Blog – Kindling

Product photography lighting techniques for beginners

Alright, Let’s shed some light (pun absolutely intended) on the wild and wonderful world of product photography lighting. We’re about to embark on a journey that’ll take your content from “meh” to “marvelous” faster than you can say “cheese!” (Unless you’re actually photographing cheese, in which case, maybe say “smartphone!” instead.)

First, picture this: It’s 2011, and I’m trying to photograph a client’s new line of… wait for it… glow-in-the-dark garden gnomes. (Yes, that’s a thing. No, I don’t know why anyone needs a luminous lawn ornament, but here we are.) I thought, “Hey, they glow in the dark, so I’ll just turn off all the lights and snap away!”

The result? A bunch of blurry, green blobs that looked more like evidence of alien activity than sellable product photos.

Turns out, even glow-in-the-dark products need proper lighting. Who knew?

So, how do you light your products so they look better than a supermodel on a good hair day? Well, grab your favourite caffeinated beverage (or a glass of wine, I don’t judge), and let’s dive into some lighting techniques that’ll make your products shine brighter than a diamond in a coal mine!

How To Enhance Your Design Studio’s Brand

There are certain businesses that, given the nature of the marketplace they are in, rely more on their branding than on others, and with furniture design studios being in a sector where image plays a huge role, branding is certain to be important. There are many ways to enhance your branding, and if you follow the advice of professional web designers, digital marketing is one of the most effective.

Digital marketing is often associated more with online sales and promoting businesses online, and whilst they certainly are important goals of a digital marketing campaign they are not the only ones. In fact, if you consider that your brand influences potential clients offline, you will recognize that digital marketing can enhance your offline activities immensely. Here are 5 actions that will ensure your digital marketing promotes and augments your brand.

Be Proactive In Seeking Positive Reviews And Testimonials

The internet has changed the ways people buy products enormously. Now, potential customers carry out far more research online than ever before with regard to what they are buying, and crucially, on any company they are considering buying from. That means they look for reviews so one of your priorities to boost your brand and reputation must be to ask your satisfied clientele to post reviews and testimonials on your website and other websites.

Pillars Of An Effective Content Strategy

While creating and publishing content on your website is better than producing no content at all, simply writing blog posts randomly and when it is convenient to do so, is not a strategy that is going to bring many positive SEO results.

Professional SEO companies advise that for your content to have all the positive impacts on your SEO, and the subsequent improvement in your search engine rankings, it needs to be done in a way, that very few other website owners would ever think of implementing.

That way is structured, has end goals, works for your audience, and not just the search engines, and it can be monitored to see if any changes to it have to be made. It consists of 4 components or pillars as we like to call them because they form the cornerstones for your content to be effective and bring results. Here are those 4 pillars…

7 Ways Business Storage Units Can Help With An Office Relocation

Moving to a new office can be tumultuous for most businesses and their employees. However, several services are available to make it less so, such as professional removalists and rental space in a storage facility. While working out what to do with office furniture, inventory, and equipment during an office relocation can be challenging, having secure storage available can be a godsend.

Melbourne storage units are undoubtedly an effective solution to these challenges. This article will outline seven ways they can significantly help business owners organize an office relocation.

#1 – Ideal Temporary Storage Solution

One of the main benefits of commercial storage units during an office relocation is their ability to provide temporary storage solutions. Moving an office can be a long and drawn-out process, and there may be a need to store items for several weeks or even months. Storage units offer a means to store stock, office equipment, and office furniture until required at the new office premises.

What is Your Business Plan?

In today’s digital era, crafting a robust business plan is more than a mere document; it’s a roadmap to success. At KINDLING: Software & Marketing Ideas, we understand the importance of a well-structured plan that is not only realistic and achievable but also motivating. Let’s delve into how a business plan can be the kindling that ignites your company’s potential.

Understanding the Essence of a Business Plan:

Well-regarded digital agency Slinky rightly points out below that a business plan is not just a formal statement of business goals but a compass guiding your business through its journey. As Forbes recently stated, a business plan is vital for startups to focus on their goals and measure their progress.

Take the story of Sarah, a budding entrepreneur in the tech industry. When she first started, her ideas were scattered, and progress was slow. However, once she developed a concise business plan, her path became clear, and she could navigate her business toward success more effectively.

How Every Web Designer Can Protect Their Business By Using Service Delivery Agreements

Although it does not happen very often to web designers, there can be occasions when a client, for whatever reason, claims that the website a web designer has delivered was not what was agreed upon. The claims can range from the website not having the appearance they asked for, fewer pages than agreed, or lacking functionality that they thought it would have.

Now, we should not be so naive to think that there are not a few rogues who sadly give the vast majority of professional web designates a bad name by selling clients short and quite rightly those clients have every right to be aggrieved. However, if we focus on web designers who genuinely strive to deliver great service and great websites, we have to consider the scenarios where clients dispute what was agreed upon.

One of the key problems that cause such situations is that the agreement to design and create a website was done verbally, or if it were done in writing, it has the scantest of details as to what should be included. This serves neither the web designer nor the client and is why, when a dispute does happen, neither has anything to back up their side of the argument.

This can escalate and the dangers for the web designer are that they are not likely to receive final or full payment from the client, and worse, the client could set about rubbishing that web designer’s reputation by going on a crusade of posting negative reviews about them on the internet.

So, if any web designers are reading that and hoping there are ways to avoid such a situation, the good news is there are. Prime amongst them is using service delivery agreements, which are ideal for businesses that provide services such as web designers.

15 Non-Negotiable Web Design Principles That Should Apply To Every Business Website

When you consider that online data shows that there are over 1 billion websites in the world, it is safe to say that web designers have been busy. It is also true to say that no two of those 1 billion websites will be 100% identical, either in how they function or how they look. There may be some that are similar, but we can be certain none are exactly the same in all ways.

Without meaning to contradict ourselves, many of those websites which have been professionally designed will have several commonalities. By that, we mean that they will have been designed by web designers following a set of key web design principles and best practices. For any website to be remotely successful, it must have been created by following what we like to call ‘non-negotiable” web design principles.

These principles are what form the foundation of top quality website design and are why those web designers who follow them without fail are the ones who create the best websites and earn the most praise. Here are fifteen of the non-negotiable web design principles we are referring to.

7 Benefits Of Marketing Your Family Lawyers Business Online

Unless you are in the fortunate, and we dare say, a unique position, that your family lawyers business does not need any new clients, we assume you have some means of attracting prospects. What form that may take will differ somewhat between each family lawyers business, but one which must be considered by all of them is online marketing.

Given the huge expansion in the use of the internet over the past 20 years, coupled with mobile devices now giving access to the internet, any business which does not use online marketing is denying itself a huge commercial opportunity, and that includes family lawyers. Also, any family lawyers business which does not use online marketing is missing out on several benefits, such as the seven which are listed below.

Increased Revenue

It must surely follow that with a properly researched and implemented online marketing campaign, creating a greater number of prospects and generating higher conversion rates, the revenue produced by your family lawyers business will increase accordingly.

Improved Targeting Of Your Ideal Prospects

Several channels that you could use for an online marketing campaign allow you to target an audience that matches the exact demographics of those you seek as new clients. Whether that be by age, marital status, income, or location, rather than the almost zero targeting that some marketing has, e.g. newspaper ads, your online marketing will be seen only by those who are most likely to become clients.

Top 5 Sales Management Software

No business would exist if its products or services were not being purchased by customers or clients. That leads us to the conclusion that the most important function within a business is sales. In some companies, this could be a whole team of sales staff, a single salesperson, or their online activities.

To ensure that their sales processes are as effective as possible, it is recommended that a business utilises sales management software. This provides several benefits including having data relating to sales conversions, the means to forecast sales, and also being able to analyze sales performance.

If you are not using sales management software, or feel that the current sales management software you are currently using is not satisfactory, then here are 5 of the top sales management software currently available.

1: EngageBay

Suitable For: Freelancers, Small to Medium Businesses

This is a platform that helps businesses manage their sales, marketing, customer support and CRM. Some of the specific features include deal management which presents a visual outline of individual deals as they progress. Its customer support features include Live Chat and email tracking.

As for marketing your business, EngageBay allows you to create landing pages and email sequences so that you can implement an email marketing campaign directly from the interface.

A team of up to 15 people can access the software and its simple drag and drop functionality mean that the learning curve is not difficult.