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Video: Introduction to WCAG 2

Posted in Accessibility on by Paul Boag

I recently gave an internal presentation at Headscape about WCAG 2. A number of people expressed an interest in seeing it so I made a point to record it.

At the end the presentation I references a stripped down version of the guidelines found here.

I also refer to a quick reference guide to WCAG 2 that can be found here.

Apologises

Apologises for the poor audio quality of this video. Unfortunately the decision to record the presentation was made at the last minute and so we didn’t have a proper mic setup arranged. You can also tell it is not quite as slick as my normal presentations :)

I would also like to apologise for the lack of transcript of this video. Again, it was not my initial intention to put this video online as this was an internal presentation containing my initial thoughts on WCAG 2. I am still learning a lot about the new guidelines and will publish a more considered article when I have a better understanding of the subject.

Feedback

On that subject, I would be interested to hear your feedback on the thoughts I present. Do you agree with my interpretation of the new guidelines? Have I misunderstood anything? Are there other elements I should have addressed? Your thoughts would be appreciated in the comments.

Update: We now have a transcript!

Thanks go to Anna Debenham who braved the horrendous audio to transcribe the presentation. If you cannot face the video we do at least now have a written version!

Paul: Ok, this has worked out a little bit weird because the idea initially with this presentation was that it was really about bringing us up to speed with WCAG2 now that WCAG2 has been released. But I made the mistake of mentioning it online and several people said “ooh, can you record that?” so now it’s a little bit of both, a little bit of a presentation to you guys and a little bit of a presentation that will go on the web.

Paul: So as you guys probably know, WCAG2 has now been released, and as accessibility is a big part of what we deliver and we talk a lot about accessibility, we need to be up to speed on it and we need to know what we’re doing. Obviously accessibility has become such a part of what we do day in and day out that we don’t necessarily think too much about it, it’s almost an intrinsic part of what we do, but with changes to WCAG2, or with the arrival of WCAG2, there have been differences, changes, things that have altered, so I want to make sure that everybody is up to speed with it. Feel free to butt in with questions, that’s absolutely fine.

Audience: Will the video be able to see the screen?

Paul: The video will be able to see the screen. Ok, so, WCAG2. Basically, WCAG1 came out in 1999 which is a good old time ago, in Internet terms that’s like forever, and there was a real need to make some changes and improve WCAG1. Let me just pop back and just explain.

The Journey to WCAG2

Paul: So, yeah, like I said, WCAG1 came out in 1999, it quickly dated as technology evolved, and some of the guidelines actually became harmful in a way. So you guys know that for example, we don’t always take note of what they say about Access Keys, we don’t always take note of what they say about “make sure you put text in an empty form field” and things like that. And WCAG1 was very much built with HTML in mind, and obviously the web is a lot broader than that and there are a lot more formats about. But unfortunately development of WCAG2 was very slow, and also fraught with controversy. I mean, famously with Joe Clarke who is an accessibility expert wrote on A List Apart “to hell with WCAG2″ because it basically had become a bit of a joke, because it was very generic; they were trying to write a set of guidelines that really made no effort to mention specific technology because they didn’t want it to date like WCAG1, but the result is it became unreadable and nobody could understand it.

WCAG2 Reborn

Paul: But, things did change. Major changes were made to the WCAG2 draft and things did improve dramatically. They really listened to the community, and the language in it now is much clearer. So what I want to do now is talk a little bit through what WCAG2 includes and what it doesn’t, and how we’re then going to go about implementing it and how it affects us.

Principles

Paul: Ok, so let’s look at the structure of WCAG2. Basically WCAG2 has 3 tiers to it that you need to know about. Tier number 1 is the idea of Principles. So this is kind of the most generic of the tiers, you know, it’s really kind of aimed at the kind of things you would tell a board of directors that doesn’t really understand anything technical, that doesn’t really understand accessibility at all. And there are 4 principles which are the foundations of web accessibility and these principles I’ll come onto a little bit later.

Guidelines

Paul: Underneath each of those principles are Guidelines. So, within each principle there are 3 or 4 guidelines or a number of guidelines that is different for each principle. But there are a total of 12 guidelines, and these are goals that you should be working towards in order to make your content more accessible to users.

Success Criteria

Paul: Under each guideline, there are Success Criteria. So now we’ve really hit the nitty-gritty, these are kind of specific, measurable goals that you’ve got to achieve. And this is how you judge whether your site is WCAG2 compliant, if you like. So, this is the really important level if that makes sense, but it’s organised within this hierarchy of guidelines and principles.

Techniques

Paul: Now, actually, there is kind of a 4th tier as well which is techniques. So you’re trying to, maybe as designers, you’re trying to conform to the Success Criteria, well there’s a whole load of different ways and different techniques that you can do that and you could read about those, and you could make up your own techniques if you wanted to, but there are some laid down that can help you get going.

Working with WCAG2

Paul: So those are the 3 levels that WCAG2 is built around. Now let’s dive into those a little bit. I had to think about how much detail I want to go into in this room. Obviously we don’t want to go into every technique that you could possibly apply and we don’t even want to go into necessarily every success criteria. That’s really for you guys to look through afterwards. What we are going to do is look at those guidelines and those principles, and hopefully help you to understand where WCAG2 stands over stuff.

Perceivable

Paul: Ok, so, the first… heh, totally illegible text, isn’t that great. Very accessible!

Audience: (laughter)

Paul: So the number 1 principle is Perceivable, and that’s 1 of your 4 principles that you’ve got here. And perceivable is basically talking about “information and user interface components must be presentable to users in ways that they can perceive”

Audience: (laughter)

Paul: Unlike that! (points to presentation)

Audience: (laughter) Is the rest of the presentation like this?

Paul: Yes.

Audience: (more laughter)

Paul: You actually don’t need to read this anyway which is very useful. So, Perceivable is basically about “can you see it?”, that is it as far as the principle is concerned, and the answer is “no you can’t”. But perceivable then breaks down into a series of guidelines. So, let’s have a look at what these guidelines are. So basically, perceivable is broken down into 4 guidelines. And if we talk through each of those it should give you an idea.

Text Alternatives

Paul: The first one is text alternatives. So this is stuff we already know. “Provide text alternatives for any non-text content so that it can be changed into other forms people need, such as large print, braille, speech, symbols or simpler language.” So this really applies to things like video, audio, forms that you create, and interestingly CAPTCHA is particularly mentioned here. And that is a particular accessibility problem that hasn’t been particularly well solved I don’t think.

Time Based Media

Paul: The next way that Perceivable works itself out is in time-based media. What we’re talking about here is that you need to provide an alternative for anything that is time-based. So here we’re talking about captions for video, sign-language maybe, media alternatives, but it also applies to live and pre-recorded video. So if you’re streaming stuff, then you need to think about this as well as with stuff that’s pre-recorded. Now, it does take into account the difference between “crap, how are we going to make streaming video accessible?”. If you read into the guidelines it does give some good advice there. So that’s not quite as scary as it first sounds.

Adaptable

Paul: Anything that we produce needs to be adaptable. In other words, content can be presented in different ways. For example, a simpler layout maybe for people with cognitive disabilities for example. Really, this boils down to things like using semantic markup, meaningful order in your HTML so that if the CSS is stripped away it still makes sense in the order that it is presented, and not relying on colour and other sensory elements to convey information.

Distinguishable

Paul: And then finally it’s got to be distinguishable. So it’s about making it easier for users to see and hear content including separating foreground from background and that kind of stuff. So we’re talking here about contrast, colour, and control over things like audio and video, that kind of stuff. So that’s where we’re at with perceivable.

Operable

Paul: Let’s move onto the next principle which is Operable. So, Operable is about user interface components and navigation, and making them easy to use so that somebody can use them whatever disability they may have. So this again breaks down into 4 different guidelines, the most obvious of which is Keyboard Access. So everything that we produce has to be accessible via a keyboard. So, for example, the Flash video that we’re currently creating for the Wiltshire Farm Foods home page needs to be keyboard operated, alright? Which I bet it isn’t at the moment! And to be fair, it’s part of production, I’m sure they’d put that in at the end if I hadn’t reminded them. That existed under WCAG1, so there’s nothing different there. So everything needs to be keyboard accessible.

Enough Time

Paul: You also need to provide enough time for people to take in the information that they’re being presented with. So giving the ability to pause, stop and control time based material is really important as well.

Seizures

Paul: You’ve got to take into account seizures, some people can have seizures triggered by animation and that kind of thing, so there are various limits that the guidelines lay down about flashing objects and stuff like that.

Navigable

Paul: And then finally it’s got to be navigable. So this includes things like skipping content, having descriptive page titles, tab order, links that make sense out of context, lot’s of headings, that kind of stuff. Is this all making sense?

Audience: Yes, apart from time-based media, I don’t understand that.

Paul: Time-based media, we’re talking about video and audio. So let’s say you had… one of our podcasts. So, there are certain things we need to ensure. One is that it is operable, in other words, a user can pause the podcast if we get annoying, or they want time to take in the information that we’ve said, but the other thing is that we also need to provide an alternative way of them getting it which is why we provide the show notes that we do and the transcripts and stuff like that.

Audience: Ok, well that kind of fits under Text Alternatives and giving it control so it’s under Operable… I just don’t get where it is under perceivable, as a perceivable thing, it has to be perceivable?

Paul: Yeah, basically.

Audience: Video, audio… all has to be perceivable then?

Paul: Yes. Some of these principles and certainly some of the guidelines do overlap to some degree. But when you draw down to the Success Criteria level, of how you actually apply these things, then there are more specific techniques. I think what they did is create a load of success criteria, and then kind of chunked them together in meaningful groups, but sometimes they’re not so meaningful. But it is a vast improvement on WCAG1 as far as being able to understand it.

Understandable

Paul: Ok, talking of understanding it, our next one is Understandable. So this is the next one of our 4 top-level principles, so everything you produce has to be understandable. So what does that mean? Well that results in 3 guidelines. It has to be Readable, Predictable and has to be able to provide Input Assistance. So how does that work itself out in practice?

Readable

Paul: With Readable, we’re talking about making content readable, text content mainly. So this works out in things like setting the language in your HTML, you know, setting what the language is in the header, avoiding using jargon, finally we’ve got a decent reason to go back to clients and say, you know, “you can’t use that kind of language, nobody understands it!”. Also things like abbreviations need to be explained, and also reading level as well, and that’s something I really want to get through to a lot of our clients because a lot of our clients, especially the public sector clients that we have, have this attitude of “well of course, people that look at our site are of post-graduate degree people, and they have excellent reading level”, but that doesn’t take into account things like people that speak English as a 2nd language, who can be very intelligent but not particularly good at reading, also people with Dyslexia can be incredibly intelligent but not particularly good at reading. So reading level is an important aspect of it.

Predictable

Paul: For it to be understandable it also needs to be predictable. So with this we’re talking about things like consistent navigation, and no uninitiated changes. And this is a particularly important one in our world of AJAX and JavaScript and all this cool stuff that we’re doing where we can often trigger events without asking the user’s permission first. When I say “asking for permission” I mean they haven’t clicked on link or they’ve not initiated it in any way. Users need to initiate these actions… and no pop-up windows without them clicking first to trigger a pop-up and being aware of what’s going to happen. It’s all about making it understandable and making them aware of what’s going on.

Input Assistance

Paul: The last guideline under Understandable is Input Assistance. So this is going into the realms of when we do forms, how do we handle errors, what kind of feedback do we give to the user, what labels – are things clearly marked up as labels, are they descriptive of the fields and the forms and that kind of stuff. We’re also talking about help, what additional help are you provided in terms of tool tip and contextual help and anything else that you care to mention. So that’s Understandable, that’s what that principle is driving at.

Robust

Paul: The final principle is Robust. “Content must be robust enough that it can be interpreted reliably by a wide variety of user agents, including assistive technologies.” In other words, what we build has to work on everything.

Audience: What about AJAX?

Paul: I think that’s where we get into the realm of progressive enhancement, that it’s fine to use something like AJAX as long as, if the AJAX is taken away, it still operates. Or, you provide an alternative version, the guidelines do actually accept that you can do alternative versions of something. So Gmail is a good example of that, Gmail, it actually doesn’t work if AJAX is turned off but they do provide an HTML only version of it which does the same thing. I’m not a great fan of that because it’s twice as much stuff to maintain, and one version become out of date and all the rest of it. My preferred technique is to build it so it works normally, and then to layer on the JavaScript and AJAX on top of it to provide enhanced functionality, which is what we guys have been doing pretty much all along and we need to continue in doing that.

Compatibility

Paul: So that Robust principle actually only comes down to one guideline which is Compatible, so that’s about maximising compatibility with current… listen to the wording of this… Maximise compatibility with current and future user agents, so we also need to be looking forward as well and predicting the future which is always good. But that’s where it comes back to using solid, good code that is’nt reliant on lots of hacks in order to get it to work, and it goes back to the conversation that we’ve been having recently about browser testing, upgraded browser support and that kind of stuff as well. So Compatibility and Robustness is the last principle. The other thing I should have mentioned with Compatibility is this also includes things like validation, making sure that your code validates, and just generally other markup type stuff.

What, no AAA, AA, A?

Paul: Ok, another thing that might have occurred to you is AAA, AA, A.. Priority 1, 2 and 3. Priority 1, 2 and 3 are still there, there are still those levels of conformance, but I get a real sense from the tome of this document, and this is just my personal opinion, people watching this video who know a lot more about accessibility might jump all over me on this, but my sense is that they were playing down those 3 levels of conformance. To be honest, I think I’m pretty keen on that. I don’t think those levels of conformance have done a lot of good generally speaking, because I think it’s kind of developed a checkbox mentality amongst some of our clients “We must be AA compliant” or “We must be A compliant” and they’re not actually thinking about the needs of the users, they’re just ticking the boxes so they meet some quota that has been established somewhere. One of the things that’s quite interesting, and I’m not sure if it’s a change from WCAG1 or not, I couldn’t find the reference in WCAG1 but again someone will correct me no doubt, but conformance in WCAG2 seems to be on a page-by-page basis. So you’re no longer in a situation where you want to claim conformance so you’re claiming conformance for an entire site, but you’re rather conforming on a page-by-page basis. And this allows you to basically pick-and-mix the level of conformance you want to reach on any particular page which is much, much more sensible because there are some elements where you might be building a particularly complex application that really isn’t going to manage being AAA compliant, whereas the rest of the site is AAA, and this one page isn’t. So it’s giving you the ability to mix and match. In fact, in the guidelines it says “It is not recommended that Level AAA conformance be required as a general policy for entire sites because it is not possible to satisfy all Level AAA Success Criteria for some content. In other words they’re saying it’s just not possible to be AAA in some situations, so don’t even try.

Start With Basics

Paul: So how does this relate to what we do on a day-to-day basis? Well, I think the language we use with our clients pretty much will remain consistent with how it was with WCAG1 which is that we need to start of by encouraging all our clients to start with the absolute basics. A lot of people are put off of accessibility because of the enormity of it, of all the things they’ve got to do. And even to be single A compliant there is quite a lot to do if you’ve got a site that has never been built to be single A compliant before. So I think our attitude has got to be that you work towards this over time, it is an ongoing process, you don’t need to do it all in one big go and that you need to start with the absolute basics, the quick wins, the stuff… you know, it’s the 80/20 rule, 80% of the problems that people are going to encounter from an accessibility point of view is caused by 20% of the accessibility issues if that makes sense. So we can solve a small number of issues but have a big impact on the site. So we’ll start off with some real basic stuff. Things like putting in “alt” and “title” attributes, providing alternatives to media, things like video and audio, being aware of JavaScript and the problems that JavaScript can create if it’s not implemented correctly, providing resizable text so that the user has the ability to either increase or decrease the text size on sites, to build everything to be standards based because that makes it so much easier in future.

Audience: Aren’t we moving away from resizable text?

Paul: We’re moving away from the resizable interface where the whole thing scales up and down, but there’s no reason why we can’t keep the text itself rescaleable. The layers should be able to push up and down. It has to be said with resizeable text, it is becoming less of an issue. The reason it’s becoming less of an issue is because browsers now have this zoom functionality built into them. But I don’t think we’re quite there yet to be able to drop resizable text entirely is my current feeling… I’ve got mixed feelings about it. But the obvious aim we’re going for here is to be single A compliant.

Build Over Time

Paul: So all of this is about building accessibility over time. Taking the guidelines by themselves is not going to be enough, and taking this checkbox mentality that I talked about earlier is not going to be enough. Once you’ve done these quick fixes, the next step on from that is to start consulting with your community. We need to encourage our clients to start talking to their users and find out what accessibility concerns they have. I also think, which I think we’re quite poor at, that we need to start testing with real users some of the accessibility stuff that we do, and the big problem there is persuading clients to pay for that. It’s really hard to get clients to pay for that kind of testing but I do think that it’s a really useful thing to do, and there are organisations out there that provide people you can get in to do testing, or that you can send sites out and they test with them. So, testing with real disabled users is really worthwhile. I think it’s about identifying major issues and dealing with those first, just pragmatic kind of prioritisation of issues, something you do with usability. With usability you look for the quick wins and the showstoppers and those you deal with first, exactly the same with accessibility. Now, what the major showstoppers are for those navigating the site need to be dealt with. And over time you build towards AA and AAA compliance if you can. But you only do that maybe on some pages. The big concern clients have and the reason they get into this check-box mentality of saying “we’ve got to be double A or we’ve got to conform to the WCAG guidelines” is fear, a fear of litigation. Especially our bigger clients, they’re really worried they’re going to get serious issues. But I think it’s important to stress with clients that litigation doesn’t happen overnight. You don’t suddenly have come through the post a writ saying “you need to come into court about this accessibility issue on your site”. It doesn’t happen like that. What happens in reality is the user complains. And if the user is repeatedly not heard and not listened to, and not responded to and not cared about and rejected, they get angry enough to maybe approach someone like the RNIB who then take it on into litigation for them. That’s the reality of what happens.

Quick Response

Paul: So as a result, you can diffuse that by responding to complaints quickly. So as you’re building up over time with the accessibility policy, if someone does complain, you need to write back to them and you need to deal with that issue straight up. Ok, so that’s how the client should be dealing with all this and there’s loads more I could say on this but I don’t want it to go on forever.

Headscape’s Approach

Paul: Let’s briefly talk about Headscape and our approach and how we should be approaching the subject of accessibility.

Establish Approach With Client

Paul: Well first of all I think everything that we do in our approach should be in conjunction with the client. I don’t think necessarily we talk enough to the client about accessibility. Some clients are just so bamboozled by it that they want us to take control, others want a say in it and what to be reassured that we’re doing something about it. So I think there’s a dialogue that we need to make sure happens. And if a client just wants us to take control of it, that’s great. If they want to be involved in the process, then that’s great to but we need to engage with the client and talk to the client more about it.

Remain Pragmatic

Paul: The second thing and I think this is really important is that we need to remain pragmatic in our approach to accessibility. Everything I’ve been talking about before like building up accessibility gradually, about doing the quick wins first and the show stoppers and that kind of stuff, that’s all pragmatic. I don’t want us on one hand to ignore accessibility, and it needs to be an integral part of everything we do, but on the other hand you can become extremist about it. We could spend hours and hours trying to get something to work in every conceivable user agent in the world and we can worry about every type of disability to the point where it becomes like a paralysis that stops us actually doing anything. So there’s a real balance that we need to strike here. And we need to strike that with our clients and working with our clients.

Have a rationale

Paul: Now I think it’s worth saying that if we decide not to comply with a guideline for whatever reason, we need to have a rationale for that. So we might not conform even to single A compliance in certain situations, although to be honest I can’t think of any off the top of my head, but if we do decide not to conform, we need a damned good reason why not. In other words, we need to have thought about it. And the other thing about accessibility is that we always think about it at the end of the project. It’s too late by then, we’ve built everything. So it really needs to become an intrinsic part of everything that we do.

Responsibilities.

Paul: Let’s talk about the idea of responsibility here and whose responsibility accessibility is within Headscape. Basically I’m going to say, everybody. One of the absolute great things about WCAG2 is because it’s got this 3 tiered approach, it is “accessible” to everybody. It’s understandable by everybody. So therefore it can be everybody’s responsibility to keep an eye on accessibility. And so this is how I think it should split down.

Sales/Client – Principles

Paul: Marcus and Chris and the Client should be worried about principles. The Operable, the Perceivable, those basic top-level principles. And you should be looking at anything that goes out from the company and going “well is that really operable?” So you can take a very top-level approach to it. And I think as you talk to clients as well you take this very top-level approach to it. That’s the level you guys should be working at.

Guidelines – Project Managers

Paul: Project managers, I think you need to be looking and understanding from the guidelines point of view. So you need to go in and read what those guidelines are, and you need to be sure that you understand them. And as you look at any work that goes out from the company, you need to be thinking “does it conform to those guidelines?” You don’t necessarily care about the nitty-gritty of how those are measured, or the nitty-gritty of how they’re achieved, but has that guideline been met? That’s the level you need to be working at.

Success Criteria – Designers and Developers

Paul: Then when it comes to the designers and developers, you need to get right into these guidelines. And you need to understand the success criteria and how to apply the guideline and how to make them work in practice.

Check Everything

Paul: So basically, we need to be checking everything that goes out the company for accessibility. And I have to say I’m making the mistake of saying this on camera, but I think we’ve got a bit lax recently when it comes to accessibility. We reached a point where it was becoming quite intuitive to us, and we were doing it quite naturally, and then as a result of that, we stopped checking because it was the natural process of what we were doing, and then bad habits start to seep in again. So WCAG2 is a great opportunity for us to say “ok, we need to start reviewing everything we’re doing as it goes out again”. So I’d really, really encourage you to check everything.

Needs to be second nature

Paul: basically we need to get to the point where this is second nature to us, so that we’re doing this intuitively again, but not to the point where we’re no longer checking.

Audience: Clients often say “what’s the difference? If I just got for single A compliancy, what won’t my site be reaching?”

Paul: I have to say that I think I would stop talking about double A, triple A and single A compliancy. I don’t think there’s really any value any more in talking about that to the clients.

Audience: I think there is because having the page by page conformance is a really good thing and that we can now argue that yes, we can now make the majority of your site triple A compliant, but for a page full of videos, we can make it single A compliant.

Paul: Ok

Audience: Clients will continue to reference it in briefs. You can’t not talk about it.

Audience: I think it’s actually quite a strong thing.

Audience: is it a page by page compliance, or template by template compliance?

Paul: I think it has to be page by page because the content that goes into the page, into the template, could invalidate it. This is why I think it’s something that should be downplayed. I accept the clients will still talk to us about it, but clients still talk to us about doing speculative design, it doesn’t mean we do it. I think there’s an education thing there whereby we need to move clients away from being obsessed by double A, single A compliance, and to start thinking about accessibility policies. What is there accessibility policy and what is it that they are trying to achieve on their site? Our base mark is going to be single A, it’s always single A, and I think it should continue to be single A.

Audience: but if you don’t talk to them about it, you could argue that less caring clients would just say “well why would I do anything about it, bottom line?”

Paul: Yeah, I said you shouldn’t talk about single A, double A, triple A, but that doesn’t mean you can’t talk to them about accessibility and the improvements that accessibility brings because for people that have got that sort of attitude you don’t want to talk about the disabled if they don’t care about the disabled, you talk about search engines, and that’s the best way to sell accessibility, by talking about search engine placement. That’s the reason you want to be accessible for people who have that kind of attitude. For those that care, and are talking about single A, double A and triple A, you need to say to them “well actually, conforming with any level, it’s great that you want to do accessibility, and certainly single A should be an absolute minimum, but we’d encourage you to start working up an accessibility policy and looking at your site as a whole and say could this area do more in your site, your accessibility policy should do real world testing with real users…” all kinds of things.

Audience: So you think that we should be encouraging large organisations that have accessibility policies themselves that refer to double A, triple A, to try and persuade them to kind of move away from that?

Paul: No, not necessarily, I wouldn’t go that far. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that they’re a bad thing, I’m saying they’re not the be-all and end-all. And at the moment I feel like the vast majority of clients think they are the be-all and end-all. They’re obsessed with putting that little badge on the bottom of the page. And it’s not about putting badges on the page. The trouble with institutions that have these policies of single A, double A and triple A is that these policies are in place for the institution, not for the user. And that’s my problem with them. That’s why I think we should try to break that mentality with clients. And I accept that sometimes we’re going to lose, and that’s fine. Exactly the same goes when we were talking about browser support. I accept sometimes we’re going to lose that battle as well. But it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try and fight it.

Audience: I just wondered why WCAG2 still does it, because yes, you’re right basically, and accessibility requirements should be based on user requirements and not ticking boxes, so why is it still in there?

Paul: I think it’s in there because… my impression… I hate talking about accessibility on camera! You remember what happened last time in the podcast? It was just a nightmare! I think the reason it’s still in is because some of those success criteria are hard to meet. Some of them are damn difficult. When you start talking about streaming video, you’ve got some difficult challenges there that need to be met. So I think as a result, what the W3C is saying there is that we accept that some of these things are difficult to do. And we accept that you’re not always going to be able to do them, so we’re going to make them triple A. But come on guys, some of this stuff is dead simple and we should be doing it, that’s single A. That’s my impression of the mentality behind it, and that’s a great mentality, but it’s when someone changes that to being guidelines, which is what they are, to being rules, really instilled by Moses and presented to the people. You know it’s not that and I think that’s an important differentiation to make.

Where to Start

Paul: I know what you guys are like, especially designers. Ok I’m making sweeping generalisations here. But, if you guys go along to the WCAG website and you look at the WCAG2 guidelines, it’s horrible! It’s intimidating and it’s scary and it goes on for pages. And there’s a lot of text around it.

Audience: There’s no pictures? (laughter)

Paul: There’s no pictures! The design isn’t even very good. So what I’ve done is I’ve taken that page, I’ve literally all I’ve done is I’ve stripped out the explanation text in front of it, and the waffle at the end of it, and I’ve left you with just the set of guidelines so it looks like a slightly less intimidating list. Not much but slightly. So that’s up at http://www.headscape.co.uk/WCAG2 so if you go to that, you can get just the actual list of criteria. There’s also, on the WCAG2 website, there’s a thing where you can go and you can say my site uses tables, my site uses video, my site has this and that, and you untick the ones that it doesn’t have and it narrows down the list of success criteria to only show you the ones that you need to care about. So you might want to check that one out as well. Ok, so that’s basically all I have to say, are there any other questions before we wrap up?

Questions

Audience: Clients are going to ask us the 1 minute elevator pitch. What’s the difference between WCAG2 and WCAG1? What would you highlight as differences?

Paul: I think there’s a bigger acceptance of things in the world other than HTML, so things like Flash, PDFs, all that kind of stuff, there’s much more reference to that kind of thing. It’s much better written, much better organised. I think it’s more pragmatic. It’s a little bit more… I think it will last the test of time more. It’s hard to pin down exactly what I mean by that. There is actually a document out that talks about the specific differences between WCAG1 and WCAG2 if you wanted to get into that level of detail. And to be honest, I couldn’t tell you what that is yet because I haven’t looked at it in that much depth myself.

Audience: I think you and I do need a couple of the more detailed stuff, to get the guidelines, just one or two examples basically. Something that’s new between WCAG1 and WCAG2, and also some of the differences between single A, double A and triple A. The streaming video is an excellent example.

Paul: Just go along to http://www.headscape.co.uk/WCAG2 and you’ll be able to see those different levels.

Audience: It seems like, an almost unwritten principle, or unwritten in your list of principles. It’s technology agnostic.

Paul: WCAG2 started off as so technologically agnostic that it wasn’t understandable.

Audience: WCAG1, the first line is all about “it must be W3C technologies”.

Paul: Yeah, it will pretty much accommodate anything. You know, it talks in terms of audio and video. It doesn’t mention Flash for example specifically, at least I don’t think it does, but it refers to those kinds of things. It refers to documents that are not HTML. I’m saying this as much for the video as anything else, I’m still learning about it as well. So I think it’s going to be a learning process for a while for us to really get to grips with this, and truth be told we probably should have started a little sooner than this, but it’s not radically different from WCAG1. This is as much getting us back into the habit of thinking about accessibility as anything else really. Ok?

Audience: 1 more question. Are they new Keynote animations?

Paul: Yeah, they are new Keynote animations.

149. White Hat

Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

On this week’s show: How to become number one on Google *cough*, are customer testimonials worth it and how do you create a reassuring website.

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Housekeeping

Some housekeeping to kick off today’s show I am afraid:

Web Design Introductory Training

Drew and Rachel over at EdgeOfMySeat.com are running two training courses next month that look ideal for those starting out in web design. What is more they are offering boagworld listeners 10% off if they enter the promo code ‘boagworld’ at checkout.

The two courses are…

HTML and Web Standards for Beginners – 19th February

a one day course ideally suited to those wanting to get into web design, or perhaps for clients who have to format content with HTML for their websites. Covers the basic web standards principals of semantic markup and separation of content, structure and presentation.

Beginners CSS – 20th February

a one day course for learning CSS from the ground up. We go from zero knowledge right through to building floated, positioned and fixed width layouts.

For more information visit edgeofmyseat.com/training/

Bamboo Juice

Next up is a conference I am really excited to be speaking at. It called Bamboo Juice and is a one day conference taking place at the Eden Project in Cornwall. There is a growing line up of speakers that currently includes people like Jeremy Keith and myself.

It is great to see conferences happening further afield in the UK and I really want to see this one succeed. Please support it if you can. Cornwall is a stunning place and the Eden Project is a must visit. You ticket includes entry to the Eden Project so you will have a chance to look around.

Best of all the entire conference only costs £99! Please, please join us. Its going to be great fun and it should have a nice intimate feel with lots of time for chatting.

You can book your ticket now at bamboojuice.co.uk.

Consultancy Competition

Just a reminder of our free consultancy competition. Headscape are giving away a free days consultancy to a lucky winner. Email us with your name, URL and why you want us to help you out. We will pick a winner at the end of the month.

If you can’t wait that long Paul has started running mini-consultancy clinics via Skype. You can buy 30 minutes or more of Paul’s time and he will chat with you about your site, career or anything else (within reason). Its a bit of an experiment at the moment so if you are interested in trying it out visit the Boagworld forum where he talks more about the idea.

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News and events

More on jQuery

If you listen to this show regularly then no doubt you will be aware of what a huge jQuery fan I am. I was therefore super excited this week to see the release of a new version of jQuery that builds on what is already an excellent Javascript library.

Most of the improvements are in performance. This is remarkable as jQuery was already one of the most lightweight and speedy libraries available. However, they seem to have made some significant improvements.

The main new piece of functionality is something called Live Events. Live Events allows you to bind events (such as a onclick event) to all elements even if they have yet to be created. Let me give you an example. Let’s say you wanted all links with a class=’external’ to open in a new window. Previously you would create a function that added an event to all links with that class so that when the link was clicked it opened a new window. The problem was that if you added more links dynamically to the page you would have to rerun the function if you wanted them to behave in the same way. With live events this is no longer necessary. This is a huge improvement and one that will streamline a lot of code.

I really cannot say enough good things about jQuery. It really is enormously powerful and a real time saver. What you can do with it is quite amazing as is demonstrated by a post from Smashing Magazine this week entitled "45+ New jQuery Techniques For Good User Experience". Whether you use jQuery already or not, check this post out. It will definitely give you loads of ideas for enhancing your sites.

Getting started with HTML 5

Talking of new releases, there is a significant amount of buzz surrounding HTML 5 at the moment. This is somewhat surprising considering it is a long way from being finished and some even argue we do not need it in its current form.

Cameron Moll does a nice job of providing a round up of what is currently being written about HTML 5 including a nice little summary at the beginning…

The world isn’t ready for HTML 5 at large just yet, but we can begin preparing for it by using common, semantic selector names (header, nav, section, etc.)

To be honest it is still early days for HTML 5 with some estimating it will be released in 2022 some estimating that it will not be fully implemented by browsers until 2022. With those kind of timescales we can afford not to care. Jeff Croft puts it up nicely in his post "Two Thousand and Twenty Two" where he says…

It ultimately doesn’t matter if HTML 5 is available next month, next year, or fifty years from now. Those of us who do real work in this industry know that the only thing that really matters is what specs and technologies are supported by the browsers real people use.

Jeff came under a lot of attack for his post but I have to say I agree with him. What matters to real web designers and real website owners is what browsers will support now. So my advice is to ignore HTML 5 now and brush up on your WCAG 2 instead!

Web design trends for 2009

We turn now to the more immediate future and a post by the people over at Smashing Magazine. "Web Design Trends of 2009" endeavours to look at emerging trends that could become mainstream over the coming year.

To be honest I am not sure these are some much web design trends of 2009, as a look back at the end of the last year. However, it makes interesting reading none the less.

The trends listed include…

  • Use of letterpress typography, where text is ‘punched out’ of the background
  • An increase in the richness of user interfaces through the use of Javascript
  • The general acceptance of PNG transparency
  • Big bold typography
  • An increased use of font replacement using tools like sFIR
  • More sites than ever using overlay boxes to display images and video
  • A proliferation of video and screencasts
  • Blogs adopting a more magazine orientated design aesthetic
  • Lots of Javascript slideshows wherever you look

Nothing particularly surprising, but the article does provide some inspiring examples of these different trends and analysis about wh
y they are becoming fashionable.

Your website can thrive in a recession

We conclude today with another post about the recession. To be honest I am getting sick of talking about it. In fact I suspect it is turning into a self fulfilling prophesy. However, Gerry McGovern has written an interesting post about how your website could thrive in a recession.

The article mainly focuses on the cost savings that can be made by bringing customer interactions online. He quotes research which states:

the average cost of a web interaction is 27 pence, the average cost of a phone interaction is 3.76 Sterling and the average cost of a face-to-face interaction is 9.34 Sterling.

He goes on to say:

So, it is 14 times cheaper to allow a customer to complete a task on a website than to have the customer complete the same task over the phone. The Web is 35 times cheaper for completing such a task than a face-to-face interaction. Isn’t that a compelling business case for a website during a recession?

It is an interesting argument and one that may sway some of the people holding the purse strings. However it fails to take into account the upfront development cost of moving customer interactions online. For better or worse companies are focusing on short term cost savings at the moment rather than long term expenses. As a result some web design projects are being put on hold.

Nevertheless if you work for an organisation that deals with a large number of customers then this article is a powerful arguement. It is certainly something that you need to show your boss.

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Feature: Becoming Number One On Google

‘Become number one on Google’ – The dream of every website owner and titles like that grab people’s attention. What can you do to help achieve that dream without resorting to black hat techniques? Read More

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Listeners feedback:

Customer testimonials – Are they worth it?

Question from Dave Rupert –

“Client Testimonials” – whenever some marketing aficionado comes up with these they want them on the site. When was the last time you thought “OOOOH CLIENT TESTIMONIALS!! OMFGWTFBMXBBQ!!1!” and clicked to go see a whole page of them? Are these out of date? Does anyone care about them? Are there examples of good implementation? Do you use Client Testimonials on your site? If so, why?

This is a good question because it has made me question something that I have always considered to be a really good thing on websites.

I think someone in Dave’s position – who I assume is a web developer/owner – won’t ever get excited about a list of client testimonials. Let’s face it, they’re not for Dave. They’re meant for visitors to the site to try and persuade them that buying a product or hiring a service is a good idea. The idea is that customers are far more likely to trust a testimonial from an existing client than the marketing speak on a website.

But this is where I have started to question my thinking. For example: “I am Mr X from company Y and I have to tell you that after using these people’s services I am now a better, more rounded person and I have decided to name my first-born after the MD”… this rather points to the fact that Mr X is the MD’s brother/drinking buddy/receiver of folding in a reverse handed way (delete as appropriate)… or even the MD himself!

So, do potential customers place any value in testimonials or do they instantly think they are fiction. In my opinion, I do still think they have value, particularly if you back up an online testimonial with that particular client’s contact details in a proposal. I also think that video testimonials have more value than written ones because (unless they are a complete setup) you will be getting the client’s real feelings and you can watch their body language.

Slightly going of point, regarding providing client contact details for inclusion in a proposal, I have started to ask potential new clients which of our existing clients they would like to talk to rather than simply providing a list chosen by me. I think this adds a further degree of trust.

Fundamentally, I do still think testimonials are a good thing and we will continue to use them on our site. But I don’t think I will be placing so much importance on them as I used to.

How do you make your site feel safe

Kevin Dees asks an interesting question on the forum:

I don’t know if this question has been asked before but I’m interested in what other designers have done to help make a site "feel safe".

Many times I find myself leaving e-commerce sites… because they do not feel safe. I find that this is due to poor design. Big flashing buttons and the like make me wonder if I’m going to get scammed.

So, I guess what my question is "how, as a designer, do you make your site feel safe, welcoming, and secure with the design itself? What are good practices? How do you make users go were you want them to, yet make them feel like they are still in control? What do you suggest adding or even keeping way from when it comes to design"

The answers he got in the forum didn’t really address his question. They focused on the realities of making a site safe (security and technology) rather than on the perception of security.

A site maybe the safest in the world but if the design isn’t right you are left with doubts. Take for example the new US government site that allows people to apply for visa waivers every time they travel to the US. One would hope that a site collecting that amount of personal data would be extremely secure but the design leaves you wondering if it is legitimate. It just doesn’t ‘feel’ professional.

I have spent a long time trying to come up with an answer for Kevin. However, I have found it hard to define what provides that sense of security. Part of the problem is that I think as a web designer I am more sensitive to the ‘vibe’ a site gives off than the average user. I am not sure I am best placed to judge.

Also, a lot of the things that occurred to me where content issues more than design. Delivery policy, site security, returns policy etc. are all content issues and so do not answer Kevin’s question.

However a few things have come to mind…

  • An attention to detail – Sites that lack an attention to detail always make me nervous. Poor browser support, bad grammar, inconsistencies and ill considered design reek of unprofessionalism. If I am going to spend my money on a site, I want to know that money and time has been invested in its creation. If an organisation is shoddy in the production of their own site, then I can probably expect the same attitude in the way they interact with me!
  • Structure – I think a strong grid structure is very reassuring. It conveys a sense of order that is disconcerting when not there. I think that is the problem I have with the US immigration site. The form you have to fill in is all over the place. Fields don’t line up and the site lacks any sense of order.
  • Colour – Misjudging colour can have a serious physiological effect on how we perceive a site. Some colours ar
    e naturally more trustworthy than others. Blue for example has a very safe reliable quality. However using a conservative blue on a site aimed at young girls will project entirely the wrong image and make the audience suspicious of your site.
  • Trying too hard – Some sites just try too hard, shouting for attention. Flashy graphics, heavy sales copy and advertising orientated imagery all scream desperation and manipulation. People do not like to be manipulated or pushed into responding. They like to move at their own pace. Push them too hard and they will run away.

I am not sure I have done particularly well at answering the question either, but hopefully there is something in there you might find useful.

 

Becoming number one on Google

Posted in Marketing on by Paul Boag

‘Become number one on Google’ – The dream of every website owner and titles like that grab people’s attention. What can you do to help achieve that dream without resorting to black hat techniques?

We have spoken before about the dangers of using black hat techniques to improve your sites ranking. But, what legitimate techniques can you use?

There is a lot you and your team can do to improve your placement on search engines. These fall into three broad categories:

  • Improving your site’s build
  • Improving your site’s content
  • Encourage quality links

Improving your site’s build

I have written before about how accessibility can also improve search engine placement. By avoiding content types that search engines find hard to access (like Adobe Flash), marking up content semantically and using appropriate ALT and title attributes, we make our sites easier to index. However, although these techniques ensure content is indexable, it does not mean search engines will discover that content in the first place.

The following will ensure Google (or other search engines) discover your content.

  • Create a clear hierarchy – Every page should be reachable from at least one other page of your site.
  • Use text links – Links between pages should be textual rather than use images, Flash or other unaccessible technologies.
  • Use short URLs – Some web addresses created by dynamically driven websites (such as those built using content management systems) cause problems for search engines. Shorter web addresses with less parameters (characters after the ? in the address), the more likely to be found.
  • Add a site map – Add a site map that includes links to the important content. However, try not to exceed 100 links on a page as this can cause problems.
  • Submit your site – A search engine will find your site through those who link to you. However, speed up the process by submitting your site for indexing. You can submit a site to Google here. You can also submit a site map using Googles Webmasters tools. This helps Google learn the structure of your site and increases the number of pages indexed.

    • Once search engines can access your website, you need to address the content.

    Improving your site’s content

    The most important consideration when writing copy for search engines is the inclusion of search terms. Before writing a page have a clear idea of what it is about and what search terms might use when searching for that subject. Next, incorporate them naturally into copy, headings, image alt attributes and the page title.

    Be careful not to use too many search terms. Two or three per page is adequate. If you use more, copy may become hard to read and the ranking of each individual term will be reduced.

    Do not stuff a page with search terms as you may be penalized. They should be incorporated naturally into your copy. Try reading your copy out loud. If it sounds like you are forcing the use of keywords it will require some rewriting.

    Ultimately all you need to do is write good copy. If it is well written and engaging it will also attract links.

    Encourage quality links

    If you already run a website, you will have probably received an email from somebody wanting to ‘exchange links’. The email may have explained that Google ranks pages by the number of incoming links.

    There is some truth in this claim. Google does partially rank pages based on the number of sites who link to you. However, this is not the whole story.

    In reality nobody but Google knows how they rank sites. Links are a factor but it is not just the quantity that matter. Google states that:

    The quantity, quality, and relevance of links count towards your rating.

    Google looks at a number of factors:

    • The subject matter of the site linking,
    • The copy that appears in the link,
    • The popularity of the site linking,
    • The reputation of the site linking.

    It is rarely worthwhile responding to link requests, unless they come from a high profile website with appropriate content.

    It is however worth seeking links from relevant sites. Which sites would you like to appear on irrespective of the benefits to your ranking? Which sites do your target audience frequent? Getting featured on such sites provide benefits of their own, independent of the benefit to ranking.

    Will the above techniques get you to number one on Google? Possibly. It will certainly do your site no harm unlike many of the other techniques out there.

    This was another lovely little extract from my book – the website owners manual.

    Effective browser support

    Posted in Development on by Paul Boag

    Browser support should focus on usability and accessibility rather than pixel perfect design. Sites should render in all browsers, but provide advanced features and aesthetics to those which can support it.

    Most web design contracts address browser support. Many agencies still treat support as a black or white decision – a browser is either supported or it is not. If the browser is not supported the site is often unusable. However, this approach fails to acknowledge the diverse and evolving nature of the web. We should be supporting all browsers.

    What does ‘support’ mean?

    Although we support all browsers, that does not mean every user will have the same experience. For example, it is unrealistic to expect a user accessing the web through a text only browser to have the same experience as somebody using the latest version of Firefox.

    As Yahoo states in their own browser support documentation:

    Requiring the same experience for all users creates a barrier to participation. Availability and accessibility of content should be our key priority.

    Supporting a browser should provide the best experience possible within the constraints of that browser, and should exclude none.

    Expecting pixel perfect accuracy across browsers is unrealistic and not cost effective.

    The problem with pixel perfect design

    With browser technology improving all of the time it is unsurprising that modern websites do not always render the same in older browsers such as Internet Explorer 6 (released 2001) as they do in more contemporary counterparts. In fact even modern browsers differ in the way they display HTML.

    Many web designers go to extreme lengths to ensure consistency across their ‘supported browsers’. However although this is achievable if the number of supported browsers is limited, it comes at a cost. This includes:

    • Significant overhead in the time required to overcome limitations in older browsers.
    • Increased likelihood that unsupported browsers cannot access the site. This is because of hacks and excessive code employed to ensure consistency.
    • A tendency to design for the lowest common denominator.

    A better approach is to ensure that the site works well and looks reasonable on the lowest common denominator browser, and then ‘enhance it’ for more capable browsers.

    For example, modern browsers support design enhancements such as:

    • rounded corners
    • drop shadows
    • Improved typography

    and various other styling not supported by older browsers without additional code and effort. However as Andy Clarke explains – because these design elements are not intrinsic to the usability or functionality of the site they can be safely dropped.

    If this approach is adopted, it is less likely browsers will render sites incorrectly and so the level of testing can be reduced.

    Testing

    When a black and white approach to browser support is employed, testing can become expensive and time consuming. While website owners want to support as many browsers as possible, web designers want to limit the number supported to make testing manageable.

    However, if a modern approach is adopted the burden of testing is reduced. This is because instead of testing focusing on pixel perfect precision across all browsers, the focus is on usability and accessibility.

    Obviously, when claiming support for all browsers it becomes impossible to test in every browser combination. Instead it is necessary to prioritize browsers based on website statistics and ensure accessibility by testing in these.

    The number of browsers and versions that a site is tested on will vary depending on the budget available for testing. However, even testing on a handful of browsers will normally cover the majority of users experiences (as a relatively low number of browsers dominate the market). In addition, those browsers that are not tested should reliably render the page because no unnecessary code or hacks are used to build the site.

    Conclusion

    In conclusion, building websites that are enhanced for more capable browsers – improves accessibility, reduce costs and ensure every user gets the best experience possible within the limitation of their choice of browser.

    146. Obsessive

    Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

    On this week’s show, Paul interviews Nicholas Felton about designing with data, we celebrate the return of 24Ways, and explain how community can keep users coming back for more.

    Play

    Podcast: Download (24.0MB)

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    Housekeeping

    Two pieces of housekeeping before we begin:

    • First, Jaysone wrote in asking about the chat room we mention on the show. He wanted to know what it was and whether anybody could join. The chat room is associated with the shows we occasionally stream live. You can watch these shows at http://boagworld.com/live and interact with us as we record via the chat room. Anyone is welcome although you will probably need to follow me on Twitter to see when the shows are being recorded.
    • Talking of streaming shows, the next live show will be our Christmas special on the 8th December at 2.30PM UK time. The show will be an open question and answer time so either send in your questions in advance or come along and join us in the chatroom. We will also be doing a feature on this years top Christmas gifts for geeks. You can vote for your suggestions over at UserVoice.

    News and events

    24 Ways is back

    This week sees the return of 24 Ways. 24 ways is the advent calendar for web geeks. Each day throughout December they publish a daily dose of web design and development goodness to bring a little Christmas cheer.

    I am not sure whether it is the quality of the posts or that 24 Ways appears just before Christmas, but I always get excited when they return.

    This year it returns with a somewhat controversial new look (personally I think it is great they are experimenting) and a whole new set of posts. They still offer a complete archive of previous posts so be sure to look through that, as well as subscribe to their RSS feed.

    There is something very special about 24 Ways. I think part of the reason I like it so much is because the writers are given a free hand. They can write on whatever they want and so inevitably write about their passions. This leads to a better quality of post.

    As if that glowing recommendation is not enough, I should also point out that our very own Marcus Lillington has a post coming soon. Surely that will be enough to encourage you to subscribe!

    iPhone designers kit

    In the past I have been slightly rude to the guys over at Smashing Magazine about their endless lists of other people’s creativity (we love them really). However, this week they have released something that is genuinely useful.

    The iPhone Starter Kit, is a set of button elements and various iPhone interface options, bundled in a Photoshop PSD. The pack is ideal for mobile developers and front-end designers who need a professional way to show mock-ups or try out ideas.

    You can use the set for free and without restriction. This includes both private and commercial projects. The only thing they ask is that you do not resell it.

    Admittedly you may not be doing work on the iPhone right now. However, I suspect it will only be a matter of time before we will all be working on a mobile application of some description.

    The mobile sector is incredibly exciting at the moment and this is another useful little weapon in our arsenal.

    5 Ways to Get Usability Testing on the Cheap

    Our next post is from the sitepoint blog and is entitled ‘5 Ways to Get Usability Testing on the Cheap‘.

    Usability testing is a good idea for any new web site. Increasing the usability of your web site is good because it will increase visitor satisfaction, which in turn increases sales and user loyalty. On the business savings side, usability testing can also save you money in development, maintenance, and support costs.

    The problem is website owners often perceive it as expensive, failing to grasp the high return on investment. However, it doesn’t need to be and any project can incorporate some user testing, no matter what the budget.

    The sitepoint post makes 5 suggestions of how you can keep the cost down…

    • Use a service like usertesting.com, which provides a video of users interacting with your site.
    • Get a written user response to your site from Feedback Army for as little as $7.
    • Use a DIY user testing tool like Silverback for the mac or Morae for Windows.
    • Ask friends and family to take a look at the site. Alternatively ask for some feedback on the boagworld forum.
    • Use services like Crazy Egg or Click Density to get heatmaps showing how users interact with your site.

    Whatever approach you choose, always make sure you have at least some user testing in every project.

    Site search options

    One of the things I hate most about the Boagworld website is its search facility. The built in search mechanism that comes with my blogging software sucks! This is particularly embarrassing as I am always banging on to clients about how important search is. After all half your users will turn to the search box before even considering browsing the site. Search has to be right.

    I have half heartedly looked around for something that would do the job. I remember looking at Atomz a while back and also there is the obvious Google integration route, but nothing inspired me.

    This week however another post from Sitepoint caught my eye. It was talking about the new site search from Yahoo! Recently adopted by Techcrunch it has some fairly impressive features…

    • Real-time indexing of content – When new blog posts or comments are added to the site, the search index updates almost immediately.
    • Customised ranking – You can fine tune the algorithm to fit your audience and user experience.
    • Structured search – You can build your own refinement mechanisms. For example I could allow users to filter posts by category, number of comments, tag or any other criteria I set.
    • Blending Web with site results – Users can search both site and web content and see the results blended together in a single display.

    If your site search sucks as much as mine, you might want to check this out.

    Back to top

    Interview: Nicholas Felton on ‘Designing Data’

    Paul: So joining me to day is Nicholas Felton. Good to have you on the show Nicholas!

    Nicholas: Thanks so much Paul, it’s a pleasure being here.

    Paul: It’s the first time that I’ve really spoken to you. I only first saw you or heard about your work at Future of Web Design and I have to say you completely blew me away with a presentation that was very different from the majority of stuff that was being talked about because it wasn’t really fundamentally about Web design, I guess in a way.

    Nicholas: No, I think in a way it’s about a weird hobby that’s kind of developed into a tiny Web phenomenon.

    Paul: Well, from what I can gather it’s a fairly big Web phenomenon according to Keir from Carsonified who was raving about you afterwards. For those people that haven’t come across you before, tell us a bit about yourself. Who are you? What is it that you do? Where is it you work? A bit of background basically.

    Nicholas: Sure, sure. Well again, my name is Nicholas Felton. I’m a graphic designer, predominantly print but I definitely dabble in the web and am there more and more frequently. I went to art school, I studied graphic design about ten years ago here in America at the Rhode Island School of Design and I’ve worked in graphic design firms and advertising doing identity and on the side I’ve started my personal website called Feltron where I’ve grown these annual reports that have become something that I’m sort of getting well known for.

    Paul: So let’s talk about these annual reports, because this is what you were talking about at Future of Web Design. There’s a lot of people that might be listening to this thinking “Well, hang on a minute he’s just said that he’s primarily a print designer, this is a web design podcast. Why have we got him on the show?” Well just to kind of deal with that to start with, I mean obviously web design should be a lot broader, we should be looking outside of the web for inspiration and I’ve found these Felton Annual Reports incredibly inspiring. For those that don’t know, tell us a little bit about what they are.

    Nicholas: Alright. Well, I really latched onto this name for them because I think it communicates pretty quickly what it’s about. Everyone understands what an annual report is. It’s the summation of a year. I’ve just attached my name, more precisely my sort of Web name, which is Feltron. My last name is Felton. But these started in 2004. I was just trying to get a grip on the year and wrap it up and I looked around at the websites I was looking at and the books I enjoyed and I put that all on my site but I snuck in a couple of little details, like the number of postcards that I sent and worked out the number of air miles that I traveled and those sort of, they hooked me. And so the next year I went back through my records and I put together a multi-page feature for my website where I looked at my travel in more detail, making pie charts of the countries that I went to. I split up my photography into all these different metrics that I could examine and between that I came up with about six pages I think of exploration of my eating and drinking habits and the culture that I enjoyed for the year and this is something I thought would only be appealing to people who knew me well, it would be a little bonus for them at the end of the year and it turned out to be a little viral and people started sending it to their friends and I started hearing from strangers that they thought it was fantastic and people saying, “I want to do this,” so I’ve tried to spend more and more time on it each year to stay in the forefront of this desire that I see building for people to encapsulate their year in this kind of report.

    Paul: For me personally, when I heard you speak I immediately came away with a desire to do the same thing, just as you described.

    Nicholas: That’s fantastic.

    Paul: But the question that’s burning in me is, “Why?” Why do I feel the desire to do that? Why did you do it? Where did the idea come from? How did this all start?

    Nicholas: I think it wasn’t that hard for me to do. The first one that I described, which was a multi-page document I actually didn’t do anything different than I’d been doing for previous years. I just had this natural habit that in my calendar I would write down where I went socially as well as what I did for work and I was able to look at that and between the names of the restaurants I knew this was a Thai restaurant so I could sort of make pie charts of what types of meals I was eating and I knew how many bars I had been to and I guess after that year I decided I was really going to formally examine this and decided to strictly track more things over the course of the year. I guess for me it’s driven by curiosity, I think I’m a pretty naturally curious person, maybe you are as well and it’s not about changing my behavior. I really don’t want the reports or this recording of my year to affect what I do over the year. I think I find a lot of solace in the numbers that come out of it. Just knowing how many beers I had or how many coffees I had or how many air miles I traveled is really comforting to me. It’s a way of tackling some of the unknown in our life.

    Paul: It’s interesting because when you describe it, if someone hasn’t seen these reports you kind of think of an annual general report that’s published by a company, which are tediously dull documents but the things that you produce are graphically stunning as well. So I’m interested, is it primarily a kind of data collection exercise for you, or is it more a graphic design exercise? Is it about, I mean you kind of indicated that it’s about the data that you’re gathering rather than maybe the graphics, but the graphics are obviously what sells it to other people I guess. I don’t know.

    Nicholas: Yeah, it’s hard for me to split it, but I have to say it’s absolutely about the finished product which is a piece of graphic design and the better the data is the better the story I have to tell so it’s a narrative of my year. It’s all encapsulated. It’s primarily a visual piece and I do put a lot of time and effort into making sure that it’s very visual and very easy to read quickly but that there are little details in it you can pull out if you want to spend more time with it.

    Paul: Yeah. I mean that’s the immediate thing that you said there, it’s very time consuming.

    Nicholas: Yes.

    Paul: Not only from a design point of view, and I’m sure it must take you just an unbelievable number of hours to produce something that is so exquisitely designed but I mean tracking all this stuff, you must spend, I mean I’m surprised there isn’t a big part of one of your pie charts that’s just entitled “Tracking” you know where you spend hours just tracking all this information. What keeps you going? Why do you continue to do this?

    Nicholas: Well first of all, it just doesn’t take that much time actually. I tend to sit down in the morning in front of my calendar and write down the meaningful things from the previous day but at most five to ten minutes a day. It’s definitely a background process that’s running in me all the time as, “Do I need to take note of this for my reporting?” And when I do leave my routine, when I travel, it’s a bit more complicated because then I’m doing new things and I want to make sure I get them right but it’s something I think you get into the habit of doing. For anyone who writes a diary or does these sort of recordings of the day I think after a while it’s not a burden at all. Last year I did find out, I decided out of this curiosity that I wanted to record every street that I’d walked down in New York City and that did become a little burdensome, but it was well worth it.

    Paul: It’s interesting that you picked that one out because that was the one that I really looked at and went “Wow, that must have taken a long time.”

    Nicholas: Yes. But it was well worth it. A year is a long time but it’s actually not that long of a time and I had a lot of hunches going into it about where I would go and where I didn’t go and it’s phenomenal to see how little of the city my routine is actually settled into.

    Paul: Yeah, it’s a fascinating exercise. Just kind of give us a little bit of an idea, you know tell us you just mentioned walking down certain streets. Tell the listeners some of the other things that you collect, the other bits of information.

    Nicholas: Well last year I was keeping track of every single alcoholic beverage that I had. For some reason I think drinking is really easy to keep track of because it is sort of a binary act, it’s like “one drink” versus a meal which can be more complicated but so alcoholic beverages I had 968 in 2007. I had 83,565 milligrams of caffeine through all my coffee beverages which by examining my weight and the caffeine content of each type I was able to deduce was approximately 6.8 lethal doses. I knew there’d be a couple lethal doses in there I just wasn’t sure how many and I worked it out.

    Paul: That’s just horrifying. How do you decide what it is you’re going to track?

    Nicholas: It usually just leads naturally out of the previous year. So like in June I will decide, “I wish I’d been tracking that this year,” and so next year I’ll make a point of doing that. So last year I started delving into the distances I’ve traveled, I worked out that I traveled about 1075 miles on the New York City subways. So this year I’ve taken a much closer look at the distances I’ve traveled. I’ve worn a pedometer all year so I could figure out how far I’ve walked and yeah.

    Paul: What kind of other stuff are you tracking at the moment? You’re tracking how far you’ve walked, what other things?

    Nicholas: Mostly the same things from previous years, but I’d like to look at it all through the lens of distance so it’ll be a different measure of the year rather than relating things to days or hours how does that relate to how far in terms of length I was through the year.

    Paul: I mean you mentioned a pedometer there. What other kind of tools do you use for collecting data when you’re out there? When you’re out and about I feel like you need a really handy little iPhone app or something here that kind of records all this stuff for you but what tools are you using?

    Nicholas: Well yes the iPhone is great I’ve tried to have some sort of smart phone where I can take notes at all times through this project but often times it’s just as simple as sending an email to myself so I have this little note that gets collected and goes into a folder and I make sure that I enter that into my calendar. It mostly all goes into iCal. I also use Backpack by the 37signals guys to keep running lists of the clothes that I purchase through the year or the movies that I saw and then when it all comes together it’s Excel. Everything needs to get into a spreadsheet so that all the math can get done and that’s probably half of the time it takes to design is just collating all the numbers.

    Paul: Yeah, I’ll bet. Wow. This is absolutely fascinating. It’s something very addictive about the whole idea. I mean OK, for somebody like me, let’s say I wanted to go for this and I wanted to try it. What kind of advice would you give me starting out?

    Nicholas: Well probably the best advice is to pick something that you’re going to be able to track, that you’re not just picking “What websites do I visit?” because it’s going to be overwhelming and you’re just going to pass on it after a week or two so pick something that’s easy that you do, not too infrequently that it’s not interesting but frequently enough that you’re going to get a good data set out of it. And so like if you see a lot of concerts I think concerts attended is great and then what aspects of that that are interesting? Who did you see and where was it or how long was it? So I think definitely in this website I’ve been developing to help other people create their own annual reports or just personal reporting in a way you can just have one really rich data set and by slicing it in different ways I think you can get a lot of interesting presentations out of it.

    Paul: You mentioned a site there that you’re developing. Tell us a bit about that.

    Nicholas: OK, it’s called daytum.com. It’s D-A-Y-T-U-M and it’s just a place where I’ve tried to remove a lot of the boundaries for creating a document like this. So there are two parts of it, there’s the recording element that can get complicated so we want to make a way that’s really easy for you to count things and then the display part of it which is practically inaccessible to a lot of people so there are a lot of built-in pie charts and stack line graphs and counting methods that are all built in, in a sort of clean design and you can just make this page that fills up with graphs and numeric intricacies of your life.

    Paul: I must admit I’ve had a quick look at it and I haven’t signed up for it yet and you know it has that same clean look that your reports have and you know it’s obviously beautifully designed as well I mean we’ve spent a long time haven’t we talking about the collecting of the data I think that’s probably the most fascinating bit but as this is a web design podcast I feel like we should be talking about the design a little bit as well.

    Nicholas: Absolutely.

    Paul: You know I think the kind of key thing that really struck me is that you’re presenting, you know, fairly dry data and don’t get me wrong, I’m not implying that your life is boring but at the end of the day it’s data that you’re presenting and you’re doing that in a kind of visually stunning way. Tell us a bit about how the design comes together, you know. What’s your design process?

    Nicholas: Well I have the benefit of being in control of all the data so if something isn’t looking right one way I can explore it a different way or I can rewrite a headline which is one of the greatest advantages that any designer can have rather than working for someone else. And then I sort of have an infographics approach where I really eschew using keys or trying to make your eye go in too many places to understand something so whenever possible I try and keep everything really focused so you can look in one spot and hopefully understand what’s going on there immediately rather than having to look at color codes or translate symbols unnaturally.

    Paul: I mean is it, a lot of graphic designers out there that kind of find working with data and, you know, things like that incredibly dull. How do you keep inspired? How do you get something out of it? Because you’re not working with gorgeous imagery or anything like that, you know it’s quite dry, what inspires you about doing this kind of stuff?

    Nicholas: Well I guess they’re kind of like puzzles for me. Um, I will see the establishing of infographics sort of like the data’s there and it wants to look interesting so how can I make a system that’s going to present it in the most instructional way? So I’ll play with that system so that it will line up in a dramatic way rather than just sitting in a static predictable line graph or bar chart or something like that.

    Paul: I mean also you seem to use typography very heavily so I’m guessing that’s something you’re particularly passionate about.

    Nicholas: Yeah I guess it’s my two natural loves in one place: the numbers and type.

    Paul: Oh dear. So what advice would you give for us Web designers that are kind of, you know we do work with data a fair amount, you know from surveys through to content management systems that provide reporting and things like that. What do you think the key is to presenting data in an understandable and approachable format?

    Nicholas: I think that one of the key things is just getting away from the default options that you’re given like I’ve found it’s really impossible to get a nice looking graph out of Excel or out of Apple’s Numbers and the same is kind of true for the Google Chart API which is what we use for daytum.com which is basically a way to send a URL to Google and they return a pie chart or a line graph but they can get really overly complicated and ugly very quickly so it’s a matter of stripping it down and making sure that this is something that’s going to be dramatic and simple to understand.

    Paul: It’s that simplicity thing again that, you know, have taken something complex and as you say stripping it down and keeping it simple.

    Nicholas: Absolutely, and even if you have the benefit being able to edit your material so that I’m looking at a pie chart that has four or five slices rather than seventeen I think it’s going to benefit your readers enormously.

    Paul: So Daytum, that you are in the process, is that actually live now or is that still in the process of being developed? I can’t remember whether it was generally accessible or whether it was in a closed beta.

    Nicholas: It’s in a beta but the wait list is down to less than a week now so it’s just a queue basically to protect out severs. But yeah, we’re adding new features all the time. We’re about to add averages there so you can examine your average cup of coffee or your average commute time and we just plan on trying to preserve the user experience by making sure we don’t get too swamped and growing it over time.

    Paul: So how did this come about? You keep saying “we” so who’s the team that’s behind that?

    Nicholas: Yes it’s my partner Ryan Case who is more on the development side but is also a fantastic user interface designer and he came to me in January or February of this year and like many people had said we should figure out a way to do this year reports on the web so that other people can do it but he had the technical chops and motivation to really get the ball rolling and he’s become actually a great data tracker himself and has been keeping track of all his beers religiously and all the trains he’s been taking, which I didn’t know he had in him. So I think it goes to show anybody with the proper motivation could get started.

    Paul: So is this your full-time job now or is it a part-time project?

    Nicholas: It’s about half-time at this point. I still have my editorial clients and web clients and identity clients that I work for but this definitely occupies as much free time as I can give to it.

    Paul: Well I found the whole thing incredibly inspiring.

    Nicholas: Thank you so much.

    Paul: It made me look from a completely different perspective at graphic design and also at life in general I guess and we have so many people who come on the show that are talking about the stock and trade of web design and thought it’d be really good to get you on just to give a different perspective and make us look outside of our little boxes. Thank you so much for coming on and I wish you all the best in your various projects.

    Nicholas: Thank you Paul. Thank you.

    Paul: Good to talk to you.

    Nicholas: OK, take care. Bye bye.

    Thanks goes to Todd Dietrich for transcribing this interview.

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    Listeners feedback:

    This week’s listener contribution is a question from Dave. He writes:

    I am having real problem maintaining users. They visit the site once and then I never seen them again. I have good content, the site is usable and so I am at a loss as to what I should do.

    Should I be worried? Are repeat users really important? What can I do to keep them coming back which doesn’t cost a fortunate?

    It is such a good question that it spawned an entire post on using community as a retention tool.

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    The stickiness of community

    Posted in Marketing on by Paul Boag

    For many, the Holy Grail of a successful website is ‘stickiness’. How do I keep users coming back for more?

    Dave from somerset wrote: I am having real problem maintaining users. They visit the site once and then I never seen them again. I have good content, the site is usable and so I am at a loss as to what I should do.

    Should I be worried? Are repeat users really important? What can I do to keep them coming back which doesn’t cost a fortunate?

    I have written about the importance of repeat users before. These are the people who develop brand loyalty, complete calls to action and regularly purchase. For example, according to data from WebSideStory Inc. repeat users are eight times more likely to make a purchase on an ecommerce site. Repeat users are the lifeblood of most website.

    One of the best ways to keep users coming back is to foster a community. However, a thriving community provides a lot more benefits than repeat traffic. An online community can also:

    • Improve your offering
    • Change brand perception
    • Promotes your site
    • Reduce your costs

    We have covered the benefits of community on the podcast before. However, that was back in 2006 so my thinking has moved on since then. I therefore hope you will forgive me if I clarify what I mean when I say ‘community can help your business’.

    Improving your offering

    A good community is not just about users speaking to one another through a forum or chat room. It is also a two way dialogue between you and your users. It is an opportunity for you to hear from your users and discover what they want from your website.

    In an attempt refine their products or hone their marketing message, many organisations spend substantial figures on focus groups and customer survey. However a healthy community is constantly providing feedback on your offering. This gives a superior insight into how your product or service should develop at little or no cost.

    However, listening to your users does not just improve your offering. It also improves their perception of you.

    Changing brand perception

    People like to be heard. They like to feel their opinion matters. Engaging with your users and really listening to what they have to say about your products and services is incredibly powerful. It is even more powerful when they see their suggestions acted upon.

    Both Dell and Microsoft have significantly improved the way their brands are perceived by talking to customers and engaging the community around their products.

    Often this involves nothing more than a speedy response and apologetic tone. However, openness and transparency with a community can also go a long way.

    It is possible not only to undo a negative brand perception but also nurture a positive one. And once users feel positive about your brand they start to recommend it to others.

    Promoting your site

    An community that is enthusiastic about your site or products can be one of the most powerful promotion tools available. Sites like Digg.com have become popular largely because of their passionate community. Equally, Apple’s success is at least partly reliant on their obsessional ‘fans’ who constantly push and promote their products. Nothing is as valuable as personal recommendation.

    If you include your users in the process of developing your site they feel invested in it. They feel the site is as much theirs as yours and so will promote it as their own.

    A successful community will always be seeking to draw others in, so growing and promoting your site. This ‘evangelistic’ tendency in a community can also lead to substantial cost savings.

    Reducing your costs

    As I have already said, a passionate community can provide free advertising and save money in focus groups and product development.

    However they can also save money in customer support. This is particularly true if your site provides customer support. Rather than users sending queries directly to you, they can post them in support forums and allow others in the community to answer their questions. These forums also become a repository of knowledge others can draw upon. This reduces the support burden (and therefore cost) on your organisation.

    Finally, communities have a lower cost of sale. Because they are already enthusiastic contributors to your community, they are easier to reach. This is especially true for repeat ordering.

    Hopefully that has convinced you of the benefits found in community and given you some ideas of how to keep users coming back for more.

    145. Baby Jack

    Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

    On this week’s show Paul looks at how to communicate better with your users. Marcus examines ways to improve your contracts and Ryan has a baby (not actually on the show).

    Download this show.

    Launch our podcast player

    Watch the behind the scenes video

    Housekeeping

    Two pieces of housekeeping before we begin:

    • First, congratulations to Ryan Taylor our producer and Michelle on the birth of their first child. We want to send our love to them all and welcome Jack Taylor to the world!
    • Second, just a quick note to say we will be holding our live Christmas special on the 8th December at 2.30PM UK time. The show will be an open question and answer time so either send in your questions in advance or come along and join us in the chatroom. We will also be doing a feature on this years top Christmas gifts for geeks. You can vote for your suggestions over at UserVoice.

    News and events

    Google goes social

    The biggest and most controversial story of the week is the addition of SearchWiki to Google search results.

    SearchWiki is a way for you to customize search by re-ranking, deleting, adding, and commenting on search results. You can move the results you like to the top or add a new site. You can also write notes attached to a particular site and remove results that you don’t feel belong. These modifications will be shown to you every time you do the same search in the future.

    However, most controversially you can also share some of these changes with other users. This has led to fears of spamming and negative commenting as users attempt to manipulate the results.

    Personally, this feels like a storm in a tea cup. It is an interesting new feature but I really do not see it catching on in any significant way. Only the most extreme power users will bother using these features and the majority will never see the change.

    For example, even if website owners do attempt to manipulate users by spamming notes or adding negative comments about competitors, the vast majority will never see these notes. Users have to actively choose to view other users notes from a tiny link in the footer.

    I say let stupid website owners spam these comments. It will keep them busy doing something which ultimately will make no difference to the popularity of their site.

    Where this could be useful is when I can identify friends who I trust. Being able to see their notes or reordering of results would be of interest to me. Until then, this is non-starter.

    In browser web development tools

    In last week’s show we listed your top web development applications. Interestingly several of those applications were browser addons such as the web developer toolbar and Firebug.

    This week Smashing Magazine has reviewed 15 in-browser web development tools that offer a variety of debugging and coding features.

    The list ranges from the web known like FireBug to the more obscure like Fangs (for showing how a screen reader might read a page) and ColorZilla (for quickly listing all the colors on a particular web page).

    Other tools featured include:

    • YSlow – a Firefox extension that analyzes a Web page for front-end performance.
    • Fiddler – an Internet Explorer extension that analyzes and profiles a Web page’s HTTP traffic.
    • DebugBar – a debugging extension for the Internet Explorer.
    • Web Accessibility Toolbar – an extension for Internet Explorer and Opera that quickly evaluating and analyzing your Web content’s accessibility.

    If you are regularly coding this list is a must read.

    From tables to CSS and back again

    Kevin Yank, the co-author of Everything You Know About CSS is Wrong has written an excellent article on Think Vitamin telling us it is time to build websites using tables.

    Before you all start sending Kevin hate email I should point out he is referring to CSS tables.

    Let’s face it, the worst thing about CSS is its support for column based layout. Sure, it does a great job at absolute position but floats just make no sense! As Kevin writes…

    You couldn’t come up with a more convoluted way of expressing page layout if you tried!

    Fortunately with the imminent arrival of IE8 all major browsers will soon support CSS tables. This means any group of elements can be made to display like rows and columns within a table. Suddenly designing layout in CSS is as easy as using HTML tables.

    I know what you are thinking… ‘what about IE6 and 7?’ Kevin addresses this in his article. He suggests that because it is so easy to layout using CSS tables we will have the time to design in CSS tables for modern browsers and the fall back on floats for IE6 and 7. He goes on to suggest that perhaps it is worth simplifying your design slightly for these older browsers to further speed up the process. He believes (and I agree) that clients would agree to this if they understood the cost savings.

    Overall, I think this is a very exciting transition and one that will help bring across those hold out ‘table based designers’.

    Advice for long term success

    Our final news story today is some advice from the founder of Amazon. Jeff Bezos has done an interview with the ‘US News and World Report’ on how to run a successful business. The advice he shares is something that applies to all of us whether we are running a website or building a freelance career.

    From reading the article I took away three lessons…

    • Have a long term strategy – Whether in business or running a website, you need to look ahead. Too many of us are thinking about the short term. What feature should we implement next? Where is the next salary is going to come from? Jeff encourages us to look further and work towards long term and visionary objectives.
    • Do not be distracted – Jeff also encourages us not to be put off by others who do not ‘get’ your long term vision. Stick to your guns and keep going. It is easy to have your confidence knocked by the criticisms of others or problems you encounter along the way.
    • Take risks – I am a great believer in taking risks from time to time. A part of this is excepting failure. If you want to double the amount you succeed you must also double the number of times you fail. As Churchill once said Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.

    Sure, the interview is not about web design and is written by a guy who can afford to think long term, ignore others and take risks. However, it is still good advice and something we need to take on board both as web designers and website owners.

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    Feature: Successful communication

    We put a lot of time and attention into the content on our sites, but what about our other communications? We send out newsletters, post blogs, participate in forums. All of these reflect on our brand and the way we are perceived.

    In this week’s feature Paul examines how to improve our communications with users.

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    Listeners feedback:

    Sign-off and payment

    We have this question from an anonymous listener:

    I have a designer’s contract in front of me and I am getting a ‘feeling’. The contract doesn’t discuss much in terms of scope; just really limits risk for the designer. Though I can understand the need, I raise an eyebrow to focusing more on ‘not getting burned’ than ‘providing a good design’ … so here is the big question. The designer wants 50% upfront and 50% on an arbitrary completion date or “prior to file relinquishment, or upload and/or assembly of website on clients web server.” My thought is I am not paying $X for a pdf mock-up … I am paying for a site redesign and would like to see it work live prior to getting signoff. (or payment) Inevitably, there is a trust issue; I believe we have both been burned in past client/ designer relationships and are treating each other cautiously. Is there an industry norm which could help the situation? My perspective is how it will look live, especially considering different browsers, am I off base as a client to see the design work live prior to payment?

    Ok, so picking this apart from the top:

    Firstly, having a contract is a good thing. Full stop. But, you don’t have to blindly agree to whatever is put in front of you. If you don’t like what you’re reading then amend and send it back. This may also mean that you want to get legal advice – I guess that depends on your confidence dealing with the legalese involved in most contract documentation.

    Contracts should be made up of two parts:

    1. the terms and conditions (the legal stuff) that should cover obligations, deliverables, rights, liability etc.
    2. the Schedule that should be a detailed description of the project – tasks, timescales, price, payment terms etc. It should also include detail on what the testing process is, what browsers/operating systems etc.

    Ideally risk should be limited for both parties. A good contract makes expectations clear for both sides and lays out what should happen if something goes wrong.

    Regarding payment terms, it is perfectly normal for a contractor to ask for a percentage of the total cost up front. But, it doesn’t necessarily have to be half up front, half on completion. We often spread invoicing over 4 or 5 different points over a project. This is good for our clients as it is an incentive for us to reach certain milestones along the way. One question I have here is – does this particular designer want payment literally on commencement? We provide 30 days for our clients to pay bills, so even though we may invoice on commencement, we will be a month into the project before we receive payment.

    Ok, more detail… the contractor wants final payment:

    • On an arbitrary completion date – you should not agree to this. Payment by a particular date is not acceptable as the work may not be completed and the delay may not be down to you.
    • Or “prior to file relinquishment” – this is not unheard of. Basically, they are saying ‘you pay us and you’ll get your stuff’. Which is fair enough as long as you (quite rightly point out) have witnessed the site operating correctly in a ‘live’ environment. I’ll come onto this shortly.
    • Or upload and/or assembly of website on clients web server – this is what you want I believe.

    A ‘live’ environment doesn’t necessarily have to mean your web server. We test all our web development work on our own development server prior to making it live and we ask our clients to sign-off on this environment prior to pushing live. We do, however, rarely invoice until the site is live because there are possible issues with the live environment that we may not have envisaged. Particularly, hosting platforms often need to be able to support certain technologies – if they don’t, you have a problem. If the designer is providing the hosting then that is unlikely to be an issue. It also gives them an option of taking your site down if you don’t pay. That way, they can happily make the site live prior to sending you the final invoice. Do they offer hosting?

    So, in conclusion, I would push for the final invoice to be on live and tested release of the website. I would also propose that payment is split into 3 points – on commencement, on design look and feel sign-off and finally, on live and tested release.

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    Successful communication

    Posted in Site content on by Paul Boag

    We put a lot of time and attention into the content on our sites, but what about our other communications?

    We send out newsletters, post blogs, participate in forums. All of these reflect on our brand and the way we are perceived. How can we improve the way we communicate?

    Good communication is dependent on two factors:

    • When you communicate
    • How you communicate

    Get this wrong and you risk seriously damaging the relationship with your users.

    When to communicate

    The schedule of your communications are always important, whether posting to a blog or sending out a newsletter. Send too many communications and it becomes irritating, too few and they forget about you.

    There is no frequency that is always right. To a large extent it depends on the nature of your site. If your site sends out stock market tips then users may expect updates every few minutes. However, if you sell a service that is purchased once every couple of years then sending out communications every few weeks will be enough to keep you in their minds.

    The key is not so much frequency as regularity. Users should come to expect your communications. Communicating on an ad-hoc basis becomes frustrating, especially with blog posts, newsletters or podcasts.

    However, communication does not have to be completely dictated by a schedule. You can also have trigger based communications. These are normally emails sent to a specific individual rather than the whole community. They are sent in response to a specific event rather than a schedule.

    A common trigger based communication is an email sent to somebody who has just purchased from an ecommerce site. These typically include an email confirming the transaction but also one when the goods are dispatched. These emails are extremely important and yet are often overlooked in the development process.

    Trigger based communication are also useful in encouraging repeat traffic. Most website communities have a large number of ‘sleepers’. These are individuals who have signed up for your site but have stopped using it. It is possible to monitor user activity and if they stop using the service an email can be automatically sent tempting them back with incentives or new content.

    However, never forget the golden rule of user communication; do not contact users without their permission. Nothing will damage your sites reputation faster and destroy your community than spam.

    Take a few moments to consider your communication strategy. When might it be appropriate to send out trigger emails? Are you collecting user’s contact details and is it legitimate to contact them? What methods you are going to use to communicate and on what schedule?

    Your communications with users needs the same attention you gave your sites copy. This includes not only when to communicate, but how.

    How to communicate

    There are lots of communication tools out there including blogs, podcasts, email and RSS. However, these are just technologies and don’t get to the heart of how to communicate. Communication is about what you say and how you say it.

    Always remember when communicating with users to make it personal. Whether it is in a forum or posting to your blog, people like to talk to people not faceless corporations. Whenever possible write as ‘Jim from Marketing’ rather than as ‘Acme inc.’ People are less critical and more receptive when dealing with a individual rather than an organisation.

    Although your aim is to demonstrate that your organisation is made up of ‘real people’, that does not mean you do not need no unifying voice.

    Know your voice

    The danger individual employees engaging with your users is that your organisation sends out mixed messages about its identity. All copy should have a consistent tone, from the content on your website to the emails you send existing customers.

    At first reading this may seem contradictory. On one hand I demand a consistent identity and on the other I want users to see the people behind your organisation. However, this is actually an approach newspapers have been employing for years.

    Most newspapers have regular columnists who readers come to recognise. However, each newspaper has an overall identity. For example in the U.K. tabloid newspaper "the Sun" has a very different persona to that of "the Times".

    Deciding on your persona will underpin all communications with users. Ask the question – if your site was a person, what type of person would it be? Would it be a young hip teenager or a boring middle aged business man? These characteristics help define how you communicate and the tone you set for your site.

    However, whatever persona you create it should always be as open and transparent.

    Be open and honest

    Many organisations feel they need to maintain a flawless facade with users. This serves to create a barrier, reinforcing the feeling that the user is dealing with a faceless corporation.

    A better approach is to be honest and fallible. Nothing is more effective in getting users trust than admitting when you get it wrong. Take for example photo sharing site Flickr.com. Their site suffered a series of outages in which users were unable to access their photos. Unsurprisingly the mood in the flickr community was pretty negative. However, flickr was able to turn that negativity around with a simple blog post entitled "Sometimes we suck". They acknowledged the problem, apologised and promised to do better. They did exactly that and before long flickr was seen as a shinning example of how an organisation should run a community.

    In fact it is possible to turn a critical user into an evangelist for your site simply by responding in a timely and open manner. In a world where users can instantly broadcast their frustrations via blogs, social networks and other methods of online communication you cannot afford to ignore them. However, if you respond in a positive and open fashion those same users will be broadcasting their pleasure at your response.

    This post is an edited extract from Paul’s book – The Website Owners Manual.

    144. Scale

    Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

    On this week’s show Paul talks to Joe Stump from Digg about scalable websites, we review the best apps for web designers and investigate services for sending bulk emails.

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    News and events

    How much should you charge?

    If you are starting your freelance career the number one question you will have is ‘how much should I charge?’ It is important and yet strangely it is not something you are taught at college. Perhaps they don’t teach it because it is a damn hard question to answer. It is certainly something we have avoided talking about on this show.

    Fortunately an article entitled ‘Six things to consider when setting your freelance rate‘ has been released this week. Although the article does not give a magic number, it does provide 6 valuable insights that will inform your final decision. These include…

    • Young freelancers and recent grads almost always ask for too little.
    • You can do things your clients can’t.
    • Your rate influences your perceived value.
    • You don’t get to keep it all.
    • An hour worked is not an hour billed.
    • The higher you start, the less you’ll need to increase.

    I couldn’t agree more with everything said in this article. However, the one that really resonated with me was ‘You do not get to keep it all.’ Your rate has not only got to cover your billable hours but the cost of sales and marketing, as well as your various overhead. The article has a link to a superb rates calculator that helps you work out your chargeable rate based on these various costs. Definitely worth checking out.

    A plethora of accessibility posts

    With the implement arrival of WCAG 2.0. we are seeing a resurgence of interest in accessibility. This has led to a plethora of accessibility posts over the last few weeks. These include…

    • Writing good ALT text – This is a simple post about the use of the ALT attribute. It suggests two rules of thumb when it comes to writing ALT text. First, if you were to describe the document to someone over the phone, would you mention the image or its content? If you would, the image probably needs an alternative text. Second, does the alternative text of any images in the document make sense if you turn off the display of images in your web browser? Simple advice, but well worth remembering.
    • Designing for Dyslexia – This is a series of 3 in depth articles that look at the subject of Dyslexia. It asks what Dyslexia is and how we as web designers can improve our sites to accommodate the needs of Dyslexia users. Its interesting stuff. Part 1 defines what Dyslexia is. Part 2 looks at some of the conflicting requirements with users who have visual impairments. Part 3 suggests some specific things you can do to improve the legibility of your designs.
    • Accessible forms using WCAG 2.0. – This extensive post aims to provide web developers and others with practical advice about the preparation of accessible HTML forms. It compares the WCAG 1.0 accessibility requirements relating to forms with those contained in WCAG 2.0. Important stuff but not a 5 minute read!
    • Too much accessibility – The RNIB explains how the LEGEND tag can cause more harm than good if not concise and relevant. The reason? LEGEND text isn’t read at the start of the FIELDSET, it is read at the start of the label. It repeats at the beginning of every single text label in that FIELDSET.

    A business case for deleting content

    I find myself using the word ‘simplify’ a lot when I talk to clients these days. So many website owners are constantly wanting to add features or content to their site. However, in reality we should be removing not adding to our already bloated websites. This is particularly true for large institutional websites. However it does also apply to smaller sites.

    Take for example the Headscape website. When we started the redesign process for our site, I sat down and really thought through what information prospective clients wanted. The answer was very little. In the end our large text heavy website was reduced to a single page. That is the power of simplicity.

    Gerrry McGovern summed it up perfectly this week in his post entitled the ‘Business case for deleting content‘. He wrote:

    The more you delete, the more you simplify. The more you simplify, the more you increase the chances of your customers succeeding on your website.

    We may think that we cannot delete content because ‘somebody might want it’ or because we believe ‘it will help our search engine ranking’. However, bloated sites bring complexity and with complexity comes confusion. The more content on your site, the less chance a user will be able to find the content they need.

    12 principles for keeping your code clean

    We finish today with a great post for those who need help with their HTML code. Whether you are a student learning HTML or a designer who is more comfortable in Photoshop than Coda, this is a very useful article.

    The post provides 12 excellent tips for keeping your code clean. These include…

    • Use a strict doctype
    • Set your character set and encode those characters
    • Indent your code
    • Keep your CSS and JavaScript external
    • Nest your tags properly
    • Eliminate unnecessary divs
    • Use better naming conventions
    • Leave typography to the CSS
    • Add a class/ID to your BODY tag
    • Validate
    • Order your code logically
    • Just do what you can!

    The article explores each of these points in depth and communicates clearly current best practice in coding HTML. Well worth the read even if only as a reminder.

    Back to top

    Interview: Joe Stump on Building a Scalable Site

    Paul: Ok, so joining me today is Joe Stump from Digg. Good to have you on the show Joe.

    Joe: Oh, good to be here.

    Paul: Have we had you on the show before?

    Joe: Ah, not that I’m aware of.

    Paul: Oh, wow, well we need to rectify that then. It’s good to have you on. Well, I have to say, this interview was arranged by Ryan, who is our producer. And he’s a developer, and I’m a designer. And he suggested we got you on the show, not that I wouldn’t like you on the show, obviously. That we got you on the show, obviously about scaling websites. Now, I’m going to be out of my depth very quickly here, so you’re going to have to be very gentle with me Joe.

    Joe: Sure

    Paul: So, in fact, it was so bad, that as I sat down to write questions I thought: "I don’t know what I’m doing here" , so I went and talked to some of the developers at headscape, and I asked some of the Boagworld listeners, and so we’ve got a little selection of questions for you, that, hopefully we can learn a little bit about how you go about doing things at Digg. Lets start off, what’s your job title, what is it that you do at Digg?

    Joe: Ah, I have a really fancy job title that doesn’t mean a lot of anything, but ah, my official job title is "Lead Architect" and um, I think what best describes it, is that I manage the technical implementation on the code side.

    Paul: OK

    Joe: So, Digg’s broken up into a lot of different arenas on the tech side, we’ve got, R&D, which is headed up by Anton Cast, we’ve got operations, which is headed up by Scott Baker, and then under that are the people that I work with, ah, probably most closely in implementing solutions for Digg. Ron Gorodetzky is our lead systems engineer, Tim Ellis, also known as timeless, is our chief DB wonk, and then, Mike Newton is our lead network guy. So I think us four kind of steer the technical implementation along. The managers, ah, the manage, and handle the strategy and partners, and stuff like that.

    Paul: You managed to say the word manager with real distain.

    Joe: Oh, no actually, I have a great manager, John Quinn, he’s our VP of engineering, he’s by far the best direct manager I’ve probably ever worked with. Yeah, he’s really good.

    Paul: OK, well lets go back in time a little bit. And start by, well, when was the point when you realized, that you were going to start having scaling issues with Digg? When did you start thinking about the whole subject of scaling?

    Joe: Um, well Digg was pretty big when I came on board, so Digg was about 10 – 12 million uniques when I joined on.

    Paul: Wow.

    Joe: And I think we’d just cleared 35 million last month. So scaling was obviously an issue, but the big difference is that, I think sites generally go through a few different levels of scaling, where like the first one’s like, "I’m just going to throw it on a virtual server, or an Amazon server, you know, you’re basically just seeing if things are going to just "stick to the wall", and then they do. Ah, so the first thing you normally do is start breaking services off onto separate boxes. I want to put my DB on one box, my server on another box, and maybe memcached on each of them. And then you hit, read saturation on that one DB server, so then you go to the kinda next level of scaling. Which is where Digg was when I started, where you start dangling, a whole bunch of read slaves, off of your DB master, so, and for those who are not familiar with the master / slave terms, you send all your writes to one database server, and then that disseminates those writes to a whole bunch of slaves, and then you send all your read traffic to those slaves. So that’s where Digg was when I started. It’s write http traffic across a whole bunch of servers, its read traffic across a whole bunch of slaves, and then we have one master. And we’re now going through, what I think is the third phase, where you hit write saturation on your master, which is a bigger problem, because you then need to start sending some write traffic to some masters, and we’re actually going with a strategy that’s common with Facebook, and Flickr, and those kind of websites, where it’s called horizontal partitioning, where you put some of your records on one server, and the other records on another, so it’s like, you can say, for users, all users whose names start with A through J, would go on this database server, and K to Z live on this other database server. So we’re in the middle of implementing the first swipe at that. So we’ll be pretty aggressively into where everything will be federated and partitioned across a whole bunch of servers.

    Paul: OK, one of the questions which kinda came up, which kinda relates to that, is, once you start spreading things across multiple servers, how do you handle things like user sessions, which have obviously got to be persistent.

    Joe: Aha, so there are a couple of ways to handle that which, I’d say most people are handling it by.. There’s two ways, probably that you can do it easily. One of them, is if you have what they call "session affinity" on your load balancer, so the load balancer will say: "Oh, well this person, last time I had them here, they went to server A, so we’ll send it back to that server". So the session always lives on only one box. That’s one way to do it, we don’t do that here, we have a custom session handler in PHP which sorts the session in Memcache, and that allows you to.

    Paul: Can you just clarify what memcache is, for idiots like me who don’t know.

    Joe: Sure, memcache is a distributed caching system that’s actually, basically what it allows you to do, is expose a machines RAM over the network, and cache stuff into another machines RAM across the network.

    Paul: Ah, OK

    Joe: Yeah, it’s insanely fast, it was developed by Danga back in the day, and Brice Fitzpatrick, yeah so it’s heavily used by anyone whose scaling with LAMP, even a lot of people who aren’t. They all use memcached.

    Paul: Wow

    Joe: So, yeah, we store all of our session data in memcached, so PHP creates a unique session id, and we just stuff session data into that in memcached, and we can distribute that across, I don’t know, 50 or 60 memcached servers, and what not.

    Paul: So how many servers do you guys have, it must be a staggering number by now.

    Joe: Um, yeah, it’s kinda funny, every time I ask Ron that, he’s always like "Ah, I don’t know"

    Paul: Laughs

    Joe: Because we really can’t I mean, I couldn’t give you a specific number because on any given day, we’ll pull or push into production, a dozen servers, so, hundreds, there’s definitely hundreds in production. So.

    Paul: I mean, with that many servers, so obviously you’re talking about taking servers on and offline, and all that kind of thing, I mean, making updates to the site, when Daniel comes up with some stupid idea, that you’ve got to apply to the site, of a new feature that he wants to apply on the site, and you’ve gone through the process of making it work. And you’ve then got to push it live.

    Joe: Aha

    Paul: How does that work? How do you go about pushing something like that live when there are so many servers involved.

    Joe: So we have Ron Gorodetzky our lead systems engineer guy. So us developers have a bunch of M4 make files, that, when you check the code out, you run basically Make, Install, and it, for lack of a better word, it builds or compiles the website into a cohesive package, and then Ron pushes that to each server, I think he is still doing it by rsynch, but I know we are migrating over to Puppet, so it may happen via Puppet soon. The production side of things, is something that’s handled completely by operations, so I couldn’t tell you specifically how it happens, but generally, we make a tag of the website, and tell Ron, we need you to push "9.4.15" or something like that, and he does a checkout, builds it, and pushes it to all of the different servers.

    Paul: So is that – do you actually have to take the site offline to do those updates? How do you minimize the downtime that’s involved with that.

    Joe: Oh, well there’s a bunch of different ways. Um, we don’t bring the website down normally for pushes, it depends on the size and complexity of the push. But like, day to day pushes, we probably push I guess, a minimum of once a day, just little bug fixes and stuff like that. And those happen generally in the middle of the day, and nobody notices, it’s no big deal. Ah, the outages these days, are completely dependant on database activity, you know, like database fixes and stuff like that. And the ways that we’re getting around that these days, is using a different method of partitioning called vertical partitioning. Where, like for instance, like I think our comment Diggs table, of like, who’s dug a comment, up or down, that’s like 15 billion records in it.

    Paul: Wow

    Joe: that’s like, yeah, if you’re like to alter that table, you’d probably crash mysql, but if you were, it would probably take a week to alter it. So instead we probably create another table, where we have like comments, and then we have another one called comments_made_up, or something like comments_diggs, comments_diggs_beta, and that has a couple of extra fields in it. And so we’ll say, OK, we’re about to push the code, at the end. When we push the code, the first comment id that was added to the table was 15,000,000,001, so then you start at 15,000,000,000 and work my way back in the table. So we do some of that live as well. For the next push that we’re doing, we’re using a migration table, which will tell us how far along each record is, and which records we’ve actually migrated, and stuff like that. And then we’re going to use this package called "GearMan" which is a queuing system which we’ve had in production for a while. And we’re basically turning our servers into a giant BotNet, so we’ll back fill all those partitions quickly.

    Paul: Wow, that kind of amount of data, it must create huge problems, even adding a new piece of functionality onto the site, to actually code it in a way that’s not going to have a momentous impact on the database. This must be something that’s always constantly on your mind I guess?

    Joe: Yeah, I’ll tell you a really funny story that highlights that perfectly, we have these little green badges that are on the Digg button, and they indicate, that a friend of yours has dug that story. And when you hover it shows the last four friends to dig it or something. So that’s a pretty knurly query, against a very big table, and we’ve actually had to, what I would call "dial it down a bit", so that it only shows up on the stories that are 48 hours old, and it won’t show up if there are more than 500 diggs or something. So the features fairly usable, but it’s not like… Well before if someone went to the top of 365, it was basically crashing our servers. So we’ve been rewriting that, and we basically, the way that we’re rewriting it is: If you write something, we take that Digg and we drop it into each of your followers buckets. So we make a bucket for each story for each person. Any time one of their friends digs it, we drop that dig into their bucket, but the problem is, like Kevin Rose is followed by 40,000 people, so every time he digs something, I need to drop 40,000 things into 40,000 different buckets. And we did the math, and just to get that feature up and running in a vast sane manner, so that it will scale, so we can bring it back in full capacity so everyone can use it all the time. We need 1.25 GB of storage, and we need to be able to sustain 3000 writes per second in order to keep just that small feature online.

    Paul: So that really kind of illustrates that a relatively small feature that someone comes up with, has massive ramifications from your point of view.

    Joe: Yeah, this is something that has kind of been something that I always talk about. I mean even back when I was doing consulting, I’d kind of have clients come to me, and it would be: "Check out this awesome design", and I would be like "that designs awesome, but that little feature down there, that’s going to cost you know, $100,000 in servers, and 500 man hours. But it’s, like, well the designers think of sizes and shapes, and so Daniel always jokes around and says: "Well I can make it purple" if that will make it easier for you" you know, it’s like…

    Paul: Laughs

    Joe: Laughs – well that doesn’t make it easier!

    Paul: Well, we’re going to get you and Daniel back on the show to talk about this whole design / developer relationships, so you can lace your side of it now, and get your side in first. Before he defends himself.

    Joe: Sounds like a plan.

    Paul: So are you at the point now where you’ve got an architecture that’s kind of infinitely scalable, or are you going to have to go back to the drawing board if Digg just goes even more, you know off the scale than it already is?

    Joe: Yeah, well we’re actually at the drawing board right now.

    Paul: Yeah?

    Joe: Yeah, Ron, myself, and some of the other senior peeps, about 8 or 10 months ago, we started putting together… well we knew that we were going to start to have serious limitations, especially since we were going to be scaling internationally. You know there is a problem with latency. With you guys across the pond hitting the west coast and other things like that. So we want to be in multiple data centers. We want to be actively serving traffic from multiple data centers, so we’re are, well we need to horizontally partition, we need to make sure we can do that. And we need to live in two different data centers. We need to be able to survive one data center disappearing. So we spent basically a week in front of the white board, and we created this thing called IDDB, which is kind of an elastic storage engine, built on top of SQL, and memcachedb, that we’re going to be putting the first bits and pieces into production, probably over a month or so. And really, the whole partitioning thing isn’t the difficult thing to figure out. The difficult thing is basically spanning multiple data centers, and also we’ll have a couple hundred gigabytes of data, and I need to spray that across, you know, a couple dozen different servers, without bringing the site down. So we have a couple million – 3 or 4 million users, and I need to take all of their records, and all of their auxiliary records, here’s like your user record, and there’s also a bunch of cruft related to that. So I need to take all of that, and migrate it to different partitions. But I need to do that while the site’s still up and running, and I need to do that without breaking the site for you. So, that’s the more complex problem at this point.

    Paul: I mean you talk about spreading across multiple data centers, and if one of those data centers goes down, the site does too, and whatever. How are you currently handling redundancy? How are you making sure the site stands up at the minute?

    Joe: Right now, our only single point of failure at this point, is our actual data center, so if the data center falls off the planet, then we’ve got problems. But we’ve got a general architecture. We’ve got a couple of general balancers up front. And those two have, what we call a "heartbeat" between them, and if one of them falls off, the other instantly takes over traffic for it. And that balances traffic across, I couldn’t even tell you, dozens and dozens of web servers, and of course, the load balancer does help checks on those, so if any of those falls over, it will drop it out of the pool. Behind that, we have, I think, 4, I guess our masters are technically single points of failure, but we have multiple masters as well, and we have dozens of read slaves hanging off of them. I think right now it takes about 10 minutes to bring a new master into production if one fails. So, and then we have, to store our files, we have a thing called MogileFS, which is a distributed web dav storage engine of sorts, and we can loose multiple nodes on that, and not have any problem with that as well.

    Paul: Yeah, so at the moment it’s a physical problem that you have, that if your data center gets hit by an earthquake or whatever, then you have problems. Please tell me it’s not in San Francisco?

    Joe: It’s not in San Francisco.

    Paul: Ha ha, yeah, you’re not actually going to say where it is are you?

    Joe: No I can say we have one on the west coast, and we have one on the east coast.

    Paul: Oh, well that’s at least something. Um, I mean so far we’ve concentrated a lot on scaling technology, but there’s kind of another side to this, as well, where you get something like Digg, that has grown incredibly rapidly, over a very short length of time, and that is, kind of scaling the team behind it. You know, I don’t know how many developers were working on Digg when you joined it, but there would certainly be a heck of a lot more now. And I’m quite interested in how you went about growing the team. And how you deal with that kind of rapid growth, and making sure everyone knows what they’re working on, and not overwriting others work, and all the complexity that goes along side of that. How have you dealt with that?

    Joe: Sure, I guess, to put things into context a little bit, when I was hired, we had both Kurt Wilms and I, were both hired on the same day, and were respectively employees 18 and 19, and developers, I think there were 7 of us. So, now we’re at the low 20′s as far as developers, and we’re in the mid 80s, as far as total employees, and that’s been in a year and 9 months. So as far as scaling the teams go, some of the building blocks were well in place by the time I got here. Like, source repository, stuff like that. But I think the crucial things that we’ve done, since I’ve come on board, that were, we had some coding standards that were out there, but they weren’t really in force. And then we had, we didn’t really have any frameworks in place. I think one of the problems, you know, when Jay, our CEO, was asking, where do we find more senior developers, I told Jay, like that’s not the right question, the right question is like, how do we get the code, and how do we get the technology, in a position, where we don’t have to hire really senior people. So I think the keys to that are, we do have pretty strict coding standards, so we do enforce those rigorously, through continuous integeration environment, and code reviews. Every piece of code that gets pushed to production has to be reviewed. And that’s literally 4 or 5 coders, sitting in a room, going line by line through change sets, and stuff like that. And that sounds really time consuming, but without question, on every code review I’ve sat in on, we’ve found one show stopper bug. So, those have been crucial, in getting things put together. The other things we did as we grew, is we broke the team up into smaller teams, so we have a development team of 20 – 25 developers, but that’s broken up into teams of between 3 and 5 developers. This really helps in a couple of areas. 1, it enforces code ownership. So everybody has this problem. I code this, then I go and work on something completely different. And 6 months later I come back to this code and I’ve forgotten. I don’t remember any of that. Where as if you’re always working in the same area of the sites, not only do you remember a lot more, you’re a lot more familiar with that. But also, you feel a bit more of a sense of ownership over that. You’re not just this hired gun that’s come in and ploughs through this feature then moves on to something else. You have your own territory that you need to keep track of. You need to keep really nice and what-not. So we did that, and then we have a bunch of core frameworks, that we’ve built. We have a small application framework, we have an AJAX framework, and now, we have this data access layer that we’ve been building up called IDDB. So I think those are pretty crucial too. It’s difficult to find coders that are intimately aware of memcached, and race conditions that exist in memcached, and um, we have to be very selective about what fields we add indexes on in mySQL. We also have to be very selective about how we store that. Normalization flies totally out the window, if you’re a DBA guy. A lot of concepts, they are not bad developers, by any means, they do great AJAX work, they do great application level PHP work, but if you don’t have frameworks in place for them to not have to worry about the super-super complex stuff. It’s going to be really difficult to hire, and it’s going to be really difficult to, you know, get a lot of stuff running in parallel and stuff.

    Paul: Wow.

    Joe: Yeah, and then we also, another one of the things we’ve adopted, is the agile SCRUM. So we’re doing sprints, and we’re running those in parallel now across all the teams. So right now we have 4 major projects going on right now.

    Paul: Ok. So you talk about a sense of ownership there, and the developers are split down into multiple certain areas. You know, does that not get boring, for the developer, having to work on the same bit of code long time, or do you rotate people?

    Joe: Well, we don’t currently rotate people, the team structure’s been in place for about 4 or 5 months now. And you know, most of the work they get is fairly immediate, and we’re moving major projects like Facebook connect, so the "Tools and integration team", their doing facebook connect now, and after this, they will maybe work on a new version of the API and so on. It’s written out to wide swaths of the site, so that we have "Site Apps" which does like, all the different applications on the site. And then we have "Tools and Integration" where we have the external projection of Digg, then we have "Core Apps" which is like, search, R&D stuff like recommendation engine, and what not, and then we have "Core Infrastructure".

    Paul: So it’s probably enough to be interesting?

    Joe: Yeah, we have pretty broad teams, and also, when we put people on those teams, even if someone has an amazing core infrastructure background, but they say, look, like, one of our UI guys, used to be really heavy into core infrastructure stuff when he worked at Quest, and managed massive warehouses, but he says, like, "That’s not what gets me up in the morning any more". It’s like, "Javascript UI interfaces are". So we try to put people on the teams where, you know, where their passions lie. And that’s kind of another thing that people need to recognize. And that’s like, not all developers are driven by, or interested in the same things. We have some, what I would call "UI / Frontend" developers, where like, they could care less about PHP, but we have PHP guys who could care less about Javascript. So I think, recognizing strengths and weaknesses, and capitalizing on those, is pretty important too.

    Paul: OK, one last question to finish off, and that is, well you know, the kind of things that you’ve been talking about are fascinating to hear, about the kind of challenges that you have to face with the size of Digg, and the amount of traffic you have to handle. But obviously a lot of people who are listening to this podcast, aren’t at that stage. They are not working on massive projects like that. So I’m really interested in what advice you would have, for those who are just beginning to suffer from scalability problems, and they feel that it’s coming, and it’s something they need to be paying attention to. But it’s not on the enormous scale that you have to deal with. What things can they do right now to prevent problems down the line?

    Joe: Um, I think, the easiest things you can do, is you need to re-think the LAMP acronym, because that stack is actually no longer really that stack. I would take Linux, and I’d take Apache out of that stack, and it doesn’t matter, as long as you’re running on a Unix. And as far as Apache goes, Lighty and EngineX are much better at getting a lot more money out of your box, as far as scalability goes. The two areas, that I think people, they sound hard, but they are really easy. One of them is installing and using Memcached, and the other one is installing and using a queuing system of some sort. And I think, like, recently I went through this with a little side project, called "Please Dress Me" which AJ and Gary Benashack and I did.

    Paul: Oh, yes yes.

    Joe: And we had a very small virtual server at MediaTemple, that survived pretty crushing blows from TechCrunch, Digg, BoingBoing, with almost no load. And that was like, beforehand, memcached is so second nature to me at this point, that I was just like, "Oh, well I’m just going to cache everything in memcached", and it was literally just like this RAM spewing machine. It didn’t actually hit the database. Actually my sysadmin at MediaTemple was like "Something’s really weard, MySQL is only doing like 1 query a second, and you’re doing like 500 requests per second from BoingBoing. So I’m cached. Yeah memcached is just like, it takes literally 10 minutes to install, and probably another hour or two to implement.

    Paul: Wow, that sounds excellent, that’s really good advice. Joe, thank you so much for coming on the show, and I can’t wait to get you and Daniel fighting with one an other in the not too distant future. I’m hoping to get a good violent argument about designers and developers, just because I can.

    Joe: Laughs.

    Paul: I was a little bit disappointed when you guys sat down at Future of Web Design, were far too nice to one another, compared to the evening before, when you’d had a bit to drink, and you were talking in the restaurant. That’s the kind of conversation I want, that real vicious session.

    Joe: OK, I’ll make sure that Daniel and I get liquored up before coming on then.

    Paul: Yeah, that’s the answer. Ok, thank you so much Joe, that’s really good advice, and we’ll talk to you soon.

    Joe: Thanks Paul, bye.

    Thanks goes to Nathan O’Hanlon for transcribing this interview.

    Back to top

    Listeners feedback:

    Top web designer applications

    Often this section of the show consists of questions for myself and Marcus. However for a change, I thought we should ask the questions. Via the forum, the boagworld site and twitter I recently asked you to vote for your ‘favourite web designer application‘. The response was overwhelming and you can see the complete list of suggestions on UserVoice. However, here are the top 5…

    1. Firebug – Firebug is a Firefox addon that puts a wealth of development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page. A less popular suggestion was the Web Inspector in Safari.
    2. Web developer toolbar – The Web Developers toolbar is a Firefox addon that provides a variety of web development tools. You can disable CSS and Javascript, visually highlight elements, manage cookies and much more. A less popular alternative was the IE developers toolbar.
    3. Adobe Photoshop – A professional image-editing and graphics creation software from Adobe. It provides a large library of effects, filters and layers. This is the grandfather of such applications and many (like myself) use it out of habit more than anything else. Less popular suggestions included Fireworks, Illustrator and Inkscape.
    4. Coda – Coda is a one window development environment for the mac. It includes FTP, text editor, browser preview and even terminal window. A beautifully designed app it appeals to the more visual web designer. Simple, easy to use and elegant.
    5. TextMate – TextMate is a powerful text editor for the mac with an extensive plug-in architecture. From its code highlighting in near endless languages to support for numerous version control systems, TextMate is probably the most powerful text editor out there.

    If you disagree with the Boagworld Listeners top five or want to see the other entries then head on over to UserVoice and vote for yourself.

    Sending out bulk emails

    My second listener contribution comes from the forum. It is a question from Richard about sending bulk email.

    Richard writes: I need to send out bulk emails to approx 200k registered (opted in) users on a monthly basis.

    Does anyone have any recommendations for an outsourced bulk email provider?

    As with the previous contribution I want to focus on your responses rather than my own. This is what the Boagworld community had to say…

    Jamie was the first of a number of people to recommend Campaign Monitor. Judging by the feedback from the forum they offer an excellent service but are expensive when compared to others.

    As well as recommending Campaign Monitor Nick mentions Silverpop, which he described as ‘an enterprise affair’. Apparently it is not as polished as campaign monitor but considerably more powerful.

    Phil recommended two more, Mail Chimp and Mad Mini. He hasn’t used them personally but the prices look good and he says the user interfaces appear polished.

    Doug doesn’t recommend a specific service but does refer Richard to a post on Creative Tips which provides a comprehensive review of Campaign Monitor, MailChimp, AWeber, and Constant Contact.

    If you have suggestions for Richard or would just like to share your experiences of using bulk email services then contribute to the thread in the boagworld forum.

    Back to top

    143. Partnership

    Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

    On this week’s show Paul and Marcus discuss how to promote your web application, ways to improve the client/designer relationship and tools for managing your font library.

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    News and events

    Obama top technology promises

    One of the most exciting things about being at this years FoWD conference in New York was that I got to witness the election of the next U.S. president.

    Whatever your political persuasions it was a landmark election. Not only will Obama be the first African American president he is also probably the most technically aware.

    Obama campaigned aggressively online, from a dedicated YouTube channel to Obama pages on Facebook and MySpace as well as Twitter feeds. He even had his own iPhone application.

    So what can we expect from this tech-savvy President? How will he shape the future of U.S. online presence and possibly that of the entire web? An article on tgdaily entitled ‘Barack Obama’s Top technology promises‘ gives us a roundup of various technological promises from Obama’s speeches. These include:

    • A commitment to Net Neutrality
    • A desire to expand broadband penetration in the U.S.
    • A review of the current wireless spectrum usage
    • Tougher legislation around online security.

    Of course, promises made on the campaign trail are one thing. We shall see what the reality turns out to be.

    Could Microsoft consider adopting Webkit?

    Talking of things that may never be, a young (and very brave) developer at Microsoft recently asked Steve Ballmer:

    Why is IE still relevant and why is it worth spending money on rendering engines when there are open source ones available that can respond to changes in Web standards faster?

    Ballmer’s response was surprising to say the least:

    There will still be a lot of proprietary innovation in the browser itself so we may need to have a rendering service. Open source is interesting. Apple has embraced Webkit and we may look at that, but we will continue to build extensions for IE 8.

    Although some have seen this as a sign that Microsoft may adopt Webkit, personally I am sceptical. Were Microsoft to completely change its rendering engine it would inevitably break large numbers of sites and cause outrage among many of their large corporate clients.

    The backlash when moving from IE6 to IE7 was massive. Moving to Webkit would conflict with Microsoft’s mantra of ‘not breaking the web’.

    That said, we can dream. Without a doubt the real innovation and competitive advantage among browsers is in features, not rendering engines. This would in many ways be a smart move allowing Microsoft to concentrate on differentiation through ‘extensions’ and functionality, rather than wasting time on getting pages to display correctly.

    WCAG 2.0 resources

    Something that is definitely going to happen very soon is the release of WCAG 2.0.

    WCAG 2.0. has now become a proposed recommendation. This means it is not only technically complete but has been successfully implemented on a large variety of sites. In short, it has been proved to work.

    According to the Web Standards group this means it could therefore be released before Christmas.

    This is hugely significant and very exciting from an accessibility point of view. WCAG 2.0. has come a long way from its controversial beginnings and is now a very good set of guidelines.

    Now is the time to start building compliant sites and the Web Standards Group has provided some useful resources for implementing WCAG 2.0.

    Prototyping with XHTML

    Our final story is a post on the Boxes and Arrows website encouraging us to ‘Prototyping with XHTML‘.

    The article lays out an approach to wireframing and prototyping, which is based entirely around the use of XHTML. Starting with the XHTML itself, you build up the structure and elements within your site. You then add CSS and Javascript to further refine the concept.

    It is an approach with a lot of merit. Unlike other methods, the prototype is not thrown away but becomes apart of the final deliverable. It is also an approach particularly suited to multiple iterations, allowing you to refine the design over time.

    In a world of web applications it is becoming increasingly important to demonstrate user interactions in a way static comps cannot. However, although this approach is appealing I do not believe it replaces the Photoshop mockup. Client’s like to see ‘finished’ looking designs. That said, it is another useful tool in your arsenal and you should be sure to read this post.

    Back to top

    Feature: A Partnership of Cooperation

    At this years FoWD I shared how the relationship between web design agency and client is fundamentally broken. Where there should be mutual respect and cooperation, there is negativity and mistrust. Read More.

    Back to top

    Listeners feedback:

    Marketing a web application

    Nick Charlton writes: Long time listener, haven’t asked a question before though..

    Apart from your blog, the podcast and twitter, how else have you marketed GetSignOff?

    To be honest, I have done very little marketing yet. However, I know that has got to change. The problem is that I am not a trained marketeer and so don’t really know what I am doing. That said I do have a rough plan:

    • Free pro accounts – While in beta we gave away numerous pro accounts to ‘web celebs’. However, to be honest it was a waste of time. These guys were either too busy to review it or just didn’t feel it was worth writing about. This time I intend to give free accounts to those who blog about the application. Not entirely sure how I am going to do this yet but I think it might generate some buzz.
    • Offering discounts – Discounts are an effective way of spreading word of mouth. Again I am not entirely sure if or when we will do this, but offering the occasional discount should encourage people to tell their friends.
    • Targeting appropriate publications – I am in the process of writing a number of articles either directly or indirectly related to GetSignOff. I have also asked some sites to review the application. I have approached sites like Digital Web, Think Vitamin and printed publications such as .net. Having a product aimed at people like myself makes identifying appropriate publications easy.
    • Producing supporting video content – I have already produced the ‘Getting design sign off‘ presentation but also intend to make some shorter tutorials for YouTube. These will contain valuable content in their own right, but will also promote GSO.
    • Utilising CSS galleries – Because my audience are web designers we have submitted GSO to several CSS galleries. We know that many web designers use these sites and so this gives our application a lot of exposure.
    • Use speaking opportunities – Speaking opportunities have been a great opportunity for promoting GSO and I have started tailoring my speaking slots around the subject of sign off.

    In time we may consider advertising through things like Google Adwords or the Deck. However, until we are confident in the return on investment we are not willing to invest more money in anything other than development.

    Font management

    Aurel writes: I would realy like to know how designers deal with fonts? From personal experience, I have alot of fonts and it takes me time to find or manage them. So I was wondering if you know of any way to group the fonts, e.g. when you go through the drop menu of fonts in photoshop, they apear in groups (or something along those lines).

    The solution I use was recommended on the Rissington Podcast (oh the shame of admitting that.)

    It is a piece of software called FontExplorer X which is available for both the mac and PC. It has some superb features if you are serious about fonts. These include:

    • Organising your fonts – Organise using a library, folders, tags and even smart sets. You can directly access all typefaces from a certain foundry or all fonts tagged with a certain keyword? You can even view all italic fonts.
    • Auto activation – FontExplorer allows you to decide which fonts are available in which applications. This is ideal if you want to avoid scrolling through large numbers of fonts in applications like Photoshop.
    • Font information – FontExplorer gives you a clear customisable preview of your fonts as well as detailed information on the character set and usage restrictions.

    The application also has an in built store that allows you to buy additional fonts within the same intuitive interface. I am guessing this is how they manage to offer the whole application absolutely free.

    Back to top

    A partnership of cooperation

    Posted in Web strategy on by Paul Boag

    At this years FoWD I shared how the relationship between web design agency and client is fundamentally broken. Where there should be mutual respect and cooperation, there is negativity and mistrust.

    I am horrified by some of the stories I hear from clients and web designers about failed web projects. In most cases the problem has been not with the project itself, but with the relationship between client and supplier.

    Although we are learning at Headscape, we have discovered three principles that will help both designers and clients work better together. To run a successful web project you need:

    • Mutual respect
    • A defined relationship
    • A positive attitude

    By building these characteristics into your relationships there is a much greater chance of success. Let us look at how.

    Learn mutual respect

    It is disturbing to hear how some web designers refer to their clients. There is an underlying feeling that clients are stupid and just hamper the development process.

    In reality clients are normally a key component and extremely knowledgeable. The client usually has a better understanding of their business objectives and target audience. They know what they want to achieve through the website and will have to work with it over the long term.

    The client is the sites advocate, evangelist, defender, content provider and more. He is the driving force behind the site and deserves the designers respect.

    However respect is a two way street, and clients often undervalue web designers. This is especially true in in-house teams although it also occurs when hiring external agencies.

    Clients often reduce the role of the web designer to a pixel pusher. They micro manage designers effectively ignoring the extensive experience the vast majority bring to the table. Everybody has an opinion about design, but good design is not about personal opinion. It is about fundamental rules of layout, typography, colour theory and more. It is the designer who has expertise in these areas, and the client needs to respect this.

    This lack of respect is often because both parties misunderstand their respective roles.

    Define the boundaries of the relationship

    Both designer and client have expectations of their role and that of their opposite. However, these expectations often differ. For example, if a client has not worked on a web project before they are unlikely to be aware of their role. This can lead to the client straying onto the designers territory or failing to fulfil their own obligations in the eyes of the designer.

    At the outset of a project define the boundaries of the relationship. The client’s role in particular needs to be clearly defined.

    Clients should be focusing on three things:

    • The business objectives – The client understands the business objectives associated with the website. Therefore, they should be constantly asking whether the design fulfils these objectives and if not explaining to the designer where they believe it falls down.
    • The needs of users – A good client should have an insight into the behaviour and character of their target audience. The client should assess designs not based on personal opinion, but within the context of the target audience. They should ask how users will react to a design, not what you think of it personally.
    • Problems and not solutions – Many clients endeavour to find solutions to perceived problems rather than communicating the problem to the designer. For example, a client should not suggest that a design is changed to a specific colour. Instead they should express concern that the target audience may not respond well to a particular colour. The designer can then decide on the best way to resolve the problem. If the client does not communicate the underlying problem, but merely suggests a solution, he is straying onto the designers territory. This prevents the designer from doing his job properly.

    Of course, it is not just what you say but the way you say thing.

    Build a positive attitude

    Interestingly that both designers and clients perceive the other as a barrier. Designers believe that projects would run smoother without the objections of clients. Client perceive designers as negative and constantly undermining their ideas and suggestions.

    Personally I rarely say ‘no’ to a client. Saying ‘no’ ends the discussion and leads to confrontation. It also fails to communicate the problem or identify a way forward.

    Does this mean I do everything my clients ask? Not at all. Instead I provide them with enough information to realise that their suggestion may not be the wisest decision. In short I say ‘yes we could do that’, but then go on to explain the consequences of their suggestion.

    However, you should not stop there. Also ask the question ‘why’. The other party may make a suggestion that seems ridiculous, but they will have had their reasons. You need to know what those reasons are. By understanding them you maybe able to provide an alternative that keeps everybody happy.

    Maintaining a good working relationship between client and designer is not an exact science. However these approaches have gone a long way to improving the way we work with clients. Hopefully they can do the same for you.

    142. Community

    Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

    In this week’s show Ryan and Stanton cover the news in Paul’s absence, we’re joined by Mark Boulton to discuss design by community and Marcus reminds us to keep positive.

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    News and events

    Typeface.js

    There are many solutions to insert custom fonts into your designs, whether it’s the good old CSS image replacement techniques, SiFR or FLiR, we’re really just biding our time until font-embedding through the @font-face rule becomes widely supported in the browsers (we’ve covered font-embedding before in show 129) But for now, there’s another technique on the block called typeface.js which uses browsers’ vector drawing capabilities to draw text in HTML documents.

    Browsers have, for a while, supported vector drawing – Firefox, Safari and Opera support the canvas element was well as SVG, and IE supports VML. The Typeface.js project uses this vector capability to ‘draw’ the fonts within your webpage.

    There are a couple of caveats, while the ‘drawn’ text is selectable, it’s not highlighted (though this should be remedied in future versions) and the fonts have to be converted first through a tool available on their website. But this might be a nice little fallback if the users browser doesn’t support @font-face.

    Sell Your Web App

    In our next news item Ryan Carson, owner of Carsonified, has this week published a blog entitled “Sell Your Web App: Lessons I Learned From Selling Dropsend” and as you would expect from that title he shares his tips and mistakes when selling his app and it’s a very interesting read.

    He talks about considerations like choosing the right merchant account, anticipating high lawyer and accountancy fees and off course being discreet, don’t blog about your sale!

    He’s also prompted for people to leave their own tips in the comments so if you’ve sold a web app yourself head over to thinkvitamin.com and share your experiences as well.

    Lessons learned while building an iPhone site.

    Theres a nice article on the Flickr Blog which details some of the lessons they learned while building the popular iPhone version of the Flickr site. They go into detail of subjects such as “don’t use a javaScript library or CSS framework”, “Load page fragments instead of full pages”, “optimize everything” and making sure to tell the user what’s happening through visual indicators.

    If you’re developing iPhone apps, or are even just thinking about it I’d recommend giving this article a read before you start work, it may save you a lot of time down the line.

    Free Site Validator

    Our final news item brings our attention to a service blogged about by Roger Johansson at 456bereastreet.com. Roger was looking for a way to validate his site without having to do every page individually and what he found was freesitevalidator.com.

    The service automatically craws each page of your site and checks it for validation, as well as giving you a report of any broken/dead links. Also known as Link Rot!

    The service looks really useful so be sure to check it out.

    Back to top

    Interview: Mark Boulton on Design by Community

    Paul: So as I said at the start of the show, joining me today is Mark Boulton. Good to have you on the show Mark.

    Mark: Good to be here.

    Paul: It’s nice to finally talk to you, we met up for the first time just a few days ago now.

    Mark: Yeah, it was it was about a week ago.

    Paul: It was great to do so. I talked about you a few weeks ago on the show as well when we were talking about a recent blog post that you wrote. But we will come on to that in just a minute. What we are going to talk about today with Mark is that he has done the unthinkable from a design point of view. Haven’t you really?

    Mark: I have really yes.

    Paul: You’re totally insane and so I wanted to pick you brain about why you have chosen to do the unthinkable. Before we get onto that, all of this resolves around some work your doing for Drupal. Tell us a little bit A) about what Drupal is and B) what you are doing.

    Mark: Drupal is a Content Management Framework I guess, that allows people to build websites and its an open source project, it’s been going for quite a while now. I think seven years or so. The software is on version six now and it has a very large user base. Probably three hundred or so registered users.

    Paul: Three hundred users?

    Mark: Three hundred thousand!

    Paul: Ah ok.

    Mark: So it’s a pretty enormous project really, and with it being Open Source these are all very passionate developers. It’s quite a developer centric platform.

    Paul: Ok.

    Mark: The community, with it being open source the community contribute quite a lot to it, with modules and themes and that kind of thing, plugins. Our involvement in the project is redesigning drupal.org, which is kind of the home on the web of the framework, so you can go there and download and read documentation. But it’s also the home of the community, which is a pretty huge one. So it’s very exciting.

    Paul: So tell us a little bit about the design process that you’re using, and this is what you blogged on and what kind of caught my attention and struck me as a ridiculous idea and what on earth were you thinking about?

    Mark: Yeah, well I’ve been working with Lisa Raquelt who is a user experience researcher and kind of strategist. She started very early on in the process. She started blogging about it with the Drupal Association, who represent the Drupal community, who engaged us on the project. They are very happy with this being an open source project. They’re very happy with us to talk about it. Which is completely opposite to the way you normally work with a client.

    Paul: Yeah, totally.

    Mark: Normally you sign NDAs and it’s very closed doors. You don’t want to tell the competition, its the complete opposite, which is terrifying. Lisa started blogging about it and got really really great feedback from the community, really valuable feedback. Then I then started blogging about some of the design work we were doing. We are redesigning the wordmark and the branding currently. And I thought I may as well just jump in feet first here and see how this goes, which is totally contrary to the way I’ve been working in the past and the way your mind tells you you should work. You just shouldn’t openly talk about design because you’d think that it’s very subjective and everyone is going to have their own opinions, which is true. But we blogged about it a couple of weeks ago and it’s where my blog post on my own site, markboulton.co.uk, came about was I had a lot of people including yourself Paul. Who were saying I was insane, why are you doing this? And it’s this notion of design by community that’s very different to design by committee. Which is what a lot of people was telling me, "You can’t design by committee, it never works." Which is true, it never does.

    Paul: So why do you think we are so hesitant as designers to talk openly? Is it fear of the subjective, is it that we don’t like people looking at our designs before they are finished? Why are we so hesitant do you think?

    Mark: It’s a really interesting question that. I had an interesting conversation with an architect a couple of weeks ago about the exact same thing. A lot of architects don’t open up. A lot of designers, maybe product designers. An insight into the way somebody works and as designers we all work very differently and sometimes it’s a very private process. To expose that it’s almost like going out shopping with no clothes on. Suddenly you’re exposing the way that you work to everybody, to judge you, and people will judge you. It is a terrifying thought. I think part of it is also schooling. If you’ve done art at school, which most designers have done, most visual designers. You slave away on a piece of art and it’s not finished yet and it’s not finished and you don’t want anyone to look at it until it is finished, so I think there is an element of that as well. When I released two versions of the Drupal wordmark, for feedback they were very much just sketches. They were right in their first iteration. I would normally never do that but I thought let’s see what the community thinks.

    Paul: So what happened when you released those two sketches?

    Mark: It was carnage. Initially it was quite painful sometimes to listen to some of the comments to be honest. I think anybody takes their own work personally. If someone then attacks some of your own work with necessarily seeing any of the context and that kind of thing, then it can smart a little bit. But I’ve written my own blog for a while now and I’ve got reasonably thick skin, so it wasn’t that bad. What did come out through all of the comments were trends. Trends started to emerge. So from people’s subjective opinion, if enough people were having the same kind of subjective opinion, then that becomes less of an opinion and more of trend. And it was really those trends were looking to identify, that we could feed back into the development of the design.

    Paul: It’s interesting there you talked about the fact the people who were seeing this stuff didn’t have the context. Did you not prepare the ground in any way? Did you not tell them why you took the approach you did? Or did you literally just put out the branding there and go, "What do you think?"

    Mark: Yeah, there is a reasonably sticky situation with Drupal, particularly with the wordmark. They have a kind of logo at the moment, which is a kind of drop with a face on it. And that logo at the moment is under GPL so it can’t be trademarked which means the Drupal Association can not protect their own property, as it were, because this logo is under GPL. Which means that anybody can take it, change it, completely mess around with it. Which is fine, the community have been doing that for a long time now. So when I took on and blogged about this redesign of the wordmark, there was not the context, the business context, was perhaps lacking because I felt that I could not provide that business context. Because I was the designer and that should really come from someone else, and that was a little late in coming. Which is why the first blog post really didn’t go down too well, because I assumed the audience knew that this project was happening. As it turned out, it actually wasn’t. They didn’t know and it was all a bit of a mess, but it’s kind of smoothed over now, with later iterations and there’s been more blogging done by the Drupal Association. Which has provided the rationale for redesigning the branding.

    Paul: Right, so there is a lesson to be learned there I guess of the importance of providing context and why stuff is happening and why you are taking the approach you are I guess.

    Mark: Absolutely yeah, I think context is really important, especially for branding and logo design and that kind of thing. Just providing, and I was very aware of this when I blogged it. We all saw what happened with the London 2012 logo, when that is released very early without any context, it’s either misunderstood, or just hated or really liked. I’d rather have that kind of opinion anyway, than somebody kind of going, "Yeah, its alright."

    Paul: You prefer to create a strong reaction.

    Mark: Yeah, either positive or negative, because those are the reactions you can act upon. Anything in the middle is kind of gray, middle ground. That’s actually very very difficult to take on board and move forward with. So any kind of negative or positive reaction, you can take that on board, which we did. But the context for the Drupal logo is going to be the other stuff around it, which is the branding, the tone of voice, what is said on the page, the design, the other design elements around it, how it interacts with the existing kind of drop because they are still keeping that as a mascot. So it’s how all of that works together was perhaps lacking at this early stage. Which is why perhaps, going back to your initial question, designers don’t actually release very early on because the context isn’t there yet.

    Paul: Yeah, which makes a lot of sense. When it came to the feedback, so you were obviously asking for feedback here, were you setting any kind of constraints on that feedback? From time to time I’ve talked on the subject about how to get design signoff and that kind of thing and one of the things that I always say is, "Don’t just say, ‘What do you think?’" but actually kind of try and guide the type of feedback you want and give a context to it, is that something you did?

    Mark: Yeah. Not initially, which was why we had to.. The initial blog post didn’t really go down so well from an actionable sort of feedback point of view. Because I felt that a lot of the design questions I wanted answered. I think it was too early and I hold my hands up for that. I think it was too early in the process for me to blog about that. The second post that I put up I asked for specifics on whether or not the word mark needed a capital D or a lower case d and whether or not it needed, we were developing the idea of a secondary icon with it which is a splash and whether or not it needed the splash or not. We got some really great feedback because that focused people’s attention. That provided a really great selection of trends which have fed back into the next iteration. The first post was a bit of a free for all to be honest. Nothing really useful came out of it, which was a shame.

    Paul: I mean you kind of, you talked about trends. Do you think that that is kind of, those trends that you see emerging, have the way that you have taken those on board has it been a kind of anecdotal trends or are you talking statistics here? Were you kind of marking down how many people you know said, "Yes, there should be an uppercase D." or whatever or are you just kind of taking on a feeling? Does that make sense?

    Mark: Yeah. It was kind of taking on the feeling. More qualitative than quantitative at this point. However, for the cap D or lowercase d we could have just run a poll which in hindsight we should have done, is just had a tick box for each question as it were. However I’m always a little, I actually quite like a lot of the qualitative feedback because people were saying, "Yes cap D and splash," but then they go on to say something else. If we just reigned it into a simple poll then we would have lost all that really great, valuable feedback, because it’s that that provides context for their answer.

    Paul: Yeah, I mean you won’t necessarily know why they’re saying a capital D.

    Mark: Exactly, and there was enough of people saying the same kind of thing in those comments for it to be a pretty good trend for us to act upon. And it also throws out more heads about them on as it were. There was a lot of valuable comment from the Drupal community especially. And that we would have spent six months trying to research the ins and outs of that community, the history and the culture because there is an awful lot, you know. It’s been going seven years and there’s a lot of people in there. I would have been around ‘til next year trying to fully understand that community if I hadn’t adopted this open way of working.

    Paul: It’s quite interesting, isn’t it? I mean when they were coming back and you were seeing a trend emerging very definitely one way or the other over something, were you always going with that decision or were sometimes you saying "Well actually, although everybody’s saying we should go with a capital D or whatever, I’m not going to because of X, Y and Z."

    Mark: Yes. I think there does have to be somebody who is willing to make a decision on something that needs to be decided upon. If fifty percent of people said, "I like a black website," and fifty percent of people say, "I like a white website," the compromise is that you end up with a gray website and nobody wants gray. So, what we’ve done especially with the cap D and lowercase d for example there was pretty much an overwhelming response to, "Yes it should be lowercase d," because it’s kind of more attractive aesthetically and all the rest of it. However we’ve chosen to go with uppercase D and that is because of business requirements and also because of the ties in with the documentation. We’ve revised the word mark now where the uppercase D is actually a lot better than the previous version. Perhaps when I posted initially the lowercase d and the uppercase D were not really on an equal footing design-wise. The uppercase D needed a lot of refinement and again perhaps that skewed the results, skewed the comments and so we’ve actually reversed the general trend there and said, "Actually no. We think we should go with the uppercase D for this reason and this reason," and that will continue throughout the whole process. We’ve got to remember, and it’s very important, that the Drupal Association hired us for our expertise and if we feel strongly about something then hopefully we’ll go ahead with that and we’ll push back on any feedback.

    Paul: I mean it’s quite interesting. You talk about, "as we go through this process." So it sounds like you’re gonna keep going down this line, that you’re gonna, you know, as you create say, the website interface that you’ll expose that.

    Mark: Yeah we are. If you have a look on groups.google.org and do a search for the redesign group in there we have set in a bunch of dates in the calendar for gathering community feedback. So we will be posting up a link on Thursday to the prototype we’re developing and we’ll be doing that for the next six to eight weeks. Every other week we’ll be posting a link up there to gather feedback throughout the weekend. So we’ll be posting it up on Thursday/Friday morning and then we’ll be kind of locking off comments on Monday and then all of those comments will hopefully try and establish some trends and feedback. That’ll then feed back into the next iteration. So we’ve pretty much set a precedent here and we’re gonna be designing in the open ‘til the final curtain call, as it were.

    Paul: Excellent! So how do you feel this differs from design by committee? Because from chatting to you when we met up whenever it was I got the distinct impression from you, you saw this as a very different kind of experience, but why, what makes it different?

    Mark: Yeah, well I’ve been involved in design by committee quite a few times. I’m sure a lot of designers have and generally in those instances you’re in a boardroom or a meeting and there are several people, maybe twelve tops, and they all have very strong opinions. Generally, as I said in my blog post, there might be an alpha male in there or two sometimes. People can rally around the loudest voice, so all of a sudden that becomes the opinion. It can be a very, very difficult environment to work in because there are so few people, all with a very loud voice. Design by community is a different kettle of fish really because we’re designing for essentially 300,000 clients and the wider web community as well, we’re not just asking the Drupal community for feedback here, we’re also asking the wider web community for feedback. Anybody can get involved in this, it’s not just for the Drupal community. So anybody can. So if you feel like, talking to the listeners here, if anyone feels like weighting in with their comments, please do. Because it’s very important to us that the wider audience is reflected in this redesign and not just designing for the Drupal community. So it’s a very different process I think, because we’re kind of staffing back a little bit. We’re not in a meeting room with twelve people trying to come up with a solution. We’re putting stuff out there. We’re asking for comments from a lot of people who are thankfully providing comments, which is great. Really thoughtful feedback, then we can try and establish trends and then it’s those trends that we act upon. It becomes a little less subjective. That’s the idea anyway.

    Paul: It’s the scale that turns it into trends rather than just an opinionated person I guess.

    Mark: Yeah, that’s right. And you do have to, like I said initially, sometimes it’s difficult to read a bit of a flaming going on on your blog posts, you know, because there are quite a few people out there who will be very passionate about this project. They’re very passionate about Drupal because they’ve got a lot of time and money, a lot of people their livelihood is dependent upon this platform. So we have to really take that into account that this is serious for a lot of people. We’re not just redesigning a website here, we’re actually providing a platform for a community to do their work. So it’s pretty important stuff.

    Paul: So, I mean do you think that this is a kind of a peculiar situation? You know, is the Drupal project unusual or would this be a kind of approach you would encourage for other designers working on other types of projects?

    Mark: It’s a really interesting question. I mean I’ve worked waterfall methodologies in the past so you get your, you do your research, you do your initial designs, they get signed off and then you build your website, it’s very linear. And after working at the BBC for so long I realized that, because we worked very iteratively at the BBC that actually a more iterative approach was actually more valuable so to take that client-side approach, and the agile software development approach, to take that commercially with design is actually very difficult. But with the clients we are currently working with, that’s the way that we work. So we don’t work in a waterfall methodology, we work very iteratively upon fixed time scales. So we have a week per iteration for example. Now the feedback thing, the only difference really between Drupal and any other big project is the fact it’s open source and has a very, very big active community who are used to working in this way. I think that’s the critical thing is that they’re used to people putting software updates out early, feedback and they get changed and honed down until the final version is released but it’s just the way that they’re working so we have to kind of slot into that culture and it’s not a culture that design thrives in actually.

    Paul: No, I can imagine.

    Mark: No it’s a very difficult environment for design because, and it goes back again to one of your initial questions about wanting to sit there and craft a solution until it’s finished. Well that goes counter to the way that this open source culture works. They want to see stuff early. They want to feed back. They want their say. So as long as you kind of understand that and they’re not being grouchy or attacking you in any way they just want the very best for the project. So yeah, it’s worthwhile considering it as a working approach. Certainly the iterative approach is worthwhile considering for any project but the getting feedback early, if your audience is big enough then give it a go and see how it works. You know if you speak to me in six weeks time I may have a completely different conversation. This is really very much a work in progress and we’re just seeing how it’s going. It’s not been done as openly in the public before. I can’t really remember any projects from a design perspective that have been like this. It’s fairly unique. Which is really great, it’s exciting. So we’ll just see. We’ll see what happens.

    Paul: Yeah, very interesting stuff Mark. Thank you very much for coming on the show.

    Mark: Thank you for having me. It’s been a pleasure.

    Paul: And we will wait with baited breath to see future blog posts as to how the experience goes to the bitter end.

    Mark: Please do because I’ll be blogging about it pretty much constantly throughout the life of the project.

    Paul: We’ll keep an eye on that. Thank you very much for your time and we’ll get you back on soon enough.

    Mark: Great! Thanks Paul!

    Paul: Bye bye.

    Mark: Cheers. Bye.

    Thanks goes to Todd Dietrich and Andy Kinsey for transcribing this interview.

    Back to top

    Listeners feedback:

    Keeping Positive

    Got this question from Bill (remember him?!)….

    I have just found out that the potential new project I have put loads of work in to winning is not coming my way. I wrote an extensive proposal, did some unpaid mock-up work, attended a presentation and jumped through every hoop thrown my way.

    I was told by the client that it was ‘very close’ but on this occasion I had not been successful. Gutted.

    How do you guys at Headscape cope with these types of rejections?

    To be honest, and this is from a lot of bitter experience, it’s hard and some are harder to take than others.

    I do, however, have a few thoughts and pointers that may help. Firstly, you can help yourself by weeding out the enquiries that you will never win.

    Are these people worth your time?

    Check out the email address of the enquirer. If it’s gmail, hotmail, yahoo or similar then chances are your potential client is just looking for free consultancy from you. I.e. they have an idea and have no idea what’s entailed in making that idea happen. And they certainly will not pay you to research it.

    Secondly, and I am only aware of this possibility in the UK, but you can check up on a company through the Companies House website. This tells you all sorts of useful information about how long they’ve been around, their liquidity etc. You may change your mind about responding to a tender sent from a dissolved company.

    Talk money

    There is nothing more frustrating than being told that you are ‘way out of the ballpark’ after putting hours, even days, of effort into a proposal.

    Ask people, up front, what their budget is. Explain that you need to know it to respond with the most appropriate solution for them. An example I often use is usability testing. Everyone knows that testing, preferably many times throughout a project can only be a good thing. But that said, not doing any testing doesn’t automatically mean that your client will get an unusable turkey for a site.

    If you don’t get anywhere by asking then create a 2 or 3 paragraph solution with associated tasks (a mini proposal I guess) and email that to the potential client with an associated ballpark price. If they still want you to deliver a ‘full’ proposal then, chances are, your ballpark is within their range.

    Ask/listen

    Ok, so assuming you think that responding to the proposal is a good use of your time, you now need to read their brief in detail noting questions you have along the way. You will make a number of assumptions about what is the correct solution for this client while you are reading.

    You need to talk to the client to confirm their answers to your questions but you also need to listen to their responses to ensure that your assumptions are correct. It’s very easy to arrogantly assume that ‘you know best’ because you’ve been doing it for years.

    This also applies to your written proposal. Don’t describe and price up what you think the client needs – go through every point in their brief and respond to it accordingly. If it is plain obvious that something they’re asking for makes no sense at all, then tackle it head on and explain why they shouldn’t be doing it.

    Stick to your guns

    We decided, quite a while back, and for very good reason, that we would not do any unpaid mock-up design work. In some cases this has been seen as a positive thing (once it has been explained) but with other potential projects I’m sure it has adversely affected our chances of winning the work. However, we should stick to what we believe is right. Chopping and changing presents a negative image to both potential clients and our staff.

    If you do decide to present initial mock-up ideas don’t be tempted into iterating them further. Any client who asks for is again asking for free work and is most definitely to be avoided.

    Be gracious

    Sometimes you just have to accept that you’re not the right fit with certain companies – even if the initial phone call or meeting went really well. It may well be that someone else delivers just the thing that really swings it for the client – sometime you just don’t know what that is.

    If you do lose then you need to accept that you win some, you lose some. It often happens that these things happen in streaks which can be very frustrating. We found ourselves turning away superb opportunities earlier this year simply because we were too busy.

    But always try to bring a positive attitude to any rejection because it is possible that these people will contact you again for further work (though beware that you are simply making up numbers!) or they may recommend you to others. They won’t do either if you react badly to the rejection!

    Back to top

    141. Feedback

    Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

    In this week’s show, Paul Annett joins us to discuss how he pushes the boundaries of CSS and we look at how to improve your website through user feedback.

    Download this show.

    Launch our podcast player

    News and events

    Working from home

    I suspect the vast majority of people listening to this podcast spend at least some of their time working from home. In today’s world, doing the type of work we do, there is no reason not to.

    However, home working is not the utopia some believe. It has its own challenges and problems. For me it is a constant sense of guilt that I am not pulling my weight in the business. For others it is a lack of motivation or fighting the distraction of housework and family.

    With some many of us struggling with the relatively new environment of home working it is great to see people sharing their experiences in a new A List Apart article (Working from home: Readers respond).

    This article has some great advice and although it contradicts itself in parts (different people deal with home working in different ways) it is full of ideas that I either already implement or will be soon.

    While I am talking about A List Apart I want to quickly mention "Progressive Enhancement with CSS". This is a follow up article to "Understanding Progressive Enhancement" an article we mentioned in an earlier show. It is a great article that explains one possible technique for ensuring your CSS squeezes the best out of as many browsers as possible. If you have a chance, give it a read.

    Everything you know about CSS is wrong

    Talking about CSS, yet another book on the subject has been released this week. However, this one is different. Written by Rachel Andrews and Kevin Yank, "Everything You Know About CSS Is Wrong" is aimed at web designers who already know CSS well. The emphasis is on emerging techniques and future CSS support.

    I haven’t read this book yet (although I do have it on order), but it looks very exciting. It has been a while since I have got to experiment with CSS and so this will hopefully point me in the right direction.

    It tackles subjects like Internet Explorer 8, CSS tables and CSS3. These are all topical subjects and so the book appears to have a lot of potential.

    I will review the book once I have read it and we intend to get Kevin on the show to talk about some of the techniques.

    Reduce your business costs with free stuff

    With the economy in tatters and a general sense of impending doom, we are beginning to see posts on how to cut cost and tighten belts. One such article is "Reduce Your Business Costs With Free Stuff" on the Think Vitamin website.

    The article is a mixture of ideas on how to save money in your business. Some will save you thousands and apply only to larger companies, while others save only a few pounds a month. However whatever type of business you run, from a humble part time freelancer to a multi-national design agency, there is something in here for you.

    Ideas include:

    • Cutting costs on your phone system without reverting to VoIP
    • Subletting office space
    • Open source versions of basecamp, Microsoft office, campfire and much more
    • Moving email and hosting in house

    Although I think some of the suggestions are somewhat short term (Managing email internally would quickly become an expensive headache) I generally agree with most of what is suggested.

    If you are beginning to feel the squeeze then this one is worth the read.

    HTML Email: What mail clients are people using?

    Finally this week there has been an interesting evolution in our understanding of HTML email clients. This has been nicely summarised by Alex Walker on the Sitepoint blog. He writes:

    There are lots of reasons for hating HTML Email, but perhaps no#1 on most people’s hit list is having to produce HTML Email to deliver to potentially hundreds of different mail clients and configurations.

    Now, clearly it’s completely impractical to test your work on hundreds of mail rigs, but the question is, where do you draw the line? Generic browser usage statistics are reasonably common, but mail clients stats?

    In the past you could confidently make up whatever numbers you liked on those question without fear of being caught out. But that may be changing.

    Litmus, who produce an excellent web-based browser and email testing suite are now publishing email client usage statistics from their new Fingerprint email analysis system. It makes very interesting reading.

    Alex goes on to summarise the key findings which include:

    • 60% of people use web based clients
    • Just over 80% of the HTML email market is dominated by Outlook, Hotmail and Yahoo!
    • Business still generally stick with Outlook although they seem reluctant to upgrade to 2007

    Interesting stuff.

    Back to top

    Interview: Paul Annett on Pushing the Boundaries of CSS

    Paul Boag: Joining me today is Paul Annett from clear:left, good to have you on the show Paul.

    Paul Annett: Thank you very much. Nice of you to have me here.

    Paul Boag: So Paul is, with a few others from his company, the people who really make clear:left happen, rather than Andy and Jeremy and Rich, which we know, well Richard does work, but Andy and Jeremy certainly don’t do anything do they?

    Paul Annett: Well, you know, they fly around the world a bit you know?

    Paul Boag: Yeah that counts. I guess..

    Paul Annett: No, we all chip in, obviously. Everyone does their fair share, so we say.

    Paul Boag: Very diplomatic of you. I feel like I can insult them over this as I do the equivalent of no work in my role as well.

    Paul Annett: I was going to say… Well there’s eight of us at clear:left, yeah we all just chip in. We’re all caught making the tea, that sort of stuff.

    Paul Boag: Cool. Well tell us about your role. What is it you do at clear:left?

    Paul Annett: Well, I’m a user experience designer. So that means, well it’s more than just making a web site look pretty, which were are accused of sometimes in the trade; to make sure that the sites are easy to use, as well as a pleasure to use really. That’s something that’s often overlooked with some web site design companies, obviously none of your audience.

    Paul Boag: Obviously not.

    Paul Annett: It’s a vital ingredient in the mix really. My job does overlap with some of the other guys in the office. Basically, we all know each other’s jobs fairly well so we chip in and share some responsibilities. My main focus is UX design. We’ve also got the others guys doing information architecture, they tend to start the project off with handing over wire frames or prototypes to me. Then once I’ve finished my bit I then hand over the designs to our front end developers who then code up the HTML and CSS. As I say we do overlap a bit more than that but that’s basically how it works.

    Paul Boag: I’m quite interested in how that works. You are saying you don’t do too much HTML and CSS, or how does it work.

    Paul Annett: I don’t do a lot right now, I used to when I was freelance before joining clear:left. I used to do pretty much everything on a project. I don’t do a lot now; I don’t really have time to. The occasions when I do get time to are when we are working on our own projects. I especially seem to have had a bunch of project holding pages or client holding pages in the past where Natalie and Jeremy who do the front end are busy doing other projects and we need to just get something up there while the design is being made. So I will code up that kind of thing. I don’t really get to work on a lot of the big life projects, but then I’m no where near as proficient as Natalie and Jeremy are at those kind of things. I think they would have a fit if they considered my code going live.

    Paul Boag: See that’s quite interesting, isn’t it? You’ve begun to build a bit of a reputation as somebody that does-I don’t know-CSS embellishments for want of a better word on some of your designs. You know the kind of thing that other web designers go oh. The most kind of well known example would be the Silverback holding page where you have the clever resizing background How did that come about? Where did that idea come from?

    Paul Annett: It comes from… it’s fortune, really, that I happened to be building that page because it was one of the holding pages. I always look for something unusual to do, or something that’s going to catch someone’s eye, that kind of thing. That particular technique was quite appropriate because the site has quite a niche audience, in terms of web designers. People who wouldn’t necessarily pick up on the subtleties and things that I like that are in there, they’re like hidden gems, wouldn’t care. Web designers seem to catch on to that, it’s something they haven’t seen before. The particular technique itself was just a happy accident, really, because I virtually designed the site, it’s a very simple little holding page with the gorilla icon, designed by Arch Nemesis podcaster, John Hicks.

    Paul Boag: Well he designed our logo as well so he can’t be that arch nemesis

    Paul Annett: That was fantastic drawing on it’s own. But then when I put the vines there, I was just thinking finally give it some kind of depth. I was fiddling around with some of the CSS, and because I don’t know, this is a benefit, because I don’t know CSS like the back of my hand. I do sort of dip in and out. I might make mistakes. Those mistakes might accidentally do something that makes me go oh hang on maybe I can actually use that for something, which is what happened in this case. I happened to position the only layer of vines that I had a percentage off the screen. It moved in relation to the grid. That got me thinking, well maybe I can do this with multiple layers of vines. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but I happened to mention that I had launched the holding page on twitter and a few people.

    Paul Boag: All hell broke loose.

    Paul Annett: Yeah the few people that follow me thought oh that’s nice and they twittered it, and other people twittered it. Before we knew it, a day later, we had 25,000 views on the web site and we were thinking wow we’ve hit something here. 50% of those people signed up for more information about our product, which it didn’t even exist yet, and the web site didn’t even say what it’s about. So they were just intrigued to find out more based on the what they had seen.

    Paul Boag: So that caught you very much by surprise then?

    Paul Annett: Oh yeah We were kind of overwhelmed. If it had been, in an anyway, some kind of planned INAUDIBLE machine, then we would have waited until we had actually started building the app probably. We had over 10,000 people signed up for something we were thinking we’ve really got to pull something out of the bag here. Hopefully we did.

    Paul Boag: Well you do have very good feedback on it. That really demonstrates well the power of design, that even something that, let’s be honest, is maybe, gimmicky is not the right word but you know, isn’t fundamental to the functionality of the site, yet had a huge marketing impact. So it was very worthwhile.

    Paul Annett: Exactly. These things, they are gimmicky. They’re things that people come back to and play with and just want to fiddle around and look at it again. They don’t mean anything. The idea is that they entertain me and maybe some other web designers. It just happened that it entertained 25,000 web designers.

    Paul Boag: Is this something that you do regularly? Do you sneak things like this in a lot?

    Paul Annett: It is something that I like to do, as I said, to entertainment myself. But I do now look for places where I can sneak these things in. I think I’ve always done it really. I always strive to do something unusual. Back in the days of my freelance site, which is nice-design.co.uk, which is still there but not updated since IE8 so if you are using IE8 it will break. Even then, that was one of the first sites where the header and the sidebar were fixed and it was only the content that scrolled. It’s an unusual thing to see, other than the framesets, obviously, back in the day. I always try to sneak these things in. And when I’ve been working here at clear:left, last year’s de-construct site where we snuck in an Easter egg. There’s a style switch on it, I don’t know if you saw it, but when the site launched it was like a wire frame and along the top there a time line which said the progress of the site as it was being built. It was played as if it was being built live as the event got nearer. The time line at the top was actually a style sheet switcher and we deliberately hid the mouse cursor and made it not look like a bunch of links so that if people found it by chance then they would be pleasantly delighted at the surprise of these extra designs on the site that they’d found. Actually we had a few people email us and say terrible usability, they don’t look like links and the mouse cursor doesn’t look like a hand when you move over them. They kind of missed the point, it wasn’t supposed to look like a link, it was supposed to be a hidden little gem for people to find. That got good feedback as well.

    Paul Boag: It’s that creating a sense of satisfaction from a user that they found something special or you know, it’s that little bit of wow factor.

    Paul Annett: Yeah. When people are then able to say their friends oh go on look at this, then they feel like part of an exclusive little club of people that are in the know. Definitely.

    Paul Boag: You talked a lot of the Silverback example of how basically that came about because you were fiddling with CSS and then something didn’t behave as you expected it to and you saw some potential in there. So that was very much a technology driven way of coming to it. Is it always like that or are sometimes these things planned in from the start. I guess in others words, do you have the ideas and implement them or how does it happen?

    Paul Annett: It really varies. Sometimes it’s design driven, like with the de-construct site last year, that was design driven and we wanted to have something which resembled the process that building a web site out there. The silverback one was kind of technology driven but also slightly design driven because I wanted to give it that depth. To take that one step further, I’ve used the same technique on the UX London site. UX London is another conference were running next year in June, uxlondon.com. The technique that I used on silverback is reimplemented there. There’s no three dimensional movement or anything like that, but as you resize the window, the logo changes color. That’s just done by having a transparent window through the logo in the shape of the U and the X, so as you resize the window, the background color behind the whole page slides sideways and changes the color of the logo. This kind of this could be done with Flash, it could be done with Java Script, but I don’t know Flash, and I don’t know Java Script, so it is me trying to find my own little work around and quirky way of doing things really.

    Paul Boag: I guess the thing that you know when you start thinking about these things is browser support. Some of these things you are doing are kind of either very advanced CSS or very hackerish CSS so either way you come up with browser support issues. Do you worry about that or is it just that they’re extras and it doesn’t really matter.

    Paul Annett: Well fortunately because the audience for the sites that we’ve done in this sort of extreme way are web designers so you know they are going to be using the latest browsers. They’re going to be using firefox and they’re not going to be using IE6. We wouldn’t go to that sort of an extreme on a client web site and everything that we do, everything that leaves our doors is valid CSS, valid HTML. It wouldn’t be allowed not to be if you know what I mean. We’re very standards aware as a company, but I do like to kind of push the boundaries on things a little bit and see what I can get away with. Not in anyway inaccessible, but just not very conventional and if it doesn’t work in IE6 and doesn’t work in other browsers then as long as we implement something that looks the same but without the effects then that’s fine. The silverback site, if you look at it in IE6 is just a gorilla in front of some vines, no movement, nothing lost. Nobody coming to that site will be like there’s something missing here, but they just won’t get that extra little embellishment.

    Paul Boag: It’s that graceful degradation.

    Paul Annett: Progressive enhancement really. Most people that do have the technology get the extra stuff. This isn’t a company policy, but personally I’m usually in the favor of, I’ve seen quite a couple of sites recently that had a browser upgrade nag bar where if you’ve got IE6 then it says hey just upgrade your damn browser, you’re missing out on stuff. We’d never do that, we wouldn’t put that on a client site here, but I might put that on my own site. I haven’t, but I might.

    Paul Boag: Sounds like a good idea to me. What’s the kind of process you go through in getting these extras added in? Are they kind of planned in from day one. When you, say for example, did the UX London web site, did you have it in your head right from the beginning that you wanted to do this with the logo, or something occurred to you further down the design process? When did it happen, is it in the design stage, the build stage?

    Paul Annett: With that particular one, that was something that I tried out on a previous site. It didn’t really work 100% and we thought we’ll do something else with the site. But I had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to do it from the start on that project. But in general, again it varies really. If, sorry to be so vague and unspecific.

    Paul Boag: No no, that’s the nature of design isn’t it?

    Paul Annett: One thing I do advocate is that with all our client’s stuff, as well as our own stuff, I always present mock ups in a browser. I never send out a JPEG of mock ups to clients because for start, they are going to view it at the wrong size, they are going to look at it in preview or some kind of windows equivalent, image viewer, and it’s going to be resized to fit their screen, so they’re not going to see it in the context of the web site anyway. Not only that, but it also gives you the opportunity to actually build part of the site so you might have the header as a flat JPEG and the footer as a flat JPEG and the left hand side as a flat JPEG but the right hand side, where you want some kind of interactivity, you could spend a little bit of time building that so that it kind of explains to the client that this is what I want to happen here, roughly. Obviously it wouldn’t be the final thing because you don’t want to invest that much time up front, to give them that little bit of insight. That’s what I do when I am building holding pages or whenever I do get the opportunity to do something like that in house here is that I’ll code up some bits I think is the unique, gimmicky bit of it, and all the rest will just be a flat JPEG. It’s just to sell the idea internally, if you like, and to have everyone gather around my Mac here and ridicule me and laugh at you.

    Paul Boag: It makes sense that more and more web design that we are doing these days has got so many interactive elements with use of Java Script and various other things, that a static JPEG doesn’t always cut it anymore does it?

    Paul Annett: No, exactly. Another thing we do to combat that here at clear:left is that we often build prototypes of a site, instead of having like a paper wire frame which we often do as well but if there are interactions that need to be explained to the client we’ll build a flat wire frame of it in HTML just using framework and Java Script libraries and simulate the AJAX side of things just with hard coded Java Scripts. It’s also not production quality code, but the prototype wire frame and the flat JPEG combined will give the client a better idea of exactly how the finished site will be.

    Paul Boag: Sounds good. We’ve talked a couple of time about is this gimmicky, is this not you know… I’m quite interested as where you feel the line is drawn between good design here and tipping into that naff gimmick area. Do you know what I mean?

    Paul Annett: Yeah. There are a couple of things that haven’t seen the lights of day yet, which maybe they will one day. I guess it depends on how much time it’s going to take and how much value it gives us at the end of the day. Using a similar kind of thing with positioning elements we’ve got these great big letters in the clear:left office and we regularly rearrange the letters that spell clear:left to spell different words on the shelf at the office. To simulate this online I’ve built a little page which has got the word clear:left across the page when it’s at full screen at 1024 pixels wide and as you resize the window all the letters swap places because they’re all positioned at different places at different percentages off the screen, blank bits of image and all this complicated CSS positioning going on. When you reach 800 pixels wide it says elf:cartel. So it doesn’t have any fundamental reason or… it doesn’t do anything, it’s pointless, so it’s not going to be anywhere probably. But that is too, possibly gimmicky. There are some ideas which are not necessarily web based which are gimmicky but do work like when we were planning this year’s de-construct and INAUDIBLE wants to get some silverback promotion in there. I talked to him why don’t we just have a gorilla one day running around dishing out silverback branded bananas. Everyone laughed and thought it would be stupid, and then we did it. And then it was really successful and everyone loved it. Yeah, it was a bit of a gimmick but again it kind of fitted with the brand so it worked.

    Paul Boag: It’s a fine line isn’t it, you walk in things like that? Because you know you could have been absolutely ridiculed for something like that. How do you know what is going to go down well and what’s not? I guess you don’t.

    Paul Annett: Yeah, luck. I was ridiculed for that here in the office but we went with it and it seemed to work. It was great fun.

    Paul Boag: I’ve seen pictures. It looked entertaining if nothing else. Going back to the online stuff, even if you develop something like that, it never sees the light of day, you never know that technique may come in use in a future web site that you develop and it might be appropriate.

    Paul Annett: Yeah there’s always like a library of that stuff that we’ve kind of half developed and ideas that we’ve got, notes, that kind of thing. It might well see the light of day in the future

    Paul Boag: Let finish off with just a kind of general advice that you like to give designers out there that they look at some of the cool little things that you do and they think I’d really like to do that but I don’t want to just go out and copy him because there’s nothing imaginative in that. I want to kind of get into that mentality of looking for opportunities to do this kind of thing. What advice can you give them? How can you start them off?

    Paul Annett: There’s loads of stuff that’s come out as a result of the silverback hype, if you like. There was an article that I did on ThinkVitamincom which kind of explains how to achieve that technique. People have taken that and done all sorts of other things with it. I’ve seen someone creating moving 3d images and that style of a zoetrope(?) toy thing, which uses the same kind of principles but applied in a different way. So by all means, the best advice in all cases of web design is to look at the code, see how someone else has done something and see how you can adapt that to your own stuff. One thing that I really rely a lot on is, especially in these hidden Easter eggie things, is alpha transparency and thinking of how you can create a window through the front layer of a web site so you could have, instead of having a white background on the web site, put a white foreground layer with a window through it, shaped in the shape of whatever, and see how you can make that interact with the background layer so as you perhaps scroll down the page something becomes visible through this previously invisible transparent window. There’s a site called webleeddesign which does this brilliantly. That’s my ultimate, I would have loved to have made something like that, it’s really good. Only that one page, but it’s really nice with that alpha transparency in the front there. Think about what you can do with resizing the text on a browser so-we redesigning the clear:left site at the moment, hopefully it will be online soon-now I’m giving up an Easter egg that’s coming up on it.

    Paul Boag: No one listens to this podcast so it’s fine.

    Paul Annett: There are certain things hidden on certain pages and if you bump the text size up a couple of points then those things would become visible because of course you can control the position of things based on ems. As you resize things, your font size gets bigger, it perhaps moves in relation to the other things and things begin to peak out from behind something that was previously in front of it. I play around with that kind of thing a lot. That’s the advice I’d give you in terms of this particular way of doing things.

    Paul Boag: That’s some great advice there, there’s lots of possibility. I like what your saying that it only takes a small number of techniques, you talked about transparency there, you talked about the background stuff, and you talked about the font resizing, but the possibilities of just those three things are endless really. You could do all kinds of things with them.

    Paul Annett: Exactly, combine them in different ways. Again someone take this and do something with it, but imagine a line going diagonally across the screen but in font of that you’ve got a completely white page and across that white page is a very narrow slot of transparency, so if your line starts at the top right hand corner all you see is a dot in the top right hand corner but as soon as you start scrolling down the screen, that dot moves to the left because it’s visible through that hole. That’s a very basic example of how you could use windows of alpha transparency interacting with the background to do something which moves horizontally as you scroll vertically. I haven’t done anything with that yet as I haven’t thought of anything good to do with it but maybe someone can.

    Paul Boag: That’s absolutely brilliant Paul, there’s some really good advice in there and thank you for taking the time to come on the show. I hope we can get you back on before too long.

    Paul Annett: Thanks. Thanks very much for having me.

    Thanks goes to Troy Oltmanns for transcribing this interview.

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    Feature: Improving your site with user feedback

    Users can be invaluable when deciding how to move a website forward. We should always listen to what they say. However, sometimes that is easier said than done. Read more here.

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    Improving your site with user feedback

    Posted in Site content on by Paul Boag

    Users can be invaluable when deciding how to move a website forward. We should always listen to what they say. However, sometimes that is easier said than done.

    Whether you are a website owner or a web designer, listen to your users. Whether you are running a web application like GetSignOff or developing content driven websites, listen to your users.

    We all know that user feedback can be invaluable for improving our sites. However, knowing something and putting it into practice are different things.

    There are two problems with listening to users:

    • How to listen to them in the first place
    • How to decide what is valuable feedback and what is not

    We will never pay more than lip service to the idea of users shaping our sites unless we overcome these obstacles.

    Collecting user feedback

    Everybody thinks they know their audience. However, in reality they probably do not. When was the last time you actually asked a user his opinion? You may think you know what they want but you can’t be sure unless you ask.

    Fortunately there are a number of ways to collect feedback from users:

    Face to face

    From focus groups to usability sessions, meeting users in the flesh provides unparalleled feedback. Meeting users allow a level of interaction unavailable through other methods because they allow two way real-time interaction.

    This creates a better empathy and connection with users. You can get inside their heads by watching their mannerisms, listening to their tone of voice and even observing the way they dress. All of these subtle elements help construct a picture of the type of person they are.

    Admittedly face to face meetings can be difficult to arrange. However I would encourage you to settle for nothing less. You may not do it extensively, but make sure you do it at least once.

    Web stats and search queries

    In my post ‘use web stats for more‘ I explored what could be learnt from analysing web logs and search queries. I explained that web stats could be used to find and resolve problems with usability, accessibility and content. I also looked at how monitoring search queries reveal what users really want from your site and the mental model they use to find your content.

    In short, web stats are an invaluable source for identifying trends in behaviour and expectations.

    Questionnaires and surveys

    Probably the most traditional and most favoured form of collecting user feedback is the ‘survey/questionairre’. One reason they are favoured is because they identify broad trends in much the same way as web stats.

    Personally I am not a fan of this approach, especially when used in isolation. Tracking broad trends through statistical analysis does not encourage empathy with users. As is pointed out in the book Subject to change, empathy is an important aspect of successful web development. Without empathy you will not truly understand your users.

    Also, in my experience there is a difference between what users say and what they actually want. Users often request features and functionality when in reality they value a simple user experience. Without a two way discussion with users it is hard to identify the underlying needs.

    Finally, unless users feel strongly about a site they are unlikely to complete a survey. This polarises results suggesting extreme opinion where it does not exist.

    I am not suggesting surveys are useless. The problem is how they are acted upon. Many treat survey results as absolute. In fact it is necessary to ignore some results and read between the lines of others.

    Third party web applications

    The final way of collecting user feedback is through a new generation of community tools. Sites like Get Satisfaction and User Voice allow two way interaction with users. Users can submit suggestions, questions and complaints online and you can respond in kind. This happens in an open forum allowing anybody to participate in the discussion.

    This open format (when compared to the predefined questions of a survey) encourages a more personal discussion and provides opportunity for a deeper level of discussion.

    As with surveys the people responding are likely to be more polarised in opinion. However, because of the interactive nature of these services it is possible to dig a little deeper and understand the underlying issues.

    Personally, I have found these services an invaluable way of building a closer relationship with users and better understanding what they are looking for.

    Of course, whatever method you use to collect feedback it must be assessed. You need to determine what must be acted upon and what can be safely ignored.

    Assessing user feedback

    Once you have engaged your users, you will be amazed at the quality and quantity of suggestions. The problem becomes deciding what to implement.

    I have had this problem for some time with both Boagworld and more recently GetSignOff. I have established 4 criteria I use to judge whether I act on a suggestion or not. These are:

    • Level of feedback – How many people are making the suggestion? If it is a substantial number then you should seriously consider implementing the idea. However if it is just a vocal minority then you may wish to think twice.
    • Source of feedback – Who is making the suggestion? Are those people your core audience? It is easy to find yourself implementing functionality for a group of users who provide no value to your business or site.
    • Cost of implementation – Consider return on investment when deciding on whether to implement a suggestion or not. If it is time consuming to build and expensive to implement, then the benefit to your users and your business must be high.
    • Impact – Finally, consider the broader impact of adding new functionality or content. Will it introduce complexity into your site? Will it break another part of the site? Will it distract users from your call to action or undermine business objectives? Often implementing a suggestion can have surprising consequences.

    There is no doubt that listening to users can be an invaluable way of improving your site. However, ask yourself how you intend to gather their feedback and respond to the results.

    140. Launch

    Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

    In this week’s show GetSignOff has finally launched, we talk about how to use web stats to improve your site and we answer your questions about roles with web design and should you help clients with hosting.

    Play

    Podcast: Download (25.2MB)

    Download this show.

    Launch our podcast player

    News and events

    Acid3 receptions and misconceptions and do we have a winner?

    The team that develop WebKit, the open source web browser engine that Safari and the new Google Chrome are built on, have just announced that the engine passes the Acid3 test developed by The Web Standard Project (Wasp).

    So what is Acid3?

    Acid3 runs a series of tests against a given browser and produces a score, the goal being 100/100. This score is generated from how "standards compliant" the browser is. For example whether it supports CSS2.1 styles such as "inline-block" and "pre-wrap", if it supports SVG-Fonts, what DOM features is supports and a whole range of other criteria.

    So WebKit passes!

    Does this mean we should ditch Firefox, IE and all the other browsers in favour of Safari or Chrome, well no, and that’s what Lars Gunther is talking about in his article over at WaSP.

    It’s great that tests like Acid3 exist and that browser developers endeavour to build better browsers because of them. All in all it results in a much better experience for the average user and makes our lives as Web Designers much more hassle free.

    6 Things To Like About Dreamweaver CS4

    So Dreamweaver CS4 became available this week, 15th October to be exact and Alex Walker over at Site Point has been having a play and has shared with us 6 thinks he likes about the new release. Check out his article for details of each, but a summarised list is:

    • UI/Workflow Improvements
    • The Related Files Toolbar
    • Code Navigator
    • Live View
    • Advanced JavaScript Interpretation
    • Making JavaScript Unobtrusive

    From reading the article these improvements over the previous version look really promising. One feature that really caught my eye is "intelligent code completion" for JavaScript and the most popular libraries such as jQuery, MooTools, Prototype etc, the same way it does for HTML!

    It would also appear that Adobe are making big improvements to the "Display View" of Dreamweaver, which has historically been the stigma plaguing most "professional" designers who use it. The "Display View" now has integrated code navigation, so you can use it to jump to specific elements within the page and Adobe have also built WebKit into Dreamweavers core so you can run your site through the software to test JavaScript, rendered CSS, server-side code etc.

    So will these new features encourage more people to use Dreamweaver?

    7 Ingredients of Good Corporate Design

    Smashing Magazine has published a great article that discusses 7 ingredients to good corporate design. They break the discussion into two elements:

    • Design as artistic representation, which consists of:
      • Logo
      • Typography
      • Colours
    • Design strategy, consisting of:
      • Brand
      • Quality
      • Community
      • Culture

    It’s important to understand that corporate design isn’t simply of a graphical nature but is intrinsically linked with your strategy, the goals that you set and how you implement them and this article is well worth the read.

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    Launch: GetSignOff Goes Public

    Monday GetSignOff finally opened to the public. It has been an interesting journey read more here.

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    Feature: Using Web Stats for More

    We all use web stat tools like Google Analytics for tracking marketing campaigns. However, they can also be used to improve your site. We discuss this in this weeks feature.

    Back to top

    Listeners feedback:

    Salesman seeks designer/developer

    Got this audio question from Andrew:

    Hi Paul, hello Marcus and hi to all the people who work at the show. I live in Canada so hearing your nice English voices through my headphones is great. My name is Steve and I’ve done some freelance web design for clients in the past, but the part I enjoyed the most was the selling cycle; being able to explain to the client what a standards based website could do for them and then persuade them that investing in such a site would be wise for their business. I bet there’s a lot of designers and developers out there who are absolute Jedis when it comes to coding CSS and HTML but really hate the selling part. And then there are people like me who can really sell well but I wish I could work with people who are amazing at building websites.

    My two-pronged question is as follows:

    Is there a website or another resource that would allow people like me, who love web design, but are more business/marketing oriented to touch base with people who are in the opposite situation? And I’m thinking more than just a job board here, I guess the best analogy would be something that Marcus might be familiar with – adverts in the back of music magazines that would say something like ‘band seeks drummer’ or ‘talented singer needs people to play instruments’.

    My other question: how did you guys do it at Headscape, were you all great at coding and someone had to get pushed out the door and start selling or were there very separate roles from the beginning?

    Ok, part one first (I’m original aren’t I)… the ‘band seeks drummer’ analogy is good but I much prefer a dating agency analogy! Cuddly, financially sound salesman WGSOH seeks quiet, intense, practical developer for fulfilling relationship. :-)

    As far as I am aware, sadly, this service does not exist. Forums, like the Boagworld forum, have got to be your best bet.

    Right, part two. Much as I would love to claim that I used to be great at coding before they kicked me out of the door to do the selling, it would be a blatant lie. When Headscape started, the three of us came from different disciplines – Paul was designer/tech (it’s true!), Chris was project manager and I was salesman. We soon didn’t have enough design/tech resource and started to recruit but the fact that a) Chris was organising and pushing projects along and b) that I was concentrating on bringing in new work meant that we were running things like a larger agency (more efficiently and with less risk) very early on.

    I have banged on about how important effective selling is in the past many times so won’t repeat myself here. The only thing I will say is that having totally separate roles is not necessarily a good thing. Even now, we don’t have very separate roles. Chris and Paul are both heavily involved in the sales process and always have been. In my view, it is the responsibility of the company directors to se
    ll.

    But, added to that, Chris and I also do a lot of consultancy work (requirements analysis, IA work etc), and Paul still does design work. This is important because it keeps our ‘hand’ in. Getting too involved in one role can often lead to a lot of potentially out-of-date talking, and very little ‘doing’.

    Do/should you help clients’ with hosting?

    Hi all

    I’m just about to do a ‘simple’ website for a friend (aka my 1st client) which will try to market something he is looking to rent out. Whilst I’m confident I can do the website, I’m not sure how far I should go with helping/organising his hosting. The client doesn’t know anything about hosting and doesn’t have any hosting space with his broadband provider.

    Now I don’t really want to get into organising hosting unless I have to, so I’d just like to know what the ‘norm’ is in this regard? As a web developer/firm do you automatically sort out hosting, do you get the client to do it and then give you the hosting password so you can upload the site? Is it even a good/lucrative idea to get involved in sorting this out as part of the ‘service’? Can people suggest what they do please?

    Thanks, Alex

    This question came from the Forum and there are already some interesting posts in response. The biggest issue here is:

    Can you support this website?

    Can you provide support if the site goes down in the middle of the night, on Christmas Day, or even when you’re on your two week break to Spain?

    If you decide to sell hosting then you become a middle man between your client and the hosting company. Your client is contracted to you to provide and support hosting, not the hosting company. Of course, you have a relationship with the hosting company where they will provide an agreed level of support but… you are still the person that has to deal with your clients’ issues as and when they arise.

    At Headscape we are completely open about this with our clients. We tell them that we only provide support (of any kind) on working days between 9am and 5.30pm. We’re not set up to do anything more than that.

    However, we do offer hosting for those clients that feel that the level of support that we offer is enough. We have our own managed platform and we also act as a reseller for a large hosting company.

    The solution for those clients that require a superior level of service is simple. The client buys the hosting directly thereby taking you – the agency/freelancer – out of the loop. We specify technologies, discuss the level of support required, amount of bandwidth etc with client – we will also set up the site on the web server – but the client orders and pays for the hosting.

    This has worked really well particularly for the larger, busier sites that we have developed.

    All that said, if you act as a reseller, and you have enough clients, you can make a decent profit via hosting. However, don’t be fooled into thinking that it doesn’t involve any work keeping all those clients happy and up to date. If you have enough clients to make money out of hosting then it’s very likely that you will have regular hosting issues to deal with and constant renewals to deal with.

    My friend and colleague, the long suffering Mr Scott, has many times said that he wished we had never touched hosting simply because it often ends being a constant irritation that gets in the way of project work and rarely pays for itself.

    Back to top

    Using web stats for more

    Posted in Site content on by Paul Boag

    We all use web stat tools like Google Analytics for tracking marketing campaigns. However, they can also be used to improve your site.

    As I continue my efforts to finish the website owner’s manual, I have reached a section on web stats. What struck me was how little most of us use the power of web stats. They can do so much more than monitor your marketing efforts. In particular they can:

    • Help find and resolve problems on your site
    • Improve the quality of the content you deliver

    Let us look at how.

    Finding and resolving problems

    When it comes to web stats one of the most popular figures to monitor is conversion rate. Conversion rate compares the number of users visiting your site to the number that complete a call to action.

    If your conversion rate is low, this could reflect a problem with your site. This could be due to:

    • Usability – The user is unable to find the call to action due to poor navigation or other usability issues.
    • Accessibility – For example a particular browser does not render the site correctly and so users cannot complete the call to action.
    • Content – The site does not provide adequately convincing content to encourage users to complete the call to action.

    But what consists of a low conversion ratio? That entirely depends on your call to action. For example, an ecommerce site could have a ratio anywhere between half a percent and eight percent depending on the sector and product. On the other hand, a call to action that does not cost the user money should expect a higher figure.

    The best approach is to compare a conversion ratio against itself over time. As you make adjustments to your site does that harm or improve conversion rate?

    Fortunately website statistics can also help establish what changes will improve your conversion rate. Start by looking at where users exit your site.

    Dropout points

    When looking at where users exit your site exclude those who only view one page. If you do not the homepage will be at the top of your list. This is because people click through from a search engine, discover this is not the site they wanted and leave immediately. Although this may indicate a problem with your SEO, it does not reflect badly on the site.

    Once these anomalies are excluded take a look at the remaining pages. Why are users leaving at these points? Is the content relevant and clearly presented? Is the navigation usable? Are you suggesting a next step to the user or are these dead end pages?

    Look at the history of users who dropout at a particular page. How long have they been on the site by this point? What other pages have they viewed? How long did they spend on the exit page before leaving? Does this reveal trends which help to identify the problem?

    Sometimes the problem will be obvious, other times it will not. In such cases try usability testing. This will uncover potential issues. If usability testing is not an option try using a tool like Click Tales.

    Click Tales picks up where traditional analytical packages leave off. It allows you to see what users do on an individual page. It record user sessions anonymously showing you what they click on, hover over and how far down the page they scroll.

    Although a technology like Click Tales is impressive it cannot replace traditional usability testing. It does not provide you the opportunity to question the user. For example it will not explain why users abandon shopping carts?

    When the website owners of ecommerce sites start examining their website statistics they are often horrified by the dropout rate experienced on shopping cart pages. They worry that there is a fundamental usability flaw. However, in many cases that is not true. Questioning users reveal they abandon baskets for a host of reasons ranging from ‘I was saving the items to buy later’ through to ‘I wanted to compare the price on another site’. Like the homepage, shopping carts will always have a high exit rate and no amount of statistical analysis can change that.

    However statistical analysis will allow us to improve the content and products we provide on our sites.

    Identifying popular content

    There is a real benefit in understanding what users want from our sites. From what content they want to what products they will buy, understand users requirements allows you to mould the site to user needs.

    Website statistics can help identify popular content but not in the way you might expect. Looking at the most visited pages will not provide answers.

    Popular pages can be misleading for three reasons:

    • Pages can be visited by mistake
    • Page can be popular because their prominent
    • Pages can be popular because they are gateway pages to deeper content

    The homepage is a good example of these problems. I have already explained that the homepage is visited my mistake from search engines. It is also a prominent page and used as a navigational tool for finding other content.

    Looking at how long users spend on a page can help to weed out ‘false positives’. However ultimately this is a flawed approach and can only give a partial indication of the popular content on your site.

    A better approach is to look at the search terms users entered into search engines to reach your site. Almost all website analytical packages provide this information and it helps define users priorities. However, this is only going to show content that already exists on your site. If a user entered a search term for content you do not have, your site would not have been returned. The user would never come to your site. What you really need is a way of identify content that you do not offer but users want.

    This is possible by examining the phrases users enter into your own sites search engine.

    Approximately half of your visitors will use internal search. Every time they use search they are telling you exactly what they want from your site in their own words. That is incredibly valuable.

    You need access to these search terms and particularly the ones that return zero results. This is the area where you need to do work. Users are expressing an interest in a piece of information you do not have or your search engine does not recognise.

    Once you have access to these search phrases, start tailoring content around them. If the content does not exist, add it where appropriate. If it does exist but is not being found, introduce the exact phrasing your users are searching for. Better to use the language of your users than sticking to internal jargon nobody understands.

    And there you have it. Proof that website stats can be used for a lot more than just tracking marketing campaigns.

    139. Brand

    Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

    On this week’s show we’re joined by Ryan Carson to discuss building an online brand. We look at promoting your site with minimal budget and Marcus shares his views on working in an office.

    Play

    Podcast: Download (33.1MB)

    Download this show.

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    News and events

    Understanding progressive enhancement

    Its funny how we spend our whole lives telling clients to avoid jargon and yet web design has more jargon than most. Every few months we seem to make up some new term that is thrown around like everybody knows it.

    In reality some we have never heard certain terms, while others seems so similar to one another that the difference escapes us. Take for example ‘graceful degradation’ and ‘progressive enhancement’. Have you heard of them? Could you tell me the difference?

    I have to be honest, I couldn’t. In fact in a few weeks you will hear an interview I recorded with Paul Annett from clear:left where I make a comment about graceful degradation and he said ‘no its more like progressive enhancement’. I had no clue why one was right and the other was wrong and I am supposedly a web design expert. Does that make me thick? Possibly. However, more likely I just missed the memo on that one.

    The trouble is we are all too busy looking intelligent to clearly communicate with one another.

    I have to some extent criticised A List Apart (among others) in the past for perpetuating this kind of ‘in the know mentality’. However, I am now being forced to eat my words (gratefully so) as they published an excellent article on Progressive Enhancement and why you should care about it.

    Now if only somebody could explain what Web 2.0. really is.

    A free conference (kind of)

    I realise that some of the advice I give on this show is unrealistic for some. For example, I talk about the importance of attending conferences. However, when a conference can cost hundreds of pounds it is not always possible.

    One alternative is to listen to the podcasts that most conferences published. Unfortunately, they are slow to appear and are hard to follow without being able to see the slides.

    Fortunately, the FOWA in London has significantly raised the bar and other conferences will be forced to follow suit.

    FOWA has released video of most talks. These appeared within hours of the speaker taking the stage, and are beautifully done including both speaker and screen.

    There are also ‘highlights reels’ for most talks. These are a cut down version of the presentation, ideal if you are too busy to watch the whole thing.

    With some of the most influential people in web design taking the stage, this is an invaluable resource and Carsonified should be congratulated for making it freely available.

    Design Float

    Talking of useful resources check out Design Float. Design Float is basically a Digg clone. However it is a clone aimed at designers.

    I have to say I don’t like sites that rip off Digg. I have huge respect for what people like Daniel Burka and Joe Stump are doing at Digg. I hate to see people directly ripping off their work (normally badly).

    However, Digg does have one flaw. It doesn’t serve the niche very well. Even Kevin Rose recently said: "We don’t really do a good job of servicing the long tail of content." And he is right.

    As a web designer, categories such as technology or design are just too broad for me to bother following Digg regularly. Until this problem is resolved, Design Float is an alternative.

    Design Float allows me to only see stories relating to web design and although the smaller community means that stories are posted less regularly, what is posted is pretty good.

    I recommend checking it out. However, if you are a designer don’t just limit yourself to web design posts. Also look at the other design posts. There is some pretty inspiring stuff there.

    Can we stop supporting text scaling?

    Finally today, a post by Dave Shea in which he discusses page zooming.

    Most modern browsers now support page zooming. The only exception is Safari and that will soon change. This allows users to zoom an entire page, not just the text. Obviously this is beneficial to those with visual impairments. However, is also exciting for web site owners and designers.

    Traditionally websites have been forced to support text resizing. This significantly increased development time as well as making design integrity challenging. As text scales, designs often breakdown especially when fixed sized images are involved.

    With page zooming these problems go away. It provides the designer with more control and reduces the costs of development. A cost normally passed on to the website owner.

    Dave asks whether it is time to support page zoom rather than text resizing. As can be seem from the comments, there is no wrong or right answer. Nevertheless it is an interesting question and one you might want to start considering for your own site.

    Back to top

    Interview: Ryan Carson on Building an Online Brand

    Paul: So I’m really excited to have joining me today Ryan Carson from Carsonified. Good to speak to you Ryan.

    Ryan: Thanks for having me Paul. Good to be here.

    Paul: It seems that we are crossing paths more and more often with me doing various things with Future Of conferences and you guys kindly giving discounts to my listeners, so it’s good to finally actually have you on the show.

    Ryan: Thanks. It’s great to be here.

    Paul: So the reason I have asked Ryan on to the show today is to talk a little bit about building an online brand. Carsonified have got lots of different brand identities going on with obviously Carsonified itself and then Future Of and ThinkVitamin and various other things. Ryan’s a bit of an expert really, or he comes across like that anyway, at building an online brand and I wanted to talk to him about how he’s gone about doing that. But before we get into that, Ryan, tell us a little bit about the background of Carsonified. How did it come into being, so to speak? How did it end up being what it is today?

    Ryan: Well, it was kind of born four years ago. It started off basically as just me in our top bedroom. I used to be a developer in a web design studio and when Jill and I, my wife and I, got married four years ago we just decided to start our own company. At that point it was just me and I was trying to build web apps and attempting to make money and didn’t really do a great job of it. Then I kind of slowly moved into doing sort of more workshops and things and then we built our first proper web app, which was DropSend, and then we just kept growing and growing and doing more web apps and more websites, for ourself not for clients, and then we launched a couple big conferences, Future Of Web Apps and Future Of Web Design, and all of a sudden now we’re about eleven people. Located in Bath and just love what we do and are really excited to be part of the web industry. So that’s us kind of in a nutshell.

    Paul: It’s quite interesting, the approach that you’ve taken. You’ve come from the same background as the vast majority of us yet your business has gone in a completely different direction. You haven’t gone down the road of delivering solutions to clients but you’ve done this quite eclectic thing of a bit of web apps here, conferences here. Was that an intentional thing or has it just kind of naturally evolved that way?

    Ryan: It kind of naturally evolved but my mother, and your mom always knows you best, she always said there’s a vein that’s been running through my life for a long time, which is just connecting people. I don’t know, for whatever reason I just get a lot of joy out of connecting people and physical events are just a great way to do that. I’m passionate about the web and therefore it’s kind of like, well, connecting people in the web industry, in the technology sector is just kind of made sense. It did start off with this thing called BD4D which you probably don’t remember, By Designers For Designers. A friend and I did that and it was bd4d.com which is now gone but the idea was we got together designers for free just at a bar and people showed their work. It was in London originally and it kind of took off and I think then it was always just a for fun thing. We called it the Creative Fight Club. I think that was kind of the genesis of our events career. We don’t really see ourself as an events company we see ourselves very much as lovers of the web and technology and we just kind of happen to connect people at events so, it just kind of worked that way. I’m also not a big fan of working for clients because it’s just so hard. I really respect what you guys at Headscape and any web designer web developer because constantly doing work for clients is really hard work and it’s fun but it’s hard and because we run our own conferences and build our own web apps thankfully we’re our own client which gives us a bit more freedom. So that’s kind of how we ended up there.

    Paul: It depends on how you look at it Ryan because from my point of view you’ve got thousands of clients while I only have one at a time because you have all those users of your apps and the people who come to your conferences. You’ve got far more trouble in my opinion.

    Ryan: I guess you could look at it like that but they tend to be less demanding. They’re not paying us thousands of pounds each so it kind of. But you could look at it like that. We try to treat all of you who come to our show with the same respect as clients, it’s just a shorter term, lower economic value relationship.

    Paul: OK, so let’s talk about brand a little bit and profile and stuff like that. Carsonified has kind of built quite a significant online profile and I’m just quite interested in some of the techniques that you’ve used to achieve that. You know, how have you made that happen?

    Ryan: OK, well I think underlying everything we do is genuineness. I think that we care very much about honesty and being genuine and being kind and friendly and that sounds a bit fuzzy and happy but that’s just kind of, I don’t know, the way we are. And I think that’s been the key to our success, that when we do things people know that we’re not trying to pull the wool over their eyes or secretly sell them something. We have a genuine interest in the web and the tech industry and so when we do things people kind of know there’s real people that are behind this, we’re not some company. And I think we’ve always been very personal and very human and very transparent and I think that at least set the stage for being successful, but obviously we just follow through with pumping out tons of hopefully valuable content. We see building a brand as basically building friends and I think that on our blogs and through our tweets and at our events and through our communications we try to treat everybody as friends and that’s kind of, I think, a little bit of the key to our success.

    Paul: I like that idea of talking about treating people as friends. I think that’s a good way. Too many people treat people as potential customers in preference to actually having any real interest in them as human beings I guess. So it’s good.

    Ryan: Well yeah. I just kind of think about who do you like being around? I mean, It’s your friends and there’s a reason for that. I think why does business have to be different? Of course there’s an element of professionality but when you go to the pub and you relax it’s because you feel comfortable with people and I think that whole idea should permeate business. You know with your friends you just buy them a beer, but with your customers there’s significant money being exchanged I think that should involve even more trust than friendship. Hopefully our customers, our attendees and our sponsors really believe that we’re doing the right thing for them. You guys probably do something very similar when you work with your clients. You want them to know that you care about them. That this isn’t just about money that you actually are trying to build something beautiful and worthwhile for them.

    Paul: Yeah. I mean it’s interesting. You talking about friends reminds me a little bit of the Innocent smoothie guys that I heard talking at Fuel, which is obviously one of your conferences, where they were talking about how they refer to their customers as family, don’t they? And I always thought was quite a. It sounds naff when you say out loud, referring to your customers as family but if you kind of treat them with that kind of respect, I don’t know, it’s good but it depends on how you get on with your family I guess.

    Ryan: Yeah. It could be good or bad but the problem is that would never work if you didn’t actually think Innocent cared about you. If you looked on their bottle and there was E numbers and preservatives and stuff you’d think, “Well, they talk this stuff, but they don’t really seem that committed to doing this.” So I think it really needs to be backed up with a sincere and real effort to support. I mean, we’ve been talking about accessibility, this is a good example, at Carsonified for years. You know, “Yeah we care about accessibility and it’s a great thing,” but we don’t actually know what we’re doing and so we just met with AbilityNet yesterday with Robin and we said we want to get serious about this. I know that you guys are really good at accessibility and sort of putting our money where our mouth is. We want people with disabilities to be able to attend our shows and to use our websites. Let’s actually spend some money on that and get serious about it so at the bottom of each page we’re going to put a little thumbs up symbol that will go to a site that explains why accessibility is important to us and what we’ve done to move towards that with also sort of some tips and hints for people who are disabled like how can you use this site better and get more out of it so trying to put our money where our mouth is really.

    Paul: Yeah. I tell you one of my favorite moments I ever had at one of your conferences was, I can’t even remember who the speaker was but the question that came out for the panel was about promoting your business and can you do that outside of San Francisco and California and this guy said you had to be in California you had to be at San Francisco if you wanted to launch a web app and you stood up afterwards and you completely laid into this guy and you said, “No no no, that’s not the case, blah blah blah.” But it does strike me, you know, you’re a Bath-based company and Bath isn’t exactly the beating heart of the web design world and I’m quite interested as to whether you feel that that’s been a barrier to you in any way, being based where you are.

    Ryan: That’s a great question. It makes it harder, for sure. You know, we have to go to London to have meetings to go to drink, parties, to network, blah blah blah, but the way we make up for that, and I think a lot of your listeners won’t be in London necessarily or New York or Silicon Valley so this is applicable to all of you out there. It’s all about being visible on the web. And you guys do a good job of this as well. You just have to get yourself out there. So we blog as much as we can, we tweet as much as we can. We try to gather a community around us and that’s the way we make up for the fact that we’re not in London or Silicon Valley. I was going to say another important thing about building a brand, and this fits into that, you need to have an opinion in order to be heard, and that means that you have to be comfortable with the fact that people will completely disagree with you sometimes. You know I think in a way I’ve been successful at building a brand because I’m willing to say something that pisses people off really. You know and I think it’s only interesting to hear from someone who has an opinion. When Paul Graham said that “You know you need to be in the startup hub,” it just really made me angry, because he was basically saying to every one of us, well, you know you’re just kind of screwed, and I just thought, “You know what? That’s just not true, and it makes mad and I’m gonna sort of put my reputation on the line by going on stage and disagreeing with you, a well known entrepreneur.” And if I kind of was afraid to do that you know, not so many people know about et cetera. So yeah, get out there, blog, be as controversial as you can, you know as long as you’re being genuine and be ready for people to say mean things about you really.

    Paul: Talking about mean things and people say mean things about you. You’ve come under some criticism for being somewhat pushy in your self-promotion. Do you think that’s kind of justified in any way? Do you think maybe there’s a cultural difference there, the fact that you’re American and are us English more uncomfortable with marketing and promoting ourselves?

    Ryan: Yes, I think there is a cultural difference. But I’m also kind of, I like to think I’m friendly but I am sort of a brash person. I’m not afraid to tell you my opinion and do what I think I need to do. While being kind, I don’t want to sort of hurt anybody, but I think there is a cultural difference and I do think that, I mean my wife is English so I’m obviously very familiar with English culture now and British culture and I think there is kind of a slight uncomfortableness with getting on stage and blowing your own horn. I think that in the UK we need to get over that. Not change our culture here but be willing to admit that in the UK if we don’t start to step up to the plate and start talking about ourselves, the rest of the world’s just gonna carry on in the tech space. Mike Harrington, he’s not going to shut up. You know and unless we really start to kind of compete with that and start talk about all of the great things that are going on in the UK and really kind of get out there I think unfortunately it means that the startups and the web designers and web developers that are British are going to start to fall behind in the world stage. For instance, I was trying to think, who are the rock star developers in the UK? Who can you name? I mean I can name a couple but who do you think?

    Paul: It’s hard. It’s hard to say. I think there are more rock star designers than there are developers. You know you can think of people like Rachel Andrew, and Drew. Two that spring to mind. Jeremy Keith is kind of a developer but maybe not really.

    Ryan: Matt Biddle. You know, there’s a few but it’s just. It’s not the plethora that are sort of being spoken about, in the US particularly, but I have no doubt there’s just as many talented people here. It’s just that, that hesitancy to say, “I’m going to do my own startup. I’ve got a good idea. I’ve got what it takes. I’m gonna start talking about it.” It’s just less common over here. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing and that everyone here should change but I think if you want to build a brand in the web space you just need to admit that I’ve got to get out there. You know I had an interesting conversation with Alex Hunter who is sort of really big in Virgin, The Virgin Group, he’s high up and he’s met Richard Branson a bunch of times. And you know what was crazy? He said that Richard was really shy. And I was like, “Really?” That’s a great example I think of a guy, he’s obviously driven and I don’t think everyone should be like Richard Branson but he’s obviously driven and he understands that in order to get Virgin talked about, to build a brand he’s got to be kind of crazy and get out there. He’s always hanging from helicopters or you know flying spaceships and you know, that’s why people talk about him.

    Paul: I think there’s also a little bit within the web design community here in the UK of kind of almost false modesty and a little bit of trying to persuade the world that we’re being very altruistic in what we’re doing and not being up front. I receive criticism for the fact that I’m very open about the fact that Boagworld is a marketing tool and that we make money out of it.

    Ryan: But it’s the truth.

    Paul: Yeah, exactly. So I think I prefer to be up front about those things, than kind of hide them behind a façade of false modesty to be honest.

    Ryan: Well yeah and that kind of goes back to my thing I said earlier about being genuine. I think you’ll always be better off if you’re genuine. And of course we’re sort of painting with broad brushstrokes here, but there’s some very talented people here and I just think, let’s get on our soap boxes and sort of shouting back at the Americans really. And people are doing it, I just think there should be more of it.

    Paul: Talking about effective marketing tools, ThinkVitamin, let’s talk about that for a little bit. ThinkVitamin is a website that you run which is basically web design related and web app related kind of articles and stuff like that. I’m guessing that was set up as a marketing tool. Tell me a little bit about why it exists and how you came about setting it up and what its aim is for you.

    Ryan: Yes. So thinkvitamin.com has two purposes. It’s to build good will and to give back to the community but it’s also a marketing tool and those things are actually very related. If we pump out great content we give away for free it will be valuable, but those of you who read thinkvitamin.com will also probably come to our shows. It’s a symbiotic relationship. We’re very happy to do that. There is a little bit of altruism there, we do actually want to provide good content and give it away for free but we also realize we needed a platform to talk about our shows. We kind of kept calling in favors like, “Do you mind blogging about Future Of Web Apps?” and “Can you mention it?” We just thought we need to build a big site that people go to so we can tell them about that and we’re fortunate to have great connections. We know people like you and Molly Holzschlag and Kevin Rose and just big Internet people and they all agreed to be on the advisory board and really that’s just a group of people that we trust that occasionally write for us but we’re actually taking ThinkVitamin in a new direction where we want it to pretty much become it’s own little business. So we’ve hired a full time Editor named Simon Mackie and he was really high up at SitePoint actually. And he’s come over and he’s taken the reigns and we’re gonna, yeah we’re gonna basically grow that team and expand that out into its own little business.

    Paul: That’s interesting.

    Ryan: It’ll be better for the readers. It kind of was dying. The publishing schedule was going down and I think we realized, “Man this is so valuable we have over 50,000 RSS subscribers, closer to 70 if you count the news feed,” and we thought, “This is great, we should grow it.”

    Paul: Yeah. I mean it’s interesting in some ways you’ve kind of taken the same approach that we have at Headscape using ThinkVitamin that you could have created a blog on the Futures Of website and you could have put this content there. There’s actually a value in separating it out and making it a standalone thing. It feels less salesy I guess. The same way as I could have posted my Boagworld stuff on the Headscape site. You know it could be the Headscape podcast instead of the Boagworld one. All the rest of it. It just comes on a bit too strong if you do that I guess.

    Ryan: I totally agree. And it’s interesting because I had a good conversation with Mike at FreshBooks, and freshbooks.com for those of you who don’t know is an app that helps you send out invoices. He had this blog and he was really slogging his guts out on it and at freshbooks.com/blog or something and he said, “I don’t get it. No one’s really reading it,” and to me it was obvious for that reason you just said. Well it’s clear that this is just a marketing tool. Why would you put a blog on your company’s site, on your product’s site? It’s just kind of obvious and that’s exactly why we haven’t done it for our events, you know we put occasional updates there but it’s hard. As much as I like Web 2.0 Expo or something I would never read a blog from Web 2.0 Expo. It’s just too blech, you know what I mean?

    Paul: Yeah totally. It’s interesting that the other thing that you’ve done, which again is something that I do, which is that you haven’t just relied on people coming into your sites, whether it be ThinkVitamin or the Futures Of sites or even the Carsonified site. You’ve made a big deal of kind of going out there and using tools like Twitter and Qik and YouTube. I’m just interested as how effective you’ve found those things.

    Ryan: I find Qik to be really effective, or Qik, however the heck you say it qik.com and I was really shocked as soon as I started broadcasting was that just tons of people were interacting and I almost couldn’t wait to do the next one. Annoyingly 3G is kind of spotty in Bath so it makes the quality a little bit bad but I’d highly recommend Qik or any other comparable service. It’s so fun you just take your phone with you, I had to get a kind of crappy Nokia phone or something, because I use my iPhone for normal business but just grabbed it from the 3 store, got a plan I think it’s 20 pounds a month that gives you unlimited data which you’ll need if you’re streaming live video from a phone, and whenever I’d walk to Starbucks or something I’d just turn it on and start talking and people would show up because the way Qik works for people who don’t know is you actually see comments live on the phone screen.

    Paul: That’s very cool.

    Ryan: Yeah, it’s great for interaction and any tool you can use to interact with your fans will increase your connection and that friendship. It will show you want to be real and you want to connect with people and I think hopefully we’ve achieved that where people think, “Gosh you know Carsonified we know who’s there we know it’s not a company it’s really these people that are there and they’re interested in hearing from me and talking to me,” so that’s been good. YouTube has been amazing, I mean I hate YouTube, it’s ugly, it’s a bit crude you know but man there’s just a lot of people on it. I used this cruddy little video camera, filmed myself giving some tips about business, threw it in iMovie, put some music to it and popped it on YouTube and I think I can’t remember the figures it’s up to, it’s up to like 10 or 15,000 views in literally like two hours work.

    Paul: Yeah, I keep meaning to get around to that myself and I’ve never quite managed it.

    Ryan: Now you can use a Flip camera. Flip is just a type of camera, you just record and then it’s got a USB dongle built right into it. You pop it in and it actually automatically uploads it to YouTube.

    Paul: That’s nice.

    Ryan: There’s a couple tools you can use to make it easier. And then Facebook, I’ve been using Facebook a lot just to connect with people and remember people’s birthdays and say hello and just be a friend to them. The more connections you can have to people the better, which builds your brand and I feel that, like a mercenary when I say that, and I don’t like it, like I do believe it’s just a better way to live to connect with people and it happens to build your brand which is great and I like that as well, but I think it’s important that you need to be genuine and actually care about people for this to connect.

    Paul: What about Twitter? How have you got on with that? Have you found that a useful tool?

    Ryan: I love Twitter. And it’s been probably the best way I think for me to communicate I’ve got I think around 4,200 followers now and I don’t know why people follow me. I don’t think I’m particularly interesting but I do whenever I tweet I try to imagine if I was somebody else and I was reading it if I would find it interesting. I think with Twitter don’t tweet too much, maybe a couple times a day max. If you tweet too much people unsubscribe.

    Paul: That will explain my problem then, I tweet too much.

    Ryan: I still follow you so it’s not too bad. But you know Evan Williams had a good tip he said you should tweet things every so often that you’re not quite sure if you should tweet because they’re a bit too personal or a bit too blech, because that’s the type of stuff that’s actually fun and interesting to read. Initially we had a twitter account for Carsonified and we deleted it. I think we decided that that was kind of exactly what not to do. People don’t really want to hear from a company, they want to hear from you.

    Paul: That’s almost the same as having a blog on your own corporate website isn’t it? Having a kind of corporate Twitter account. After saying that we have set one up for GetSignoff but more as a for announcements. If something goes down with the service or if we’ve done some bug fixes or stuff like that. By far the majority I do via the Boagworld Twitter account which is just me talking about my life. I agree with what you’re saying about putting personal stuff there as well that people seem to like to know what’s going on with each other’s lives. I like to know how Jackson’s doing. People like to know, I don’t know. Making it personal, it’s about that personal connection again isn’t it really?

    Ryan: Definitely. And I think that that’s the future, you know just in general. Humankind you know it’s just kind of being personal and not hiding anymore behind companies or brands or policies or terms and conditions. It’s about, “Hey, how can I help you and how can I take care of you?” and that’s just a better way to live and it will massively benefit your company which is great. What’s interesting though is that everybody, including us, continues to look at the Signal vs. Noise blog from 37signals and kind of scratch our heads it’s like, it’s the one blog where it is a company blog, I mean yes it’s called Signal vs. Noise, but it’s on their domain, and yet they have over 90,000 subscribers. It’s funny because I think everyone is kind of, “How do you do that? I want to replicate that.” In the end I think you know, they were kind of first. You can’t have that many of those type of blogs and I think most of us are gonna have to be happy with just doing a good blog that is real and personal whether, and I mean ours is carsonified.com and it seems to work and we have about 4,000 subscribers and for us that’s a pretty good number. We should post more but that’s something I haven’t quite figured out yet and I’d be interested to hear from your listeners what they think about that. Is it possible to have a company blog that people care about or is it just not possible? I don’t know.

    Paul: I think what you said there about being first is quite significant. I think originality goes a long way. I mean even with the Boagworld podcast. Simply the fact that I was the first web design podcast it seems to give it a momentum that keeps things going, you know because you keep delivering the goods so to speak which obviously the guys at 37signals really have done. I think there is a momentum in being first in something.

    Ryan: Yes and that’s probably the secret sauce.

    Paul: OK, So let’s wrap this up with kind of a last question which is: What advice would you give to budding entrepreneurs seeking to increase their profile? Let’s have some kind of top tips if you’ve got some.

    Ryan: OK. The first tip I give is to start connecting with people that you feel are influential. You know, spend some time and try to get out and physically meet these people, get to know them and to not be creepy about it, but to get out there, to get in front of them and to get to know them. See if you can do something to help them out, to get on their radar, and I think building sort of a group of friends that trusts you but is also influential is just instantly valuable. So I’d do that and you can use all the tools we talked about for that: Facebook, Twitter, etc. etc. but physical meeting is always the best. I mean you want to have a beer with people.

    Paul: And you say you do that by trying to help them out in some way? Because that’s always the difficult thing. It’s all well and good to say, “Get to know influential people,” but how you do that’s the tricky part isn’t it?

    Ryan: Well my dad always did something that worked. If it was someone he really respected or cared about and wanted to get on their radar he would find an article about them in a magazine and he’d actually go to a framer and have it framed and then write them a personal note and just kind of say and send it to them and say, “You know, I bet you haven’t had time to actually frame a picture of your article so I thought you might want this for your wall.”

    Paul: What a genius idea. I love it.

    Ryan: And it’s genuine. I’m not trying to get anything out of you but I respect you and here you go. It’s very subtle. You have to be very careful to not try to sort of bribe people. If you come across that way it’s exactly what you don’t want to do. If you feel, and kind of think deep down, “Do I actually want to be friends with this person or am I trying to use them?” I think you should steer very clear of a person if you just think actually I don’t really like this person I’m just trying to get something out of them. But if you think there’s some synergy there, that’s a great way to do it. Remember people’s birthdays, it’s just a nice thing to do. Stuff like that is a great way. Most people’s friends don’t even do that for them. I’ve had people send me stuff and you know it just makes me smile and I’ll always take their call or answer their email now. So I think that’s a good idea.

    Paul: Any others?

    Ryan: Um, other tips. Um, probably put a real emphasis on customer service and build a real base of caring in your company. Not just for your customers but for your own team. I think that your team will never be able to treat your customers well if they don’t think that they’re treated well. So I think as entrepreneurs grow and they start to hire people I think it’s important to remember to take care of your staff first and then your customers second. And a really great resource for that is what zappos.com does. Zappos.com has an amazing company culture. They have this book called the Culture Book and every year it comes out and you can buy it and it’s basically a bunch of testimonials, thousands of them from the Zappos employees about why they love their job. And it’s just packed full of ideas of how to take care of your team and it’s a great inspirational resource. I think you can either get it on eBay or Amazon or you can buy it straight from Zappos. A couple hopefully useful tips?

    Paul: Yeah that’s excellent. Ryan thank you so much for coming on the show, it’s been really good to get you on and I think there’s some really good useful advice there for anybody looking to kind of build an online brand so thank you very much and no doubt we will have you back again soon.

    Ryan: Thank you, it’s an honor.

    Thanks goes to Todd Dietrich for transcribing this interview.

    Back to top

    Listeners feedback:

    Site promotion with minimal budget

    Our first question is from Adam in the boagworld forum:

    I have got a site that needs an awful lot of promotion to work, and have got very little budget to do it with. I could probably spend a little bit on Google AdWords but on nothing else. So, how can I promote my site for little money?

    Adam went on to tell me it was a charity website. This makes it challenging. As Adam said…

    There are thousands of Charity sites, and many better funded, and just altogether bigger.

    In this situation search engine optimisation or Adwords is going to be tough. The competition is fierce and so it will be expensive to be highly ranked.

    The other problem with a charity site is that unless it is niche (e.g. bird protection) the potential audience is open ended. However, with limited resources there is little point in targeting ‘the general public’. You will have no impact on such a broad audience.

    Target a specific group as it will be easier to gain momentum within a smaller audience. For example, there are Christian charities who do general humanitarian aid. Even though anybody could be a potential supporter, they instead target other christians. Therefore they are well known in that circle. Better to have a lot of support from a niche audience than a small amount of support across the general populous.

    Once you have picked the audience use three techniques to reach them:

    • Offline promotion – Engage with your audience offline as well as on. Attend conferences, produce offline promotional material and target magazines your audience reads. As web designers we often forget to power of offline marketing.
    • Social marketing – Identify the social sites your audience You should be wherever your audience is interacting. Finally, seek out key figures who your audience admire and respect. See if you can get them on board and encourage them to promote your site.
    • Editorial promotion - Find out if your audience reads online blogs or magazines. Offer to write articles for these sites. Do not overtly promote your charity but instead write content which will be of interest to the audience. Failing that make use of comments to join in the discussions and increase your sites profile among that audience.

    However, be careful. In your haste to promote your site do not spam. The key is to offer something of value. You must earn the right to promote your site.

    Sitepoint has an excellent article entitled ‘10 rules for driving traffic using forums‘. Although it is focused on forums, its advice is applicable to most forms of online promotion.

    Office Or Not

    This from Brad:

    A question from Canada! I’m a long-time listener of the show, and I thank you both for your entertainment and inspiration.

    A little bit of background first… Two years ago I co-founded a small web development company, and to date we have not yet invested in office space. As we slowly move on to ‘higher profile’ clients, we find it increasingly important to have someone in-house, to answered the phones, do the books, etc, etc, so we can focus on growing the business.

    That said, I’m obviously touching on a huge spectrum of possible questions, so I’ll try to narrow it down. I don’t think this is something you have covered specifically on the show before…

    Is office space really important for a creative business? If so, what steps would you recommend. And if not, are there better areas to spend $2000 / month?

    If I had been asked this question only two years or so ago I would have said that office working for a web team is not important at all. If anything, I would have said that home working was better. The following extract from Paul’s blog, written in 2005, underlines this:

    The benefits of a virtual company

    By virtual company, I mean we do not have a central office. Each member of staff works from home and we communicate and file share with tools such as Skype, CVS and Groove.

    People are often curious about an entire company home working and ask how well it works in reality. My answer is usually that it is brilliant. From the employee perspective, you do not have to commute and you can see a lot more of your family. For example, if I were still working for IBM when I used to commute an hour and a half everyday, I would only see my 2-year-old son at weekends. As an employer, I love it because my staff tend to work the hours they would commute and generally home working is seen as a big bonus that keeps people at the company longer. Not to mention the savings made on premises.

    Communication really is not a big problem. There are so many tools out there these days that help, and broadband means that even telephone conversations are now free.

    Paul goes on to say that the only drawback of home working is that it lacks the social aspects of working in an office.

    Not true I’m afraid. Though of course home working does give you an environment to ‘get your head down’ without interruption, what it really lacks, that phone/email/IM cannot replace, is creative collaboration. People simply do not bounce ideas around like they do if they work together.

    Our current office is open plan and there’s nowhere to hide yourself away. This has meant that I haven’t really frequented it that often – I need ‘calm’ to write. However, watching particularly our development team grow and work really effectively together underlined to all of us the value of working together.

    So much so that we are about to move into our ‘dream’ offices where there will be a mixture of open plan spaces and areas where we can work quietly.

    So (finally!), in answer to Brad’s question, I think that office working is better for the business in the long run and I would say warrants the additional associated cost (though beware the costs, they can mount up – another podcast topic I think). That said, we have managed for nearly seven years before doing it properly (i.e. pretty much all of us will be in together most of the time) so it won’t necessarily damage you if you leave it awhile.

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