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Archive for the ‘Design’ Category

When They Can’t Figure Out Your Site, People Turn to Search – Have One?

Posted in Business, Content, Design, Usability, tagged , , , , , on Monday, Jul 13, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

Usually when people come to a website, they’re looking for something.  And they hope they can find it on the first page, but if not, most are willing to scan the page to see if there’s a link that may lead them there.  This behavior really points out the importance both of properly organizing the [...]

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Your Website is Your Business Card

Posted in Business, Content, Design, Marketing, Opinion, Strategy, Usability, tagged , , , , , on Tuesday, Jul 7, 2009 | 2 Comments »

What does your paper business card look like? It probably has your name, your company logo, some contact information and maybe a quick tagline summarizing what your company does.  People can find all the information they need to contact you just by glancing at your card.

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What Your Website Visitors Initially See – The 5 Second Glimpse Test

Posted in Business, Design, Marketing, News & Notes, Usability, tagged , , , on Wednesday, Jul 1, 2009 | 1 Comment »

The first time visitors come to a site they usually spend less than 5 seconds figuring out if they’re in the right place.  Right place being, of course, where they can get whatever information it is that they’re looking for.  During those 5 seconds you need to communicate what your site is about, what information [...]

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The Value of a Website’s Tagline

Posted in Business, Design, Marketing, News & Notes, Usability, tagged , , , , on Friday, Jun 26, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

There’s nothing new about taglines.  They’ve been used in different types of media for quite some time as a way to summarize the entire company/product/organization in a short bit of space/time.  On a website, the tagline is usually a short bit of a text near the logo to describe what that site is. They’re the [...]

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Your Website is Your Company

Posted in Business, Design, Marketing, Strategy on Thursday, May 21, 2009 | Comments Off

I’ve been thinking a lot about company websites.  So many small and medium businesses just have a brochure for a website.  What does that say about the company?  Tom Harris wrote a post yesterday at Insights Group on just this subject:
You’re about to go into an important meeting – a sales call, a presentation, a [...]

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Simple is Good

Posted in Business, Design, News & Notes, Opinion on Wednesday, May 20, 2009 | Comments Off

I had a chance to listen to Josh Holme’s talk The Lost Art of Simplicity at the KalamazooX Conference, which I covered here.  It’s a great talk, and if you get a chance to listen to it, I encourage you to do so.  Josh recently posted his slides from the talk, which are worth a [...]

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On a Crusade Against Drop-Down Menus

Posted in Business, Design, News & Notes, Usability, tagged , , on Thursday, May 7, 2009 | 4 Comments »

Anyone who worked with me at the publishing company will know that I am completely (almost) against using drop-down menus on websites.  Why?  Well there are lot’s of reasons…
They’re cool
I hate using anything because it’s cool.  If you have a business reason for using something, that’s one thing, but using something because it’s cool, just [...]

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Splash Pages – Thumbs Up or Down?

Posted in Business, Design, Marketing, Usability, tagged , , , on Tuesday, May 5, 2009 | Comments Off

Now, I have to agree with Todd Zeigler over at The Bivings Group – normally I hate splash pages, especially as a user.  But as Todd said, they seem to be extremely useful for collecting information (usually emails).  It seems that sometimes you have to be a bit obnoxious for people to actually give you [...]

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Why I Hate Keyword Clouds

Posted in Business, Content, Design, Implementation, News & Notes, Opinion, Usability, tagged , , , on Wednesday, Apr 29, 2009 | Comments Off

Ever see a set of words in different sizes which are all links on a site?  It’s probably a keyword cloud.  These clouds try to give a visual representation of what the site is about.  Sometimes they’re based on tags, which the writer of the content uses to categorize their content (these are .  Often [...]

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Cheap Usability Testing – Gather Some Friends

Posted in Business, Design, tagged , , on Thursday, Apr 23, 2009 | Comments Off

Yesterday’s post over at ProBlogger – Watch a First Reader Use Your Blog – got me thinking more about business website usability.  Many times sites are poorly designed because those who design and own the sites never have to actually use them.  Testing them to make sure functions work isn’t the same.  When you’re familiar [...]

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Want People To Fill Out Your Forms? Stop Annoying Them

Posted in Business, Design, News & Notes, tagged , , , on Wednesday, Apr 22, 2009 | 2 Comments »

How many more leads and sales could you be generating from your website if your forms were designed properly? When forms annoy people, or things aren’t where they expect them or don’t work properly, they’ll just leave.  I don’t know about you, but I end up filling out quite a few forms on websites – [...]

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16 Quick & Easy Ways to Increase Usability On Your Business Website

Posted in Business, Design, News & Notes, Usability, tagged , , , , , on Friday, Apr 3, 2009 | Comments Off

Usability is the science of making things easier to use.  Usability is especially important to websites since visitors can easily and quickly go somewhere else.  Try these tips to make your website easier to use and help your visitors find what they’re looking for.

Search in the upper right – Especially for large sites, make it [...]

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