Pleasanton Web Design

I ran across my notes on a branding presentation given by Jared Spool at the Silicon Valley Web Guild some years ago. I found the PDF notes for the presentation still on the Web Guild website. The title of the talk was Strike Up The Brand – How to Design For Branding. If you haven’t seen Jared Spool of User Interface Engineering (UIE) talk, I’d highly recommend it. He’s very entertaining and informative. I vaguely remember him standing up at the podium with several rolls of toilet paper. But it was funny. And informative. Not like Carrot Top. Anyway, here are my typed notes from the presentation:

Branding is:
1. Accumulative
2. A conditioning process
3. Associate symbols, colors and phrases with certain emotions

Affinity Branding
1. Placing logo near objects.
2. Establishing close relationship between the branding element and product.

Example: You see some jeans in the store with the Calvin Klein label on them. You may have been conditioned to associate Calvin Klein with quality or fashion, so you may see the jeans in front of you has having those characteristics because of their association with the logo.

Dispositional Branding
1. Not placing logo near objects
2. Do what you are predisposed for
3. No clues available – there is nothing in front of you to help make the choice
4. Depends on situation

Example: If someone were to ask you what service you would use to ship a package across the country and have it get there the next morning, you would probably say FedEx. You have the disposition or tendency to associate the service with their brand, without being given presented with a choice between FedEx or DHL, for instance. However, you may have chosen DHL.

Indirect Messaging
1. Using slogans and images to condition the customer to the brand
2. Must be repetitive
3. Takes time
4. Easy to Design

Direct Experience
1. Using actual experience to condition
2. More effective
3. Harder to design

The Ford Website given as an example of Indirect messaging. Commercials on the Website interrupt and are unpleasant. Their Website had many logos everywhere, but didn’t help navigation. They were just distracting.

Best thing you can do in branding a site is to give a good experience, i.e. allow user to complete task (good direct experience). Logos and advertisements can work against you.

Associate the brand with good experience on your Website.

Usability

The experience dominates the user’s visit. There is NO evidence to support that fast loading sites are easier to use. The opposite may be true.

How slow is too slow?

Perceptions of users on speed of download is uniform and consistent (given different tasks they chose themselves).
1. No correlation between download time and perception of download time.
2. There is correlation between perceived download time and completio of task.
3. Zeigarnik effect – The Zeigarnik effect states that people remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed ones. If you don’t let the user complete the task they visited your Website for, they will remember that as a negative and associate it with your brand.

Other correlations:
· Fun
· Professional
· Whether or not they would return

Task completion is paramount!

Seducible moments

After the user completes a task they are more susceptible to being marketed. Also, you can offer alternative product selections.

A search engine on a Website is not good for sales. More purchases come after clicking on categories than after using a search engine. If they need to use the search engine, your navigation is too hard. Fix it.

The very first thing you need to do when beginning the graphic design of a Website is to make two related decisions:

• Will the Website be a fixed size, or will it stretch (or shrink) to fit the visitor’s screen resolution and
• What screen resolution will you optimize for?

For a while, 800 x 600 at fixed resolution has been very popular. And for a while, 1024 x 768 has been the most common screen resolution used by Web surfers ’round these parts. Take a look at my stats from last week:

Screen Resolution Percent

1) 1024×768: 63.81%

2) 800×600: 10.81%

3) 1280×1024: 10.30%

4 ) 1280×800: 2.70%

5) 1152×864: 2.67%

6) 1440×900: 1.57%

7) 1680×1050: 1.17%

8) 1280×768: 1.17%

9) 1600×1200: 1.06%

10) 1280×960: 0.95%

So, if that is anywhere near typical, most of the visitors to those 800×600 fixed width Websites are seeing a lot of unused real estate on their screen. That probably accounts for the recent comeback of fancy page background patterns I’ve noticed over the past couple of years.

Just as 640×480 bit the dust, it looks like 800×600 could be nearing it’s demise in the next couple of years. Not yet though. Ten percent of potential customers is a lot of people to give the finger to by placing crucial content outside of their 800×600 comfort zone. Here are my recommendations:

1. Use a page design that fills the screen at 1024×768, but has no crucial content outside of the 800×600 box.
2. Look at the page design at the different screen resolutions listed above that have a visitor percentage of 2.5 or more.
3. Optimize the page for 1024×768, but make sure it still looks good, and displays crucial content at 800×600 and 1280×1024.
4. Make sure the page design doesn’t fall apart at 1280×800 or 1152×864.

I expect that all those people surfing with 1024×768 screen resolution are getting pretty bored of seeing that 800×600 stripe down the middle of their screen, no matter how pretty the background pattern is. Designing for 1024×768 will make your Websites stand out, and give at least the appearance of better use of screen real estate.

Here’s a recap of a recent Web Guild meeting

Advanced Search Marketing
Silicon Valley Web Guild
12/13/06

Speakers:

• Barbara Coll, Founder & Search Specialist, WebMama
• Jessie Stricchiola, Founder, Alchemist Media
• Moderator: Massimo Burgio, Search Specialist, Global Search Interactive

Barbara Coll works for large companies that have large advertising budgets. She started off by sharing the insight that there are not enough searches on the internet to capture all of the possible investment. The ROI for search marketing is so much better than that of conventional marketing channels, that companies would like to invest more, but there just aren’t enough clicks.

Big companies don’t just try to get the number on spot on the SERPS for their chosen keyword or phrase. They want to OWN the page. They want to be show up on the sponsored links (pay per click) as well as having as many of the natural results as possible.

Big companies also would like to own their own brand and control their image on the internet. It’s called “reputation management.” To the extent it’s possible to keep “your company sucks” and the like off of the SERPS, they are willing, or should be willing to pay to do it.

I believe she offered this tip (but I might be mistaken): The most valueable link you can buy for ranking in Google is a listing in Yahoo Directory. I’ve purchased these for clients in the past, and I think they were $299/yr. My little secret – if you buy it for the first year and cancel, they won’t remove your listing! Or at least they haven’t for the sites I’ve worked on. Anyway, I agree, that is one valuable backlink. Working on natural search engine position is crucial, even if you are running spend on PPC campaigns. Contextual ads convert at 1/5 the rate as search, so natural search engine position should always be on the radar.

Barbara also advised against pulling your yellow pages ad. That is, until everyone has their computer by the phone in the kitchen, like they do the phone book.

A company’s IT team is the biggest potential barrier to search engine marketing. A lot of the changes necessary for search engine optimization fall into their realm.

Jessie, who does search engine optimization (SEO) for smaller organizations says “Always optimize for organic.” Like I stated earlier. I guess that’s where I got the idea. She also warns to expect a “grandfathering period,” or a period of around 6 months, for changes to take hold.

Here are some additional tips, compliments of Jessie:

• Make sure all data is accessible.
• Don’t have site structure that blocks spiders.
• Use consistent themes – ensure your site is thematically structured.
• Develop more content – everything in print should be on site to increase site size and therefore pagerank.

That’s all I have time for now. Coming soon – Silicon Valley Web Guild, Advanced Search Marketing – Part 2

The following is an overview of our Web design process, from the initial contact to the completion of the Website.

1. Request For Quote (RFQ) - Using the RFQ form on our Website, potential clients tell us about their business, and what they would like to get out of their Website. This is actually the start of the discovery phase of the Web design process, and we eventually use this information in the design of your Website. In fact, to properly quote a Web design project, we need to create a thumbnail design first.

2. Proposal – Given the information submitted on the RFQ, and the resulting thumbnail design we create, we provide the client with a proposal that defines the project. Included is the cost and a rough schedule. Additions or changes to the site that go beyond the scope of this proposal are considered “change orders” and are subject to additional fees or re quoting.

3. Discovery – Once the proposal has been accepted the initial payment had been made, we begin to gather as much information about the company, industry and clients as possible. The more we know about the business and Website visitors, the the better we will be able to create a Website that meets the businesses needs and exceeds the client’s expectations.

4. Planning – After all of the relevant information is gathered, we prepare the planning documents that will guide us in building the Website. We also plan the promotion and marketing of the Website at this point, because the way it is put together will have a significant effect on search engine rankings down the road. It is important to plan and design with promotion in mind. Upon approval of the planning documents, we move to the next phase of the process – Design.

5. Design – At this point, using the planning documents as our blueprint, we will determine how to best produce the Website. The design process consists two basic phases:

• Information Architecture – How the information will be diced up, organized and presented to the user, and how they will move around in the site (navigation).
• Graphic Design – How the site will look. The graphic design work comes later in the process than many clients expect. It is impossible to create a good graphic design without first knowing the information architecture. If the graphic design is done first, and then the information architecture is determined, undoubtedly the graphic design needs to be tweaked, usually with negative consequences.

6. Production – Once the site is designed, we put together a list of all the things we will need to complete the site. This document is called the “production list.” Using this list, we create all of the “assets” (graphics, text, documents, databases) that are used in the next phase of the design process – Integration.

7. Integration – Now that we have all of the parts ready, it’s time to put it all together on the development server. Our patience and planning has paid off. At the end of this step the Website looks great, works, and is ready for testing. We don’t do “Under Construction.”

8. Testing – We test your site to meet all specifications set forth in the planning documents. We make sure that the site loads fast and all of the links work on the browsers and operating systems specified.

9. Deployment – Once it is tested, the Website is ready for the world to see. We transfer the Website to the live host server, perform necessary set up and it is usually up and running the next day.

10. Promotion – Now that the Website is available on the Internet, we need to tell everyone how to find it. It can take a few hours or a few months for the visitors to start arriving, depending on the strategy taken, and on the advertising budget.

Whether you are a Web designer, or the buyer of Web design
services, the planning phase of the Web design process is
the most important phase. Planning requires a significant
amount of effort before there is a visable product, so it
is sometimes a hard-sell to business people, especially those
who are used to “flying by the seat of their pants.”
I often find, however, that once involved in the process,
the client gains valuable insights into their business, their
market, their clients, and their competitors. Taking time
to really plan a Website project, which requires stepping
back and thinking, in a systematic way, about how they are
approaching their business, gives the Website buyer an unexpected
added value, especially if they are in start-up mode.

The first step in planning a Website is define the project.
You want to make sure that you, as Web designer, and the client
are on the same page, and remain on the same page throughout
the project. The following are questions that need answers:

• Project Scope - What will be included in the
  project and what will not be included?

• Audience – Who are the main types of people who
  will be visiting the Website, what are their characteristics,
  and why will they be visiting the Website. What will the
  want to do?
• Competition – Who are the competitors and what
  do their Websites do and look like?
• Niche – Specifically what market niche does the
  business occupy or want to occupy?
• Positioning – What is the company’s positioning
  strategy for their niche? Why buy their product or service
  over the competition?

• Overall goals - What does the business want
  to acheive through the Website? Sell products? Provide online
  resources? Present a professional image?
• Business processes - How will the Website fit
  into the company’s business processes? How will it integrate
  into those off-line processes?
• Marketing and branding strategies – What existing
  marketing or branding stategies can be leveraged for use
  on the Website?
• Workflows - What processes will need to be completed
  on the Website, described in a step by step fashion?

• Goals for Web site – What specific, numerically
  defined goals exist for the Website. What are the expectations?
• Keywords/Search Terms – What words will people
  searching for products/services/information use to find
  the client’s Website, using the major search engines?
• Message - What message should the Website communicate
  to the user, either explicitly or implicitly?
• Perception – How should the user percieve the
  business, based on visiting the Website?
• Action - What action or actions should the visitor
  take while on the Website?
• Technology – What technology should be used in
  designing and building the Website?
• Marketing – How will the Website be marketed?
  How will the business get visitors there?
• Administrative – How will the Website be administered
  and maintained after it is launched?
• Schedule – When does the Website need to be complete?
  When will decision makers be available or unavailable to
  approve deliverables throught the process?
• Budget - What is the budget for the project?
  What is the ongoing budget for maintenance and updates?
  What is the budget for promotion?

The answers to these questions should be put into a “creative
brief” or “project definition” document that
will be used as a touchstone throughout the design process.
The information in the planning documents should be as detailed
as possible, and based on as much empiricle evidence as possible.
Having someone fill the a questionnaire off the top of their
head will be useful, but to the extent it rely’s on guesses
or false assumptions, it will provide flaws in the planning
and therefore flaws in the finished Website.

Find out more
about TP Designs’ Web design process.

Find out more
about TP Designs’ Web design services.

See TP Designs’ Request for Quote (RFQ)
Form

What is Web design? The definition of “Web Design” can vary, depending on who you ask. Web designers working for one company may perform different tasks than Web designers working for another company. The basic answer is that Web design is the design of a Web page or Website, including the information and user interface design, but not including programming. Programming falls under the definition of Web development, or Web application programming (to name two of many).

At a smaller company, with fewer people and more overlap of job descriptions, Web design can be defined as the whole production of the Website from start to finish. To clarify this a bit, let’s outline the process of creating a Website from scratch.

1. Discovery

In this step, the Web designer finds out as much about the company and its clients as possible, paying special attention to the user audience of the Website.

2. Planning

Project definition documents are created as a guide to the creation of the Website. It is important that the scope, audience and goals of the Website are clearly defined during this stage, so the resulting project definition can be used as a touchstone to keep everyone on track throughout the process.

3. Information Design

How will the information be broken down and presented to the user? If what the user will be looking for is well defined in the discovery and planning stages, this will be an easier job. The information design, or information architecture, step includes design of the navigation and is the most critical step in making the Website user-friendly.

4. Graphic Design

Graphic design may seem trivial to some, but it is also a very important factor in the usability of the Website. It isn’t just about making the Website look pretty. It is also about visual balance and readable typography, both of which are critical in the creation of a user-friendly Web design.

When these steps have been completed, you have a finished Web design. Loosely speaking, putting it together is called Web production, and making it work is called Web development.

Find out more about TP Designs’ Web design process.

Find out more about TP Designs’ Web design services.

From the standpoint of a web designer there are two perspectives you can take on how the website will be used. The first is the most obvious to most website buyers. It is the sales and marketing perspective. You want a website to sell products. You would like to lead the customer down the click path of your choosing, with the final step being the purchase. You also want to create certain associations with your “brand” in the customer’s mind, such as “our brand is stylish, ” or “our brand is valuable.” You want to condition the user to have certain reactions when seeing your brand. In short, you want to do something to the visitor, or make the visitor do something. You want to lead, or push them into action. When designing from this perspective you start with what you, as the Website owner, want the user to do, and design the Website to that end.

The other perspective you can take in designing a Website is that of the user. The user will come to your Website for a reason. They may want to compare the price of your product to another product, or their budget. They may want to view product or service specifications, download a white paper, or make a purchase. When designing from this perspective, you start with what the user, or users, wants to do and design the Website to that end.

So you may guess at this point that if you were to design your website based on what the user wants to do, they would have an easier time doing that, and therefore have a better experience. They would see the Website as being more usable (easier to use) and feel that they had a better experience after using it. With the Website designed based on the needs of the sales or marketing department, the opposite can be true. Users may feel the site is difficult to use, especially if what they want to do does not match what the sales marketing people want them to do (or think they should be doing) on the Website.

In reality Websites are designed with a mix of sales/marketing perspective and user perspective. Because of company politics, it is usually the case the sales and marketing department has more political power than the Web team, so it’s often difficult for the Web designer to shift the focus on to the user and away from making the Website an online brochure, or an exercise in operant conditioning. It is important that the user’s voice is heard. In the end, the best thing a Website can do for your business is to give the user a good experience by allowing them to do what they want to do. That won’t happen unless you design for it.