Your Van Is Your Best Salesperson: Don’t Let It Make These Mistakes Driving around Burnley, from the M65 corridor to the town centre, you see them everywhere. White vans, silver vans, big vans, and small vans. They are the lifeblood of local business, carrying tools, delivering goods, and getting tradespeople from one job to the next. For many businesses in East Lancashire, their van isn’t just a vehicle; it’s a mobile billboard, a 24/7 advertisement, and often the very first impression a potential customer has of their brand. When done right, van graphics can be one of the most cost-effective marketing tools you will ever invest in. They generate leads while you are parked at a job, build brand recognition while you are stuck in traffic, and create a professional image that instils trust. But when done wrong, they can be a waste of money at best, and at worst, they can actually damage your brand’s reputation. Many well-meaning business owners make the same common mistakes, turning their potential marketing powerhouse into a confusing, unprofessional, or simply invisible message on wheels. To ensure your investment pays off for years to come, let’s break down the most common mistakes to avoid in Burnley van graphics. Trying to Say Everything at Once This is perhaps the biggest and most common mistake. You are proud of your business, and you want everyone to know everything you do. You’re a plumber, but you also do boiler servicing, bathroom installations, landlord certificates, emergency callouts, and underfloor heating. The temptation is to list every single service on the side of your van in a long list of bullet points. The problem is, your audience is not a captive one. They are other drivers, pedestrians, and homeowners who will likely see your van for a mere three to five seconds as it passes by. In that short window, the human brain cannot read and process a long list of text. It just becomes visual noise, a jumble of words that get completely ignored. Your van turns from a sharp advertisement into a cluttered mess. Think of your van graphics like a motorway billboard, not a newspaper ad. What is the most critical information someone needs to know in three seconds? * Who you are (Your Company Name) * What you do (The primary service, e.g., “Plumbing & Heating”) * How to contact you (A clear phone number and website) Anything more than this risks diluting the main message. You want someone in Padiham or Nelson to glance at your van and instantly understand what you do and how to call you. They can visit your website or call you to find out about the specifics. The job of the van is to create the initial connection, not to close the entire deal on the side of the road. Choosing Style Over Substance with Fonts You have found a beautiful, elegant, swirling font online that you think looks incredibly classy. The problem is, it’s difficult to read when it’s stationary on a computer screen, let alone when it’s on the side of a moving vehicle viewed from 30 feet away on a grey Burnley afternoon. Font choice is critical for readability. Ornate, cursive, or overly thin fonts are disastrous for vehicle graphics. They blur together at a distance and become completely illegible at speed. This is especially true for the most important information, your phone number and website. If a potential customer has to squint and struggle to read your contact details, they won’t bother. They will just call the next van they see with a big, bold, clear number. The key is to prioritise clarity and readability above all else. * Choose clean, bold fonts. Sans-serif fonts like Helvetica, Arial, or Franklin Gothic are popular for a reason, they are incredibly easy to read from a distance. * Ensure high contrast. Dark text on a light background or light text on a dark background is essential. Avoid placing text over a busy or multi-coloured image without a solid block of colour behind it. * Size matters. Your company name and phone number should be the largest text elements on the design, easily readable from across the street. Your van graphics are a tool for generating business, not just a piece of art. The design must be functional first and foremost. Using Low-Resolution Images and Logos You have a logo on your website or your Facebook page. It looks great on screen, so you send that small JPEG file to the sign maker and ask them to put it on the side of your van. The result is a disaster. The logo is pixelated, blurry, and looks incredibly unprofessional. Digital images are made up of pixels. When you take a small image and try to enlarge it to the size of a van door, the software has to guess what to fill the gaps with. This leads to that blocky, fuzzy look that screams amateur. It instantly cheapens your brand and suggests a lack of attention to detail, which is not the message you want to send to potential customers. The solution is to always use vector graphics for logos and design elements. Vector files, with extensions like .ai, .eps, or .svg, are not made of pixels. They are made of mathematical equations. This means they can be scaled to any size, from a business card to the side of a building, with absolutely no loss of quality. They will always be perfectly sharp and crisp. If you had your logo professionally designed, your designer should be able to provide you with the vector file. If you don’t have one, it’s worth the investment to have your current logo professionally recreated in a vector format before you even think about van graphics. Ignoring the Van’s Actual Shape A van is not a flat canvas. It has curves, contours, recesses, door handles, windows, fuel caps, and trim. A design that looks perfect on a flat 2D computer screen
