Let me answer that question by having you ponder another question. How much does good design influence you when you buy something? When you go grocery shopping, does the design of the packaging affect which food products you buy? How does the look of a car on the outside and inside change how you feel about purchasing the car? During your house-hunting, does the look and layout of the house influence whether you want to buy it?The reality is that design plays a crucial role in consumers purchasing products. If you have not been taking notice how good design affects how you buy stuff, start taking note of it.

So how do you obtain a professional look to your products? First you need to acquire the services of a professional graphic designer. Whether you have one on your staff or have to hire one, do not attempt to design your products if you are not skilled in this area. Consumers can pick out the "homemade" design from a mile away. What if you have one of those templates you bought? Consider how many others bought them also. You may have difficulty making your product stand out and be unique. Plus the template you bought may not reach your type of customer either.

What do you need to look for in a graphic designer? Obviously years of experience is necessary. Your friend's nephew who has been tinkering with photo editing software may not be your best choice to design a product that will represent your company. Experience with designing products for the same or similar markets as yours is a great asset. Check and see if the graphic designer has a portfolio for you to examine. Make sure that the graphic designer can do a quality design that will convert prospects into customers, not just eye-candy to look at. Something that looks really good to you may not necessarily attract clients to buy your product.

Once you have secured the services of a professional graphic designer, find out exactly what he or she needs from you. Then make sure you give everything required to the graphic designer. Try your best not to give what is needed by piece-meal. In other words, do not give a few things here then wait a fews days then give a few more required pieces and so on. For the graphic designer to give you the best he or she can, make sure everything that is needed is given in short order. It is hard to design a piece well when everything is not there and may end up requiring more changes than necessary thus raising your costs for design.

Any graphics or images that are required need to be high resolution. Web images are not high resolution. Even if your product design is going to be for the web only, give the graphic designer high quality images. It will make the job easier. The resolution of a web image is usually 72 dots per inch or dpi. An image that is considered high resolution will be 300 dpi. Dots per inch is simply how many dots or pixels that are in one inch on your computer monitor or paper. The higher the dpi, the more information the graphic has to make a good image. Curves and shades look smoother with a higher dpi. Any editing will look more seamless with graphics that are a higher dpi. It is very difficult to use low resolution images an make quality work out of them. After the design is finished it is simple to make the image web-ready.

Also do not have your graphic designer overload your design with images. Less is more here. A graphic designer worth their weight will know how to design well with "whitespace" - the area where there is no design element. Too many graphics or images is just distracting and will be less successful in converting sales.

Also have in your plans the time needed for the graphic designer to do a quality job. Handing a graphic designer a job that needed to be done yesterday will probably will not get you the very best he or she can do. That does not mean it will not be good, just not the best.

To learn more on how to create successful products through targeted design, go to http://www.designedforsuccessseries.com and order the Designed For Success Series for more