thing you want to do is right click on the image press copy. See the image below.
After you have copied the image you need to open the Photoshop trial that you downloaded. Once the trial is open hold down the CTRL key and press N. This will open a new file. Press OK to bring up a new layout and then press CTRL and V. This pastes the image on the screen. This is your current header.
Now that you have this open you can utilize the skills you learned in the photoshop tutorials to design a logo and attractive text for your website. We completed an example below.
After your logo is created you can press Alt+Ctrl+Shift+S and save your banner to wherever you choose. Once you have save the banner go back to your Volusion admin and make sure you are still on the logos page. Press browse and then upload your logo to your website. Make sure to press Save Changes at the bottom of the page. After you are done you should have a logo uploaded that looks something like this.
For your invoice logo follow the
same example as above except that you use the invoice logo as a
general template to design the image.
In addition you
will want to click on the link where it says “Have a
favicon.ico?” A favicon is a little image that appears in the
web browser. It stands for favorite icon because when you save a
page to your favorites a little icon appears beside the listing.
To create a favicon you need to have a logo. In the following
example we will use the DropShip Code logo, the globe.
First, we create a new photoshop file and make the size 64 pixels x 64 pixels with a 72 pixel resolution. Then we place our globe in this 64 x 64 box. It is probably way too big to fit in the box so we can click “Show Transform Tools” in photoshop and shrink our logo down to size. It will probably look something like the following.
We can now press CTRL+ALT+SHFT+S and save this image for web and
devices. Save it as a jpeg file to a place it is easily
accessible. Now we are going to turn this image in to an ico
file. Browse to the following site:
http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/favicon/
Here you can
generate a favicon with ease. Once you have the ico file saved
you can go back to your Volusion admin panel and upload it.
After you go live customers will see your favicon when they
visit your site.
NOTE: Creating a
favicon is not necessary and is in no way required. It is just
an attractive detail for your site and a way to build brand
remembrance.
BUYING A LOGO OR IDENTITY
But what if
you aren’t very graphics savvy? Not a problem! Let someone else
do the tedious work for you. You can use the following guide if
you do not wish to take the time to create your own logo. You
can buy logos and complete identities for your business. To do
this, visit this SITE
and browse through their logos and business identities until you
find one you like. If you happen to come across something you
like you can simply buy the logo or identity and save the files
to your computer. Now they are yours without having to go
through the tedious design process.
HIRING
THE WORK
It is possible that you don’t know how
to use Photoshop and do not want to take the time to learn the
software. This is ok! You can hire someone with tons of graphics
design experience to create a logo or complete business identity
for you. The best part about it is you can have this done for
cheap!
You can use an
outsourcing company to complete all of the work for you. You
can even hire them to upload all of the work for you. Heck, if
you don’t feel like doing any of the design or product adding
you can hire someone for that too! The site above has an endless
supply of very talented coders and designers at phenomenal
rates. The way it works is that people bid on your project. You
are required to describe the process in detail and someone
willing to complete the project will bid on it. When you accept
a person to complete the project for you, you will be required
to place the funds in escrow and when they are done you can have
the funds released to that individual. There is also a ratings
and review system so you can look at a coder or designer’s past
work and reviews. Visit the site today if you need to find
someone to help you complete the work.
SETTING UP WEBSITE COLORS
In this
section you will be setting up you website colors. There are
many settings for this in Volusion. Changing the settings is
very easy and you can make changes in a matter of seconds. Most
of the installed templates in Volusion already have the colors
ready to go but you may want to make changes. These settings are
in the Design menu and you will focus on the “Navigation Menu”
submenu. You can make changes on this screen and then view your
website frontend to see the changes.
For more advanced settings you can view the “Live File Editor”
submenu and make changes to CSS files to change colors and the
website layout. This is for advanced users only. If you don’t
know how to utilize CSS then please do not make changes to this
area. You can utilize rent a coder to make changes for you if
you choose.
BUSINESS CARDS AND BROCHURES
When you are starting your company it is important to spread
the word about your new business as fast as possible. One of the
easiest ways to do this is by having some business cards or
brochures professionally printed. Hand these out every single
chance you get! You never know who you might run in to that
would make a great customer or possibly be able to give you a
referral.
You can design your own business cards in
Photoshop, Illustrator or Microsoft Word. You can also buy an
identity or have someone design them for you. Whatever the case
it is very important to have these at hand to promote your
business.
After you have them designed your next step
will be to have them professionally printed. Don’t waste your
time or ink printing them yourself because it is actually
cheaper to have them professionally printed. The quality will
also be much better with the professional option. An awesome
company we have been doing business with for a few years is
U Printing. You can visit
their website here and get a quote on just about any type of
printing you can imagine.
Now that you have all of your
colors, logos, banners and business cards lined out your site is
basically finished and ready to launch. But before you go live
there are a few more very important steps you need to complete.
In the next section we will setup a few different ways for your
customers to pay you.
Step 14 - Merchant Service Providers
The True Web Money Dropshipping eCourse Outline
Start Here - Introduction
The Power of the E-Commerce
What is Drop Shipping?
Why You Should Drop Ship
Getting Started
Setting up a Temporary
Contact
Picking a Niche Market
Getting Started with a Plan
Business Structure and Legal
Picking a Domain Name
Product Sourcing and Finding
Suppliers
Building Your Website
Branding Your Business
Finding a Merchant Service
Provider
Marketing Your Business
Putting it all Together
Sales Strategy
Defining Business Systems
Conclusion
Step by Step Checklist
Website Resources
