Monday, March 24th, 2008
Ok, now for the second part of my usability post. In the first part of Usability For The Masses, I talked about not cramming content on your homepage and about user-friendly sites and how they can help benefit your company and your website in dramatic ways. In this segment I will speak about the layout of your website. Again, this is only in my eyes and how I feel about usability. Some may completely disagree with this entire post and all my methods, but they seem to work for me and for my clients. So I am sticking to them, and sharing what may help you and your clients. Layout structure is very important in any website, no matter what industry you are in. The layout of your website also goes back to content a bit, but I want to focus on a more important subject with content, its layout. You want to get your message across in ways that captivate the visitor and make them connect with your company, its product or service. Thus, the way you layout your website and it’s content is very important. With most sites you see are plain like a bucket of white paint. Basic header with navigation under, then an image, sub navigation on one side (normally the left, which is also bad) and content on the right segment of the site. This is a very basic and most of the time very user-friendly. However, you really want to get creative and dig deep down into your personality, your company’s core values and what you want the company to stand for. For example, say you own an online music store, where customers can buy punk rock CD’s. You are going to market to a segment that has interest in punk rock music. So basically, a plain site with a navigation on the left, content on the right and a main navigation and header above that would probably work. However it really would be boring to the crowd you are marketing to (which could be men and women ages 14 to 37). Anyone older than that, is more than likely having a mid life crisis, and would be purchasing from live stores where the crowd hangs out at. Anyone in that age group, looking to buy punk rock music, is not going to want to browse through a boring site, thus more than likely they will leave before they get to the second page. On the other hand you could be putting together a very nice site for your golf community. You don’t want Tiger Woods going to the site to check out where he will be playing next and think he is on a grungy golf course with thousand dollar putters do you? You want to look professional, confident and clean. This all goes back to your brand, and the market segment you are looking to go after.
Thursday, February 21st, 2008
Have you ever been to a site and just got lost in all the content. Maybe it takes you an hour or two just to find the contact us page? I recall a lot of web sites that I have personally been to that had me so frustrated looking for different things I just ended up closing out the browser and even turning my computer off. Keep in mind that I have more patience with that sort of stuff then others. Most surfers would have abandoned the site 59 minutes earlier then I did. So we know that there are tons of sites out there that really are not user-friendly. What you may not know is what makes a site user-friendly. I am going to talk for a bit on Web Usability and how you can improve usability on your own site. I am going to speak from my point of view. Now there are several different views on usability, and mine may not be the best. Take it or leave it, lets get started on my points.
First and foremost is your contact information. This should be displayed in either a phone number or email address at the top of your page. There should also be a contact us link in your main navigation at the top of the page as well. Your contact information is the most important part of your site I believe. You may be offering a product, but it won’t do you a bit of good if your customers can not contact you to inquire about it or for that matter order it. Perhaps you may be offering a service that can be purchased online. Well that is all fine and dandy, but what happens when a customer has a question about the service and needs to contact you immediately? I am sure you know that they do not want to dig deep into your site for a contact us page, phone number or email. Also when you show your contact details upfront, right away the customer feels secure doing business with you. It shows you are not trying to avoid speaking with them about your product or service and actually are welcoming them to ask you questions or make comments. So folks, make your contact us information easily accessible.
Next lets focus a little on content. I see site after site after site, that has all the information packed jam tight on the homepage. That is a big no no. Sure, you want to be informative on your homepage, but thats just that its a homepage. You still want the visitor to search through the entire site to get a good feel of your business and the products and services you offer. If your page looks cluttered when the visitors goes to the site, most likely they are not going to stay on the site very long, let alone find what they’re looking for. So be informative on your homepage, yet keep it brief, if that makes sense. You may be thinking to yourself, well how do I keep it brief? Here is an example. If you are a web hosting company, I wouldn’t recommend putting your top three plans, your support options, your guarantees, your specials, and a domain name availability checker on your homepage. Why? Well it tells the customer what plans you have (without any regard to a full list of features), a domain availability checker (with no pricing or stipulations shown), support information (ok, thats great you offer support), normally a description of your company, and testimonials. WOW that is a lot of information on one single page. More then likely it will look cluttered (unless ofcourse you make a lot of whitespace, and have the visitor scroll for a mile to get to the end of the page. This will drive the visitor away before they navigate through the rest of the page to actually see what you offer in-depth. So keep it short and sweet.
Stay tuned for part 2 - I know this article is short but I will come back for part 2 soon.
Thursday, February 14th, 2008
So you have a great business idea. You want to sell pink lemonade to your neighbors. Great business idea! However, even that type of business should have a web presence. Lets face it, most of the world’s population is doing things on the internet now a days. Heck, you can even order a pizza and have it at your door in 30 minutes or less. So, from ordering pizza to chit chatting with friends, your daily routine involves the internet in some way shape or form. It is not like a life or death thing, however it can be for your business. Being accessible is a very important aspect in any business. Your customers want a variety of ways to contact you, see your products and order among other things. With that being said, lets discuss some of the obstacles in your way.
1. Getting an idea: Well I am sure you already have an idea by now if you are reading this. Your idea is your business, we’re sure it’s a great one too! So now that you have a vision for your business now its time to pinpoint your target audience. What is a target audience? That is the type of people you want to purchase your product. Some of us are lucky and have the world as our target audience. Like web design for instance can be marketing to a much larger audience, which includes the business world. On the other hand you may not be as lucky as some, and may be offering a product that a certain age group would have interest in. Or maybe you offer children’s products such as clothing. In this case you must figure out who you want to market to. Once you have that in place, it will be much easier to create a website, and will prove to have greater success online and off.
2. Web Hosting: Lets chit chat for a minute about web hosting. You may be asking yourself what web hosting is. Well, a “web hosting provider” is a company that rents space and bandwidth to you for a monthly price. You can think of it as virtual real estate. Typically you will have a few web hosting plans to choose from. Since you are a new comer to the world wide web, it may be a good idea to start off with the smallest package. Remember, most web hosting providers will allow you to upgrade for free if you reach your limit on space and/or bandwidth. For web hosting, it doesn’t get much better than Media Temple. You can visit them at http://www.mediatemple.net. Also to compare web hosting providers, you can visit Top Hosts at http://www.tophosts.com. If you want to really get in-depth with web hosting you can head over to Web Hosting Talk at http://www.webhostingtalk.com, its the largest web hosting community on the net and a very good resource.
3. Web Design: So you have your great idea and now you have an excellent web hosting provider. Next you need to focus on a web site design. This can be touchy. Remember, your web site will be your online store, so its imperative that it look good. With respect to looking good, it must also function excellent. By this we mean user-friendly. You don’t want your visitors getting lost in the site looking for your terms of service, contact us information and especially your ordering page. You may be a lucky son of a gun and have the natural ability to create excellent web site designs and just by chance be able to code that excellence into valid XHTML code. If not, then I would strongly recommend you to hire a professional web designer. A professional can deliver the solid brand that your company will need to excel on the net. You may have heard of CMS, which stands for Content Management System. You can request that your site be integrated into a content management system by your designer of choice. What will a CMS do for you? A CMS has many benefits, but most importantly for a newbie such as yourself it allow you to easily edit, or add content to your site. With that being said, you can attempt to take a stab at it yourself, or you can contact real professionals (DevGuys makes a good fit for that).
There is more to it then just that, but you get the jest of it. So let’s have a recap. First find a plan, and darn good one. I wouldn’t recommend being the next MySpace, YouTube or Break.com. These are websites that have already shined. It would be a miracle if they were beat out. Find something original, that will attract people and make a brand! You will be successful if you market it the correct way. Second, get a domain name and web hosting. Make sure you ask a lot of questions to the future home of your web site, as it will save you a lot of headache in the long run. Go with a popular provider that has great reviews. There is an excellent site out there for web hosting reviews, over at WHReviews. You can visit them at http://www.whreviews.com 3. Get your web site designed by a professional - US
That about covers you new comers. The world is waiting for the next big thing, so hurry up!
Saturday, February 9th, 2008
So you have heard about the new web 4.0 right? You DIDN’T? Well thats because it doesn’t exist. But web 2.0 does in fact exist. Let’s chit chat a bit about web 2.0 and what it really means. Does web 2.0 mean sweet looking eye candy icons, mirror effects, rounded corners, LOTS of white space and huge text in bright colors like neon greens and bright oranges on a white background? We would like to think it does not. However, we do believe it is a style of design mixed with application development. Many people have different views on the whole “web 2.0″ topic. Some think its glassy buttons, while others think its sweet web applications like MySpace style sites and YouTube scripts. Let’s dig a bit deeper to really bring out the term web 2.0 and get a true meaning on it. We don’t like to think of it as just a “buzz word” for marketing. Its much more powerful and extensive than just that. Before 2.0 you had web 1.0 (ummm where do they come up with this stuff?) When web 1.0 was around you had things like Double Click, mp3.com, domain name speculation, Britannica Online among other. With web 2.0 you now have blogs, wiki, Flikr, Syndication, cost per click and many many many others. I think the first sign of the web 2.0 transition was blogging. I mean back in 2001, who the heck blogged? Not many folks I know even knew what a blog was.
So what does web 2.0 have to do with the design?
Well if you compare sites from back in the day when Ricky Lake was still on TV (was the internet around back then??) You will see the style of design it was. Mostly small text, hardly any white space, no innovation or creativity in navigation menus and list goes on. Now look at sites like http://www.traineo.com Very web 2.0 style design with larger text, glassy icons and buttons, more stylish navigation menus, butt loads of white space and clean spiffy website. Compare a few sites from the “Ricky Lake” days to now. A lot cleaner, smoother and more appealing then before. Of course everything changes with time right? Well at this time the internet and the public was starting to take note to new sites that were coming to the scene like MySpace, YouTube and different social sites. Combined with the new evolving style of design, the two just sort of went together like Oreo’s and Milk. So while some say that web 2.0 is a design style. We’d like to think of it as an internet revolution with kick ass web apps and awesome clean web designs.
