Web site Shifted!

Our sister company, Shift by Design, recently decided an upgrade to their site was needed to freshen things up and give the brand a new look and feel.

The old site was getting tired and was not working as well as it could, and additions such as social media, new galleries and examples of success stories were getting harder and harder to work into the existing framework.

So a new approach was taken, utilise some of the existing content, add new content, bigger brighter images, more blog orientated information and greater social media integration.

The site is hosted on a Wordpress template, customised to suit the very visual nature of a property stylist business.

We had a host of great images to work from and as these new images come in on a weekly basis, creating a large feature section was the natural choice in order to showcase the home staging skills of the business operators.

These large images lead into blog stories about projects, sales successes and general interest information about the benefits of staging a property for sale.

The new site is live and ranking well in Google despite the move which is great news. Check out Tasmania's leading home staging and property presentation website here

Home Staging Australia

Shift Branding recently completed work on Home Staging Australia's new website.

The site is aimed to increase the awareness of the home staging industry and what it actually does to improve the selling price and time on the market for home sellers.

Home Staging Australia is also an unofficial index of home staging and property presentation professionals from around the country, helping those looking for a property stylist find one.

The site is largely aimed at sharing information, news and cool products that work well for home staging pros to assist them do their job.

It also shares stories that help raise the awareness and the value of engaging a home stylist to come into your home at sale time and provide creative suggestions that add value to your home.

Shift Branding International's role in the project was to co-ordinate the layout, site build, content development, image selection and resize and SEO.

Check out the new Australian home staging and property stylist directory here

Where does the time go?

We've been flat out recently working on a number of new projects for clients.

A great new client is AgFirst Land Management Solutions. They have been a supplier to the Tasmanian agricultural sector for some time, assisting busy large property owners manage the maintenance and upkeep of their properties through services such as mowing, fence repair, pasture improvement, ploughing, hay baling and the list goes on.

AgFirst are quite simply the one-stop shop for making sure your property is kept in great condition reducing the burden on farmers and land owners.

AgFirst is well known for it's services to existing customers, but was not competitive in the online world. And, as we all know, these days everything is searched online first. AgFirst owner, Stephen Reynolds, worked with Shift Branding to determine the important pieces of information clients wanted to know quickly and easily and provided some great action shots of the work he and his team have completed over time.

The result was a simple and easy to navigate website providing information relevant to the services the business offers.

One of the key aspects of the build was the importance of being found. Stephen was not too familiar with the principles of SEO and these were added to the site too.

To check out the site, visit www.agfirst.com.au

Shift Branding SEO - the user experience

Shift Branding loves brand, there is no doubt about it. But our real passion comes from the improvements we see with our client's search engine rankings and the greater conversion our clients get from having a user driven website.

It still amazes me how many sites are out there in small business land that are direct replication of their sales brochure or their corporate brochure. These sites exist to do nothing.

They don't engage users, they don't provide information the customer wants and they don't allow the user to research the information they are after (an important process in the purchase process).

So many business owners forget what it is like to be a buyer of a product, particularly when they are so close to the business, they simply don't see it the way a prospective buyer does.

This user driven space is also over looked by developers who have a brief and budget to meet so push out creative, but not necessarily usable websites which then don't create conversion to sale.

So if you are in the middle of developing a new website, take a step back and review the site operation from a user perspective. How easy is it to find information? Will I be assisted through to the product I want? Can I buy it online? Are you the most cost effective supplier of this product? Will you help me if I need to return it?

Think like a consumer when you build your next site to assist those that use it when it goes live.

If you require assistance with your website, no matter where you are located, why not contact Shift Branding International. We are a small business working for small business.

How contain the content

We recently launched the site www.homestagershq.com for our client of the same name. This business provides home staging professionals (the people that come in and help prepare your home for sale) a location online to be found by home sellers.

Well, as part of the strategy to provide solid news and relevant blogs to these users, homestagershq.com have also launched an exciting new element to their members and the general public.

The product is called the Homestagershq.com News Portal and this feature draws in blogs, news articles, home staging based Tweets and YouTube videos of relevance to the home staging industry. It provides all this aggregated content in one site, making finding out about developments in the home staging industry rather easy.

We really like the way that content from Twitter is instantly uploaded as soon as a relevant tweet is published by a home stager, very easy to watch and read what all the home stylists are up to from the home staging community.

You can check out the News Portal for home stagers here

Search engine ranking - Shift by Design goes #1

Shift Branding has worked very closely with its sister company, home staging professionals Shift By Design to optimise their site to return maximum returns on Google placement.

After lots of trials and tribulations, Shift by Design recently went to the #1 spot online on a worldwide search for the industry term, home staging. We never promise number one spots as this is impossible to guarantee so it is great when it happens through hard work and sound strategy development.

Interestingly enough, this placement put Shift by Design ahead of sites such as Wikipedia which was even more of a win.

See the screen grab below:

Time flies when you are having fun

It's so true, how quickly does time pass when you are doing the things you love?

Well at Shift Branding, that's exactly how things have been panning out. With a few tight deadline projects underway and a particularly large online website development in the pipeline, our resources have been stretched to the limit.

We have recently launched a number of new brands onto the scene including a company that specialises in product distribution and warehousing, a business that wholesales plumbing and electrical supplies and a massive project that will deliver online home staging resource to all the home staging professionals out there.

Move It is a local Tasmanian business that provides the all important service of logistics - getting one thing from one place to another. This particular business is quite interesting in that it not only does it help business and home owners move office and property, they also deliver your new fridge, sofa or dining table from most retailers around the state. Move It with Ritchie Rich is now online with a new brand identity courtesy of Shift Branding.

Brassware Agencies NT is another new client with a brand new identity and for the first time in it's 27 operating history a presence online with a new website. This business provides a wholesale service to electricians and plumbers seeking all manner of items such as tapware, basins, showers, toilets and baths plus loads of other interesting products. Brassware Agencies NT has now gone live with a new site and new logo.

Lastly, a large scale project for Shift Branding on behalf of homestagershq.com has recently gone live. The site has been developed over some 7 months and provides home staging professionals a new location to meet, find out about industry developments, and anew way to be found by home sellers. We are really excited about the potential of this site and hope you get a moment to inspect it.

We are working towards a number of new exciting projects in the coming weeks which should further expand the business categories Shift Branding International has worked in.

Head quarters for home staging (and home stagers)

A new bit of business recently was the completion of the homestagershq.com project which involved the design of a new logo, letterhead, business cards, with compliments slips and a presentation folder.

Homestagershq.com is a yet to go live website specialising in providing home stagers a dedicated hub to promote their business and their industry, irrespective of which training organisation the stager is part of or what part of the world the home stager hails from.

The most interesting element of this project is the fact that while it is a resource for home stagers to promote their business (and indeed even use to create their own website on) it also serves as an online tool for home staging professionals who have signed up to a membership to be located by home sellers looking to engage a property stylist.

A home seller simply heads to the home, enter their town and city and the details of registered stagers in the area will be provided.

The site will offer subscribing home stager members:

- a landing page to promote their business

- a portfolio section to upload before and after shots

- a blog function

- a forum to discuss topical issues

- an online store to buy eBooks and training resources

- industry information on home staging trends

- a resource for new business leads based on Google Maps technology

- a high level of search engine optimisation (SEO) and back links to the members own website

The site is expected to go live in April and membership details will be made available at that time.

To register your interest to become one of the first home stagers on the site, go to homestagershq.com.

To see the new logo for homestagersgq.com visit the Shift Branding logo gallery

Keeping furniture being built

Shift Branding recently completed a project for a small local business called Built from the Box. Built from the Box are specialists in, well, building anything you need built straight from the box.

As a home stager, I know how difficult it is when installing furniture in a property not to have everything assembled, and as a parent, we've all been down the path where we have to assemble a bike or trampoline for the kids late at night because we have been at work all day.

Built from the box takes the pressure off these task by having one of their Ready To Assemble (RTA) technicians get to work on the project.

In our deliverables for this project was a logo, business cards, electronic letterhead and a one page landing page to get the client optimised and online so clients can find him.

The brief was simple, make the logo fully reflect what it is we are about. As the logo will appear on truck pantechs and vans, the logo had to scale up to quote large dimensions and we can hardly wait to share the images when we get them.

Thanks to Ritchie from Built from the Box for his work and trust to get the job done for him.

To see the logo, visit the gallery logo section at Shift Branding International

SEO for small to medium business in Tasmania

Shift Branding International was primarily set up to assist business in the home staging industry in North America but has found itself providing valuable consultancy services to local Tasmanian businesses looking to improve their performance in search engines and development of AdWords pay per click advertising.

Shift Branding has now introduced a new software to further improve the delivery of important tools for managing search engine optimization such as:

• Tracking rankings in search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing both locally and Internationally
  
• Managing keywords and identifying Keyword Efficiency Index (KEI) in content within websites
  
• Developing link strategies to create inbound links from external sites
  
• Auditing of existing websites
  
• Reviewing competitor websites 
  

This combined with existing services such as SEO specific content development and Google Analytics analysis and break down, Shift Branding International provides a full service online marketing and SEO offering.

Shift Branding International works with a number of Tasmanian small to medium business to help them fully enable their website and make the most of future developments and online marketing activities to convey their message to their customers efficiently and effectively.

Visit the Shift Branding International website for more details or email info@shiftbranding.com