Whenever singer John Mayer sings his romantic song, “Your Body is a Wonderland”, I can’t help but think of web sites and usability. As a usability consultant, I see the devotion to his lover, and the time he spent uncovering every detail of her being, as the way most web site designers think we approach their web sites. When the lyrics arrive at “Take all your big plans; And break ’em; This is bound to be a while”, I start giggling. It makes me think of Amazon.com. I’ll explain why.
Poor Page Design and Visitor Retention
In the never ending search engine promotion battle, one of the most frequent questions asked by site owners is “why isn’t my site listed”? When web pages don’t magically appear in the Top 10 rankings of the major search engines, it’s usually Google & Co. who are blamed. Trouble is, the actual process of submitting sites is just one part of the web marketing equation, and the responsibility for generating traffic lies at the feet of the site owner, not the search engines.
9 Tips for Great Design of Your Marketing Materials
1) Don’t just hire a good designer. Hire someone who has had plenty of experience designing business collateral. Your designer needs to ask you the right questions about the project. And he/ she needs to be able to turn the design round reasonably fast too.
Define The Design of Your Website
The single most important step before you begin designing your website is defining the structure and purpose of your site. Once you have your structure planned out, you can unleash your creative genius.
The Dos and Donts of Web Site Design
Let’s discuss an important point about online content/text versus print. People read text off a computer screen at about 1/4th the speed that they do paper. This important fact tells us that we should keep what we want to say on the web short and sweet. If some of my articles have been too long, I apologize for my flapping mouth and keyboard!
The Three Core Principles of Great Web Design
The essence of a website is self-service. There are three core things that self-service needs to get right: convenience, speed, and price. Convenience means task achievement with minimum effort. Speed means that you get in and out of a website as quickly as possible. People are cheap on the Web.
Choosing the Right Design or Media House to Promote your Company
When you begin your search for the right design or media house, start out by knowing what you want and like. If you visit the web site of a design firm and all of their projects look the same plus it’s a look you don’t like, chances are they’re not a good match for you! Even if you like their look, do you really want a web site or Ad that is less memorable and doesn’t stand out because it looks exactly like any number of others?
What Type of Website Design Fits Your Needs?
In the big, wide online world there are millions of websites and billions of webpages. In the increasing sprawl of this virtual jungle there must be an evolution. Some of these webpages must grow stronger and thrive whilst others will weaken and die.
Value-Driven Intranet Design
Within most corporations, taking ownership of an intranet is an unglamorous, exhausting, and thankless job for a new intranet manager. Many corporate intranets lack thoughtful, focused, and disciplined design and are often extremely large and unwieldy. Fixing these intranets can seem an impossible and futile task.
How to Design a Professional Website for Your Business
If you intend to create a business website, you should keep the requirements of your website visitors in mind. This is to ensure that your website visitors enjoy visiting your website and stay longer. The longer they stay, the higher the chances that they would buy something or perform some other desirable activity.