This Friday’s PSA for small business owners is a reminder that when it comes to branding and marketing, the KISS principle (pardon the rudeness!) applies every time:

> Is your logo too detailed? Can it be discerned easily, even from a distance or in a small footprint? Can you remove anything that is extraneous and doesn’t contribute to your brand promise? If there is more than one idea or theme you could be confusing your potential audience, and a confused audience is also a disengaged one!

> Is your website too text-heavy? Can someone skim your homepage and easily tell what you are all about? Consider conducting usability testing on your site or install a heat map tool like hotjar to determine what customers are actually doing on your site, or worse, if they are leaving without engaging with your site at all!

> Does your packaging employ the principle of visual hierarchy? Use colour, typeface weight, and scale to create a hierarchy of messaging so that it is clear to the consumer what it is you are trying to say. If all of your messages carry equal visual weight, you are asking the customer to make the decision about what to read first, and a consumer who is asked to figure out for themselves is (you guessed it) a disengaged one!