Download our Latest Portfolio's!

Our latest Copywriting and Graphic Design Portfolio's have been placed on our website for you to download and view. Please visit the 'Contact' page of our website - www.i-literate.co.za - where you will find the download links for both of our portfolio's. Enjoy and all feedback is welcome!

IMPORTANT NOTICE! New Contact Number

We have finally recieved our new telephone line!

To contact us telephonically please call (+27) 021 572 7785.

How to contact i-literate by phone

As you may already know, i-literate moved to new premises at the beginning of March.

We are still waiting for a land-line to be installed at our new premises - this has been taking Telkom a frustratingly long time! Thank heavens for cellphones!

If you would rather chat to us than send an email - please contact Jolene on 082 893 9683.

Increase your Marketing Efforts during Tough Times

Those successful business leaders who have been known to increase their marketing efforts during tougher economic times are the ones who reap the rewards when the economy improves.

The global economic slump like it or not, has had amongst other factors, a distinct effect on the South African economy and with ever increasing petrol prices, interest rates and therefore everything else, business and individual consumers have at best, become more careful in terms of how they part with their hard earned money.

“Right now it is essential to ensure you have dynamic, cost effective marketing strategies in place. In fact you need to spend as much time as you can, nurturing the client relationships you already have, looking to secure new clients and building brand awareness overall. The worst thing you could possibly do right now is to cut your marketing budget!”

This is according to Jolene Bestbier of i-literate, a copywriting and graphic design agency and specialist marketing consultancy based in Cape Town.

Marketing should been seen as an investment rather than an expense because successful marketing efforts are really the life-blood of any organisation, particularly during tougher economic times.
“Most businesses are experiencing a decrease in customer spend right now, so you need to work harder to gain new customers and keep the growth of your company on the steady rise. You are going to not only need to keep up your marketing efforts, but more than likely market more than you usually do when the going is good!” says Jolene

The worst case scenario of companies right now should involve their inability to increase their marketing budget, which would be entirely understandable. Now is the time, however, that companies need to be clever about how they market and be choosy about the marketing tools they use.
“What companies would benefit from primarily at a time like this, is getting more mileage out of their marketing budget. Look for more cost effective ways to maintain the quality and prominence of your image in the market place by applying creative marketing strategies, that are memorable and highly appealing and rooting out valuable resources you already have available in your business but may not have even considered or recognised in the past” she says

When your competitors pull back on their marketing and advertising, take note and take action.

According to Jolene if companies are savvy and perhaps a little daring, the current climate potentially gives them a fantastic opportunity to boost their reputation and brand by making even more of an impact on their target market which will in turn give them an undeniable lead right now, when they need it most and even more so in the future when the economy improves.

i-literate Launches Finance Option for SMME’s

The manner in which your small or medium business is portrayed to your clients is of vital importance as it should attest to the quality of your products and/or services.

First impressions last!

Whether you are concentrating on a niche market, where larger more established competitors may not operate, or whether you are indeed competing for market share against these established competitors – you need to be able to portray what you do professionally. An organisation that has taken the time to establish their corporate ID and marketing/sales materials is received as favourably as the sales person who dresses neatly and ensures his shoes are clean!

The Finance Option

i-literate understands that start-up organisations and small to medium enterprises which may need a revamp don’t necessarily have the cash-flow to have all their needs attended to at once which is why we have launched our Financing Option. This option allows you to have what you need done when you need it, yet enables you to pay off any quotation* above the value of R 5000 over a period of 6 months.

For further information please contact Jolene Bestbier on 082 893 9683 or email her at jolene@i-literate.co.za

*Terms & Conditions apply

Free Website Evaluation!

i-literate is offering new and existing clients a free evaluation of their website and proposal of solutions to remedy any areas where adjustments or improvements can be made. This is a no obligation, impartial evaluation that will give you the opportunity to investigate what you can do to generate more viewer traffic and sales in line with your needs and budget.

Please do not hesitate to email your request to jolene@i-literate.co.za

Your website is your shop window – make it stand out!

In South Africa, over 1 million individuals access the internet everyday. This figure is set to double in the next 5 years due to the much publicised undersea cable currently under construction.

What does this mean for business? The internet is an incredibly powerful, highly cost-effective marketing tool – provided you take advantage of everything available to boost your online presence. An effective website has the ability to boost your sales significantly!

Your goal is to ensure that browsers can find your website easily and ensure that the content you offer not only promotes your products and services, but is enticing enough to motivate future re-visits.

A website works very similarly to a retail shop – you may have many browsers wandering through your shop, taking a look around, but if you display your merchandise in an enticing manner, you will enjoy higher sales.

So your website is your virtual shop-window - how do you achieve success?

The Design

The look of your website needs to tie in with your overall Corporate ID. You should be using the colours that are portrayed within your logo to really emphasise your branding. The layout needs to ideally be as simple as possible – a website that has too many flashy things, buttons in different places and blocks with text all over the home page or down a side margin will confuse the eye resulting in a far more diluted marketing effect than was no doubt originally intended.

Present pages, buttons and information in a logical format and ensure that these elements attract the eye in the order that you intend them to. For example - you would want your visitor to see your logo first, so ensure that it stands out clearly and that its size is reasonably prominent without overpowering the rest of the page, from here your eye should naturally move to the welcome area discussing the services you offer in a nutshell etc. The links to additional pages should be easy to find.

Importantly, the design of your website should allow for later expansion (i.e. being able to add more pages), so that as your business grows or you add more products and services to your business that you are able to portray these reasonably quickly and easily.

The Content

There will always be those visitors who like to read and those who don’t so it is best to cater for both. One good example of this is can be seen on a website that we designed for Ginkgo Landscaping (www.ginkgolandscaping.co.za). Services are listed on each page and each listed service has a quick access link to more information. Although in more elaborate websites where more information is made available, this particular approach may not be possible, it remains imperative to appeal to both preferences and this can be achieved with a little strategic thinking.

Enticing copy is imperative to ensuring your website speaks for you by effectively promoting what you offer in a clear, comprehensive manner. Punctuation, spelling and logical format separate a reasonable website from a really good one and special attention must to be paid to ensuring there is less waffle and more information you feel would help your visitor to take the next step of contacting you for an order, or even just further information.

Search Engine Optimisation

Firstly let’s define ‘Search Engine Optimisation’ (SEO for short).

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a website from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. Typically, the earlier a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search and industry-specific vertical search engines.

As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimizing a website primarily involves editing its content and HTML coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines.

Thanks Wikipedia!

The importance of SEO cannot be stressed enough. Your website must appear within the first 3 pages of a Google search at the very least or your website will only work for you when you drive potential clientele to it through print advertising. This does largely defeat the object of having a website!

Now to ensure that your website ranks closest to the top of the first few pages on an internet search, you need to ensure that the copy content of your website is geared to picking up keywords that potential clients would be likely to use in order to locate your product or service.

If for instance I were looking for a landscaper to revamp my garden I would type in ‘landscaper’, ‘landscape design’, ‘landscaper cape’, ‘residential landscaper’, etc. As a copywriter I need to ensure that these key-words are incorporated into my landscaping client’s website copy. As a standard practice, i-literate checks recent keyword stats relating to the service our clients offer to ensure we incorporate the common words which are being used in searches.

Apart from the copy used on each page, the website developer must have the knowledge and experience to attend to meta-tags and other related back-end stuff. Here they insert key search words and phrases – similar to the ones I use in my copy and this enhances your ‘page ranking’ significantly.

Partnering with an experienced Copywriter, Designer and Developer

Ensuring the company or individuals you choose to assist you to develop a good quality website is of utmost importance - remember this is after all your virtual shop-front, it needs to be perfect!

The copywriter and the designer need to work closely together to achieve an effective end result, the designer needs to understand the limitations the developer may have and overcome challenges to that end and the developer needs to be experienced in setting up simple, as well as advanced websites.

Proper snagging is extremely important. When the developer formats and loads the website, spelling errors etc. often occur. It is important to retain the services of your designer and copywriter to proof the website before it goes live to ensure that everything looks 100% perfect!. All too often I have met clients who have had their website compiled where it clearly falls short in more than one of these essential areas. At i-literate we do offer a comprehensive service to ensure we are able to offer our clients exceptional value for their marketing investment!

Please view our special offer article entitled ‘Free Website Evaluation and Proposal of Solutions’ to arrange your free website evaluation.