Tag: web design

Before you decide to create a website for your business, you first MUST consider marketing. IN other words, you have to seriously consider how you will get people to your website

I recently wrote an article that answers the question “What is SEO”. In the article, I made an analogy that compared the internet to a shopping center/mall of information. In other words, the internet today is a place where people go to look for information they want and need.

In this shopping center (like many other shopping centers), there are areas that see more foot traffic than others. These areas are often close to mall entrances, near parking lots. 

If you owned a store in one of these shopping centers, it would be in your best interest to try to have your store located in one of these high-traffic areas. Because this would give you access to more potential traffic every day than other stores in the shopping center.

Now say you happen to decide to open a store in that shopping center. But you don’t do anything to try to get your store in a high foot traffic area, you might struggle to get new customers.

Let’s also say that you spent hundreds of thousands of dollars just to build the store, without having a strategy for getting new customers, all the money you invested in building your store might be money wasted.

Unfortunately, this is a story I have seen far too often in my digital marketing career. Many small business owners spend lots of money on building websites without any strategy on how to get new customers to their websites.

This often ends up becoming a waste of time & money for these small business owners. They build this great digital marketing asset (their website), but the website is useless because there’s little to no traffic going to the website.

I decided to write this section in this article about how to create a website for your small business because I want you to avoid making the mistake that I have seen so many business owners as you make.

So, before you go on google and search for “how to create a website for my small business”, start searching instead for ways to get more traffic to your website. Because if you build a website before thinking about how to get new customers to it, you might end up with a marketing asset that is bringing little to no value to your business.

How to get traffic to your website

In today’s digital marketing world, there are two main ways you’re going to be able to get traffic to your website. I’m going to mention them here to give you a place to start in your search for how to get traffic to your website.

I’ll also mention it because your strategy for getting new customers to your website will dictate what kind of website you decide to create.

  1. Paid advertising
    1. On of the tools you can use in digital marketing to get new customers to your website is paid digital ads. 

Paid digital ads are what they sound like. You pay social media platforms or search engines so they can display your ads on search engine results pages (SERP), websites, social media, and or social media networks.

Advantages of paid advertising

There are a few advantages of paid advertising.

  1. Paid advertising is fast.

Paid advertising is faster than organic advertising. With paid advertising, you can start getting customers to your website on day one.

  1. When done right, and for the right reason(s), paid advertising can be an effective digital marketing tool. 

Disadvantages of paid advertising

Though paid digital ads can be a great tool in certain situations, it has major drawbacks.

  1. Digital ads convert less than organic marketing.
    1. For example on a SERP like this, customers are much more likey to click on organic search results than they do on paid search. (numbers)
    2. Customers are much more like to buy from brands they know (social media)

The benefits of Organic marketing

By the end of this section, it will become clear to you which marketing strategy is my favorite (this one). This is because I believe organic digital marketing is a much better strategy for the long-term viability of any good company.

  1. Organic marketing is more authentic. Paid ads can be impersonal. More over, 
  2. Organic marketing is more effective.
  3. Organic marketing is more sustainable.

In the article I wrote about SEO, I noted that SEO was everything you do to put your store in a high traffic area of a shopping mall. The work you do at the beginning to get your store in those high-traffic areas might be a lot more than creating paid ads.

But it is not only more efficient, but it is also a more sustainable way to grow your business. Think about it, if you don’t do this work to get your store in a high foot traffic area of the shopping mall, you’ll have to consistently think about how to get your customers to walk back to where your store is.

However, if you do the work at the start to put your store in a high foot traffic area, you’ll have to do less work in the long term to get your customers to your store. The high visibility of your store will mean that you’ll have an endless source of potential customers to your store.

Type of websites?

As I mentioned above, the strategy you decide to implement to get customers to your website will determine what kind of website you decide to build.

If you opt for paid advertising, you’ll need one or multiple landing pages. 

Landing pages are web pages that are meant to advertise a specific product or service. With a landing page, you won’t need to have a website with many pages (About, Contact, Services etc). All you’ll need is one webpage with a clear description of what your product or service is, and how they can purchase or subscribe to it.

You’ll also need to know how to run ads or hire someone that can help you do it.

If you go instead with an organic strategy, you’ll have to develop a comprehensive strategy to get customers to your website.

In this case, you’ll have to dedicate some time for content creation, or you’ll have to pay someone to do it for you. When it comes to SEO, content is king. You cannot rank without sufficient content.

How to create a website for your business

Now that you know what to do before you decide to create your website, let’s talk about how to create a website for your small business.

There are a few things you’ll need in order to create a website for your small business. I’ll go step by step and explain each of the steps and why each of them matters.

Get A Domain Name

Whether you choose to drive people to your website using ads or organic marketing, you’ll need a domain name.

A domain name is simply the address of your website. In other words, what server in the world is your website located on? A domain name typically looks something like this: domainname.com.

Why a Domain name matters?

Your domain name matters because it plays an important role in SEO.

Consider the following scenario.

You’re a restaurant owner, and you’re getting ready to open a new vegan restaurant in your city of Los Angeles.

Your grandfather’s name is John Smith, and in his honor, you’re planning on naming the restaurant after him: “Smith’s Place”.

After you take care of all the legal paperwork it’s time to choose a domain name for the new website you will be creating for your restaurant. You’re torn between smithsplace.com, smithsveganrestaurant.com & smithsveganplace.com.

Which one of these domain names would be the most beneficial from a digital marketing perspective?

If you chose smithsveganrestaurant.com, you’ve chosen correctly.

As a vegan restaurant owner, your target audience will be users/customers searching for “vegan restaurants”.

Nothing will inform search engines like Google, that your website has to do with vegan restaurants, more than have the words “vegan” & “restaurant” in your domain name.

If you go with a domain name like smithsplace.com, you’re going to increase your chances of ranking high for the search term: “Smith’s Place”. But what is smith place? Google doesn’t know. Neither do your users. They are unlikely to search for your restaurant using those terms.

So, you might be missing out on many customers searching for “vegan restaurants”.

It’s tempting to want to come up with unique names to try and differentiate yourself from the competition. However, unless you have a huge budget and can afford to do some market and competitive research to determine what kind of a name you might use to differentiate yourself from your competition, it’s better to make it clear online what your business is about. 

Choose your hosting provider

Simply put, website hosting is a rental service similar to renting apartments. In the case of website hosting, however, the hosting providers rent space/storage on specialized computers called servers to businesses who need the storage space.

While choosing your website hosting platform, you probably will have to choose your website building platform as well. This is because many of the website builder platforms out there (like Wix, and Squarespace) come with website hosting built-in. So, if you choose a website-building platform like Wix or Squarespace, you won’t have to give website hosting another thought.

I recently wrote an article about why I believe WordPress is the best website platform for small business owners.

If you go with WordPress you will have to be selective when choosing your website hosting provider.

As with many things in life, with website hosting, you get what you pay for. Companies like Bluehost, or GoDaddy provide hosting services along with domain registration services.

However, their web hosting services are not built for WordPress. They are generic web hosting services.

Companies like WPEngine or Kinsta are specifically built to handle WordPress websites. Full disclaimer: I personally use WPEngine for all the websites I manage.

Do it yourself or Hire a professional

Once you have your domain and website hosting service it’s time to create a website for your small business.

For this step, you’ll have two options:

  • Do it yourself or
  • Hire a professional

Do it yourself

At the dawn of the internet, creating a website by yourself might have been impossible for the average person. You had to know how to code.

Today, with the advent of website building companies like Wix, and Squarespace, creating a website alone is as easy as dragging and dropping elements onto a screen.

No matter what website platform you choose, if you decide to create the website yourself, the process will be relatively the same:

  1. Choose a theme/template
  2. Customize the theme/template
  3. Create the pages for your website

Platforms like Wix, Squarespace, and Weebly are much easier to use than WordPress. However, that ease of use comes at a price: They are harder to scale.

That’s why I recommend business owners with plans to grow and scale their business to choose WordPress. Furthermore, plugins like Divi and Elementor can give WordPress features comparable to easier platforms like Wix, Squarespace, and Weebly.

Pros of doing it yourself

One of the main benefits of doing a website yourself is that you’ll save money from not having to hire a web designer/developer.

Cons of doing it yourself

There are a few disadvantages of creating a website yourself

  1. Time consuming. 
    1. One of the biggest disadvantages of creating a website yourself is the time it takes to create it. You’ll have to spend time not only creating the website, but also learning the platform.
  2. Bad/inconsistent design
    1. If you’re not an expert designer, or don’t have a good feel for design, the design you create for your website might not be adequate. User interface is an important part of creating a website. Bad user interface can have many bad effects including: 
      1. High bounce rate
      2. Lower rankings on search engines
      3. Low conversion rate

Because of the two disadvantages listed above, my recommendation is if you can afford to hire a professional, do it. It’ll be worth your while if you find the right designer/developer for the job.

Hire a professional

If you choose to hire a professional, there are few things you will need to know.

First, it’s important that you understand the difference between a web designer and a web developer. Knowing the difference between those two will help you save time and money. For your convenience, I have written an article on the subject that you can read here.

Second, it’s important that you understand web design pricing. Here is the most comprehensive article I have ever read about web design pricing.

This article will give you a great starting point when you think about a budget for your website.

Finally, you’ll need some resources on where you can find good developers/designers.

Personally, I have successfully used UpWork on many occasions to hire designers. Though I like UpWork, a company that is built specifically for customers who use WordPress is Codeable, which I have also used successfully.

Other companies where you can find freelancers of all types are Thumbtack, and Fiverr.

Final Words

So, there you have it: How to create a website for your business, including the most important thing to consider before you start creating your website: marketing.

I hope you enjoyed the article. If you did, have any questions or feedback, please feel free to leave a comment below.

Tag: web design

You are a small business owner. Over the past couple of years, you have been working on this amazing idea for a new company.

You created the businesss plan, carefully crafted your service packages, & made plans to incorporate your business.

After all of this planning, you knew you would need a website to tell the world about your company and why customers should do business with you. So you hired a web developer or web design company, and they created an amazing website for you.

You’ve now launched your company and your new website, but months into starting the company and making your website live, you are stuck with the question that plagues too many small business owners: How do I get people to my website, so they can see (and hopefully purchase) all these services I offer? In other words: How can I increase website traffic to my small business website.

If you’re struggling with this question, you’re like most of the small business owners I have worked with thus far in my web development career: You’re using your business website solely to sell your products or services.

Business owners who use their websites to “sell only” typically have websites with the following few pages:

  • A home page
  • An about page
  • A services page
  • A contact page

I recently wrote a blog post about how to succeed at social media, by shifting focus from trying to sell at every turn, to being more helpful.

The same concept applies here. One of the best ways to help drive more traffic to your website is to find a way to be helpful to your customers.

How Helping Can Help You Increase Website Traffic

It’s not always easy to find ways to help your customers using your website.

Fortunately for you, I have identified 5 surprising ways to increase website traffic and grow your business without selling.

These surprising uses for your website are all designed to help you grow your business online by showing you different ways you can be more helpful to your customers using your website.

Focusing on being more helpful to your customers offers these 3 main advantages:

Improve your SEO

This image shows a screenshot of the ranking for a website we created and are currently managing. It shows how someone can increase website traffic with better SEO metrics.

Organic traffic is one of the hardest traffic to get. Organic traffic is traffic you get to your website without having to pay for ads.

Finding ways to help your customers using your website will give your customers a reason to come back to your website over and over again.

Having more traffic to your website will enhance your SEO metrics. In short, SEO is how you get webpages on your website to rank higher in search engine pages such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

One of the metrics Google uses to rank webpages is engagement. Engagement refers to how long and how well users interact with webpages on your website.

Having customers come back to your website over and over again will increase your engagement metrics by telling Google and other search engines that user thouroughly enjoy whatever content you have on your website.

This will increase the chances that search engines ranks your content higher than that of your competition.

Improve User Experience

User experience is how people feel when they interact with your brand, your business or one of your products. How do these items make your customers feel? Happy? Sad? Frustrated?

A better user experience means happier customers. Happier customers means repeat customers.

Whether you’re a fitness trainer, yoga instructor, or dog groomer, having a booking system directly on your website can lead to a better user experience than forcing your customers to leave your site and rely on third party software.

In this case, the better user experience will make your customers happy/satisfied after interacting your website, which will increase the chances that they come back for more satisfying experiences.

Improve efficiency/workflow

Finding ways to be more helpful to your customers can also have the amazing unintended consequence of making your own life easier.

Take the previous example of having a booking system on your website. Doing that could help you not only create a better user experience for your customers, but also help you work more efficiently.

I have had clients who run classes/bootcamps rely on emails, text & phone calls to book their clients appointments.

This method is so time consuming, that it can lead you to spend too much time on unnecessary tasks such as the back and forth communication it takes to book an appointment.

Having a booking system on your website in this case is a win-win situation for both you and your customers.

5 Ways to Increase Website Traffic to your small business website

Share Your Expertise

Sharing your expertise online is one of the easiest (though time consuming) ways to grow your business online.

It falls into the better SEO benefit category, as more content will help increase the chances that you rank higher on search engine page, but it will also help increase the chances that you get more recurring traffic.

Who is it for?

Any type of business owner can choose to share their expertise one their own website.

However, sharing one’s expertise is would be more useful for business who who’s services tend to be more expensive, such as law firms, financial advisors, web design agencies.

How does sharing your experience help?

Most marketers believe that it takes a customer 7 times to interact with a brand/company before they take an action (make a purchase, join a newsletter, subscribe to a services).

Sharing your expertise is better suited for such business because it allows customers to freely interact with the company (content) over and over without making a huge commitment (making a purchase).

If your content is good enough, it can leave memorable mark in the mind of your customer, which increases the chances that they will remember your business, when they need the products/services you offer.

Furthermore, sharing your expertise online could help you gain more readers. These readers could turn into recurring traffic.

If your readers liked your content enough, you could start a newsletter, and leverage those emails to conduct email marketing campaigns for your business.

Start a loyalty/reward program

Who is it for?

This way of using a website especially comes to mind when thinking about small restaurant owners, fitness coaches etc.

Although a loyalty/reward program can also be considered “selling”, it offers additional benefits that a simple website doesn’t.

How can a loyalty/reward program help?

This is another way of generating recurring traffic to your small business website by enticing your customers to come back over and over again by to track, use and/or redeem their points.

If done right, a loyalty/reward program can also help you improve user experience. If your customers feel good about interacting with your loyal/program, their pleasant experience with your website could also entice them to come back to your website.

Save time & money by automating payments

Who is it for?

Though any business owner can benefit from automating payments, this way of using your website is more useful for business owners who sell low cost products/ services.

In the past I have worked with ect.

Too many coaches, trainers, instructors and other small business owners who teach classes, run bootcamps, some of these small business owners still rely on checks, venmo payments, paypal, ect.

This causes 3 main problems.

1. It’s hard and time consuming to keep track of payment platforms

Imagine you have to keep track of each one of these acounts. That would mean each time you have to do accounting, you have to pull each one of these accounts to find out who paid you and who didn’t.

You’d be looking at many different dashboard reports, which can significantly increase the time you have to spend doing accounting.

The more time you have to spend doing accounting, the less time you get to spend doing what you actually love: running your business.

2. It’s almost impossible to keep track of your customers.

In addition to the difficulty of tracking different payment applications, it’s also almost impossible to keep track of clients.

When a client misses a payment, you have to contact them, sometimes repeatedly so that they make the payment.

The clients/customers also might have difficulties finding where and how to pay, which can create a feeling of unprofessionalism. This could cause lower user experience at best, and a loss of potential repeat customers at worst.

Finally, all this tracking down of customers and the headache associated with potentially losing repeat customers, adds unnecessary (& time consuming) tasks to your workflow, and can make your business run less efficiently.

Turn Your Website into A Booking System

Who is it for?

This way of use your website to increase website traffic is best suited for any business owners who rely on appointments to conduct business or make a sale such as lawyers, financial advisors, fitness coaches etc.

Just as your website can help you easily automate your payment process, it can also help you easily schedule in bookings & appointments.

How can a booking system help?

There are many advantages to implementing a booking system on your own website.

1. Keeps your customers coming back

As many of the previous website uses, having a booking system on your website will help increase website traffic to your website by enticing them to come back each time they need to make an appointment.

2. Better user experience

Having users book appointments directly on your website can increase the user experience for your customers by eliminating the extra step of sending your customers to a third party website to confirm appointments.

It can also lead to better user experience by eliminating the back and forth of emails, text or phon calls, in case you didn’t have any booking system at all.

3. Possible Higher Conversion

Many studies have shown that business owners can increase conversion rates with less steps in the checkout process.

Having a booking system on your website eliminates an extra step (sending user to third party software) and can in turn increase conversions on your website.

Automate Your Hiring Process

Who is it for?

This way of using your website can be used by any business owners who needs to hire employees.

How does it help?

If you have ever had to hire employees, you know how hard the process can be. Between having to send, copy, scan, print, and save forms, the process can be extremely time-consuming.

You can streamline this process and help make your workflow more efficient by automating parts of this process using your website.

You could simply have a form on your website and ask potential hires for the information you need from them. You could also easily store that information in your servers so you could access it whenever you want.

Finally, having automating parts of your hiring process can help boost your trustworthiness by showing potential customers that not only are you hiring, but also that you have a streamlines process for doing so.

Being helpful to your customers is easier than you think

After reading about these 5 ways to increase website traffic, you might think to yourself: ‘Implementing these ways are probably expensive’ or ‘it has to be hard to implement them’.

No, and no. In many cases, implementing these tactics are cheaper and easier than you think.

I recently wrote an article about why I believe WordPress is the best website platform for small business owners.

With WordPress, anything is possible. Moreover, creating applications such as booking systems is easier than most business owners realize. In many instances in comes down to purchasing, installing, and setting up plugins with a few button clicks.

For example, in order to create a legally binding form potential hires can fill in on your website, you’d only need 3 FREE plugins, and setting it all up would just take a few clicks.

Final Words

There you have it, 5 surprising ways to increase website traffic by using your website for more than just selling.

I hope you enjoyed the article and that it was helpful in someway. If you have any question, comments, or feedback, feel free to let your voice be heard in the comment section below.

Tag: web design

You’re finally done building the groundwork for your new company.

After sleepless nights and working on the weekends, you’re ready to show it off to the world with a brand new website.

You’re probably wondering who you need to hire.A web designer? A web developer? Or both? Is there even a difference? 

It’s pretty common for web designers and web developers to get mixed up.

Although they’re both part of the web building process, they’re involved in very different ways.

I’m here to help you navigate the differences so you’re able to confidently pick the best option for your new company website.

I’ll also show you how knowing the difference between the two can help save you time, headaches and money.

What Is The Difference between a web designer and a web developer.

The technical definition

So, if you do a quick search in Google or other search engines, you’ll quickly come across a definition that sounds similar to this one: A web developer writes code. A web designer creates the layouts.

I created a couple of screenshots so you can visually see what the difference is.

Below is a screenshot of a layout/design a web designer might create.

This is a picture that shows the general layout of a theme before we fully customize it for our clients

Here is a snippet of a piece of code a web developer could write, to bring a design like the one above to life.

This is a screenshot of a code snippet written in php. The screenshot is used to illustrate the difference between a web designer and a web developer.

To most of us in the field, this definition makes sense, and there is nothing else that should be known beyond this.

Luckily for you, I have been a teacher in my short life. I know how some experts might understand certain concepts so clearly that they feel as though there is no need for further explanation.

I also understand how someone can be from a different field and have more questions about a particular subject.

My guess is that right now, some of the questions in your mind might be:

  • But why can’t one person just design and code?
  • It can’t be that complex right?
  • What is the difference between designing and coding anyway?
  • Can someone really code without a design

I’ll try as best as I can to answer some of the questions that you might have right now. I’m going to attempt to do so with the use of an analogy.

The Good Definition

One of the best analogies I have been able to come up with is that of a developer and an architect.

If you needed a house, in the simplest terms, the architect would draw that house, and the developer or builder would do the construction.

In the case of building a website, in simplest terms, the web designer draws your website, and the web developer does the construction of the website.

Of course architects do more than just drawing the house. Likewise, web designers do more than just drawing your website.

I just wanted to paint a small picture of how the two jobs can differ from each other. 

A small history

At the dawn of the internet, there wasn’t much need for web designers. Interfaces (the buttons, the text that you interact with) weren’t a priority.

As the internet grew into the juggernaut it is today, businesses need to adapt and create better and better designs to compete for customers’ attention.

This need for better design grew a wider and wider gab between what web designers do and web developers do.

Like most jobs in the world today, the two professions got more and more specialized.

Why this difference matters to your small business

At Brandwell, our primary goal is to help small business owners grow their businesses online. Part of this objective is to try to make owning a website more accessible to all.

That is why we wanted to focus this article on why knowing the difference between a web designer and a web developer, can help your business.

To illustrate why this difference matters, we’re going to use three different (made up, but possibly real) scenarios.

The three scenarios address creating website with WordPress. I you’re using websites like Wix, Squarespace, Weebly, or other DIY website builders, the design and development is done for you.

The scenarios focus on WordPress because it is the platform we primarily use at Brandwell to build websites. We believe WordPress is the best website platform for small business owners.

Scenario 1: Your small business needs web development

Say you’re a small business owner with a small budget ($500 – $1000) to build your website.

If you know nothing about the difference between web designers and web developers, you might go online and look for “website prices”. When you do that, you might find something like this:

This is the screenshot of a google search on "Website Prices". We use this screenshot to show how widely website prices can change, and how knowing the difference between a web designer and a web developer can save small business owners money.

Websites that vary from $40 – $12000. Or from $0 – $20000. 

Many of the companies offering incredibly low prices won’t be all that legitimate. Many of the companies charging alot won’t either. I have heard horror stories on both sides of the spectrum.

Our industry is new. As such, it is full of people trying to take advantage of unaware customers.

On behalf of all the good people in my industry, I sincerely apologize in advance. This might give you a headache, or it might leave you hopeless and want to give up. But don’t. 

There are lots of good companies out there. You’re going to have to do some research.

Try a better search

Now, instead of searching for “website prices”, let’s say you did more digging and stumbled upon this article, or many others explaining the difference between a web designer and a web developer. 

In this instance, you may realize that you could actually just look for a great looking WordPress theme for example.

One of those would cost you anywhere between 0 – $100. But 90% of these tools are legitimate. Once  you found a theme you liked, with all the layouts, fonts, buttons styles, and form design that you like, you could then look for “Web developers near me”.

You would then ask that trusted web developer you find (for a lower rate) to simply develop (implement) that design for you.

This could save you a lot of time, headaches and money.

Side note: I offer WordPress Theme Customization Service. This service takes any design that you like (whether designed by us or someone else), and turn it into a fast, secure and mobile-friendly website.

Scenario 2: Your small business needs (custom) web design

In the second scenario, you’re a small business owner with a similar budget as scenario #1, but you happen to know enough coding to help you implement designs with code and platforms like WordPress.

In this instance, you could search instead for “web designers near me”.

You would then find a designer that could create a custom theme with unique layouts, fonts, forms ect, that you could then implement yourself. 

There is also another (sub)scenario here where you don’t need custom design because you either have a lower budget, or you are okay with pre-built designs/themes.

In this case, you would look for a theme you like, and implement the design yourself.

Either way, knowing the difference between web design and web development here could save you time, headache and money.

Scenario 3: Your small business needs web design & development

In this scenario, your small business has a bigger budget ($2000+ for example).

In this case, you could search for a designer that can create a custom and unique theme for you.

Then you would take that theme and pay a developer to implement the design. 

Or you could look for a company (like Brandwell Studio), who could help you do both within your budget.

Final Words

So, there you have it: the difference between a web designer and a web developer. As I have said many times, knowing the difference between the two can help save small business owners time, headaches, and most importantly, money.

I hope this explanation helped you as a small business owner. If so, feel free to leave a comment below or contact me if you have any questions or with feedback on how we can improve content like this.

Tag: web design

As an artist, I pride myself on being able to see and create beautiful arrangements and designs, using various elements.

Whether it’s painting, drawing, or sculpting, the tools you use to create beautiful designs matter as much as the way you put elements together to create works of art.

When it comes to font pairing, the tools are the fonts, and how you put them together is the pairing.

Even the most creative minds can experience creative blocks. So, we put together this list of 9 font pairing examples, in case you are searching for fonts for a design, and you need a little inspiration boost.

Font Pairing Explained

Before you jump into font pairing, you can check out this article I wrote recently about how the look of a website can positively or negatively impact SEO.

This will give you a small background as to why typography matters.

Think of font pairing like painting a masterpiece. It’s not enough to paint the most beautiful tree in the world, and then the most beautiful car right next to it.

Good designers always have to answer the question: how/how well are two elements going to fit together in my design.

Font pairing is the same. Two fonts can be the most beautiful fonts separately, but when put together, they can look off-putting, feel off-brand, or just plain look awful together.

How to come up with a successful font pairing

A successful font pairing is one that visually represents the brand and communicates it’s values, personality, and style. 

But how do you begin to come up with one?

Coming up with a successful font pairing is an intuitive and personal process.

It starts with thinking about what fonts communicate what the brand is all about. Now, imagine a Law Firm website with a grungy, hand-written script font. Would that evoke security and trustworthiness? Probably not.

There’s also the technical side, which I won’t dive into today, but having a deeper understanding of typography, and how typography can evoke certain emotions in people, can help a designer make better font pairing choices.

But if you would like to learn more about how to pair fonts, and the inner workings of font pairings, below is the best article I have ever read on the subject.

The article is written by the team at Canva. It discusses 10 golden rules to live by when combining fonts.

9 Font Pairing Examples for your inspiration

Now, that we have the basics out of the way, let’s jump right into the 9 font pairing examples you can use to get inspired.

9. Poppins Bold + Lora

Screenshot for the website "Finregpartner.com", to showcase the beautiful font-pairing between Poppins and Lora

About Finreg Partners

Finreg Partners is a law firm that specializes in financial regulations in the fintech industry.

For this project, we needed fonts that were modern yet classical. So, we went with Poppins and Lora.

Poppins is a sans-serif font that falls into the new “Geometric” type. Fonts in this category tend to look and feel more modern than most of their sans-serif counterparts.

Lora is a serif font that falls into the “contemporary” category.

The combination of the modern (geometric) sans-serif font and the contemporary serif gave us the perfect balance of modern and classic we were looking for in a pairing.

8. Gilroy Bold + Noto Serif TC

Screenshot of the website "BuildersSiding.com", to show the beautiful font pairing between Gilroy Bold and Noto Serif TC

About Builders Siding

Builders Siding Co is a roofing and siding company located in Chantilly, VA. The company specializes in the installation and replacement of siding, windows, roofs, and other home improvement items.

For this project, we needed fonts that were both bold and inspire trustworthiness. We wanted to tell Builders Siding’s customers, that they can trust this family-owned business with their home improvement projects.

Gilroy Bold is another geometric sans-serif font. Gilroy Bold is bold as the name suggests.

Noto Serif TC is a traditional serif font. These kinds of fonts are often associated with established, trustworthy companies.

The combination of those two fonts gave us the boldness and trustworthiness we were looking for in a pairing.

7. Gilroy Bold + Overpass

Screenshot of the website "Rnicolecollection.com", to show the beautiful font pairing between Gilroy Bold and Overpass

About R Nicole Collection

R Nicole Collections is a fashion eCommerce shop for handmade and custom made shoes and other accessories.

For this project, we were looking for modern, elegant and forward-looking.

Gilroy Bold was a perfect fit for the modern feel we were looking for.

We chose Gilroy Bold for it’s modern appeal but also to differentiate R Nicole Collections from other fashion eCommerce shops out there.

Overpass is also a modern sans-serif font developed by Delve Fonts. Thin, longer fonts tend to look and feel elegant. Overpass is a bit elongated, giving us the elegance we wanted.

That, along with the geometric Gilroy, gave us the exact pairing we wanted for this project.

6. Dm Serif Text + DM Sans

Screenshot of the website "expressbuildingbuyers.com", to showcase the beautiful font pairing between Dm Serif Text and DM Sans

About ExpressBuildingBuyers.com

Express building buyers is a company that allows customers to sell their buildings, apartment complexes or set of apartments quickly.

For this project, we needed fonts that had a look and feel that was traditional & trustworthy, yet modern.

So, we went with Dm Serif Text and DM Sans. Having both fonts belong to similar font families gave us the unity we needed in a design.

But, combining a sans-serif font with a serif one gave us the contrast we needed between traditional and modern.

5. Calistoga + Source Sans Pro

Screenshot of the website "Lucasso.me", to showcase the beautiful font pairing between Calistoga and Source Sans Pro

About lucasso.me

Lucasso is one of the websites I built for myself. This a website I used to showcase my paintings and try to inspire others to be creative.

For this project, I needed fonts that SCREAMED creativity.

Calistoga belongs to the “display” category of fonts. The beautiful curves that make up this typeface not only say “creative” but also give it a friendly look/feel.

This typeface says “I’m creative, I’m friendly, I’m down to earth”, which is exactly what I was going for.

I paired it with Source Sans Pro, which is another sans-serif font. I choose a sans-serif font here because sans-serif fonts are easier to read on screens.

I specifically chose Source Sans Pro because the strokes are a bit more free-flowing than most other sans-serif fonts, which adds to the creative/friendly look and feel I was going for.

4. Pacifico + Roboto Light

Screenshot for the website "andaleash.com" to showcase the beautiful font pairing between Pacifico and Roboto

About And A Leash LLC

And A Leash is a dog daycare company in Tampa, FL. I’ve done some research and they are the highest rated dog daycare in that part of Florida (*high five to And A Leash*).

For this project, knowing the company is a dog-friendly place, we wanted fonts that felt friendly and welcoming.

Pacifico belongs to the category of typefaces called “script”. This category of typeface is the one that always looks handwritten.

These handwritten-looking typeface often reminds us of handwritten letters from before technology, which often brings feelings of warmth & friendliness.

I paired this font with Roboto for two simple reasons:

  1. They look good together.
  2. Roboto is a sans-serif font, which makes it easier to read on screens.

3. Playfair Display + Quicksand Light

Screenshot of the website "RegConcile.com", to showcase the beautiful font pairing between Playfair Display and Quicksand

About RegConcile

RegConcile is another law firm specializing in financial regulation including general consulting, anti-money laundering (AML) ect.

For this project, we wanted to make the finished project put the words “trust”, “authority”, and “modern” in the minds of the customers.

So, we chose Playfair Display, a serif font that looks more modern than other serif fonts. We essentially killed three birds with one stone when we chose this font.

We paired it with Quicksand Light, a sans-serif font that helped us accentuate the modern feel of the design.

2. Playfair Display + Overpass

A screenshot of the website "Social Register Las Vegas", to show the successful font pairing between Playfair Display and

About Social Register Network

Social Register Network is the premier business networking organization exclusively for business owners, executives, young professionals, entrepreneurs & influencers.

Full disclosure, we are a corporate sponsor for Social Register Las Vegas. But, rest assured it’s not why they are included in this. We really are proud and happy about our font pairing for this design.

For this project, the owner wanted the finished website to look classic, elite, but modern.

So, we turned to our friend Playfair Display again. At the time, it was the font that was going to accurately capture all three adjectives the owner wanted.

This time, however, we paired the serif font with another font we’ve discussed in this article previously: Overpass.

We thought this lengthier sans-serif font would add a bit of elegance to the overall design, which would make it look and feel more elite.

1. BW Darius + Nexa Bold

Screenshot of the homepage of this website (brandwell.staging.wpengine.com), to showcase the beautiful font pairing between BW Darius and Nexa Bold

Call me biased, but this might be the best font-pairing we have ever come up with.

For this project, I wanted something bold and creative. While looking for fonts, I stumbled upon BW Darius. As soon as I saw this typeface, I knew it was the one.

This font says both bold and creative. Additionally, the fact that it’s a serif font adds the trustworthiness factor to the design.

I paired BW Darius with a sans-serif (Nexa Bold) font for readability reasons, but also because it looked great next to BW Darius.

Additional Resources

So, there you have it. It’s our list of 9 font pairing examples for your inspiration. But, wait. There’s more.

If you’ve stumbled upon this article, that means you want to learn more about design either for your business or just for self-improvement.

Here are additional resources to help you learn more about fonts and font pairing.

Where to find fonts

Below are a few links where you can find fonts, both for free or to purchase.

NOTE: Most of the fonts we used for our design are free. Depending on your project and/or budget, feel free to check out some paid options. They often are better quality, and you’d possibly be helping a starving artist. 🙂

Additional Font Pairing resources

In addition to the website above to help you find fonts, here are more websites to give you even more inspiration for font pairing.

That’s all folks. I truly hope you like the article and that it was somewhat helpful to you. If you have any feedback or any other suggestions for font pairings, leave a comment below.

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