Branding Rules

Branding is paramount to your company’s success, right? Every marketing message – logo, signage, ads, web, bags, everything – has to bear the same graphic design and messaging. Well, It seems that’s not always true.

If you are a destination store with no competition and a highly committed customer you can do things differently. Went to our local Asian market, Park To Shop (yes, that is their name) and this was the bag were using that day. Yep, a rejected bag from a tobacco store in East Texas (you can see the print justification is off). Last time I was there, the bag came from a BBQ joint somewhere. While I always use my own tote bags, there is something so amusing to me to see what bags they offer on any given day.

By the way, you can’t get in the store on weekends, it is packed with customers. And it seems they are a field trip destination, too. A school bus from outside our city was parked in front with students racing around the store, taking selfies with the owner. Not sure why, but once again, I was entertained. Love Park To Shop!

Carfagna’s Catering: New Website, Repeat Client

Building strong, long term relationships with our clients is always our goal. We focus on doing great work, that is their expectation and after all, that’s why people pay us. But just as important is that clients trust us and value our work. So when a client comes back for more, well, we couldn’t be more proud.

After launching the Carfagna’s Market website the owners contacted us to meet up again. Some of the online solutions we created for the market were so successful they wanted to see how we could design and develop a user friendly website for another part of their business, Carfagna’s Catering.

We spent hours with them to better understand how their customers interacted with them to determine the online tools we could implement. Our design allows for easy access to a very robust catering menu. The catering team loves the new site, and so do their customs.

Carfagna’s Market New Website

 

 

The new Carfagna’s site was launched on Friday to resounding approval from owners and customers. It’s a beautiful site that functions as great as it looks. Working with this amazing family and their staff was a wonderful experience, and we hope this is the beginning of a long and productive relationship.

If you haven’t shopped at Carfagna’s recently, or even ever, you really do need to. Go to the website and and checkout their Gift Baskets, Family Meat Boxes and Meat Gift Boxes – amazing quality and prices!  Their Wine Shoppe has over 1500 labels and offers the largest Italian wine selection in town. Plus wine tasting and special events. And don’t get me started on the incredible butcher and deli counters. Homemade sauces, pasta, breads…it’s a foodie’s delight!

Congratulations to the Carfagna family for owning and operating this unique market since 1937!

 

The Browser You Choose Matters

 

If you have ever wondered how advertisers know your online shopping habits and search habits, or how they seem to be following you around the web, it’s simple: online tracking and the collection of all your data. One browser service is taking action to stop it, and this announcement should be of interest to everyone who values their privacy and data. Here’s an excerpt from a Mozilla blog post:

“Anyone who isn’t an expert on the internet would be hard-pressed to explain how tracking on the internet actually works. Some of the negative effects of unchecked tracking are easy to notice, namely eerily-specific targeted advertising and a loss of performance on the web. However, many of the harms of unchecked data collection are completely opaque to users and experts alike, only to be revealed piecemeal by major data breaches. In the near future, Firefox will — by default — protect users by blocking tracking while also offering a clear set of controls to give our users more choice over what information they share with sites.”

If you are not using Firefox, try it out. Read the full post here.

Carfagna’s Market – A Columbus Tradtion

We are so excited to be working with the team at Carfagna’s Market on their new website. While we have shopped there many times, we felt a bit of research was in order. Afterall,  it’s part of the job. But for this project we get the added benefit of eating & drinking our research! Spent time at Carfagna’s (Col, OH) to learn more about the market’s amazing food and wine and great meat department with really friendly staff.  This delicious “research” should help the new site design come to life!

Dublin Barber Shoppe in Historic Dublin, OH

The Dublin Barber Shoppe has been tradition in Dublin, OH since 1938. In fact, it has the distinction of being the city’s oldest business still in operation. Now owned and operated by Craig Price, the shop offers haircuts and beard trims to guys of all ages. While it remains true to the core of a barber shop, their approach is quite contemporary.  And that’s where we come in.

We are designing a website for DBS that with an online scheduling app. Customers can access from anywhere and setup their appointment. Can’t wait to showcase the final product.

Thanks Craig and Martha for choosing Trusty & Company – we love working with you!

Important Information About Website Security

 

We shared this update with Trusty & Company clients who host their websites on our server. While we cannot help or support those who do not host sites on our server, we believe this is valuable information for all businesses who have sites online.

GOOGLE CHROME JULY 2018 UPDATE
Earlier this year Google announced that the July 2018 update to its Chrome web browser (Version 68) will include displaying a new “Not Secure” warning for any website that is not secured with an SSL certificate. If you’re not using an SSL certificate, this could negatively affect your web traffic and the trust visitors have in your site—if they are using the Chrome browser to visit your site. So while this change does not effect your site’s functionality, it may effect a visitor’s perception of your site. Visitors may not want to stick around if they see a “Not Secure” warning. You can find more information on the Google Chrome update on their website here.

DOES YOUR SITE ALREADY HAVE A CERTIFICATE INSTALLED?
It’s easy to find out if your site is using a SSL certificate. Most browsers mark secure connections with a green padlock and/or a message. You can also look at the beginning of your site’s URL displayed in the address bar in any web browser. If it begins https://example.com your site has a certificate installed. If it displays http://example.com (note the missing ‘s’) then it does not.

WHAT IS SSL AND WHAT DOES IT DO?
SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer. It’s a protocol used to encrypt and authenticate the data sent between an application (like your browser) and a web server. This leads to more secure web interactions for both you and the visitors to your website.

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Syntero, Inc. Selected as Top Workplace 2018

When you work with a client for a long time, say ten years or so, you get to know the culture of an organization. Through our work with Syntero, Inc. we have met and worked with the CEO, many department heads, counselors and staff. To a person they are professional, thoughtful and committed to the Syntero mission: To provide compassionate behavioral health and social services.

It is no surprise to us that Syntero has been recognized a Top Workplace 2018 by Columbus CEO magazine, an honor that was given to only 75 companies in Central Ohio. Additionally, Syntero scored as one of the top 10 companies to the question “My job makes me feel like I am part of something meaningful.”

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Change Your Mindset

Congratulations to Peter Margaritis, CPA, aka The Accidental Accountant, on launching his second podcast series, Change Your Mindset. Pete is an author, speaker and podcast host who works with accounting professionals to improve their communication skills through improv.

We have worked with Pete for 12+ years, helping him consistently connect with his clients by taking advantage of all the marketing tools available to him, including website design and development, sell sheets, book cover design, podcast graphics, social media graphics and printed collateral.

Good luck with the new podcast series, Pete!

 

Trusty & Company Launches New Website

Keeping our clients’ website current in design, content and technology is a big part of what we do, and we always put our clients first. So although it took a bit more time for us to design and develop a new website for t+c, we are happy to share it with you now.

We custom designed a WordPress theme for our site just as we do for our clients. While there are many WP themes you can purchase, we find that they do not allow the creative design our clients expect from us. WP is a great platform, with plugins and widgets that can be installed and designed to give the functionality you want. In the Services section on our Home page, we added an accordian widget that provides the dropdown effect for each service we offer. That allows us to display multiple service categories, each with its own details and yet keep the allocated “real estate” to a minimum.

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