What's in a name? And the power of repetition...

I'm taking a momentary break from a website I'm designing for a client. I'm encountering something I encounter a lot with small businesses and nonprofits - inconsistent naming conventions. What do I mean and why does it matter? Let me put it this way, when I worked full time at an ad agency, one of the things we were trained to do AS we worked, was make sure things were always referred to by the same name wherever they appeared. For designers its an aspect of branding 101. It meant if "Wonderous Widgets" appeared 3 times on a page, 10 times in a brochure or 100 times in a website, it appeared as "Wonderous Widgets" in every single instance, in each and every format throughout a given campaign. Not sometimes as "WW" or other times as "Fancy Widgets", or occasionally as "Great Gadgets", but ALWAYS as "Wonderous Widgets".

Its a bit like the opposite of writing, where you try never to use the same word twice. In writing its assumed everybody understands the meaning of common words and for artistic reasons you want variety. When it comes to specific services, products or campaigns you are promoting that are unique to your business - using the same word or phrase to describe them each and every time will help your customers know what you're talking about. Otherwise you run the risk of confusing or distracting them [with thoughts like, "are Wonderous Widgets the same as Fancy Widgets? Is one better than the other? I definitely want the best Widget. I better wait until I'm sure I'm getting the best Widget possible. Maybe I'll try another site].

Of course what stands in the way of small businesses and nonprofits being able to do this successfully, is time and energy. It can be very time consuming to keep all the naming conventions square. But what's WAY more time consuming, is when you don't have any...

It takes a little planning ahead, a system and some discipline. Make yourself a cheat sheet - or as we call it in design, a "style guide". It will help you remember what your naming conventions are. And if you decide to change the way you name something, then remember, you want to change it EVERYWHERE it appears. And if you're working with a designer, you'll save yourself a bundle of cash if you make these decisions before they start working on your creative campaigns. :-)