Breaking into Marketing and UX Design - Farha's Journey

Why You Need an Active Company LinkedIn This week, I've been working on creating a plan to optimize BioMedware's LinkedIn account usage so we can most effectively reach other in the field. As I've learned, LinkedIn isn't just an important networking tool for students and employees, but also for companies such as BioMedware to connect with others. Having a dedicated LinkedIn account for your company has many benefits: Brand Representation Having an active LinkedIn profile will showcase your company's accomplishments to potential customers, employees, and investors. It's a great way to let them know your plans and values, as well as the newest updates about your company and products. Lead Generation By posting blogs and interacting with others' posts, you create more natural leads to your company and profile. Think of this as a form of advertising - your content will reach new people for little to no cost, depending on your plan. Networking It's great if y

So you want to create a custom logo animation: you've looked through your different options in my previous post , and decided to use an animation software instead of outsourcing to other services or sites. How do you get started? What software should you use? Things to Consider: Paid or Open-Source? When I started my animation project for BioMedware, I was a beginner and had little experience with animation software. Since I couldn't guarantee satisfaction with my end product, I didn't feel comfortable charging the company for a subscription such as Adobe After Effects. I decided to go with an open-source software to get a feel for animation. On the other hand, if you've had some experience with animation in the past, you may appreciate the security and quality guarantee of a subscription-based software such as Adobe After Effects, with monthly or yearly plans. Typically, monthly prices can range from $10 - $400 for good quality animation, depending on the software used

As BioMedware's new site lauch gets closer, I've had to shift gears from website UX to email design. This week, I've been working on designing the outgoing order and purchase emails for our ecommerce site. Since these emails may be our first contact with the customer, it's important that they are designed to be simple and efficient. Now with email design, I've learned that there are a few key differences from web design: let me walk you through the basics. Focus - Mobile or Desktop? This is a big one: since BioMedware sells desktop software, our main focus was optimizing the desktop version of our website. However, statistics show that most users open email correspondence on mobile devices, making the mobile design and accessibility larger priority. Email Sizing The first thing to note is email size: unlike a full desktop width, the average email width is 550px-600px. Anything wider than that may not be displayed to customers as intended. Make sure to check that you

This week at BioMedware, I've gotten more into the marketing side of my position: I've started working on creating a custom logo animation for the company. The process has definitely had its ups and downs, so I thought I'd walk you through some questions I had and helpful tips I've learned: So why animate a company logo? Think of it this way: your company logo represents the essence of your brand to potential customers. Animating the logo creates a greater connection with these customers: it attracts attention and customers are more likely to retain a memory of the logo, and by connection, your company and brand. Your ultimate goal is to have them associate your logo with your field of business. Where should I use the animation? An animated logo is used to promote your company or brand. Depending on your company's needs, it can be used in many different places. Here are a few places our marketing team hopes to implement it: Social Media and Marketing Adding the anim

Let's get into wireframing! The past few weeks at BioMedware, I've spent much of my time creating wireframes for our new ecommerce website. With a background in software and web development, my experience definitely resides on the technical side, so I was excited to explore the other side of website creation: design. Apparently, a whiteboard wouldn't cut it - my team member introduced me to a design software called Figma: it has a bunch of pre-sized frames, from phone screens to desktop and tablet layouts that you can start off with, plus templates, examples, images, and more. As you can imagine, the wireframing process has a few steps. These steps can vary between companies and designers, but I'll break down our general process at BioMedware:  1. Create a low-fidelity draft The first step is to create a low-fidelity draft which basically just positions the web content - where the header, nav bar, footer, and paragraphs are located relative to each other. For our barebo

Is website design the most important element in tailoring user experience? Not quite, as I’ve learned. The UX design process starts off with getting familiar with your clients and their needs. Our first week at BioMedware, my internship partner and I met with the company president and employees to discuss requirements and the feel of their brand. With a small but high-powered staff of five, it didn’t take long to learn their highest priority: simplicity. They wanted a design similar to their original website, meaning that we had a precedent to base our fonts and colors off of. So what comes next? Initial market research. Knowing what other companies are doing and their reasons for this is a great way to be aware of design opportunities and pitfalls. My team was lucky in this regard – BioMedware had sample pages of competitor ecommerce sites, so we had our research ready, as well as our company’s take on what they liked and disliked. Having simplicity as the highest priority meant never