Are You Creating "Purple Cow" Sites?

You may be familiar with Seth Godin's best-seller “Purple Cow (Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable)”. If not, I highly recommend you read the 143-pager.

The basic concept behind it is how to differentiate yourself from the rest by being remarkable. If you see a black-and-white cow, there is nothing remarkable about it, BUT if you see a purple-and-white cow, THAT is different! I ask you: “How many purple cows have you seen?”

Here’s One Purple Cow I have seen

Do you remember the old bandages that are beige color? Well, here is a purple cow challenge: How woud you make a beige bandage remarkable? Quite simply, with super hero prints (Spiderman, Minions, Barbie... you name it!). This is exactly what Johnson&Johnson did with their BAND-AID product for kids.

The art of creating something remarkable has to do with being able to innovate. You can take two paths to do so: 

1. A truly new creation  

  • The car
  • The airplane
  • The telephone
  • Twitter

2. A variation of what already exists

  • Kindle – A digital version of the printed book--at least 500 years old
  • iPhone – The good old telephone on steroids!
  • Amazon.com – The online version of the brick-and-mortar store
  • Ebay.com – An enlarged marketplace for the anctient auction system
  • Facebook – University facebooks that now can be updated in a zap with tons of information

How to create a "Purple Cow" Website?

You and us--Joomlashack--have the challenge to work in the world of “transforming” what’s already available. You can create purple cow sites for your customer when you choose a template (ideally one from Joomlashack!) and make changes to its multiple variables:

1. Lay-out & Navigation

You can add or delete columns to organize your visual and written information and make the critical decision of where the navigation elements will be located at:

  • Main menu: horizontal or vertical
  • Footer: to include valuable information such as SEO terms
  • Content type: balance between visual & written content on the homepage and internal pages

2. Font

There are sooooo many fonts available now that you can really make a remarkable site with just its font types. You can choose by

  • Font type: sans, sans serif, or handwriting.
  • Font attributes: thickness, slant, and width
  • Font language: Latin, Cyrillic, or Greek

A great place to check the gazillion of font types is Google fonts

3. Color Palette

Color is a world of its own. For your purple cow site, you may want to think about intentisity, tone, and rhythm of the palette. 

Great sources of insipiration for color palettes include:

  • Nature: look at the color combinations in a forest, desert, ocean, sunrise/sunset
  • Items:  check high-end motorcycles, cars, jewelry, watches, Persian rugs
  • Art: You can go from impressionist options (Monet & van Gogh), to modern (Picasso & Dali)
  • Unthinkables: Italian or Spanish tiles, candles, Soaps, fruits & vegetables

 All our Joomla templates incorporate many of these visual design variables, and we think each of our templates is remarkable ;-) ... yet, we challenge you to use one of these templates and make it even more remarkable with your own inspiration.  If you want to share it with us, please do so in our comments section on this blog post. 

 

Purple cow image by deviantart.com