Infinite Web Design

I recently came across a great article that gives 14 of the biggest mistakes you can make in web design.

The article makes sense and in my opinion is almost dead on.

The video that is linked to at the end of point number three is great. It is a really simple video made by a guy named Matt Cutts. He talks about search engine optimization versus end user optimization. It seems that there are a lot of SEO companies out there these days but not a lot of EUO (end user optimization) companies. I don’t even know if EUO is an acceptable acronym but i like it, so i’m going to use it

Kevin and I recently had the opportunity to sit down with some great people at a large business (roughly 900 employees) based in Michigan. The whole meeting was regarding a portion of their website dedicated to a new product they launched a few months ago. The website is setup to allow users to sign up for their service online saving the time and money of filling out paperwork and mailing it. We did a cursory evaluation and found there were a number of things about the site that were causing visitors to leave before completing the sign up process.

We were essentially doing an EUO evaluation. The traffic they were getting to the site was not overwhelming but with a conversion rate around 4 percent they are not reaching their potential. The whole point of EUO is to increase your conversion rate.

Simplifying web pages by reducing the amount of irrelevant content, organizing the navigation properly, standardizing the navigation, and presenting the information on the site in an organized and well thought out manner will start to increase your conversion rate.

An important part of EUO is testing. Without getting feedback from your end users you really can’t determine what to change and how to change it. We see a lot of websites that use industry specific words or phrases that are totally unfamiliar to end users. This is because no one took the time to test whether a person who has never been to the web site and has no knowledge of who the company is or what they do; can actually navigate the site and understand what it says.

As the world wide web grows i think we are going to start to see more and more EUO companies springing up.

You’re a large organization with divisions and departments and teams. You have vice presidents and managers and team leaders. You have a web team that manages your massive public web site. They have designers and developers and a manager. So, I ask you, who should decide what content goes on the website? Do you let anyone send content to the web team for posting. Does the vice president from Marketing call the shots? How about the manager from customer relations? Or the team leader from product development? Perhaps the manager of the web team? What is the right answer? Who should be the gatekeeper for the website? Should you even have one?

The answer is not so simple. If you put one person in charge and choose wrong you could end up with a jerk with a God complex running everything, crushing good ideas and suffering from a major case of Not-Invented-Here syndrome related to any ideas they didn’t come up with. On the other hand the right person can supply a unifying vision, provide a firm hand to keep the website from becoming confusing and cluttered or a political battleground for company infighting. But how can you pick the right person? We can learn from America’s Founding Fathers on this one and create a division of powers with checks and balances to keep people from getting power crazy.
Continue reading American History 101

We’re pleased to announce another new site launch. This time we’re helping CIPA, The Consortium of Independent Physician Associations, to get going in their efforts to save patients money through the prescription of effective generic drugs. CIPA is working to reduce the high cost of medical care by working with doctors to track the dispensing of generic drugs as a low cost alternative to brand name drugs. Generics are chemically identical or similar enough not to make a difference but often come at a fraction of the cost of name brand drugs.

We’re working with the Medical Advantage Group in East Lansing to build the site that gets the information out to the administrators and doctors who write the prescriptions. The website will be making a real difference for patients of those doctors who will be seeing better care and lower medical bills. This will be an ongoing project with a goal of progressive improvement. We’re happy that our ability to deliver lots of information online quickly and effectively will be helping people to save money and stay healthy. Much like our work with HealthCore it’s a really good feeling when you can step back and see that your work is making lives better.

We’re pleased to announce that we’ve just launched a new website for the U.S. Taxpayers and Constitution Party of Michigan. Dr. Bhagwan (Bob) Dashairya led the charge in getting the new site up quickly in time for the election on Tuesday. Brad and I are glad that we could be a part of the democratic process by helping candidates for office in Michigan get their message out so voters can make an informed choice.

You may recall that we launched a site for Charles Tackett’s run for Congress recently as well. The Web can be a great tool for democracy. A good website can be used by candidates to clearly communicate their views in a more sophisticated manner than 15 or 30 second TV and radio commercials can. With these sites we’re doing our part to contribute to a constructive political dialog instead of the typical name calling and mudslinging you find so often before an election.

We encourage you to visit the sites, read what they have to say, and whether you agree or disagree with their views leave some comments and help start a discussion on the important issues facing Michigan.

(via Yahoo News)

Is really hard to see if you are blind.

“Links list dialogue.” “Links list view.” “Your Account — Two of 164.” This is what the Internet sounds like to Chris Danielsen. Danielsen is blind. He’s using a software program called Jaws that converts the text on a Web page into a computerized voice that comes out through a speaker, allowing him to surf the Web using keyboard commands instead of a mouse — the same way lots of blind people use the Internet.

But I’m more interested in the lawsuit facing Target. Apparently the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) is suing Target due to their websites poor accessibility. The idea of accessibility on the web is not exactly a hot topic; but If the NFB wins this suit accessibility may be the next buzzword to make everyone forget about “Web 2.0.” Kevin has been preaching about accessibility to our clients for years, but I’m sure not one of them has any idea what it means or why it’s important.
Continue reading One Small Step For Man….

(via shlep: the Self-Help Law ExPress)

The North Country Gazette has a notice (highlighted above in the image) that invokes “Fair Use of Copyright” to forbid the reproduction of their publication. They’ve been called to task by David Giacalone of shlep for trying to void the Fair Use rights that all of us have. Copyright holders have exactly zero authority to void these rights and any claims to the contrary should rightly be smacked down with impunity.
Continue reading Using and Abusing Copyright Law

I came across a great blog post about the cost of web design written by Chris Pearson. How much should design cost? The article discusses the cost of designing or redesigning a blog.

It seems that the cost is usually between $1500-$3000 to get a good design. The consensus seems to be that most individuals find $1500 or more to be much too expensive. While most corporations would gladly pay $1500-$3000 for a great design.

If you are considering investing your time and money into a website please take the time to read this blog post.

We’re happy to announce another site launch, this time for International Global Products. Right now the site is a simple 3 page web site with the company’s contact info and an introduction to some of their products. A few of the sites we’ve launched recently are our clients’ first forays onto the web. They are taking those first baby steps of setting up a basic website and learning to use it as a tool to help them do business. We wrote about this a while back, this is the Publish phase of getting a company online.
Continue reading New Site: International Global Products

Brad posed the question of whether spending money for quality design work is a good business decision. I’ve been thinking on that this week and in my biased opinion it absolutely, without question, depends on the business and project in question.
Continue reading Good Design IS Good Business

Does good design really equal bad business?

If you spend twenty hours instead of ten hours on a project to get the design right is that bad business? When you spend thirty hours on a project instead of ten hours is that bad business? Where do you draw the line on cost versus quality?

I don’t have the answer. It’s really something that is unique to each project and business funding the project. I would love to see any statistics available that compare design quality with sales. If you look at the quality of a car design and how it relates to sales I would bet there is a direct correlation. I wonder if the same is true for web design. We are currently working on a large project with a company based in Rochester, MI and there is a huge emphasis on design and usability. This project has been extremely expensive, but is it worth it? I certainly hope so, but i can’t say for sure.

What do you think, is good design really worth the price?