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Time is money is time is money is time is money... A day has 24 hours. In the best-case scenario, we spend 8 hours of it sleeping. The number of hours we spend at work varies from person to person, ranging anywhere from four to 16 hours a day. As an entrepreneur, you may tend to spend a lot of hours in the office. Therefore, working efficiently is a game-changer to maximize productivity, reduce the number of hours spent in the office, have less stress as a result and achieve a better work life balance. I, too, have learned in the last 12 years of entrepreneurship that it is not always easy to implement maximum productivity in order to master a good work life balance. It requires tremendous discipline - in many ways. But there were a few things that really helped me. In this blog article, I would like to introduce you to the 15 hacks for more productivity and efficiency that I use myself in my business and can warmly recommend to every entrepreneur. 1. FIND OUT THE STATUS QUO First of all, you have to know the status quo. How much time do you spend on what kind of tasks? How many minutes a day do you spend on email, learning, distractions, actual paid client work, and so on. No matter how you go about it, if you want to increase your productivity, you first need to know exactly what you're spending your time on, down to the minute. I record my time twice a year for four weeks at a time. On a large notepad on my desk, I write down exactly ( not estimated!) how many minutes I need for which activity. Here it is particularly important to be relentlessly honest with yourself. Meaning: If I lose myself on a news website and scroll through it for a long time, read and jump from link to link, these minutes are also precisely documented. As I said, the first step is only to get the status quo. 2. ANALYZE THE STATUS QUO Once you have meticulously recorded the status quo for four weeks, the evaluation begins. It is best to categorize individual activities. To give you an example: social media for the business, private social media, emails, meetings, paid client work, personal organization, education, strategy, and so on. Add up the minutes for all categories and take a deep breath. Yes, you will be (very!) surprised and maybe shocked. That aha moment is normal and important. The good thing though: Now you really know what's going on and can act accordingly. What is possible to delegate? What can be automated? What brings money into the business and what doesn't (one of the most important considerations of all)? Certainty and clear facts are the best starting point for increasing your productivity. Record your time at regular intervals and compare your results. This way you know what works well and where there might still be room for improvement. 3. DELEGATE YES, BUT CONSIDER A FEW THINGS Depending on how the analysis of your time recording looks like, it can mean that you should look for professionals (regardless of whether they are freelancers or employees) who can do certain things better and faster than you. For example, we offer an all-round carefree service for our website clients to help them increase their productivity. Of course, delegating activities only makes sense if it pays off in terms of time and money. And don't forget, delegating tasks also means that the organization of delegating has to be taken into account here. For example, if you have to invest two hours a week to save ten hours a week, it makes a lot of sense. However, if the extra organization or administration that delegating entails is two hours a week and it only saves you two or three hours a week, then it doesn't make sense. 4. FOCUS VS. MULTITASKING Focus is always better than multitasking. Always without exception! Doing one task after the other with your full attention and focus is much faster and more effective than doing several tasks in parallel at the same time. Scientists explain that being distracted from one activity (regardless of how long the distraction lasts!) and focusing on another decreases brain performance by 20 to 40% when tasks are done in parallel rather than sequentially. Say goodbye to multitasking, it robs you of focus on what really matters. Give it a try, you'll be amazed how many hours a week you can save by focusing instead of multitasking. 5. FIRST THINGS FIRST Do the most important task of the day first - before (!) you open your emails, chat messages or social media. What is an important task ? One that pays your rent and your food. For several hours at a time, focus on that one project that matters and drives revenue. Some also call this deep work sessions . I personally like this expression very much. Deep work with maximum mental focus above everything else - that's what it's all about. Such a start to the day will save you several hours at the end of the day. 6. SPONTANITY KILLS EFFICIENCY Schedule things - in your job and your private life. I keep hearing "spontaneous is best". This may be true when you have so much free time that you don't know what to do with it. But you don't get things done that way - quite the opposite is the case. Most spontaneous things don't happen in the first place because "it doesn't work out spontaneously". I always have to smile when I hear "I'll do that spontaneously". Firstly, this is just an excuse for "I don't want to commit to it". Secondly, it means "it doesn't matter enough to me (otherwise I would commit myself to it)". Thirdly, the probability that something will take place is minimal. And that's exactly how it is in practice - it usually doesn't happen at all. "You never have time - unless you take it." What often leads to frustration in private life, leads to less efficiency in professional life and ultimately to less sales. Schedule things! You probably know from your own experience how pointless it is to say to yourself, "I'll do that when I have time." Those are the things that remain undone. That's why it's essential to schedule everything - from paid work for clients to internal organization to strategy work for your own business. At this point it is also important to mention that sufficient buffer times must be scheduled in. Otherwise it is impossible to keep to the schedule and actually implement it in daily practice. My rough rule of thumb: Depending on the activity, 20 to 40% buffer time should be added to tasks. 7. GREAT TOOLS I myself underestimated smart tools for far too long and made life unnecessarily difficult for myself . Be smarter than me and use digital tools wherever you can! You will see that it makes a huge difference in your daily work. Cheers to digitization! Here is a glimpse of the tools we currently use internally (as of June 2022): Trello including automations Billomat Loom (our customers are loving our screen recordings) don't disturb mode on the phone in combination with a secretary office, that is always available during normal office hours (Of course, here you need real people.) Calendly incl. Zoom integration (our customers are happy that it is so easy to make an appointment with us) Dropbox incl. Smart Sync scheduled blogging in the Wix dashboard Adobe Creative Cloud Libraries mobile dictation functions 8. SAME THINGS AT THE SAME TIME Working efficiently also means blocking similar activities and completing them in one go. This makes sure, you are mentally in the right mode and can work more efficiently and get everything done much faster. In addition to spending less time, you also achieve better quality results because you are more focused. Here is an example: Option 1 (11 hours): Emails - 30 min Social media - 15 min Calculate offer 1 - 45 min Emails - 15 min Internal organization - 15 min Write blog article 1 - 2 hours Paid client work - 1 hour Emails - 15 min Online meeting with client - 1 hour Calculate offer 2 - 30 min Finalize blog article 1 - 1 hour Phone call with employee - 15 min Internal organization - 15 min Emails - 15 min Social media - 15 min Write blog article 2 - 2 hours Emails - 15 min Option 2 (7 hours 45 minutes): Paid client work - 1 hour Calculate offer 1 - 45 min Calculate offer 2 - 15 min Internal organization - 15 min Online meeting with client - 1 hour Emails - 30 min Phone call with employee - 15 min Write blog articles 1 + 2 - 3 hours Social media - 30 min Emails - 15 min As you can see, option 2 gets you the same results - in less time. You can also see that in option 2 emails were only checked twice a day. Time saving in this example: 3 hours 15 minutes in just one day. That's 16 hours and 15 minutes saved per week! So you save yourself two full working days a week. 9. GOODBYE TO NOTIFICATIONS! Distractions from mobile phones, social media and various chat services make us believe that it is good to always be online and follow the latest trends, news or postings. What a productivity killer! Deliberately turn off all notifications on all your devices. The addictive factor of constantly being online should not be underestimated and robs valuable concentration and valuable time; actually 23 minutes per interruption (!) - see point 14 further down in this blog article. You pay for being online all the time with important focus and valuable lifetime, but you don't get anything useful in return. A really bad deal. 10. MAILBOX FENG SHUI It makes sense to unsubscribe from all newsletters that you delete more than you read. Of course, this applies to both online and offline newsletters. There is something liberating about cleaning out newsletters. Opt out of ads you don't really need. If you click delete more often than read , then you know what to do with it - throw it in the bin! 11. EMAIL VS. CHAT As already mentioned in point 8 above, it makes sense to block similar tasks. The same is true of communication. Even if there is a trend towards communicating via chat (e.g. WhatsApp), this is usually inefficient and problematic. Chat can't compete with good old email when it comes to productivity. Do you want to be "trendy" or do you want to be efficient? As an entrepreneur, the answer is obvious. It's a fact: the quality of communication is deteriorating more and more. This runs parallel to the increasing quantity of communication. There have never been so many ways to communicate with each other. And never before has there been so much miscommunication, misunderstandings and communication problems. Notice anything? Communication via chat is split up into many small chunks, often lined up incoherently and it often lacks logical connections. Many topics are started and touched upon, but not finished. Clear communication with final conclusions? Nope. Chats are often the cause of misunderstandings, misinterpretations and missing results from the conversation. In addition, things often get lost between chat message lines. You don't have all these problems in email communication (if you communicate correctly). Do you want to be trendy or do you want to be efficient ? As an entrepreneur, the answer is obvious. 12. MEETINGS YES, BUT THE RIGHT WAY! Meetings are probably one of the biggest productivity killers of all. They usually eat up more time than they get things going and tie up too many human (and thus also financial) resources. Block fixed times for meetings in advance. Spontaneous meetings are taboo! Also, be sure to stay away from meetings without a fixed topic and time agenda. 13. CAUSES AND SYMPTOMS As far as problem-solving ability is concerned, humanity is divided into two types: those who fight symptoms, and those who fight causes. Even if it is initially more work (and often uncomfortable) to get to the root of a problem and to solve the cause of the problem; You will save yourself a lot of valuable time (and nerves) in the middle and long run if you fight the causes instead of fighting the symptoms! You don't think it works? Think again! There are no problems, there are only solutions that you have not found yet. 14. "DO YOU HAVE A MINUTE?" Question: Are you an entrepreneur or the hospital emergency department? Honestly: How many urgent things in your everyday work are not urgent or important for your company, but merely urgent for other people who don't take their self-organization so seriously. Is it your job to iron out other people's lack of organization? No. I admit, the truth sounds harsh sometimes. But it is crucial to see things clearly for what they are - and act accordingly. Reconsider your personal availability! The don't disturb mode on the phone can help here, for example. And redirecting it to an external secretary, your business can is still available. According to a study by the University of California, Irvine (conducted by Gloria Mark), every interruption costs 23 minutes (!) to then be able to concentrate again on the activity you were doing before the interruption. No matter how long the interruption lasts! "Interruptions cost a company 31 hours a week." Efficiency expert Edward G. Brown explains this using an example from the financial industry. As he reports in an interview with the Washington Post , interruptions cost a company 31 hours a week. That's almost a full-time employee. 15. YES TO "NO" Saying yes to the wrong things means saying no to the right things. Read that again. " Saying yes to the wrong things means saying no to the right things." Think about what you want and where you want to be as an entrepreneur in the future. Say yes to the right things by saying no to the wrong things. WHY WE DON'T CHARGE BY TIME Some designers charge by the time they spend on a project - especially freelancers and one-man businesses. We generally calculate with flat rates, which are calculated depending on the service and the desired output for the client. Only in exceptional cases, or if the clients explicitly requests it, do we charge by the hour . The thing is: In the end, what counts is what the client gets from us - be it a first-class brand design from the logo to the website , an infographic , a brochure or an app magazine , for example. Logically, how we achieve the desired result is irrelevant to the client and is up to us. When you go to the Porsche dealer and buy a Porsche, you pay for the value of the car, which is a mix of quality and brand image, not how many hours it took to produce that car, right? Besides that, clients don't have enough insight and therefore often no understanding that the development of a first-class logo design takes well over 20 hours in most cases. CONCLUSION I admit, it is quite a mental effort to leave your own comfort zone to enter new organizational spheres. But you will see: Your life and your business as well as the qualitative output of your work will improve significantly. Your clients will also thank you in the end. And you will have more quality time for your private life. If this blog article has inspired you, you can also book a Pick my Brain session with me.

Our high degree of digitisation at HCG corporate designs not only brings many advantages for our clients, but also for ourselves. Since our team works remotely and has always been based in different locations, I also moved my own office from Innsbruck to Israel for five weeks - in particular to Tel Aviv. REMOTE WORKING IN ISRAEL My office in Tel Aviv was the co-working space of Damndesign - a beautiful office with all the amenities one could wish for and wonderful colleagues. In addition to the human two-legged friends, the furry four-legged friends have also grown on me (10% of Tel Avivis are dog owners). My special thanks go to Kreativwirtschaft Austria and Markus Haas of ADVANTAGE AUSTRIA for the great organisation. TECHNOLOGY & START-UP VIBE IN TEL AVIV Tel Aviv stands for high-tech, high digitisation and an incomparable start-up vibe. It was very inspiring to breathe that start-up air every day. On every corner you can see that Israel is a young country on the upswing. Nevertheless - and I find this remarkable - it is very human. It's more anonymous in a small town in Austria than in the "big city" of Tel Aviv. The mentality could hardly be more different. Tel Aviv feels like a mixture of a large village community and an economically booming city. I got the feeling that everyone in Tel Aviv wants to make it, a 45-hour work week (as an employee) is normal. I perceived Tel Avivis as hard-working, intelligent, cosmopolitan, very caring, but also very direct. For a Central European sometimes a bit too direct maybe. But hey, it's another culture. CYBER WEEK Cyber Week took place at Tel Aviv University from June 27th to 30th, 2022 - after a two-year break due to the pandemic. Here, representatives from politics, finance & investment, cyber security, energy industry and technology from all over the world came together to network and exchange ideas. As one of only two Austrian participants, it was an inspiration to network at the highest international level and to make good new contacts. VISITING WIX Another reason why I chose Tel Aviv for my temporary office abroad: Wix is at home here. As you may know, we are Wix Partners and have been creating professional website designs with Wix for many years. That's why it was a special pleasure and honor to meet a part of the Wix team in person. TYPOGRAPHIC ADVANTAGES FOR MULTI-LINGUAL DESIGN In Israel people speak Hebrew - a beautiful and interesting script. This language has a very special advantage - it is read from right to left. Why is this an advantage? Well, integrating Hebrew and English into a single design is much easier this way. An example: The logo of the Bauhaus Center Tel Aviv is bilingual. Two small black squares serve as a horizontal anchor for Tel Aviv and a vertical anchor for Bauhaus . On the right, the anchor serves as a visual starting point for English (reading from left to right). On the left, the anchor serves as a visual starting point for Hebrew (reading from right to left). As you can see, the different reading directions offer great design advantages, especially for centred designs. This is great for displaying signage, logo designs, billboards, etc. in multiple languages! The Tel Aviv University logo also benefits from the different reading directions, too. Here, the left half of the logo design below the logo icon is filled with the English text (reading left to right) and the right half is filled with the Hebrew text (reading right to left). Both languages meet in the middle. A nice thought! BAUHAUS FOR CULTURAL EQUALITY IN ARCHITECTURE Those interested in architecture may also know Tel Aviv as a Mecca for Bauhaus architecture. The White City of Tel Aviv counts the highest number of Bauhaus buildings in the world. The escape of Jews to Israel in the 1930s contributed significantly to this development. After all, a lot of functional living space had to be created at the time, which nipped potential sources of conflict in the bud. The Bauhaus idea is rooted in creating architecture for all people - regardless of origin, religion, mentality, age, social class, social background or climate. Usually, architecture is a visual monument to the culture and history of a region and its people. Bauhaus stands for the opposite and is intended as a pragmatic and purposeful all-round architectural solution for everyone , which should also endure in the future. All people should feel treated equally, nobody should feel discriminated against. Status, origin, skin colour, religion, etc. are irrelevant, the focus is on providing functional architecture to let people live as well as possible. This is how Bauhaus tries to nip any potential sources of conflict between religions and mentalities in the bud. A clever move! It's always amazing what architecture is capable of. That is why Bauhaus architecture is also called International Style - it can be used internationally. It is a no-go to turn the term Bauhaus into the term Bauhaus style . Bauhaus is not a style in that sense, but rather a philosophy. Bauhaus is not about beautiful buildings. Bauhaus doesn't aim at that. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder anyway. However, once you understand the meaning of Bauhaus, you at least find the idea behind it very beautiful (if not the buildings). CONCLUSION Tel Aviv is inspiring, cosmopolitan, vibrant, innovative, welcoming - and a real culinary delight. Tel Aviv is business and a positive example of how to drive the economy forward.

Honestly: How many t-shirts, hoodies or caps with an ugly logo print have you got given over the last few years? Well, before (!) the pandemic of course. Probably quite a few. It's amazing (or frightening) how quickly a chic fashion accessory can degenerate into a dreadful "don't want it" piece. Only because a business owner wants their logo to be big and bold on it. Oh dear. We can do better: We created the above fashion pattern for our client Spedination . The branding we developed a few years ago is beautifully integrated into super chic fashion items. A good logo design creates brand awareness. A good logo design also manages to be conveyed in terms of the overall brand communication. This also applies to the subtle translation of a logo (or parts of it) into a chic fashion pattern.

Travel broadens the horizon, provides new inspiration and gives my creativity a fresh boost. In this blog article I would like to take you to two countries that I traveled to in March/April 2022 to recharge my batteries. One of the two countries I visited, borders the Atlantic Ocean to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the south. How unusual! I’m talking about... Panama! OH, HOW BEAUTIFUL PANAMA IS! The Panama Canal , completed at the beginning of the 20th century, contributes around ten percent to the GDP in service-oriented Panama and charges several hundred thousand US dollars (depending on ship size and load) per crossing of the American continent, which is only about 80 km wide at this point. As a corporate designer, my eyes immediately fell on the logo, of course. And I have to say, it fascinated me from the beginning - and still does today. Looking at the map and shape as well as the flag of Panama, one might assume that the blue star represents the North American continent, the red star the South American continent, the blue area the Pacific Ocean, and the red area the Atlantic Ocean. At least that was my first association. However, my research revealed that the flag is about something far less spectacular - the country's two major political players: blue representing the conservatives, red representing the liberals, white stands for peace (after all...) and the two stars represent the two political parties. But back to the logo design of the Panama Canal. The colors and stars of Panama’s flag are used in the logo. Both stars are skillfully connected and yet separated by an offset transit road - a clever association with the transit between North and South America. THE NATURAL PARADISE COSTA RICA After a few days in Panama and the Bocas del Toro Islands in the Caribbean Sea, we went on to the natural paradise of Costa Rica. Immerse yourself in some beautiful images and recharge your batteries too!

Does this situation sound familiar to you? You are at an event (some are taking place again), you get into conversation with various people, you network and have a positive exchange with like-minded people. You might also exchange ideas with an online marketing expert about various online marketing and SEO topics. If you are not an online marketer yourself and have a website of your own, it is quite likely that the online marketing "expert" will chuck sales arguments right into your face - some more, some less aggressive ones. You might find this uncomfortable and sip your glass of wine before finally running off. In the digital environment, the reach is of course much greater: It is not uncommon for entrepreneurs to receive spam mails from online marketers they don't know, informing them that this or that would not work on their website or that the website would not even be listed in the Google search engine - without even checking out the website beforehand. This scam is often even used to sell a website analysis, which should show whether there are any errors on the website at all (which of course speaks against the website error statements in the email altogether). What do you think how the result of such an "analysis" looks like? Especially when it fully automatically arrives in your mailbox after just a few minutes. Hello scammers. (This is a sales method that's even taught in coachings here and there.) Sometimes certain error messages are correctly (well, coincidentally) spotted, but mostly it's just a sales tactic to scare people - in most cases completely unjustified. In our opinion, this is a brash, impolite and, above all, unserious method to get new customers. Rarely, but about every four or five years, it also affects some of our website clients - funnily enough, always at the same time within a few hours, before it's quiet again for several years. Some of our website clients forward those spam mails to us and (understandably) don't know what to do with them. Each time it involves untrue statements and claims that are proven false. Of course, our website clients understand very quickly that it's a scam - yes, we have smart clients :-) - but it's still as annoying as a mosquito on a tropical night. We then create a short screen recording to reassure the client and show that all the "errors" the online marketing "expert" addresses, do not exist and are fictitious. Proven facts beat aggressive sales - the truth always wins in the end. BUT WHY SO AGGRESSIVE? But why are some online marketers so nervous? Certainly, there are always such and such - but the greed for profit really makes some people go very (well, too ) far. In our opinion, the reason behind that aggression is another one: Artificial intelligence, machine learning and smart, digital algorithms are on the rise and are optimising the performance of many advertising campaigns. And yes, the Internet giant Google has also brought even more acceptance into this sensitive topic with machine learning and the release of Google Analytics 4 ("GA4"). Some online marketers feel obviously forced to act increasingly aggressively, because intelligent 360° solutions and more and more artificial intelligence are making their existence less and less justified. SEO PERFORMANCE OF RENOWNED AGENCIES In the research for this blog article, we dug into the deepest depths of the SEO, keyword and ranking analyses of various well-known advertising, design and online marketing agencies. The analysis results are all based on key figures that were evaluated on the independent SEO platform by Neil Patel ( the SEO guru par excellence - and no, this is not a paid advertising link) for the location "Germany". The result surprised us a little bit. The most renowned design and advertising agencies in Germany hardly rank on the 1st Google page for keywords that are most relevant for them and have a high search volume (e.g. "logo design"), and are far behind in the ranking. These agencies rank for.... .drum roll .....the names of their clients! It's important to mention that these are not backlinks, but ordinary text on the website in which the customer is mentioned. Undoubtedly, well-known agencies have well-known clients - it kind of reminds us of the chicken and egg principle. QUALITY BEFORE QUANTITY Once again it shows: SEO is important, but not everything. Not even the best or most renowned design and advertising agencies in Germany manage to get into the top Google rankings for the relevant topics and keywords, despite the greatest SEO knowledge and a high marketing budget. SEO is not a sprint but a marathon that requires endurance and time. Even the big, renowned online marketing agencies are increasingly distancing themselves from "the main thing is high keyword density and technical tricks" and are marching in big steps towards holistic approaches like "regular quality content" . SEO SERVICES FOR OUR CLIENTS In general, all websites we create are indexed in Google within 1 minute after going live. Our SEO setup service is included in all our packages and covers the most common SEO basics. From a technical point of view, the website has a good basis for a good Google ranking and can be read and indexed by Google without any issues. Our SEO advanced service goes even further, optimises the entire website even more deeply (on-page search engine optimisation), also in terms of Google Rich Snippets. Our SEO services are continuously adapted and improved to get the best value for our website clients. But it should also be said here: These are technical basics that do not replace good content on the website. Remember the marathon! FACTS UND NUMBERS FROM OUR WEBSITE CLIENTS We like facts and transparency. The following images give you an insight into the SEO performance for our website clients that booked our SEO services : The graphs show by what percentage the performance of various SEO parameters in the same country, in the same industry and in the same period of time outperforms that of competitors. The larger the blue area in the graph, the better the performance compared to the competitor. A quick insight into the SEO performance of websites that have not booked our SEO services: (Source: Wix dashboard, benchmark analysis) ONLINE MARKETING WITH ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Our website clients who want to advertise on Facebook and Instagram benefit from machine learning and advertising that is enriched with artificial intelligence and optimised fully automatically. The artificial intelligence gets the maximum out of the advertising budget, executes all tests independently and in real time in order to permanently improve success on Facebook and Instagram. This way, the online marketing budget can be adjusted flexibly, our clients are not tied to any restrictive contracts and they save a lot of money on top of that. The advantages of artificial intelligence are impressive. OUR EXPERIENCES WITH SEO, SEA & ONLINE MARKETING We have invested a 5-digit sum in advertising, marketing and sales for HCG corporate designs over the years and have been able to gain a lot of valuable experience. In the early years, a lot was done on our own (for budgetary reasons), later this was outsourced to online marketing agencies in order to optimise the ROI (return on investment). After all, we, too, only want to work with professionals! Our conclusion: We should not have done certain things. But marketing is always such a thing, you know. There is no magic formula that works the same for everyone. Some sales strategies even backfired on us (funnily, the most expensive ones). And yes, a lot is measurable. But a lot is also not measurable. After all these experiences, it would sometimes have been better to listen to our own gut feeling than to some strategists from outside. But that's life. In conversations with several entrepreneurs who we are friends with (from small to medium-sized companies to big global players), we got a similar picture: “Don't even start with Google Ads unless you have a budget of 3,000 to 5,000 euros per month and can run those campaigns for several months in a row. The result for us: The ROI (return on investment) was unfortunately only a small fraction of the money we invested.” Take some time to mentally digest that. It was hard for us too. CONCLUSION Different things work differently for different businesses. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. At HCG corporate designs, we believe in great content , a high level of quality and service , continuous SEO optimisation on our own website, organic backlinks, interesting blog articles , a strong presence on social media and, of course, recommendations from our clients, who probably are the best advertisement for us. In short: It is a colorful bouquet of many things - and has been for 12 years so far. Remember the marathon! ;-)

As a Wix Partner with years of experience, we benefit from quite a number of advantages when it comes to web design - whether classic Wix website design or fully responsive web design on Editor X. And you know what? We are very happy to pass these competitive advantages on to our website clients. One of those benefits is exclusive access to great new website features before anyone else. We used this for two new websites for our Swiss customer LAUFEN. NEW HOVER INTERACTIONS A completely new type of hover interaction on Editor X gives us and our customer LAUFEN complete design freedom and more technical possibilities than we could ever wish for. Of course you could also integrate beautiful hover interactions into a classic Wix website. The new hover variant in Editor X however, which we have exclusive access to as a Wix Partner, not only enables hover actions, but also click actions as well as user-defined in and out animations, where the animation's timing can be precisely controlled to the nearest millisecond. The triggering elements (so-called "triggers") can now be set as desired and are no longer linked to the hover box itself. We also find the wide range of animation options for the trigger itself and not just the hover box really nice. In addition to that, the content is 100% responsive. That means: It doesn't matter whether the text in a hover box is 2, 5 or 10 lines long, the associated hover box adapts fully automatically - whether on the desktop, tablet or mobile phone. This is 100% first-class web design that is really smart and basically “thinks for itself”. MOBILE WEBSITE: HOW DO HOVER INTERACTIONS WORK? A mobile website is extremely important; not only for your website visitors, but also for your website’s Google ranking . Of course, a hover interaction works differently on a mobile device (tablet or smartphone) than on the desktop version of a website. A hover interaction becomes a click or tap interaction. However, it is also important to have a visual identifier so that the user knows that there is something to discover when they tap - on the desktop version of a website this is not absolutely necessary (depending on the brand design of course). And this is where another advantage of Editor X comes into play: the mobile website's design is unlinked from the website design on larger screens (tablet and desktop). That is to say, the mobile website can look different from the tablet version, which can (again) look different from the desktop version of a website. More design freedom is not possible. COMPLEX FORMS IN WEB DESIGN Forms ask website visitors to provide certain information about themselves. Depending on the complexity, forms can be a real challenge - not only for the website user but also for the website designer. Not so for us as a Wix Partner! For our client LAUFEN, we implemented a complex form with if-then formulas on the new promotional website for In-Wash Roca® . Depending on the country selection, regions are displayed (Switzerland) or hidden (Liechtenstein). An optional, third address can be specified at the end of the form. As you can see in the video, this optional section of the form is only expanded when the option above is ticked. Of course, the scroll length of the website also adjusts fully automatically - regardless of whether it is a desktop, tablet or smartphone view. This is how professional web design works today. With complete freedom of design and first-class brand design.

Everyone is talking about cross channel marketing. What sounds like a new, hyped buzz word from online marketing gurus, is basically what every company is facing sooner or later: placing one advertising campaign across many different advertising and communication channels. THE ATTENTION SPAN IN THE 21ST CENTURY Cross channel marketing is becoming the norm in today’s overstimulated world. Every day, we are confronted with thousands of advertising messages. This, of course, means that our attention span is getting shorter and shorter. Do you remember the commercials of last night's TV program? Or the billboards on the side of the street as you drove to work today? Or that sponsored post on social media that you just scrolled over? No? No need to worry. This is nowadays’ normality. The fact is: Many advertising campaigns simply are no longer noticed. Sad but true. RECOGNITION BEATS ATTENTION The precise advertising message as such is not as important as you might think, though. However, what really is (!) important is the brand being seen and perceived. The frequent perception of a brand is essential - whether consciously or subconsciously is secondary and quite irrelevant. Much more important - not to say: the most important thing of all! - is the recognition value of a brand. Within a small moment it must be immediately clear which brand it is. This has a lot to do with psychology and - even more - with consistency and is not an easy thing to achieve. A logo alone cannot achieve that - no chance. Therefore a logo alone is a waste of money . The ability to recognize a brand at first glance is only possible with the skillful interplay of colours, shapes, fonts, grids, images and other design elements. The professional use of all these elements working together perfectly is determined by a brand design . Of course, this also includes a logo, but not only that. Think of a brand like a human body. The logo is the heart. The brand design makes all body functions work together. This is how the body can live. This is how the brand can live. CONCLUSION Fast pace, information overload, many different communication channels (both analogue and digital), a hectic everyday life and a continuously shrinking attention span of your target group - welcome to reality. You want your cross channel marketing to succeed? A professional brand design builds the basis for your successful cross-channel marketing. Feel free to contact us.

A logo design is not good just because you think it looks "beautiful". I admit, that's a bold statement. However, by the end of this blog article, you will agree with this statement. Okay, if a logo design doesn't have to look "beautiful", what does it have to do then? A logo design must generate a certain gut feeling, an emotion, function flexibly in a wide variety of applications and - most importantly - have maximum recognition value. None of this has anything to do with personal taste. When we develop a brand design , three to five logo designs are always included, all of which go in totally different directions, but of course all of them are based on the briefing (our client’s requirements). After a couple of feedback rounds with the customer, one logo design is finalized at the end. And this has nothing to do with personal taste? Let us give you a little insight into the everyday life of a part-time psychologist ... um ... a design agency. A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A BRAND DESIGNER Enquiry from the customer: "We drew a logo ourselves - see the photo in the attachment. Of course, we know that it doesn't look professional, we can't use this as a logo. That's why we get in touch with you for a brand design with logo, website and so on. We work in a sensitive business, our brand simply has to look professional, everything has to be consistent and fit together. A consistent brand identity, so to speak." There is a meeting for the briefing in which the requirements and special aspects of the brand are discussed in detail. Two weeks later, several logo designs are delivered to the customer. Customer: "We really like the logo designs very much. My team and I are really excited and overwhelmed, honestly. I didn't think it could be this good. It is exactly what we were looking for! Now we are contemplating between version A and B. I will let you know what it will be in the next few days." 3 days later. Customer: "My Feng Shui consultant likes A, but she doesn't like B and C at all. She would make a mixture of D and A." 1 day later. Customer: "I have now also asked my secretary, she likes B and C, but A and D she doesn’t like. She would do a mix of B and C. And my nephew doesn't like any of the logos. However, he could imagine version D if it looked a bit more like B and you should still take the right swirl from C with it." 2 days later. Customer: "I agree with my Feng Shui consultant, we take logo version A." 4 days later. Customer: "The opinion of my Feng Shui consultant is no longer important. We also no longer need the sub-logos for the individual outlets." Another meeting takes place to consult the customer, explaining the logo drafts again in detail based on their requirements (briefing) and to give the customer clarity. The briefing is suddenly changed. Things that were important requirements for the brand in the original briefing have now been removed and new requirements have been added. In addition, the feeling that should be conveyed with the logo in the first place, should now be something different than before. 2 weeks later, new logo design drafts are delivered. Customer: "I like E and F best. But it doesn't match my secretary's taste. We drew something on paper, I'll send it to you as an attachment. Can you use that?" The customer's drawn draft is very similar to the original draft that the customer sent to the designer as part of their enquiry. The designer explains to the customer the limitations and poor functionality of the design as well as the lack of recognition value. Customer: "It shouldn't look professional on purpose. A consistent brand is not important to me at all." What reads like a soap opera here is (thank God seldom, but every now and then) a reality in the everyday life of a brand designer or a design agency. Sure, a logo design development is not a quick act that takes just a few hours. Logo design is complex and nevertheless focused on a very clear goal: to perfectly present the message of a brand, with maximum recognition value and at the same time optimal flexibility in various use cases. As you can see from the example above, however, the usefulness of the logo to convey a brand message defined in the briefing is completely ignored by some people. Ego and “personal taste” are put above the brand message. If there is also indecision (a negative trait for every entrepreneur), the result is an unnecessarily long design process and an extremely expensive brand design that costs way too much money. Not to mention the hurdles and problems that the customer puts in their own way in the medium and long run. Brand designers are indeed now and then like psychologists who sometimes have to protect their customers from themselves - in the interests of the customer and their company. A logo design has to fulfill a task. This task is to present a brand in a recognizable, professional and consistent way. The task is not to meet the CEO’s personal taste.

Not only start-ups need a brand design and a website design. No, even companies that have been in business for years keep coming back to the situation in which their brand design leaves them miserably in the lurch. There are of course various reasons for this. In any case, a professional rebranding and a new website are necessary. Find out eight things that prove that your corporate identity needs a make-over in this blog article. DOES THIS SOUND FAMILIAR? PROBLEM # 1: NOT ENOUGH CUSTOMERS There can be different reasons for this. One of the most common is that a brand fails to address the emotions of the target group - both on the website and in print materials. An inconsistent brand design, a logo made by your nephew and a user- un -friendly website look unprofessional. PROBLEM # 2: WHERE ARE THE GOOD EMPLOYEES? The shortage of good employees is a big problem for many companies. Coming across as an attractive employer is therefore a decisive factor for the future of a company. Employer branding that attracts the best employees needs first-class design, as we have implemented for Spedination , for example. In this interview , Thomas Kogler, Managing Director of Spedination, talks about how his company’s new corporate identity impacts the recruiting process. PROBLEM # 3: CHANGE OF STRATEGY Entrepreneurship is an exciting adventure. This also means that a company can change its strategy. Then it is important to be attractive and interesting for new markets, new target groups and new business partners in order to achieve the desired business goals. PROBLEM # 4: STARTING ALL OVER AGAIN … AND AGAIN … AND AGAIN … Every advertising campaign has to be created from scratch - be it flyers, print advertisements, online banners, social media posts or landing pages. That costs extra time, extra nerves and extra money. The reason for this is very simple: There is no brand design, so no design system for the brand. That makes every advertising tedious, time-consuming and expensive. PROBLEM # 5: EMBARRASSING ONLINE PERFORMANCE Unfortunately, you see it far too often: Outdated plugins on websites lead to embarrassing performance problems and delicate malfunctions on a website. This can happen due to outdated website technologies or simply to the fact that plugins have to be updated manually, which all too often does not happen in practice. Wordpress users know what we’re talking about here! PROBLEM # 6: EMBARRASSING OFFLINE PERFORMANCE Cheap logos in particular have a greater risk of being copied or even stolen. That can cause severe issues. Imagine, you hire a “designer” and instead of new customers, the lawyer knocks on your door, as we have already reported in one of our blog articles . It is also embarrassing when different logos for the same product or the same company are put into circulation by the company itself (unless, of course, it is a rebranding that has not been fully implemented yet). A badly made logo design can confuse customers. Even a self-made logo sooner or later confronts every company with certain hurdles and causes problems, since some basic things that make a good logo are of course not taken into account when you "design" it yourself. PROBLEM # 7: NO MOBILE WEBSITE Long loading times, unreadable text, bad usability, buttons that are way too small - these are common mistakes on mobile phone websites and make customers jump off. In addition to that: Since September 2020, the Google ranking of a website was shifted to "mobile first indexing" . Hence, the mobile version of a website is used for the Google ranking (no longer the desktop version!). Many websites are not fit for that and the Google ranking is massively impaired. PROBLEM # 8: UNFORTUNATELY, THE WEBSITE DOES NOT ADMINISTRATE ITSELF ... Do you see yourself able to manage your website yourself, including content updates and technical updates? We know from years of experience that this is almost always an illusion. Because: Hardly any entrepreneur has the expertise and - above all! - the time to take care of their own website on an ongoing, regular basis. The result: outdated content, outdated plugins, technical malfunctions and poor functioning of the website. YOU WANT TO HAVE THESE PROBLEMS SOLVED? HERE WE GO: SOLUTION # 1: A BRAND DESIGN THAT CREATES TRUST Design experts translate a company’s philosophy into a visual language that perfectly speaks to the company's target group, convinces them from the first point of contact and thus generates trust. A common thread that runs through from A to Z - online as well as offline - ensures a professional impression and thus creates trust and a good gut feeling. SOLUTION # 2: CONSISTENCY THANKS TO A DESIGN KIT The brand design serves as a design kit that makes everything look consistently amazing - regardless of whether it is a flyer, print advertisement, online banner, social media post or a landing page. That saves time, nerves and money. SOLUTION # 3: AMAZING WEBSITE PERFORMANCE We are website professionals and a 4 star Wix partner and know exactly how a brand design has to be implemented on a website. Our practical all-in-one packages perfectly combine a strong CMS, smooth functionality and first-class design. SOLUTION # 4: MULTIMEDIA INCLUDED No more expensive stock photos! Thousands of high-quality, royalty-free images and videos are integrated in the website backend, 100% free of charge. Our clients have access to first-class multimedia material for a website design that is really convincing and speaks to their target group’s emotions - without any additional costs. SOLUTION # 5: ONLINE MARKETING WITH ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Smart online marketing tools are automatically integrated in the backend of our websites. For online shops, advertising on Facebook and Instagram is enriched with artificial intelligence for maximum efficiency. SOLUTION # 6: WEBSITE OPTIMIZATION FOR DESKTOP + TABLET + PHONE All of our websites are designed to be extremely user-friendly and optimized for devices such as desktops, tablets and smartphones. Hello responsive web design! SOLUTION # 7: ON GOOGLE WITHIN 1 MINUTE The most beautiful website is useless if it cannot be found on Google. Every website we create is SEO optimized from the start and is indexed on Google within just 1 minute after going live. SOLUTION # 8: THE WEBSITE MANAGES "ITSELF" Our all-round carefree package saves our customers a significant amount of time. We care about website administration, secure hosting and implement any technical updates that might be necessary, without taking up our customers’ time. The website manages itself, so to speak. This means that our customers can concentrate fully on their business.

How about your customers seeing your brand several times a day - every time they pick up their smartphone? And how about you sending your customers notifications directly onto their phones - even if you don't even have their phone numbers? Sounds good? Then you will find here what you have been waiting for: your own native app that is linked to your website in real time, being available for free download in app stores around the world. MORE BRAND LOYALTY WITH AN APP In the course of our brand design service , we now offer our website customers the opportunity to get their own native app too - of course with their logo and their company colors. And best of all: the app is linked to the website data in real time. A separate update of the data in the app is not necessary. THIS IS WHY YOU NEED AN APP The facts are clear: mobile phone users spend 85% of their phone time in apps, but only 14% on mobile websites. You certainly want your business to fall into the much larger part of 85%, right? We create your native app in your look and feel. Your app looks like your business. The app strengthens your brand and your image, as your app icon is displayed on the home screen of your customers' mobile phones. This also strengthens the customers' trust in your brand. All contents of your app (such as blog, shop, events, subscription functions, forums, galleries, etc.) are linked to the data on your website and are thus updated in real time. This ensures immediate updates of your app without any additional programming effort. Notifications (or so-called "push notifications") ensure the best possible direct contact to your customers. For example: "10% discount on product X for members - today only." on your customer's mobile phone display. You can't get any closer to your customers. Your native app ensures maximum customer loyalty and is perfect for building or strengthening a community. People simply love to communicate and interact with like-minded people; especially if this takes place in a protected environment within an app. Do you sell products, services, subscriptions or tickets on your website? Great! But it gets even better: All purchases in the app are linked to your website backend. This means that there are no additional expenses for sales. To give you a comparison: For purchases within an app (so-called "in-app purchases") you would normally have to deduct approx. 30% commission to Apple or Google. WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A NATIVE APP AND A MOBILE WEBSITE? Nowadays, every good website is optimized for all end devices, including smartphones, of course. This has not only to do with ease of use, but also with Mobile First Indexing, which Google rigorously enforced by September 2020 (we covered this on our blog ). Google is now ranking a website based on its phone version. So far so good. The phone website is like your website, adapted in size to fit mobile phone screens. If you want to visit the website, you have to open the website in the phone's built in internet browser. A native app is a stand-alone unit that is visible as an app icon on the phone display; like the apps for WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and os on. Of course, you can also visit Facebook etc. via the internet browser of your phone - but it is more tedious and less inviting. Imagine getting a notification from Facebook for a friend request. You will see this notification as a red dot on the Facebook app icon on your phone. If you do not use the Facebook app, but only use Facebook on the internet browser, you must first open your internet browser on your phone, navigate to the Facebook website, log in and only then will you see that you have received a friend request. With a native app, you are directly and quickly in the perception of your customers. A native app is a real milestone in terms of digitization, customer proximity and user-friendliness. This takes user engagement to a whole new level. You can't get more brand loyalty. WHERE CAN PEOPLE GET YOUR APP? Your customers can get your app wherever they get all other apps: iOS users in the Apple App Store and Android users in the Google Play Store. In addition to that, your native app is equally functional for smartphones and tablets or iPads. This is how you cover all mobile devices with your app. THIS IS HOW YOU GET YOUR OWN, NATIVE APP As a Wix partner, we provide our website customers with exclusive pre-sale access to this innovative service. Contact us for your own native app.

We often hear start-ups saying they would get a professional brand design "in a few years". For the start, "something small" would also suffice (whatever "something small" may be). The aha moment a few years later is inevitable: that scenario backfires and causes immense follow-up costs. Andreas Rinnhofer, founder and managing director of Spedifort , reveals how badly this strategy backfires talking about his own example. At the end of 2020 we were hired to redesign the brand design of the Spedifort brand . Conclusion: In the end, it costs a significantly more money to create and implement a rebranding than to start with a professional brand design in the beginning. But read for yourself. Helene Clara Gamper: Dear Andreas, you are the founder and managing director of INN-ovativ KG , which unites several sub-brands under one umbrella brand. The most famous product is without a doubt Spedifort. What is Spedifort all about? Andreas Rinnhofer: With Spedifort, we have created a platform on which we have finally made e-learning for the forwarding and logistics industry accepted by the industry. HCG: How did you come up with the idea of starting such a business? How did that happen? Andreas Rinnhofer: I myself was a forwarding manager for years and struggled with two major issues: the shortage of skilled workers and the fact that certain legal requirements in classroom teaching were very difficult to transport - regardless of whether it was about training newcomers or instructing existing employees. One day my wife downloaded a fitness app, a "12 weeks - I'll make you slim" program. Although she was already slim - but hey, that's the way it is sometimes with women. (laughs) So I thought, why shouldn't it be possible to develop an "I'll make you a freight forwarder in 12 weeks" program? That was ultimately the starting point for Spedifort. As a customer, I was looking for it and even wanted to implement it myself within the company I was working for at that time. Both failed due to the lack of time - after all, everything always has to be kept up to date, you know, and it was just not an idea supported by the industry. So I just started this idea myself. HCG: At the beginning you created your own logo yourself. You have also defined two or three colors and a font yourself. How was the brand perceived by customers and business partners? Andreas Rinnhofer: In the beginning, we were perceived as a classic start-up. We founded Spedifort out of our garage, so to speak. From practice for practice was the motto and we are just not the high-class players like vehicle manufacturers, for example. So we thought that all of this was too expensive and we couldn't afford it. We're not a start-up with millions in funding. Of course, we always felt a bit bad at public appearances or presentations, when handing out flyers, at trade fairs and so on. I wanted to have a rebranding relatively quickly, but I didn't dare because I thought "what shall I do with a 30-page manual" that nobody cares about? In reality, it's not about a manual, but about an operation manual. And with these operating instructions we are now much faster and manage to make everything look equally good relatively quickly, which we simply did not do before. HCG: Many entrepreneurs mistakenly believe that a rebrand would be cheaper than a proper brand design from the start. Well, the cost of the design is one thing. But the re-creating of all marketing materials (online as well as offline) has to be added here on top. Many people forget about this. This is where the real costs of a rebranding become visible. How do you see this after your rebranding experience with Spedifort? Andreas Rinnhofer: In relation to other marketing and sales expenses, rebranding is a small investment if you are honest with yourself. But it was a huge issue for us to redesign everything internally. This went from ballpoint pens to Google ads, social media, stationery, Word templates and even the website. So all of this was an enormous amount of effort that we could have saved ourselves if we had had a professional brand design right from the start. Let me put it this way: I hire the architect before I have the house built and not the other way around. So it makes a lot of sense. HCG: How long did it take to convert everything to the new design? And what roughly did it cost? Andreas Rinnhofer: Switching to the new design is an ongoing process, it is still going on here and there. There are still some promotional materials in the old design. It took us many weeks to convert. An example: We had 10 different Google campaigns, each with 10 different sizes. That meant we had to change 100 ads. But it really pays off: With the new brand design, we are much cleaner, moving away from the start-up look and towards the corporate look. "In relation to other marketing and sales expenses, rebranding is a small investment if you are honest with yourself. But it was a huge issue for us to redesign everything internally. This went from ballpoint pens to Google ads, social media, stationery, Word templates and even the website. So all of this was an enormous amount of effort that we could have saved ourselves if we had had a professional brand design right from the start." HCG: What would you advise someone who has a great idea for a start-up and wants to start their own business? Andreas Rinnhofer: Just do it! 5% is the idea, 45% is doing it and 50% is selling. Many have ideas, but many do not implement their ideas. HCG: Andreas, I thank you for the interview and wish you and your team a lot of success with Spedifort. Book your free call here to benefit from first-class brand design and web design:

Good food is something very delightful. It is even nicer, however, when the enjoyment starts before the meal - with a visual delight. You always eat with your eyes first, right? Patricia Spieker from Gourmet Visuals knows like no other how to perfectly present culinary delights. She created her website with Wordpress in her early years, but has recently switched to Wix with her business. She tells us why in the following conversation. So look forward to an interview that will whet your appetite - for good food and a good website. Helene Clara Gamper: Hello Patricia, a few weeks ago you founded Gourmet Visuals. The name is cleverly chosen and says a lot: It's about culinary delights and visual appearance, right? Tell me, what exactly we can expect from Gourmet Visuals? Patricia Spieker: Hello Helene - first of all, thank you very much for this interview, I am very happy to be here! Your assumption is correct: Gourmet Visuals combines culinary art with visual content and offers photography, social media design, social media management and also web design for the catering, hotel, food manufacturers and food companies. HCG: How did you come up with the idea of starting such a business? Patricia Spieker: I've always had a passion for design, aesthetics and good food. In addition to my long career as a project manager in the digital and eCommerce sector, I have therefore completed my training as a photographer specializing in food and restaurant photography. In addition, I expanded my know-how to include the areas of social media and web design, and so I was able to combine all my passions. HCG: The COVID-19 pandemic has hit the gastronomy and restaurant industry with full force. Where do you see opportunities for Gourmet Visuals - and above all, support for the gastronomy sector through your service? I imagine it to be very challenging at the moment. Patricia Spieker: Yes, it is indeed - the pandemic hit the catering and hotel industries particularly hard. Nevertheless, even during this challenging time, many companies were able to convince their customers with innovative concepts. I think the most important lesson from last year is don't stop and keep moving. Eating has a huge emotional component - it is not for nothing that it is said " you eat with your eyes first" . It's about capturing this component visually and communicating it authentically to the customer; regardless of whether it is a restaurant, hotel bar or a food product. I help my customers to be noticed more intensively and to attract more guests through professional image material and a first-class digital presence via website and social media. HCG: You previously had websites on Wordpress with “Geschmacksnote” and “Lounge 20” and also implemented your customers' websites with Wordpress. Recently, you've switched to Wix for Gourmet Visuals. Why? Patricia Spieker: When it comes to the implementation of web design projects, there is no uniform procedure for me - every website must be individually tailored to the company, its goals and desired customers and reflect its brand values. I was looking for a tool that would enable me to implement outstanding and unique customer projects in the shortest possible time - I have now found that in WIX. HCG: What specifically bothered you about Wordpress? Patricia Spieker: The maintenance effort. In order to guarantee the greatest possible functionality, stability and security of the website, some plugins are usually necessary, which have to be kept up to date. Of course, this also has a negative effect on the loading speed of the page at some point and can result in high additional costs. Wordpress was also not self-explanatory enough for my customers who maintain their site to get along well with it. HCG: How did you feel about creating your new Wix website? A lot was certainly new and a completely different environment than Wordpress. Patricia Spieker: Definitely, but in an absolutely positive sense. The editor in WIX is very intuitive, easy to use and offers all the functionalities that I need for my own and my customers' websites. There are also numerous apps that can be easily integrated into the site that are specially tailored to my target group: online reservations, chat functions or newsletters. "So far, everyone has been enthusiastic about the new website, as it is much more structured and neater than the old one." HCG: What special features have you implemented on Gourmet Visuals? Patricia Spieker: On my website, I primarily focused on visual content, such as galleries and slide shows. I like it to be neat and clean, so I decided not to include animations, which are available in all variations in WIX. I also found the FAQ app very practical, which answers the most important questions my customers have on the starting page. I am also working on my blog with tips on food photography, social media and web design. HCG: A mobile phone website has been particularly important since September 2020. That was the time when Google switched to “mobile first indexing”. Since then, only the mobile phone version has been used for the Google ranking of a website. How have you been with the mobile version of your Wix website? Patricia Spieker: The WIX Editor also offers everything you need for a good design on the mobile phone. You can easily switch between desktop and mobile phone view and check at any time how the design and structure of the page will look on mobile devices. If necessary, you can simply hide objects in the mobile phone version. HCG: Speaking of SEO: A few years ago, Wix faced the issue that their websites had poor Google rankings and generally poor SEO opportunities. Wordpress was mostly highly praised in that aspect. Now that's old and gone. How do you see it, what experiences have you had? Patricia Spieker: I find the functions that WIX offers me for search engine optimization to be transparent and easy to implement. You can easily define the SEO settings, such as title and meta description, for each page. Setting up marketing tools like Google or Facebook Pixel also went smoothly - this was much more complicated in Wordpress. As far as the ranking of the site is concerned: I haven't noticed any negative effects here at all. HCG: How is the response to your new website? How did people react? Patricia Spieker: So far, everyone has been enthusiastic about the new website, as it is much more structured and neater than the old one. The websites of my customers are also very popular. HCG: If you could give points from 1 to 10, 1 point is very bad and 10 points is very good: All in all, how would you rate Wordpress and how would you rate Wix, based on your experience? Patricia Spieker: Wordpress is certainly a very powerful tool with many functionalities - but at the price of maintainability, manageability and clarity. In addition, there are additional costs for the required plugins - that's why I would personally give a 6 here. WIX, on the other hand, gets full marks from me: intuitive, transparent and easy to implement and support. And not to forget: fast support if something doesn't work out. HCG: Patricia, thank you for talking to us and I wish you all the best with Gourmet Visuals and lots of fun with your Wix website.