This is a guest post from James Mowery, a computer geek who writes about technology and related topics on his blog, led tv.

The design and overall layout of a company’s website is of utmost importance when it comes to attracting customers and encouraging them to use that company’s services. One of the very first things many people notice about a company’s website is the aesthetic appeal and whether or not it is pleasing to the eyes. The customer will note whether or not the website is easy to use, navigate, and search. If a company’s website is completely disorganized, has clashing colors, or content that is generally just out of place with other aspects of the website, the customer may be turned off from the company.

Professional Design

A company’s website that is professionally designed will entice the most customers. An ideal web design would have a smooth and professional interface composed of a color scheme that does not clash. A model web design would also consist of organized content on every page detailing exactly the message that the company wishes to convey without any extra wordage or unnecessary content.

Preparing a self designed website

A web design represents details about your business and contributes to its development. A good web design enhances the growth of your business; a bad one can even become a reason for its ruin. One can add a professional factor by taking guidance from following points:

Using templates

Use of template always aids the website design by guiding in its composition. These templates are available from many website hosts. Whether your business is small or big, these templates offer different options such as color schemes, patterns, experimentation with various color combos etc. Using these templates can even enable you to design your web page on your own with little help.

Getting help from tutorial sites

There are various tutorial websites providing knowledge about how to design on your own website. They also can help with how to put in content to the templates.

Help from a professional

Even with the help from templates and tutorial sites, nothing compares to a site designed by a professional. Hiring a professional designer will take your website design to the next level, especially if you want something completely custom.

(photo by Armando Maynez)

When designing a website or online service, companies often have a whole slew of great ideas for functionality.  When is enough enough?  Can a simple design suffice?  How do you make choices about what features to incorporate?

Even the simplest of interfaces, Twitter, has begun to add more complexity with new retweet features, lists, trending topics, and more. Aesthetically, “good design” means design that is appealing to the eye, and is easily navigated visually. With this idea, it is important that complex interfaces are well designed so that the users who prefer simplicity do not feel overwhelmed. – Finding the Balance of Design and Functionality (ReadWriteStart)

I believe good design is not separated from good functionality.  In order for a website to be well designed it needs to incorporate the functionality that is needed in a way that makes it easy to use and understand.  There are plenty of pretty websites which I would not classify as “good designs” because they do not make it easy for website visitors to use the site – or even worse, they miss some features that are required in order for the visitor to do what they want.

Good design is important because visitors have so many choices of websites they can use and visit online.  If your site is not both visually appealing and easy to use, people are just going to go elsewhere.  And good design does not mean cluttering your site with links and ads – white space does count too as it allows the eye to visually take in everything your site has to offer.

What do you think good design means?

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Technorati tags: design, usability, business, navigation

Ever done a bunch of research, finally decided to get a product, gone to the website and found the only way to contact them is through a contact form?  While eCommerce websites are usually pretty savvy about letting their customers contact them through multiple ways, normal businesses sometimes give off the “go away” vibe unintentionally.

You’re afraid of spam email or solicitor phone calls, so you don’t put either your email or your phone number on your website, just a contact form.  While this probably does cut down on spam, how many potential customers are you turning away as well?  Is it worth it to turn away even one potential customer?

Most email programs are pretty good at filtering out spam.  And while you should answer the phone as much as possible, voicemail also does a pretty good job (most people are understanding on that front).  But, if someone can’t use either method and has to fill out a contact form (most of which tend to ask for a bunch of unrelated information), there’s a possibility that they won’t bother.

Contact forms do their have their place and use.  Sometimes you have a specific type of contact (for media or advertising or whatever) that you do need additional information for.  Or you’re using a contact form on a landing page for your marketing or advertising.  There are many good uses for contact forms, but they should never be the only way someone can get ahold of you.  Even in the cases mentioned here, there still should be a way to contact you directly.

How do your customers contact you?

(photo by ellievanhoutte @ Flickr CC)

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Technorati tags: customer service, brand, customer experience, business, marketing strategy, marketing

Discussions about navigation on a website usually revolve around where to put them and what items should be in them.  But without navigation on a website, there is no website, just the one page where a visitor entered your site.

Two Ways to Navigate

There are really only two ways to navigate a website: search and menus.  People will usually try one or the other, but they may also try one and then the other.  Usually people are either a searcher or a browser.  Either way, both search and a menu system should be easy to find and easy to understand.

Easy to Use

Whatever navigation people use, it needs to be extremely easy to use.  The less interaction (pull downs, drop downs, extra buttons), the better.  Searches should be clearly marked as Search.  People expect the button to be on the right side and to say something like “Go” or “Search”.  It’s better if you do the hard work of figuring out what they want (instead of having a drop down with different types of searches).  It’s often obvious what they want by what they type into the search field.  For example, “248-555-5555″ is clearly a phone number. Menus should be either on the top or sides (multiple places can be ok).  Whatever you choose, be consistent throughout the site and use titles that are clear and easy to read.

Find it Fast

You have about 5-10 seconds to engage a visitor and let them know that you have what they’re looking for.  If they don’t find it on the page where they entered your site, they may look around for a search or menu to see if they can find it somewhere else on your site.  If they can’t find your search or menu or some other type of navigation, they’re quickly going to leave.

Proper Use of Technology

Be wary of using technologies (such as Flash) that make pretty navigation or menus (animation, for example).  If someone doesn’t have access to that particular technology, they don’t have access to your site (and many search engines won’t access it either).  Even if some technology has widespread use, make sure you have backup methods of allowing people to access your site. And just because you think having pretty menus is nice, doesn’t mean that everyone who comes to your site likes them (animations can get very annoying after several pages).

No Navigation = No Website

Without a way to navigate throughout your site, people are stuck where ever they landed and they’re not likely to stay there for long.  Navigation gives visitors (and search engines) access to the rest of your site, making it easier for them to stay longer (and for you to get your point/sale across).

Thoughts?

(photo by psd @ Flickr CC)

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Technorati tags: design, usability, business, navigation

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 information on your website, as well as having a navigation/menu system that people can quickly and easily understand.

When none of the links look promising and they can’t find the information on the page they’re on, many visitors will automatically turn to search.  If you don’t have one, they’re likely just to leave.  Search is an important function on any website and on the Internet in general.  Many people think of the Internet as their search engine of choice and will type in full domain names, ex. www.sazbean.com, into the search engine instead of into the browser.  There are some people who only use search on websites instead of browsing at all.

Without search on a website, you’re missing an opportunity to give a visitor the information they’re looking for before they leave to find it elsewhere.  Many blog platforms and content management systems (CMS) will have a search functionality built-in that you can install on your site.  Google offers SiteSearch which lets you put their search box on any website and have the results only return pages from that site.

Can Your Visitors Search For What They’re Looking For?

(photo by (le)doo.(jachere triennale.soon) @ Flickr CC)

Technorati tags: design, content, usability, search, business, strategy

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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.

Business cards are still pretty important for face-to-face networking.  People are usually horrible about remembering names or company names and a small paper card lets them connect the conversation they had with the person they spoke to. (And gives them a point of contact if they want to continue the conversation).

Business websites are your online business card, yet so many businesses neglect to have the same important information in a quick & easy to understand as a paper business card provides. Most business websites are just a boring brochure of some marketing-blabber about what the company does  (that usually isn’t clear to anyone other than the author of the marketing-blabber), but don’t provide any real information to the visitor.

The nice thing about a website, as opposed to a small business card, is that you have the opportunity to offer so much more information.  But this can also be a crunch – businesses get caught up in the technology and create flashy websites, but forget about the basics.  It’s ok to offer lots of information to visitors – matter of fact, it’s a great way to get people to come back to your website over and over, but remember to keep the basics in mind: contact information, benefits to the customer, what it is you do – all visible and understandable in 5-10 seconds.

Take a look at your website.  Can you get the same type of information that’s on your business card?  Does your business website offer valuable information to your customers?  Is what you do clear in terms of benefits and value to the customers?

Make your business website a valuable business tool.

Technorati tags: design, usability, content, marketing, strategy, business

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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 you have to offer, and how they’ll be able to navigate the site, so it touches on design, usability, content and marketing…

What do visitors see during those 5 seconds?  Try The 5 Second Glimpse Test:

1. Open your website in it’s own browser window, and then minimize it.
2. Ready?
3. Un-Minimize the window and start counting slowly to 5 (1 mississippi, 2 mississippi….)
4. Look at your website during those 5 seconds.
5. Re-minimize the browser window.
6. What did you see?

When I did The 5 Second Glimpse Test for this site, this is what I saw:

First my logo on the upper right… Then the flower below and to the left. Next the title of the top post.  Then the site title and tagline in the upper left.  Lastly, the little icons in the right column…. then it was time to close the window.

The great thing is you can use this test on others to see what they see in the 5 seconds.  Just explain that you’re going to give them 5 seconds to look at your homepage and you want to know what they see during that time.  It’ll give you pretty good insight into what people see when they first come to your site – and whether it’s what you want them to see.

Since you only have 5-10 seconds to catch someone’s attention, it’s important that you get the right message to them during that time.

What did you see during your 5 Second Glimpse Test?

Technorati tags: design, usability, marketing, strategy, business

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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 first glimpse into exactly what it is you do.  If the tagline isn’t clear, visitors will have to spend more time figuring that out (which they may not).  Often visitors enter your site somewhere other than the homepage and the tagline may be the only real description on the page where they do enter.

A good tagline should:

• Be clear & informative
• Be short & concise (six to eight words)
• Differentiate your business
• Offer at least one clear benefit
• Be personable and catchy (hopefully a bit clever)
• Be unique
• Stand on its own

This may seem like a lot of weight on just a short phrase, but good taglines are invaluable for differentiating yourself and quickly describing what it is you do.  Once you have a good one you’ll be able to use it on all your marketing materials and advertising.  If you don’t know how well your tagline works, try showing someone (or telling) your tagline and see what it is they think you do.

How do you use your tagline?

(photo by Delphine – Very very busy :/ @ Flickr CC)

Technorati tags: tagline, design, marketing, uability, business

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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 negotiating session, or a job interview. Whatever it may be, there will be people in this meeting who will affect your future. People that you need to impress, because they will make decisions based on YOU, and your words and your demeanor and your appearance. People who will judge whether they want to do business with you – to hire you, to accept your proposal, to buy your products or services, to contribute to your cause. – The Mustard Stain on Your Website – Tom Harris – Insights Group

So, if you wouldn’t walk into an important meeting with mustard on your shirt, why do you put up with a website that doesn’t do your company justice?  A meeting usually only has ten people or so.  Your website is seen by thousands of people!

What does your website say about your company?

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 peek.

I think all of us – designers, programmers, marketers, businesspeople, consumers… get caught up in complexity.  In making our products, our businesses, our websites, our lives complex.  Often I think we believe that people won’t pay for simple.  We need to add lots of features, lots of value-adds, lots of freebees.

If we take a few minutes to look at some of the most successful products, we see that they are inherently simple.  The Apple iPod.  The Sony Walkman. In their design.  In their features.  In how easy they are to use.

Simple is not easy.  It can be very difficult to make these as simple as possible.  But simple is a delight to use, too look at, to be apart of.

How can you be simple?

(photo by Sarah Jane)

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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 isn’t.  Most things that are used for this reason are annoying and quickly become yesterday’s fad.  Besides, you’re running a business, not trying to join a high school clique.

They don’t work well

While this problem has improved, many sites still don’t implement drop down menus very well.  They’re hard to use and clicking on just the right link is very difficult.

They don’t show up on mobile devices

This has been improved as well.  But even if they do work on mobile devices, they’re even more difficult to use than when you have a mouse.

What about people without a mouse

There are people out there using computers without mice – text readers and other devices for people with disabilities, and other devices.  Some drop-down menus will have accessibility for people with keyboards or other devices, but often this is forgotten.

They’re a crutch

In order to properly (if there is such a thing) use drop down menus, information needs to be organized in a way that makes sense.  There needs to be some sort of hierarchy.  Most sites that use drop down menus don’t have a true information hierarchy, they just use cute titles that only make sense to the designer or marketing guy.  And there’s almost always a bunch of pages that don’t fit anywhere and are thrown under a Misc. heading – not very helpful.

It’s hard to find things

People are much faster at scanning a page than mousing over menu items to see what’s in them.  While your drop downs may seem like they’re saving time, they really are causing seconds of time for every use – that really adds up.

They’re annoying

I don’t know how many times I’ll go to a site with drop down menus and my mouse will happen to be over one of them.  All of a sudden a menu pops up when all I’m trying to do is read an article.  Now I have to take the time to move my mouse so I can do what I came to the site to do.  Or, I’ll be trying to navigate through a site but I can’t seem to get my mouse in the right place to keep the menu open long enough to click on the text – it can be pretty trying to click on a small word just to go to another page.

They’re a fad

For the most part, large sites have started to go away from drop-down menus (yay!).  They’ve found that people can scan through a long list of links much faster than they can hunt through different drop-down menus.  Having all the major links on a page means that it’ll be easier for people to find other reasons to stay on your site, instead of leaving or clicking off.

(photo by puroticorico)

Technorati tags: drop-down menu, usability, design, business, marketing strategy, marketing

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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 their information.

However, I want to insist that splash pages need to be used for one purpose – and one purpose only – collecting information from site visitors – getting them to sign up for your service, newsletter, whatever.  They should NOT be used for a pretty flash movie or some other annoyance that serves no real purpose other than to annoy everyone.  I don’t care if you spent a lot of money on that supposedly cool introduction.  If you’re not using it for a real purpose, don’t do it.  If you’re going to annoy your visitors, at least do it for an actual purpose – collecting information for a specific reason.

I also have to agree with Todd regarding the implementation of a splash page:

If you are going to deploy a splash page, please, please, please set it up so that a user only sees the page periodically. We usually set it up so that users who do not sign up see the page every two weeks or so. Also, make sure to set it up so that if users have already signed up for your email list they never see the splash page again. These steps will minimize the disruption to users who visit your site frequently.

(photo by sergio tudela)

Technorati tags: splash page, usability, design, business, marketing strategy, marketing

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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 they are based only on the words the site – the keywords – the words that are mentioned the most often are represented by the largest size.  The problem is these keyword clouds often falsely represent the true content of a site.  Keywords are not intelligent.  They don’t know that a story about – they don’t know about context or associations.  Keywords are dumb.

For example, we try to cover social media, marketing, strategy and technology links through our Twitter feed.  Many of these tweets do not use any of those keywords, but they do cover that subject area.  If you were to just look at the words we tweet, you’d come up with a keyword cloud that looks similar to this:

From this keyword cloud, it looks like all our feed is about is thanking people, being happy and retweeting. Secondarily, about marketing, social media and the web.  While our tweets certainly to include those words, it’s not the entirety of what we’re about.  It doesn’t show context or association.

These types of keyword clouds also encourage people to game the system by always including certain words in their tweets and websites (what people often think of as keywords).  This makes conversations dull, repetitive and largely useless.  When you start writing and tweeting for search engines or computers, you’re missing the conversations you need to be having with customers and people.

(photo by kevindooley)

Technorati tags: content, business, usability, design

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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 with a site, you have a certain way of doing things and you know what to expect.  But a first time user has no preconceived notions about how the site “should” work.

Still, truly professional website usability testing can be prohibitively expensive for many business owners.  But hopefully you all have a few friends who haven’t really used or seen your site.  Sit down with them and watch them try to use it – just make sure you watch and listen, don’t give them any pre-instructions or help.  Once your friend is done, ask them their thoughts and what they thought could be improved.  Watching someone else try to use your site can give you some very useful feedback on what needs improvement.  While a friend will (hopefully) be more forgiving than a customer, any feedback is good and most customers won’t bother telling you when something doesn’t work – they’ll just go somewhere else.

(photo by Look Into My Eyes)

Technorati tags: customer experience, customer-centric, experience centric, business, usability, design

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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 – when I’m researching products, looking for information for clients, signing up for services, and purchasing products or services.  It annoys me to no end when web forms aren’t designed properly, especially since it’s not that difficult.  Good usability and design principles for web forms have really been around for longer than the Internet, even if they’ve been updated somewhat.

Here are some ways to improve the forms on your website:

• Next or Submit buttons on the right – think about turning a page in a book.
• Clear or Cancel buttons on the left.
• Fields with enough space – Make sure people can give you all the information you need and see it without having to scroll the field.
• Be flexible – If you want a phone number, let people enter it however they want.  Use background processing to format it the way you want for your database or CRM.  For example, 2485556758 can easily be turned into 248-555-6758 or 248.555.6758 or however you want to see it.
• Be clear – If you absolutely need something in a certain format, make sure it’s clear and obvious right next to the field.  The same goes for any maximum field lengths.
• Keep it simple – Only collect the minimum amount of information you need.  While it’s nice to collect information for statistics and marketing purposes, you risk not gathering any information.
• Required fields clearly marked – Need particular fields filled out no matter what?  Fine, just make sure it’s obvious which fields those are.  Making them a different color will help them stand out.
• Quick feedback – If a field was missed or wasn’t filled out properly, try to let people know before they click the submit or next button.  This is pretty easy to do with javascript.
• Clear feedback – However you give feedback, make sure its obvious what field you’re specifically talking about and what needs to be fixed.  Putting messages at the top of the page and marking the field in question are best.
• Do the heavy lifting – Need information in more than one place?  Pre-fill it in if the person has already typed it once.  Need some calculations made?  Do them with backend processing and present them to the person to be confirmed.
• Allow people to edit – People make mistakes.  Let them go back to change what they’ve entered.  This means your forms need to be able to handle the back button on the browser and still have all the information that was already entered available.
• Test in multiple browsers – It may be hard to believe, but not everyone has a PC running Windows with Internet Explorer.  Make sure your form works for the major platforms, operating systems and web browsers.  If you accept file uploads, make sure they work across platforms.  Soon you’ll also need to worry about mobile platforms.
• Confirmation – Let people know you’ve properly received their information.  On your website is best.  Following up with an email if they’ve provided an address is also nice.
• Thank them! – People are busy.  Thank them for the information they’ve provided or the purchase they’ve made.

What did I miss?

One of the easiest ways to design forms properly is to try to use them yourself.  Then ask a few friends to try them and give you feedback.

(photo by kaatjevervoort)

Technorati tags: customer experience, customer-centric, experience centric, business, usability, design

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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.

1. Search in the upper right – Especially for large sites, make it as easy as possible for visitors to find what they’re looking for.
2. Consistent menus – generally on the left or top of the site. Visitors should be able to navigate wherever they want and get a feel for the site structure.
3. Include a home link – Visitors may want to get back to the homepage easily.
4. Contact page – with a business phone, address and email.  It increases your reputation and makes it easy for potential customers to get in contact with you.
5. Sized to fit – Fit into the minimum standards screen resolution of 1028×768 without scrolling horizontally.
6. Easy to read – Use text colors with good contrast, size and easy to read fonts.
7. One layout – If your site has a consistent layout throughout, it will make it easier for visitors to navigate and find information.
8. Pleasing to the eye – Color scheme is important to your professional image and makes it easier to visitors to understand what you do, as well as navigate your site.
9. Use white space – Don’t bunch things up.  People need white space in order to scan and read your site.
10. Speak normally – Overly technical text or too much hype makes reading difficult.
11. Use bullet points and lists – when feasible to make it easy for visitors to scan your content.
12. Move forward to the right – Submit, next, go, etc. buttons should always be on the right, cancel buttons on the left.
13. Use Flash, rich media, video, audio, etc. sparingly – If you have a video page, great, but your whole site shouldn’t be in rich media or people without the plugins, on mobile devices, or using text browsers will not be able to see your content.  Audio, Video, Flash and rich media should preferrably not play without the visitor clicking a button.
14. Restrain movement – Animation, flashing and movement make it difficult for people to read and scan your website.  Use for relevant informational purposes, not just as a gimmick or ad.
15. Limit advertising – We all understand that advertising has a place and a purpose.  If you choose to include advertising, keep it relevant, limit it to specific spots on your site, limit then number of ads and mark them clearly as advertising.
16. Include a Sitemap – Sometimes it’s just easier to see a list of all the pages on a website.  This helps search engines find all your content as well.

Do you have other tips to increase usability?  We’d love to hear them in the comments…

(photo by SantaRosa OLD SKOOL @ Flickr CC)

Technorati tags: customer experience, customer-centric, experience centric, business, usability, design

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Traditional marketing focuses on product features and benefits. But your customers are more interested in the experiences they can have with your products.  Usually when a customer decides to purchase a product it’s not because of the features it offers, it’s because of what they can do with the product. For example, we purchased a flat screen HDTV not because of the number of pixels or brightness or refresh rate, but because it looks awesome when you’re watching a movie or sporting event.  The experience we’re interested in is how the picture looks when we’re watching TV… the features of the TV just help fulfill that particular experience.

What about online?  It can sometimes be difficult to figure out what types of experiences customers are looking for on your website.  It helps to think in terms of tasks instead of products or features or benefits.  What are your customers trying to accomplish when they come to your website?  There probably are many different types of tasks – browsing, searching, contacting, support, purchasing, etc.  The trick is to try to make all these tasks as easy as possible on your one website.

Now, instead of thinking of these actions as tasks, think of them as a chance to interact with your customer.  What would you do if you were in-person?  What types of interactions would you want with a company?  Think of each of these interactions as an opportunity to build a relationship with your customer – or add to a relationship.  Try to think of website visitors as individual people with their own stories and emotions and opinions.

Now, how would you design your website differently to interact with your customers and build relationships? What do your customers say about your website? They may have some great insight – if you just ask.

(photo by bbjee @ FlickrCC)

Technorati tags: usability, design, customer experience, customer-centric, experience centric, business, strategy, marketing

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From Wikipedia:

Co-creation is the practice of product or service development that is collaboratively executed by developers and stakeholders together.

Your customers know what they want – or at least what they don’t want.  They have a good idea of what works and what doesn’t and what types of features they’d like to see in a particular product.  Usually companies base their product offerings on research conducted on focus groups or small groups of customers.  But the power of the Internet allows companies to communicate with a much larger percentage of their customers (at least for most products).

Co-creation is the process of tapping into the knowledge your customers have to create products they are actually willing to buy.  This process does not necessarily have to be online, although online does provide some great opportunities for 2-way communication.  The important part of co-creation is actually using this feedback to improve and create your products, which may take a few organizational changes.  Companies who successfully implement co-creation practices have internal processes for having 2-way conversations with their customers and using that information to improve their customer experiences. Using co-creation, you can more closely meet your customers’ expectations for your products while improving both ROI and customer satisfaction.

(photo by leans @ Flickr CC)

Technorati tags: co-creation, design, product management, business, product marketing, product development, customer service, marketing, customer-centric

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Good websites are designed to be both easy to use and attractive.  When visitors come to a website they don’t want to have to think about how to accomplish whatever it is they came for.  They shouldn’t have to search for links or content or the right button to click.

Well designed products have buttons in the right places and use pictures, symbols and actions that people intuitively feel comfortable with.  The same is true of websites.  People expect search boxes to be in a certain place (usually upper left) and Submit or Next buttons to be on the right (it helps to think of advancing web pages like turning pages in a book).

Good website usability doesn’t necessarily have to be difficult.  Take a look at your website.  Does everything feel like it’s in the “right” place?  If you’re not sure, ask some customers and colleagues to try to accomplish some specific goals.  For example, if you have an eCommerce site, ask someone to purchase a product for a specific purpose – like a gift for their kid’s birthday.  How easy is it for them to find an item that fits that purpose?  How appealing was the product on the page?  Were they able to find the information they needed to make an informed purchase?  Were they able to actually make the purchase? Get their feedback on whether anything seemed difficult or out of place (usability is the practice of methodically testing how users interact with something and then using that information to arrange items to make it easier to use).

Having a well designed website is important because it will affect how many sales and leads you are able to generate from it.  If customers can’t find what they need from your site, they are likely just to go somewhere else instead.

(photo by tashmahal @ Flickr CC)

Technorati tags: usability, website design, good websites, business, design

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If you are creating a business website, or looking for ways to improve yours, here are some tips to consider:

1. Make it Clear – exactly what your company does should be available on the upper half of your home page.
2. Describe Benefits – Customers only care what benefits your product or services gives them.
3. Who Are You – Contact information should be easy to find (at least a link from every page, ideally a phone number or email).
4. Customers Need Support – If customers have a problem, support information should be easy to find.  If the information you provide online isn’t enough, give them a way to contact you.
5. Minimize Clicks – Keep the number of clicks to a minimum – for any activity on your site, but especially for buying processes.
6. Purchasing Information – Give customers all the information they need to make a purchase on any product page and/or landing page.
7. Minimize Distractions – Keep flashing, moving and distracting items to a minimum – even if they provide additional information.
8. Design Down – Not everyone has state-of-the-art technology.  Design for the lowest generally accepted standards (which are widely available around the web).
9. Consistent Menus – Menus should be consistent throughout the site to make it easy for customers to find things.
10. Clear Page Titles – Page titles should make it clear where a customer is – use descriptive words for both the web browser window title and for text on the page.
11. Don’t Touch the Back Button – Do not _ever_ disable the back button.  Customers need to be able to back out of wherever they may go.
12. Avoid Popup Windows – unless they provide pertinent information to the current page and are initiated by the customer.
13. Let Your Customer Be In Control – any extra features, such as audio, video, popups, etc. should only activate when a customer clicks on them.  Have you ever been at work when a website suddenly started making annoying sounds out of your speakers?  Don’t do that to your customers.
14. Make it Readable – Fonts need to be easy to read in terms of size, font type and colors – include what color the background is.  Make sure to use high contrast colors to make your text easy to read.
15. Whitespace is Your Friend – Space between items on your page is critical for customers to be able to scan through the page to find what they’re looking for.
16. Consistent Layout – Try to keep the layouts of your pages consistent, so at least your pages look like they belong to the same website.  Navigation and information about where on the site a customer is should be in the same place.
17. Search Should Be Easy – Most people expect a search to be in the upper right region of a page – or at least near the top.

I intend this list to be a work in progress.  What other good design tips should be used on business websites?

(photo by geishaboy500 @ Flickr CC)