Work Work Play
Becoming a company you’d like to shop with
In an effort to be everything to everyone and to profit we can sometimes do things that can harm our businesses. This is especially true on the web because it’s a newer medium.
Your bottom line is positively affected when you create good user experiences.
For some reason we understand these things suck when we experience them, but we sometimes inflict them on our customers anyway.
1.The haphazard sales pitch: I just want a customer which means I have to appeal to everyone.
The alternative: Instead of trying to reach just anybody, aim to reach somebody.
I used to have a client that had about a 55%-75% click-through rate on email campaigns. His Campaign Monitor stats are what email marketers dream about.
His secret: He wasn’t afraid to scale down.
He avoided the problem where companies entirely miss any audience, because they cast their nets so wide.
Getting the best out of your designer
On many of the bids I see placed on freelance sites, the most affordable and the most qualified are at completely opposite ends of the spectrum. This is another reason, I think we find seriously great designers forgoing these sites and meeting clients the more traditional way.
I think most of the established companies with show stopping design, even if they were quoting low would never be chosen for these jobs.
Why?
Because there’s a level of mediocrity that exists on these sites that makes even an average design site look out of place.
A company should not be able to say before understanding all specifications that they can build a site for you. However, companies and individual freelances alike do say just that.
Andy Rutledge outlines really well what should happen in the first design interview. Instead of talking about design and how to accomplish these things through design, we (designers) should be talking about:
- how the website fits into your business plan
- what you hope to accomplish
- your goals and your aims.
Yeah… but what about when they skip the sign-page..
Of the projects that I’ve worked on recently (and in the past), I’m amazed at how much people are willing to spend on “superficial” design, but forget about the little they spend on “functional” design. The two aren’t mutually exclusive, but rarely do people get both.
Generally, when I’m called in, I’m called in for ideas. This is a big part of our job. Clients bounce ideas off of us:
- “Would this be possible?
- “Why would we do it this way”
- “Take a look at this and tell me what you think?”
- “How can I increase sign ups?”
When I was asked my opinion on an auction project (in October 2007), I was very surprised that while over 40% of the site was forms, there had been no importance placed on actually designing forms for accessibility or ease of use. The same thing happened on an auction project I looked over in December 2008.
If the most important elements of your sites require form usage you have to, or at least have your developer/interfacer/grandma look at this article and pdf by Luke W about Best Practices and Web Form Design. At the blog UX Matters (UX stands for user experience), Matteo Penzo talks about (and bases his test around Luke’s presentation) results of unstyled, raw data as it relates to form performance.
Staying Grounded: Writing for the web
There are no secrets for good or adequate writing on the web. However, there are definitely tips that can improve your writing. One of the problems that people get into on the web is trying to make their product/organization/service “sound” professional. That attitude often yields awkward sentences like this one:
We facilitate discussions on issues of import to us all including impending legislation on our common values.
There are many problems with this sentence, but one that sticks out is the phrase “of import to us all”. Always remember your audience when writing. Try to keep in mind that not everyone is a native English speaker.
