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.
Jul
07
2009
Your Website is Your Business Card
Jul
01
2009
What Your Website Visitors Initially See – The 5 Second Glimpse Test
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:
Jun
26
2009
The Value of a Website's Tagline
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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May
21
2009
Your Website is Your Company
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?
May
20
2009
Simple is Good
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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May
07
2009
On a Crusade Against Drop-Down Menus
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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May
05
2009
Splash Pages – Thumbs Up or Down?
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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Apr
29
2009
Why I Hate Keyword Clouds
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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Apr
23
2009
Cheap Usability Testing – Gather Some Friends
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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Apr
22
2009
Want People To Fill Out Your Forms? Stop Annoying Them
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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