Boagworld

News and events | Why cold calling never works | Making the most of the footer | Gary Marshall on writing better content

News and events

iPod Touch

Unless you have been living in a cave for the last week you will already know that Apple has just released a new range of iPods including the massively exciting iPod Touch. What is so exciting about the iPod Touch is that it is basically an iphone without the phone. This means it has WiFi and a fully functional web browser. This is a major development in the web design world as it will mean millions of internet enabled iPods and a whole new audience in a whole new context.

What is more Apple has also done a deal with Starbucks where by songs played in Starbucks can be purchased directly on the iPod. I am convinced this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of context / location aware mobile web. It won’t be long before you arrive at a University Campus and access a campus map or go to a shopping mall and access all of the menus of the various restaurants.

With the iPod being such a universal device now is the time to think about how you are going to utilize the power of the mobile web.

Free photo manipulation tools

This week I came across a site stuffed with loads of free photo manipulation tools. These guys have certainly been busy as there are loads of really fun tools including a Mosaic maker, CD cover creator and even a Hockneyizer. However, probably the most useful tool to us web designers is the palette generator. Upload an image and it will automatically create a colour palette based on it. Nice!

dconstruct feedback

This last week also saw the dconstruct conference in Brighton. I was fortunate enough to attend it and got to hear some truly remarkable speakers. I am not even going to try and recount all that was said, however I do want to particularly mention three superb talks.

Tom Coates, gave a mind blowing presentation on shifting our thinking from a website model to a data model and the consequences of this in terms of how we develop applications and how users navigate data. Tom’s presentation really felt like a glimpse of things to come.

Leisa Reichelt gave an inspiring presentation about how we develop projects. Amongst other things she talked about Agile development and I have to say this was the first time it has been explained in language I understood. This talk definitely made me reconsider how we run projects.

Finally, I couldn’t mention dconstruct without talking about Jared Spool’s presentation on experience design. Jared (who is a superb speaker) took us through how to create great experience design, explaining why it is important and how to draw together the necessary skills to make your design stand out from the crowd. Compelling stuff.

The reason I mention all of this is that all of these talks will soon be released as podcasts and I wanted to strongly encourage you to check them out!

170+ Expert Ideas From World’s Leading Developers

The final story today is the release of an article on the smashing magazine website. The guys at the magazine interviewed 50 designers and asked them 6 questions. This has led to an article with 175 professional suggestions, tips and ideas.

Its always fascinating to see how other designers work so this article is definitely worth a once over.

Marcus’ bit: Why cold calling never works

Ok, to say that cold never works is a bit strong because very occasionally it does. I should also qualify that I am talking about winning quality web design work here.

So, a more appropriate, but considerably more boring, title would be: why cold calling almost never works when selling quality web design services.

But, in my opinion, you don’t really even need to qualify the ‘what’ you are selling. I guess there are certain products or services that can, effectively, be sold over the phone to a person/organisation that you don’t know but I expect they are few and far between.

The word ‘effectively’, in the last sentence, is pivotal to this. I would love to see the ratio of telesales staff costs against actual sales won via the telesales force for, say, a double glazing company over the last year. The fact that I seem never to be called these days by double glazing companies suggests that my suspicions are correct and it simply isn’t worth it.

I don’t know anyone who likes being called out-of-the-blue and certainly, no-one who has actually bought anything through this process. I think most people are instantly ‘on guard’ and mistrusting of a cold call. This has worsened, I believe, over time and has now reached the point where it has almost become a joke.

Anyway, I’m rambling off the point – back to web design.

You can’t create a project that doesn’t exist

This is the main issue. Even if you are lucky enough to find a receptive listener, the chances of calling them right at the point where they are thinking about starting a web project is remote. The best you can hope for is that contact will be made later when a real project does happen.

You may not be talking to the right person

It is very possible that the one successful call that you made after a day’s banging the phone was actually to a chatty junior who cannot make or even influence decisions. Asking to speak to the ‘marketing director’ or ‘person in charge of the web budget’ etc is a recipe for an instant hang up.

Even if you are speaking to the ‘right’ person, chances are they will have to go to other partners or directors and that group will want to know track record, where did the recommendation come from etc.

Making yourself known

Ok, so you can’t actually win work cold calling but you can occasionally start the process of winning work through a cold call. However, I would say from experience, that this cannot be a completely cold call. You need at least one thing connecting you to the person at the other end – and the direct mail piece you sent them two days ago does not count because they will have instantly thrown it in the bin!

The kind of things that can make this type of call potentially worth it are:

Work done for one of their competitors (vertical selling)
Locality (“we’re in the same town”)
Professional connection e.g. a print designer you are close to works for them
Social connection e.g. my neighbour Dave Smith works for your accounts department and thought I should call you….

But remember you are simply selling your professionalism, skills and competence; basically, just the chance to pitch for work when it comes around.

However, I would recommend that the majority of your efforts are spent on a) ‘hot’ calls to people who contact you with real projects and b) your existing clients as they are usually your best prospects.

Paul’s corner: Making the most of the footer

This week I thought I would try and tackle a question from Peter in Italy…

Disclaimer, copyright, accessibility statement and privacy policy; these are the links that can often be found in the footer of a page. Why is it important to add this information on a website and what should this information include?

The footer is the graveyard of many websites. The place where links are sent to die. However it doesn’t have to be that way.

Gary Marshall on writing better content

Paul Boag:
So, joining me today is Gary Marshal, a technology journalist and author and many other good things as well. Hello Gary.

Gary Marshall:
Hi Paul, how are you doing?

Paul Boag:
Not too bad, good to have you on the show, we had you on once before as I remember.

Gary Marshall:
Yeah it was a couple of months ago now wasn’t it?

Paul Boag:
Yeah it was a little while back. What I thought would be good today is to get you on to talk in broader terms about writing for the web, and writing in general, as obviously that’s what you do for a living. That’s your job, and so I thought I’d kick off with really a question about copy writing and copy writers; do you thing website owners should be looking to get a professional copy writer in to work on their website rather than doing so themselves?

Gary Marshall:
I think it depends a lot on the website that you have, if your doing something where your unique selling point is a fantastic price for a product, then it probably doesn’t matter too much what the copy’s like, but the more important the text of your site is, the more important it is to have good text. So take for example if your site is a brochure then obviously the quality of copy then is really, really important. There’s also the technical side of writing as well, which is not so much a copy writer but more of a technical writer for that so you know, product information, frequently asked questions, support, that kind of thing.

Paul Boag:
What benefit do you get from getting in somebody who does this professionally in preference to trying to do it yourself, where’s the real kind of money earner in it? If that makes sense, the return on investment.

Gary Marshall:
Yeah. Well it really depends on what your sites all about. One of the things about getting a professional to do it is it saves you time, the same way you would get somebody in to do stuff around the house because your time is better spent doing what your good at. But particularly with copy writing, if you get somebody who is pretty experienced in this, what they’re doing isn’t so much writing, but its writing that works. So you know a good copy writer can say more in a sentence than your average guy can say in 700 paragraphs, which is one of the reasons that guys in advertising get paid so much, because they come up with these fantastic strap lines that lodge in peoples minds.

Paul Boag:
Yep ok that’s fair enough. Obviously the main thing that puts off people from getting a copy writer is the cost associated with it and sometimes its just prohibitive, although I have to say that I get somewhat confused that people recognise they cant do design and they get a designer in to do that but somehow people think they can do copy which is somewhat confusing sometimes.

Gary Marshall:
Yeah, it’s not that expensive. If your going to have a multi page, 1000 page website then yeah it is going to cost you a fair whack of cash, but he majority of writers tend to be paid by the word, so you’ll set a rate, and what it is you want to get and the end result isn’t going to be an awful lot of money. Your looking at a couple of hundred quid for a couple of thousand words, its not a lot.

Paul Boag:
No I suppose in the grand scheme of things that isn’t much at all is it? If you think of the amount that people pay for content management systems and design work and usability testing and all that other stuff.

Gary Marshall:
Provided they’re good at what they do. Of somebody is going to polish the text in your website, and make what you do sound absolutely fantastic, if that makes the difference between somebody hiring you or not or somebody buying your product or not then it’s paid for itself.

Paul Boag:
So, making the presumption that there are some people out there that just aren’t in a position to hire a professional copy writer and its just not an option – what advice would you give someone who is starting out writing copy for their own website? Where would you start? What are the most common mistakes?

Gary Marshall:
I think the most common mistakes are thinking from your own point of view rather than from your visitors point of view, I’d say that’s probably the worst offence that you can do, and it’s the old moaner when if you have a frequently asked questions section it’s the questions you hope people would ask rather than the one people actually do ask, you get an awful lot of people where on a website the fist page is the entire corporate history and as a visitor I don’t care, I don’t want to know this stuff I want to know what are you going to do for me why should I hang about here. So it needs to be very much ‘put yourself in the customers shoes’. Have a look at other websites and see what you like about them and what works on those sites. The other thing you need to think about big style is search engine optimisation. I was talking to someone the other day who was saying ‘when we do searches on particular products and particular areas we just don’t come up in the results at all’ and I said ‘do any of these phrases or words feature on your site?’ the answer was no. That was probably why they weren’t featuring in the search results! It might be obvious to you that your search should come up if you look for, I don’t know, web design companies in Brighton, but if you don’t have the words ‘web design’ and ‘Brighton’ in your website its not going to be indexed by any of the search engines. That can be a really difficult one to pull off, you see a lot of bad copy writing that’s done purely on the basis of SEO, where they’re just trying to get as many different phrases in as they possibly can to try and get it up in the Google rankings and I think that’s counter productive because ultimately your trying to get humans to read this and if somebody comes to your website and the whole thing is stacked with all these meaningless phrases that don’t actually give you any useful information at all, then your just going to go ‘what a waste of time, I’m out of here’

Paul Boag:
Do you think there’s a difference between writing for the web and writing for other mediums?

Gary Marshall:
Yes

Paul Boag:
What kind of differences? What should people be doing differently?

Gary Marshall:
The biggest one is brevity, simply because your reading on a screen – you’ve no control over what sort of screen people are going to be reading on for starters, so I might be looking at it on my BlackBerry, you might be using a 22 inch monitor, but web content doesn’t lend itself to huge blocks of text and long, long sentences so you need to think much more visually than you do with the printed page I think, break it up a lot more and have a lot more white space. The way to present it can be important also, even having a bigger gap between lines can make a big difference to whether your text looks appealing or not. Again, work back from the basis of ‘what is it that your visitors are going to want here?’ You need to really start with that. I find that bullet pointing is usually a very good way to approach it. So, you sit down and think ‘what are people coming to my website for? And what is it they’re going to be looking for?’ and answer that first. If you’ve got a bit of spare time go into you full corporate history and everything you’ve done in your life, but concentrate on the purpose of your site first.

Paul Boag:
It strikes me that websites, unlike other mediums aren’t linear, so you have the option to start with the top level brief information and highlights, and people can kind of dig down to the in depth stuff if they want to.

Gary Marshall:
Indeed, one of the things you see in print a lot is the use of ‘pull quotes’ to draw your attention to a particular bit of the body copy, and its basically a sales technique and exactly the same thing works on websites and can be very effective and can encourage people to read more. The other thing I would say is try not to link too much in your actual body copy because every little blue line there is a potential reason for someone to disappear.

Paul Boag:
Ok that’s interesting.

Gary Marshall:
I think it can get in the way – if you’re trying to engage people you don’t want people to go off on tangents because you’ve got this short attention span thing going on.

Paul Boag:
Yeah I can accept that – the other thing as well is that if the page is full hundreds of links it makes it visually quite difficult to read as well.

Gary Marshall:
Yeah and avoid these kind of hover over adverts that infest websites. If it looks like a link I expect it to be a link and if I move my mouse over it and just get ‘find out about hotels in Guatemala’ or something its instantly away from the website. There’s something as well, I don’t know if its true or not but in journalism school they teach you when writing for tabloids you should write on the assumption that your reader is going to be a small child, and I think that can work with websites as well because it really does focus you on getting the information there quickly with the minimum amount of waffle and without going off on huge tangents. And like the old press thing as well where you have all the information in the first paragraph and you expand on it as you go along, so you should be able to chop from the bottom. If you’ve written 500 words, you should be able to chop the bottom 250 off that without losing sense of what you’re doing.

Paul Boag:
Yeah that’s good. So, websites are one thing – your kind of corporate websites and things like that, but more and more organisations are starting to use blogs as a method of communicating. Do you think there’s a difference there? What advice would you give to people writing posts for blogs?

Gary Marshall:
Be sure that you want to do it in the first place. Jacob Neilson quite famously said the other week that businesses shouldn’t blog, and he’s getting a bit of a headline generator there – he doesn’t mean no business should blog, but it can backfire because the nature of blogging is very much off the cuff, very quick reactions to things and that’s fine if it suits your particular kind if business, but if people are coming to your site for in depth information then I don’t think blogging does suit because by it very nature blogging is your most recent thought at the top so if you don’t have regular readers its quite easy to fall into the trap of assuming everybody knows the context of what your talking about, and they might not because you wrote about it 3 weeks ago or 3 months ago. That’s quite a common pitfall I think. The other thing about blogging is because it’s quick and easy it does encourage you maybe not to craft things as well and not think things through. You have got to remember that this stuff potentially hangs about for eternity. So it might be tempting to, I don’t know, slag off the competition or something but it could well come back and bite you later on. I think with blogging, it comes back to any sort of writing – you need to know what your trying to achieve with it because if you don’t have a clear idea of what your blog is going to bring to your website, and what benefit its going to bring to your visitors and customers it’s a potential massive waste of time and effort that you could be spending on something more interesting.

Paul Boag:
Yeah.

Gary Marshall:
I sound really negative; I don’t mean to be really grumpy today! But I think it’s a bit like in the early days in the web there was always these wonderful ‘do-hickeys’ and logos you could slap all over your website and lots of people did without actually asking ‘does this bring me any kind of benefit whatsoever?’. Done well, blogging can be a fantastic thing on a website. I’ve seen a few examples of it in all kinds of things – I was looking for drum loops for ‘Garage Band’ and I was looking at the various drum loop companies and I found one that the owners blog, and they talk about how they do the stuff, what they’ve got coming down the line, why they think that they’re great and nobody else is and all this kind of stuff and I really quite warmed to them and that encouraged me to have a look on their website and I ended up spending money on it. Other sites that are just plain old e-commerce things and really don’t care. Unless your doing a kind of niche market where I don’t know, ‘golfing grandmothers’ or something then the very fact that you’ve got a niche people are more likely to pay attention to what you’ve got to say. I don’t care if the marketing director of Comet has a blog; I have no interest in what he’s got to say – so adding it to something like that would be a waste of time. I don’t want to read a blog on ‘great big faceless ISP dot com’ whereas ‘Merchant city music’, which is a music shop in Glasgow, I’d be quite interested in what these guys have got to say, so ‘We’ve got some amazing stuff coming in!’ or ‘we were away seeing a band last night and they were fantastic!’. That feeling that your part of a bigger picture can be really effective, particularly with smaller businesses.

Paul Boag:
Yeah, good stuff I couldn’t agree with you more. I think there are a lot of blogs out there that shouldn’t be out there and there are also some places that should be blogging that aren’t.

Gary Marshall:
Yeah I would agree with that.

Paul Boag:
OK thank you very much for your time Gary, it was really good to talk to you again and no doubt we’ll have you back on the show in the future

Gary Marshall:
No doubt!

Show 88: Two fat ladies

Posted in Classic shows on July 31, 2007 by Paul Boag

On this week’s show: Paul shares some thoughts on recording your creative ideas, Marcus discusses setting up a web design company and we review the Principles of Beautiful web design by Jason Beaird.

Podcast: Download (19.7MB)

Housekeeping

Before we get into the news there are a couple of housekeeping items I want to share with you all…

Eric Meyer Competition

In last week’s show we ran a competition to win a free ticket to Eric Meyer’s upcoming London workshop. The response to the competition has been truly phenomenal with a surprising mix of answer to our question…

“In which episode of the boagworld podcast did I first mention the subject of web standards?”

The answer was actually the very first show although we did have many suggest it was show 2. Although Show 2 was dedicated to web standards they were actually mentioned in the very first episode. Very well done to all of those of you who spotted that little trick in the question.

Anyway the winner, selected at random from the correct answers is… John Thixton.

Congratulations John, we will be in contact shortly to get you signed up.

Thanks very much to the guys over at Carson Systems who were kind enough to supply us with the free ticket. Don’t forget that even if you didn’t win you can still sign up for the workshop on the Carson systems website.

100th Boagworld

Next up, you may remember that a few weeks back we talked about the fact that we wanted to have a little celebration to mark the 100th episode of the boagworld podcast. Well, thanks to the organizational skills of Ian Forrester we now have a date and a venue. We will be recording the 100th episode of boagworld live at Ye Old Cock Tavern, London on Saturday 20th October 2007.

As well as recording the show live we are going to put a big wad of cash behind the bar so there should be free drinks for a while. We really appreciate all of the support you guys have given us over the last couple of years and want to in some way say thank you.

If you can possibly turn up it would be great to see you. Book it in to your calendar and sign up on upcoming. Please take the time to sign up on upcoming because it gives us an idea of how many people are coming.

News and events

Web redesign is a bad strategy

My first news story of the week is yet another post by Gerry McGovern. This article definitely makes up for his previous post about the best sites being ugly sites! This time around he talks about a particular passion of mine. He argues that website redesigns are nearly always a bad idea and that it fails to address the underlying issues.

This is certainly a position I have held for a long time. I believe that sites should evolve instead of going through a succession of wholesale redesigns. McGovern argues that redesigns too often happen for the wrong reasons such as changes in management, boredom, or a feeling the site has fallen into disrepair. I couldn’t agree more and would encourage people to think twice before complete overhauling their website.

YSlow for Firebug

Those lovely folks over at the Yahoo! Developer Network have been kind enough to produce a great plugin to the firebug firefox extension. I have spoken on the show before about how firebug provides loads of useful functionality to web developers including the ability to edit, debug and monitor both CSS and Javascript on live sites. However YSlow adds to that already impressive line up of functionality.

YSlow analyzes web pages and tells you why they’re slow based on the rules for high performance web sites. It analyzes any web page and generates a grade for each rule and an overall grade. If a page can be improved, YSlow lists the specific changes to be made. It also calculates the total size of the web page for both empty cache and primed cache scenarios, as well as information about cookies. Finally, it lists all the components in the page allows you to view the HTTP response headers for any component.

Find redundant CSS selectors

Talking of useful development tools for firefox, you might want to check out the Dust-me selector which has been released by the sitepoint guys this week. The dust-me extension helps you find unused CSS selectors.

You know what it is like. Maybe you are working with somebody else’s CSS file or maybe you are working on an old website and can’t remember what you have done. Whatever the case you don’t know what half of the CSS selectors do and so dare not remove any just in case they are used somewhere. Enter Dust-me.

Dust-me will monitor the pages of a website you surf around making a list of any unused styles it finds in attached stylesheets. The list is constantly updated as you move from page to page. Once you have looked around the whole site you end up with a definitive list of styles which can be safely removed. Nice!

Although this is useful I am sure there must be something out there which scans all of the HTML pages and saves you the effort of navigating around the site. If you know of such a tool post it on the show notes.

Marcus’ bit: Setting up a web design company

We got this question from Ali:

Have you done any podcasts on how to start a business? More specifically a web design company such as the one you have. Just a request if you have not done a podcast, could you have a whole one dedicated to starting a web design business. I mean how to start one, start with business plan or just start one day building websites for various people and build your own portfolio?

We have previously discussed the aspects of running a web design company, recently covering who you should look to employ and a little bit further back a fairly long piece where Paul and I reminisced about setting up Headscape. However, we haven’t really looked at the initial set up properly.

Though we’re not going to dedicate the whole podcast to it, I thought I would cover some of the things you need to think about.

Business plan?

To be totally honest, unless you are looking for funding, then I think writing a business plan is a waste of effort. I do think it is a good idea to write down what you want from the business and how you think you want the business to be viewed – in essence, a mission statement (though it has to actually mean something!).

It is also worth asking yourself where you want the business to be in 2, 3, 5 and 10 years time. Keep reviewing and don’t be afraid to change as your views and your business changes.

Coming back to funding; unless you are looking to develop a product and therefore require R&D time (and therefore backing) you shouldn’t really need any funding. If you can run your business from home the set up costs are fairly minimal.

Forecasting

Running a web design company, from a business point of view, can be a fairly nervy existence. Put simply, there is only so much work you can take on at any one time and clients will rarely wait for you to be ready, so there is always a point in the not too distant future (1, 2 maybe 3 months) where the work ends.

Therefore, not only do you need to be out there pitching for work, you also need have a good idea of what you need to make each month to break even. This takes thought and usually the input of someone with some accountancy experience. Producing an annual financial forecast has been invaluable to us as we know exactly where we stand throughout the year.

Keep a close eye on productivity as this is the bane of the fixed price service business. It’s very easy to get excited about a big new contract but they are usually the ones that end up being priced badly, take much longer to complete than originally expected and therefore ending costing you; not only on the visible bottom line but also in lost sales because you couldn’t take on new work.

Keep searching for new clients

When a business starts it tends to rely on a handful of clients to survive. This is perfectly normal but it means that young businesses are placed at risk if they lose one good client. I have always said that sales get easier and easier as time moves on based simply on numbers. In other words: the more clients you sign up, the more referrals you will get.
So, in the early days, make a particular effort to gain new clients as well as relying on existing ones.

Ok, that covers some general good practice, but what about some of the more detailed stuff.

Decide on branding

Here’s a few fundamentals:

Company name
URL – Obviously relates hugely to the previous point!
Logo/ corporate ID – you will need letterheads, business cards, invoices etc
Build your website – much as this is the biggest pain possible, it is fundamental. In the beginning it’s that old rock and hard place scenario where you can’t win new web design work because you only have a holding page, but you can’t build the site because you are working on precious paid work. I wondered recently why I tend not to work so many evenings as I used to – now I remember!

Boring stuff

You will need to register your company. In the UK this costs money, not a great deal but you will need to do it.
Limited company, partnership, sole trader? Take advice from professionals on this and other items here.
Insurance – I covered this in a recent podcast so I won’t go into detail, but you do need to look at:
- Professional indemnity
- Public/product liability
- Employers liability
- Key man
Contracts – you need to sort out your standard contract documentation before you start and make sure that it is used for all jobs.

Pitching early on

Even though it can feel like you don’t stand a chance against more well-established agencies, you do hold a few aces:

You have fresh ideas
You’re keen
Even though your company doesn’t have a much of a portfolio, there is no reason at all why you can’t demonstrate work done at previous companies as long as you’re honest about it and explain, in detail, about your role
You’re cheap! However, don’t continually undercut your own margins or you won’t be in business for long. Be prepared to walk away… be prepared to walk away!

Initial prospects

This is when friends, family and old work colleagues come to the fore. Even though I have just pointed out some of the good points relating to early businesses, gaining some business ‘easily’ through your contacts is highly recommended.

The cost of sale is usually much less so, again, you are helping out that bottom line and giving yourself more time for production work and pitching.

Consider outsourcing

Finally, try to build up a group of trustworthy contacts that you can outsource to a) when it gets really busy and b) if there’s a part of a project that is outside your skillset.

Paul’s corner: Recording creativity

I like to think of myself as an ideas person. I guess that is another way of saying that I am crap at implementing the ideas I have. One problem I used to suffer from was recording the ideas I had in a form that I could refer back to later. Overtime I have developed a couple of techniques that help me manage my ideas better. Whether you are a designer, developer or website owner, we are all required to be creative in our jobs. We are all looking for ways to become more creative. With that in mind I thought I would share some of those techniques with you.

Review: The Principles of Beautiful Web Design

This week I have received probably the most sarcastic and rude question ever to be sent to me. However, at the heart of all that cheek there was actually a very good question…

Once you have got to grips with the basic of HTML and CSS where do you go next?

Its a good question and there are a lot of potential answers to it. However one of the more sarcastic comments that surrounded the question made me think that perhaps the next step is to ensure a good grasp of basic design principles such as layout, typography, imagery and colour.

This in turn made me think of the book I am reading at the moment, “The Principles of Beautiful Web Design” by Jason Beaird.

Jason’s book really is a basic introduction to good design practices for the web. It is ideal for developers, amateurs or indeed anybody looking to improve the look and feel of their website. It is made up of 5 chapters each dedicated to one aspect of good design; layout, colour, texture, typography and imagery. It really is very good and talks a lot of real sense. I could imagine this being very useful for web site owners who want to understand the design process better and be more informed when signing off designs submitted to them by an agency.

However, what surprised me the most was how useful i found it myself (as somebody who calls himself a designer). I was intending to have a quick flick through the book so I could get the gist of what was being covered. However, I found myself being drawn in by Jason’s friendly writing style and by finding myself continually going “oh I forgotten about that” or “I really should spend more time doing that”. In short it works as a useful reminder service to designers too.

Check it out. Its a worthwhile read if you want to go over the basics.

Show 85: Bulletproof

Posted in Classic shows on July 3, 2007 by Paul Boag

On this week’s show: Paul provides some design advice for developers, Marcus provides so post launch pointers and we review Jeremy Keith’s Bulletproof AJAX book.

Podcast: Download (20.3MB)

News and events

Unfolding the fold

The first news story today is actually not news at all. Well, its news to me (because I wasn’t previously aware of it) but the actual post was made back in December of last year.

The post relates to that most irritating of subjects; “the fold”. I have spoken about the fold many times before. The mythical point at which people have to start to scroll. I say mythical because this point changes depending on your screen resolution, browser type and toolbars.

The reason it is so annoying is because clients are obsessed with it. They are convinced that users don’t scroll (a perception rooted in the early 90s) and no amount of persuasion seems to change their minds.

However, hopefully the post I found this week will help. “Unfolding the Fold” is a post on the ClickTale blog that provides some hard stats about the fold and scrolling in general. It demonstrates that the vast majority of people scroll, with almost all of them scrolling right to the bottom of the page. Their conclusion is that there really is no reason to squeeze all of your content above the fold.

d.construct tickets on sale 10th July

If you are in the UK on the 7th September you should be sure to come to d.construct. d.construct is in my opinion one of the best web design conferences around. The reason I like it so much is that it works hard to maintain a grass root feel that is accessible to anybody.

For a start the price ticket is very accessible at £85 + VAT. Secondly, the whole thing happens on a single day so there is no need for expensive hotel bills if that is a problem. Finally, they have a great mix of speakers with many of the big names you would expect but also a lot of less well known people in order to “shake up the scene”.

The reason I mention it now is because the tickets are going on sale next tuesday (the 10th). Historically they sell out incredibly fast. Although this year they do have a larger venue and so that should help somewhat.

I really want to encourage you to attend this event if at all possible. I will definitely be there and it would be great for us all to meet up.

Fonts licensed for web apps

Talking of d.construct, Richard Rutter (one of the organizers of the event) has posted an interesting blog entry on “font licensing“. Admittedly font licensing, doesn’t sound very exciting but potentially it could be. Richard has spotted a press release from a prominent font provider. This press release talks about a new type of license…

Ascender Corporation announced a new licensing program for font software implementations with server-based applications.

Richard goes on to suggest this might be another move towards browsers supporting downloadable fonts. This would allow us to use whatever font we wished on a website rather than being limited to what the user has on his or her desktop.

Richard does warn that this might just be in reference to Silverlight, because Ascender does work very closely with Microsoft. However, personally within the context of Opera’s move towards downloadable fonts, I am hopefully this might be something more.

A new way to visualize your desktop

Finally today, I wanted to mention a technology called Bumptop. I recently watched a demonstration of the system and was blown away. Basically, Bumptop is a new way to work with files that mirrors much more closing the experience of interacting with your desk in the physical universe. You can stack files, throw them around and even crumple them up in a 3D environment.

When I first watched this demo it felt like a novelty, but the more I thought about it the more potential I saw to organize content in a more dynamic and flexible way.

What I like most about this interface is that it is not trying to teach us a new method of interaction. Instead it is trying to replicate something we are already familiar with. The idea of using metaphors we already understand is a staple of interface design and is what makes things like tabs, desktops and folders so successful.

I think as web designers we could learn from technologies like this. We should be looking to build on established conventions people understand rather than always seeking to do the next big thing or be innovative in someway. Bumptop is innovative but it does so in a way that is instantly accessible to everybody.

Paul’s corner: Design advice for developers

I received this great question from Simon that I thought worth addressing on the show…

I hear lots of questions about the technical and business side of Web design, but what I don’t hear is how do the already technical amongst us become better designers – maybe being a visual thing this just won’t work on an audio podcast, but at least you could give us your top 5 ways to grow artistically.

As has become tradition, I decided to blog on the subject a few days ago but unsurprisingly failed to stick to “5 ways to grow artistically”. Instead I managed to produce a long and rambling essay on “when designers design” which I bore you all with on the show.

Marcus’ bit: Post launch Protocol

Everyone, client and agency, seems to understand the principle of not letting a site stagnate. Content should be regularly updated and, ….and what?

We see a lot of client demands for content management systems that are then often not used for lengthy periods of time. Therefore I thought it could be useful to look at what options there are to a site manager after that big day when the site goes live.

Of course, not everything here will apply to everyone but hopefully some of it will.

News and events

Stories, articles, seminars, fun days, whatever. These are your opportunity to create new content very regularly.

Clients are invariably perfectly happy with their site when it goes live. This is understandable, they have more often than not spent months working on it, tinkering with this, fretting with that and a) they need to spend some time on other aspects of their job (that have been neglected) and b) the site really has never been more up to date!

But what often happens is that a couple of months down the line they realise that new content needs creating but they can’t remember any of the CMS training. The 50 page accompanying manual is too scary so things get left. This happens until we are asked to add the new content because we’re too busy and it’s urgent and often, later on, further CMS training is booked.

News and events provide a steady stream of new content that helps keep the site fresh but also the CMS skills of those looking after the site.

Shortcuts

Updating shortcuts to key content is again a simple way of refreshing a site’s content without putting that much effort in.

Homepage shortcuts tend to link to:

Latest news
Latest events
Repeated main navigation
Products
Special offers
Facilities e.g. login, subscribe etc
Important ‘deep’ content
Popular topics

I guess the point I’m making here is a lot of these shortcuts can simply be rotated giving a feeling of change on the site. For example, changing a link to a main section on a weekly basis is a simple task and one that does not require the writing of any new content.

Utilising usage stats may be a good way of seeing which areas of the site need further promotion. In fact, use everything at your disposal, stats packages, CMS, content suppliers, agency support contract, internal marketing team etc so that you are as informed as possible.

Imagery

Don’t just update copy. Adding new banner imagery can really rejuvenate a tired looking design. Always look to include appropriate imagery with news articles, events etc.

Communicate

Keep your eyes open to what’s happening within your company/organisation. There may be a new project/department/member of staff etc that might be outside your sphere, that would really add value to the website.

Make yourself (and your role) known to everyone. Send out questionnaires or surveys asking people what they want to see on the site or if they have any pertinent content.

Think big

Finally, don’t lose sight of the main purpose of the site while dealing with the smaller things. It may be that the main purpose of your site is to promote your brand so updating the look and feel of the site regularly may be a lot more important than updated content. In fact, continually evolving the design of a site over time is probably far more cost effective (not to mention the effect it has on keeping the site fresh) than ‘big bang’ redesigns every 3 years or so.

Alternatively, sales leads may be the site’s primary function. In which case, keep in touch with sales and experiment with ways to boost leads.

The other really big area that site owners need to look at is site promotion. This warrants a post of its own so I’ll look at that another time.

Review: Jeremy Keith’s Bulletproof AJAX

I have decided not to do “ask the expert” this week, so we can have a review instead. Unfortunately we don’t have the time to do both segments every week so I have to mix and match from time to time.

The book I want to review is “Bulletproof Ajax” by Jeremy Keith. I read it almost 6 months ago, but haven’t had an opportunity to talk about it on the show until now.

The book is designed to be the sequel to Jeremy’s previous book “DOM Scripting: Web Design with JavaScript and the Document Object Model” which was written as an introduction to Javascript for designers. Bulletproof AJAX is therefore written in a similar tone with the focus on making AJAX accessible to designers rather than providing the technical detail you would expect from a developers book.

I have to confess I found the book a little frustrating at first. As somebody that had bought and learnt Javascript through Jeremy’s first book, I felt a little annoyed that the first 2 chapters seemed to be dedicated to laying the foundations we had already covered in the first book. I am guessing the idea was that people could buy this book in isolation without first owning DOM Scripting, but in my opinion the amount of detail provided in Chapter 1 and 2 wouldn’t make that possible. For me those first 2 chapters felt like padding to make a short book feel slightly more substantial.

However, that criticism aside the rest of the book was definitely worth the very reasonable price tag. Jeremy has an excellent writing style that is clear and engaging. He seems to explain complex topics in such a manner that you wonder what all the fuss is about. You come away from the book thinking this “AJAX stuff” is easy and wondering what all of the fuss is about. Admittedly he only covers the basics, but it is enough to get you producing the kind of AJAX applications most designers would like to build.

But, Jeremy doesn’t shy away from the more complex underlying issues surrounding AJAX. In particular he talks about accessibility and ensuring your applications work with Javascript disabled. He does this through a technique called HIJAX. I will not endeavor to explain to you the details of it here, except to say it relies on the server doing most of the heavy lifting.

From applying the principles taught in this book I have to say the HIJAX approach works very well. All of the complex stuff is handled by the developers on the server side and I get to focus on how the information is returned to the user. AJAX is a funny area that sits between client side and server side and leaves designers and developers wondering who is responsible for what. Using the HIJAX approach taught in this book, the division is much clearer.

So would I recommend this book? As with DOM Scripting it depends on who you are. If you are a designer who has read Jeremy’s first book and would like to start producing AJAX applications then absolutely. However, if you haven’t read his first book then I suggest you do that first, unless you are already confident in producing unobtrusive javascript.

If you are a developer on the other hand then my recommendation is to steer clear. This book is not meant for you and you will find it frustratingly lightweight.

Show 84: Maybe

Posted in Classic shows on June 26, 2007 by Paul Boag

On this week’s show: Paul explains why Headscape does Design Testing, Marcus talks about growing your web design and Mark Buckingham provides an introduction to Search engine optimization.

Podcast: Download (24.1MB)

News and events

Pagination 101

I came across a great post this week that provides a solid introduction to producing pagination. If you haven’t come across the term pagination before it refers to the navigational elements that allow you to move through multiple pages of results. They often include links marked previous and next or numbers to allow you quickly to jump to a specific page of results.

We use pagination all of the time and most websites seem to have them. However, they are an overlooked function that doesn’t get the attention they deserve. The post I found this week, entitled pagination 101, explains to the reader through examples what make pagination work. Although I am not convinced I agree with everything written here it generally provides some very sound advice.

Personally I love posts like this that cover very basic stuff. It helps remind us not to get so caught up in the cool stuff that we neglect the fundamentals.

Free CSS based design course

John Allsopp and Maxine Sherrin have released a free online course that introduces people to CSS based design. If you are still to make the switch from table based design or are finding the change challenging then I would highly recommend this course.

We are not talking about a short introduction here. Rather, this is an in-depth course that builds up over a series of weeks into a comprehensive guide to building with standards. Not only does the course tell you how to build with standards it also explains why which in my opinion is just as important.

Zeldman says no to Maybe

I wanted to quickly mention a post I saw from Jeffrey Zeldman this week. Its not exactly earth shattering stuff but it caught my eye nevertheless. Zeldman, suggests that it is probably a mistake to use 5 star ratings on websites or indeed any other option which allows a neutral answer. The problem is that if you allow people to rate something between 1 and 5 they will often rate it as a 3 because 3 is the most neutral response.

As Zeldman points out this problem is a lot broader than just 5 star ratings. It also applies to any response that allows for people to be uncommitted. Given a choice people will normally take a neutral stance.

As I said, this wasn’t an earth shattering post. But, what it did drive home is that web design is as much about understanding your users psychology as it is about good design or clean code.

IE Net render

I came across a site this week called IE Net Render that takes free instant screengrabs of your site displayed on IE 7, 6 or 5.5. This is a great way to see how your site is rendering on IE 6 or 5.5 once you have upgraded to 7. Its also damn useful if you are a mac or Linux user.

Of course, there are similar services out there but most of them charge and those that don’t are incredibly slow. What impressed me about IE Net Render was the speed with which it returned results. The only draw back is that it does not return content below its artificial fold.

Paul’s corner: Design testing

Headscape has always used design testing as part of its development process and yet we seem to be in the minority. We are often met with a lot of skepticism about the benefits of putting a design concept in front of real users as well as questions about how the process works. As I have received two emails on the subject over the last week I thought it was about time I explained the idea properly.

I have blogged about design testing. How we do it and why we think it works?

Marcus’ bit: Growing a web design buisness

Got this question from Andrew:

Last year I started my web design business from a back bedroom with very little experience and an old copy of Dreamweaver! I’m pleased to say I’m still here and the business is growing steadily. Your forum and podcasts have been invaluable and offered loads of great advice and support and no doubt helped many others in my position so thank you!
My question for you both is have you any advice on managing the growth and development of a web design business? As a one man band, when is a good time to take someone on, or could I realistically work with freelancers all the time? It seems that to take someone on is very costly (not just in terms of skills) but if I want to expand the business and our services for clients I can’t do it alone. Should I hire someone who can do everything, or someone who can sell leaving me to do design and development work? What are the pitfalls that I should look out for?

Any thoughts or insight into your experiences would be really helpful.

Interesting question, and one we have a lot of experience of but… one I feel I need to add a caveat to. What I am about to say is my personal opinion and does not constitute legal advice!

Ok, the easy bit first:

Sales people

Bless ‘em… we had enough bad experiences of sales people during our tenure at our previous company to know that the only people who reliably sell the services of a web design company are the people that own it.

I’m not saying there aren’t any good sales people out there, just that selling quite highly priced solution based work does not fit well with the standard sales ethos. Sales people like products. They like products with set prices (that they can cut). They like having demonstrable ROI.

Design, in particular, is very hard to put figures to. I can’t tell a company that redesigning their site will boost sales by X or Y percentage. I can talk about brand values and the importance of conveying quality online but I can’t put hard figures to it.

Most web design sales involve responding to a tender with a lengthy proposal and subsequent pitch that is tailored for that particular prospective client. It usually draws from all aspects of the business – design, technical, consultancy – and therefore needs someone with a good understanding of the business to put it together. I.e. the company owner/director.

Who to employ

Headscape currently includes the following general production roles:

Designer
Developer
Project manager
Information architect
Testing facilitator

Again, the directors tend to share IA and testing with the project managers. Project managers are invaluable members of any team but if you are looking to employ your first member of staff you need to get a designer or developer on board first.

Look at your own skills and see where you’re lacking. Maybe filling the gaps is the right way forward. However, that may only be appropriate if you’re looking to take on more complex work and simply doubling up on what you already have may be the most prudent move. Often, a new project win will point towards who the right person is.

When we started we had Paul doing design and some technical work, Chris doing project management and me doing sales. At the time, we had a great client that kept firing Flash work at us. We outsourced a couple of times but eventually ended offering a permanent position to one of these guys (he is still with us, as is the other guy who we outsourced to then!).
You mentioned hiring someone who can do everything – Chris, who was the first guy to join us, is a bit of a jack-of-all-trades so was perfect for us at the time. As we have grown though, we have looked for more and more specialist people.

Permanent or freelancer

Taking on freelancers can often mean the difference between being able to deliver a job or not. However, they are expensive and will badly erode your bottom line if you do it all the time. So, ask yourself – if I had an employee instead of a freelancer over the past X months, how much would I have saved?

Employees are a responsibility though and need looking after . One thing we have learned over the years is that happy staff make for more productive and more effective staff. As we have mentioned recently, Headscape has started encouraging everyone to spend a few hours each Friday afternoon working on anything they like. We get together monthly to present our ideas to each other – best idea wins something cool.

But sometimes you have to have to be prepared to make some very tough decisions. The bottom line is that the company always comes first. One final point though – and in the words of the late, great Douglas Adams – don’t panic! It is very easy to see things as much worse than they actually are.

Ask the expert: Mark Buckingham on SEO

This week we have Mark Buckingham on the show from netseek.co.uk to introduce us to the world of search engine optimization.

Mark helps dispels some myths surround SEO. He discusses best practice and talks about specific techniques such as keyword density and link popularity.

To be honest I felt like we only just scratched the surface of the subject of search engine optimization and would be keen to speak with Mark again. Its such a massive area that it is hard to know where to begin. So, if you have any specific questions you would like answered on SEO then drop me a line at [email protected] and I will get Mark back on soon.

Book recommendations

Finally, I just wanted to let you know that I have finally sorted my act out in regards to my reading list. One of the most common emails I receive asks me if I can recommend a book or what I am currently reading.

Now, I posted a list of recommended books ages ago but I never got around to updating it. Well I have finally done so and also gone a step further by creating an RSS feed of any books I read (be warned these will not all be web design related).

I promise to keep both the post and RSS feed up to date from now on!

Show 83: iphone bollocks

Posted in Classic shows on June 19, 2007 by Paul Boag

On this week’s show: Paul talks about the importance of undo, Marcus explains the benefits of stakeholder interviews and Struan Robertson highlights some legal deathtraps waiting for us online.

Podcast: Download (19.3MB)

News and events

Safari for Windows

Probably the most talked about story of the last week is the fact that Apple have released Safari for windows. To be honest I am a little surprised just how much has been written about this considering I don’t think the impact is going to be that significant. Will Safari cut into Internet Explorers market share? Probably not. Will it undermine the market share Firefox has developed? Almost certainly.

If safari under windows rendered exactly the same as under OSX then there maybe some benefit to windows based web developers. At the moment it is impossible for them to test on Safari without buying a mac. This has the potential of changing that. However, in all likelihood differences will emerge and if they do then this is just another browser that we have to test against.

We will see.

Applications for the iphone

At the same time Steve Jobs announced Safari for windows he also talked about the iphone. The biggest criticism of the iphone to date has been the fact that it is locked down so third parties cannot develop applications for it. Apparently Apple have been thinking long and hard about the problem and have come up with a solution. They are going to allow developers to build web 2.0 applications that can be accessed by iphone users using the built in Safari browser.

What a load of bollocks. They are telling us something we already knew. As soon as Steve Jobs announced that the iphone carried a full safari browser we knew that web applications would be developed for it. Sure, they are now saying that methods are going to be provided to automatically access iphone features such as dialing and google maps but very little detail was given. As far as I can see Apple is not giving people anything more than they already had.

Jason at 37 Signals is excited about what this means for web apps. He says…

This is the coming out party for web apps. We are very excited about this. These are exciting times.

…and he is right. It is exciting for us web developers. However, I am not convinced the user will see it that way. David Shea mirrored my own reaction at this news when he simply posted a graph showing the astronomical cost of data calls on mobile carriers. Web applications are great for web designers but for users of mobile devices like the iphone they could quickly be prohibitively expensive.

Web Design-isms: 7 Surefire Styles that Work

I found a great article on Think Vitamin this week that talks about design trends on the web. One of the things you learn early on as a designer is that despite your desire to produce something completely original you never will. Everything has been done before and in this article Larissa Meek takes us through 7 styles of design that appear again and again on the web.

The article very much reminded me of design meltdown, an excellent site that showcases different approaches to design. However, what I particularly liked about this post is that the author showed examples of how these styles occur in art as well as online. This is nice because it encourages us as web designers to look beyond the web for inspiration, a subject I have spoken about before.

CSS frameworks

The final story caught my eye because it is an extension of something we have been doing for a while. A while back I talked on the show about the fact that Headscape work with standard XHTML templates. We use these templates as a starting point for development. They allow you to jump start the build process as well as ensure consist naming conventions across the entire design team.

In a new post on the List Apart website Jeff Croft proposes a similar approach for CSS, based on the concept of Frameworks. Jeff argues that certain aspects of CSS development are often repeated across multiple projects. From browser reset styles to creating horizontal menus and standard grid layouts, it seems absurd that we generate these from scratch each time. Jeff proposes that instead we create a series of CSS files that we can be reuse again.

Its a great idea and one definitely worth exploring if you work on lots of similar projects or are part of a large team where you are looking for consistency.

Agony uncle: The importance of undo

A couple of weeks back I received this email from Tom in Texas:

I am a designer currently working on developing a web 2.0 app. The developer is doing some really cool AJAX stuff but unfortunately most of it breaks the back button in the browser. He is arguing that it doesn’t really matter as there are lots of other ways of going back. What is your opinion on the subject?

Once I had recovered from the naivety of the developers comment and finished counting slowly to 10, I started to think through the role of undo. In the end this very simple question from Tom evolved into a blog post on the importance of undo. It is this subject I am looking at in todays show.

Client corner: Stakeholder interviews

Got this question from Dusted.

I’m about to begin a project to help an organization evaluate its current web site and web site management. I’m also going to perform some research and planning to help them start developing a new web site.

The organization is quite complex with a lot of different departments – marketing/events, sales, information/press, youth and more. Each person responsible for each department will be interviewed and I need some advice about what questions to ask them.

Starting off with a few…

Describe your department’s needs of the web site.

What can be done in a better way?

The results of the interviews will be used when I present my evaluation (and research/planning) to the board.

Any advice, links to articles, books… help of any kind would be deeply appreciated.

We have done quite a lot of stakeholder interviews over the years so this question seemed like one I could help with.

Stakeholder interviews can often be confused with user interviews, as they can often happen during the same process. I tend to differentiate the 2 by calling them internal and external stakeholders. These groups will always require a very different set of questions.

This piece refers to internal stakeholders only; those people that:

Will be paying for the project!
Are content owners
- Some won’t know or want to be content owners – “that’s X’s job”
- Some will consider their content considerably more important than everyone elses – “there should be a tab called ‘Corporate Accountancy’ and a big ad on the homepage”!
Will be users e.g. sales

There are a number of good reasons for talking to stakeholders, as follows:

Politics

Most organisations involve some sort of tension between departments/stakeholders/teams/whatever. Giving representatives from each of these groups (make sure you don’t leave anyone out!) provides everyone with a voice. It ensures that everyone has said their piece and it’s down in writing. Ultimately, it gets buy in on the project from all parties thereby creating a better end product.

Education

This applies from both sides. The interviewer is looking to be educated regarding the various points and specialisms that the interviewee has (that’s the point of the interview!). However, the interviewer also has an opportunity to educate a whole raft of internal staff about the web. A good example would be why it’s not a good idea to name site sections after departmental structure. In fact, teaching users to think of their end users early in the interview will probably affect what they have to say.

Verification

Talking to internal stakeholders can often highlight the need to develop certain functionality/facilities/micro-sites/etc that web managers only thought might be useful. Interviews can also be used as a test bed for ideas as well as feedback.

Semi-structured

Following on form the last point, make a point of telling interviewees that they can go off track. The questions are useful as guides but don’t stop writing down what someone is saying if it doesn’t fit with the script.

So, finally on to some good questions to ask&#…;

Questions will, of course, vary depending on the organisation, end user requirements etc, but looking back through a number of scripts, these seem to crop up regularly:

What does your department do?
What are your ‘processes’?
Who is your client and what do they want?
How do you think the web can help you deliver?
What is your role?
What is the biggest pain about your job? What takes the most time?
Describe your Internet understanding/usage?
Describe your software understanding/usage?
Name applications that you are a confident user of.
Do you store any information in databases? What?
The current website – what’s good and bad about it, what’s bad about it?
Are you tasked with providing content for part of the website? If not, do you want to be?

Ask the expert: Struan Robertson on Legal Issues

Today’s guest expert on Boagworld is Struan Robertson a corporate lawyer who specializes in IT law. I first met him on the .net podcast and thought it would be great to get him on the show to give us a small taster of the kinds of legal issues encountered by web professionals. In the show he answers three questions on particular scenarios to give you a taster of the kind of issues that can arise. These include:

What are the dangers of working on websites for illegal companies
Some of the issues surrounding using images when you aren’t sure about the licensing
Storing private data

Although the particular scenarios are quite specific hopefully they communicate some underlying messages and encourage you to take your legal obligations seriously. If you are interested in learning more about the legal issues surrounding web design and IT in general then check out Outlaw.com where Struan provides a lot more advice. Also Struan writes a column in the .net magazine where he covers different legal issues each month.

Show 82: Microsoft drones

Posted in Classic shows on June 12, 2007 by Paul Boag

This week on Boagworld: Paul talks about managing enquiries, Marcus asks whether you should add links to your website on client sites and Rob Borley talks about ASP .net.

Podcast: Download (25.9MB)

News and events

Staying Creative

I came across a great article this week by Keith Robinson about how to keep being consistently creative. Constantly being creative can be a challenge sometimes, especially when a chunk of your time is spent on less creative activities like coding or consultancy. This article provides some incredibly practical advice about how to keep those creative juices flowing.

The one part that particularly resonated with me was the need for time to play. I am very fortunate at Headscape that Chris and Marcus let me have time to experiment and try new stuff. The result is that I am much more creative than when I used to do production work all the time.

However, this article also offers advice for those of you who don’t have the same luxury. It talks about how to force yourself to engage on even the most dull project as well as the need to pursue your own projects and interact with other creative people.

WCAG Samurai

Over a year ago now Joe Clark published an article on A List Apart entitled “to hell with WCAG 2.0“. Following this slamming attack he went on to create the WCAG Samurai who would develop an alternative to WCAG 2 based on WCAG 1. A year later and we have a working draft of WCAG 2 as well as the recently released WCAG Samurai guidelines.

I have to say the WCAG Samurai Errata is a lot easier to understand than WCAG 2.0 but WCAG 2.0 has come a long way since Joe Clark’s article. Personally, the arrival of the WCAG Samurai guidelines have generated mixed feels in me.

I not an accessibility expert and so am naturally drawn to the Samurai guidelines. They are easy to understand and don’t use confusing or vague language. However, at the same time I have a feeling that yet another set of guidelines is only going to confuse matters.

I guess my hope is that all of the different interpretations on accessibility will make clients realize that accessibility is about more than confirming to a series of checkpoints and encourage them to start thinking in depth about their accessibility policy.

Movable Type 4 (Beta)

Yes I use Movable Type. I know the rest of the world uses WordPress but movable type works for me. I run the boagworld website on movable type and have no intention of changing so don’t bother writing in trying to convince me.

That said, I wanted to point out the recent release of a beta for Movable Type 4. I have to say I haven’t installed it yet but it looks good. Its still in beta and apparently buggy in places but some of the features look impressive.

They have revamped the interface which in my opinion was better than WordPress anyway. They have improved the content management capabilities, finally added a WYSIWYG editor and added support for Open ID.

If you are not already a Word Press drone then check it out.

Mobile web developers guide

This week the dev.mobi website has released a comprehensive guide for mobile web developers.

If you have listened to this podcast for any length of time you will know that I am constantly banging on about the mobile web. Developing websites that work on mobile devices is going to become ever bigger business and although it is a challenging area, I think it will be a huge niche for those willing to embrace it.

Of course, at the moment it is a relatively immature market and finding good information can be tricky. However, this guide looks very good. I can’t claim to have read it all yet but from what I have seen this is a must read if you are looking to explore the area of the mobile web further.

Agony uncle: Promotional links

I was ferreting around in the forum for something to chat about and found this question from Remy:

I was wondering what the opinion was on adding a “Site built by Such and Co.” at the footer of a client web site.

  

I remember thinking it was normal practice in the late 90s and early 00s, but the more I look around today the less and less I see other web design/developer firms doing it.

  

I do think it’s a cleaner design if you don’t add a link off to a random (to the user) web site, but I remember hearing on one of the podcasts on boagworld that this is how this had contributed to Headscape’s (page)ranking on Google – i.e. by having well ranked web sites linking back to Headscape.

  

Just want to see what other people thought before I go and slap a nasty ‘who dunit’ at the bottom of my client’s web site.

This is a fairly old post and there’s a lot of interesting and useful stuff on there. But I thought that chatting things through, and letting people know what Headscape does, could be useful.

It generates business

It really does. Lots of it. I can honestly say that I think our credit (which was, interestingly, on a separate credits page) on the old National Trust site played a major part in whether or not Headscape would have survived its first couple of years.

I try to make sure that I always ask new enquirers how they discovered Headscape. Off the top of my head, I would say that around 1 in 20 say they followed a link from one of the sites we have built. We are currently talking to a prospect that followed the link on one of the university sites we developed.

Don’t expect a link

Whether a link appears is up to the client. Ask them if they mind. If they do, ask if you could have a link on a credits page or possibly just on a single page (e.g. ‘About this site’ if they have one or the contact page).

If they still mind, leave it.

We formalise the arrangement in our terms and conditions, as follows:

The Contractor shall have the right to incorporate, in a readily viewable location, a credit and hypertext link in the Deliverables.

Use useful wording

Useful wording to a search engine that is. For example, ‘Designed by Headscape’ doesn’t really help page ranking at all, whereas ‘Web design by Headscape’ does as it includes the search term ‘web design’.

Beware CMS based sites!

There is always the possibility that doing this could backfire. If a client has control over aspects of a site’s presentation then there is always the possibility that they could make a nasty mess of your excellent work. You have to ask yourself whether a link, in this case, is valuable.

Client corner: Handling enquiries

The idea of the client corner section is that we tackle questions clients have. However, this week I answer a problem I am facing myself; how to handle enquiries better. We get enquiries from the Headscape website and I just don’t think we handle them very well. I always have the feeling some are getting lost and when I go away on holiday they just don’t get answered. After some thought on the subject I think I have come up with some enquiry handling techniques that might help.

Ask the expert: Rob Borley on ASP .net

I often get people asking to know more about the way we work as Headscape. What technologies do we use, what approaches do we take, how do we make business decisions? To be honest I often avoid this questions because I don’t want this podcast to feel too much like a Headscape sales pitch. However, several times I have been asked by people why Headscape works mainly with ASP .net instead of PHP or Ruby on Rails so I thought we might take a look at that decision.

Knowing little about server side coding myself I thought it was best to get Rob Borley (our technical lead) onto the show to talk about the decision we made in going down the .net route.

Its actually a really interesting segment that gives a real insight into how we run our business and how we go about making decisions in regards to technology.

Website feedback mechanisms

Posted in Marketing on June 11, 2007 by Paul Boag

For many businesses a website is a lead generation tool. However, although a lot of thought is put into the website itself, very little is put into the gathering of the leads that result from the website.

As normal, when I returned from holiday I found myself faced with a mountain of email. Among the pile I have found several enquiries from the Headscape website which have remained unanswered for the week that I was away. Obviously, this is not good and it has started me thinking about how we as website owners handle enquiries and feedback that come from our websites.

As far as I am aware there isn’t much written on the subject of enquiry processing, which is strange considering that correspondence between website owners and site users is fundamental to the success of many sites. As nobody else seems to be talking about this much I thought I would jot down my thoughts on the subject.

Mechanisms for feedback gathering

A good place to start is by examining the methods you allow users to communicate through. It is easy to underestimate just how many options are available and each has its own pros and cons. Think carefully about your site and the people that use it. Are you really providing the right mechanisms for your users?

Email

Email is probably the most common form of communication from a website to its owner. Its easy to add an email address on your website and a lot of users prefer to email directly rather than use a form, because they can then keep a copy of the correspondence.

However, email is not without its problems. Not every user has an email address or access to their email client at a particular time. Also publishing your email address on a website opens yourself up to spam. There are ways to mask your address from spammers, but this often creates accessibility problems.

Forms

The next most common option is to allow communication through forms. A contact us form has an advantage over email because it doesn’t require the user to have an email client. However it can still suffer from spam. One advantage of a form is that it allows you to funnel emails in different directions based on the type of user enquiry. For example if a user specifies the message as a support query it can be sent to a different person than a sales enquiry.

Forms are probably the most versatile and powerful communication technique available and certainly work well on larger sites. However they are not always the right solution 100% of the time.

Forums

Although forums are often perceived as “user to user environments” rather than “user to website owner”, that doesn’t have to be true. Forums are an excellent way of communicating directly with your users. They are particularly good on a site where the enquiries are not confidential in nature and where you are getting the same enquiry again and again. A typical example of this is a support forum. By answering a support question publicly you avoid having to answer the same question multiple times and empower users to find their answers quicker without having to wait for your response.

Obviously, this approach wouldn’t be appropriate for sales enquiries and it still can suffer from spam however in certain circumstances forums can be very powerful.

Comments

Comments are a growing feedback mechanism, made popular by the growth of blogging. In many ways they provide similar benefits to a forum however they are slightly more limiting. On a forum a user can start a new thread dedicated to any subject they choose. When posting a comment it is normally attached to an existing web page on a specific topic. Although this is restrictive it can be appropriate if you are looking for feedback on a specific issue and want to avoid too much secondary discussion.

Ratings and reviews

Ratings and reviews can work particularly well when you are looking for feedback on a product line or article. Although ratings provide only limited feedback (a score) this also means that it is very easy for a user to participate. The ease of contribution makes it more likely a user will feedback than otherwise would have been the case. This approach works well when a website owner wants feedback on a specific web page. Having questions like “did this page answer your question. Yes or No?” is much more likely to get a response than an open comments box.

Live chat

More and more sites are introducing “live chat” facilities. To be honest I have mixed feelings about live chat. On the right site I am convinced it can be a powerful tool, however it can also create usability and accessibility problems. The best use of live chat I have seen is for answering support queries. They allow users to get instant answers without having to pay international phone call rates to contact foreign websites. They also allow website owner to handle a greater number of simultaneous enquiries than would be possible on a phone call. However live chat can be intrusive when the website owner initiates the conversation and on smaller sites the demands of having somebody available to answer queries can be prohibitive.

Of course, unlike every other method mentioned so far, live chat doesn’t seem to attract spam and so in that regards it is appealing.

Instant messaging

A cheaper and easier to implement alternative to live chat is simply to publish an instant messaging address on your site. Of course this does require your visitors to have an instant messaging client installed but that is less of an issue these days. Although instant messaging is a nice extra to have, I don’t think it will ever be more than an alternative for people who particularly like to communicate that way.

Offline mechanisms

It is easy to forget offline mechanisms of communication such as telephone and post. In fact it is surprising just how many organisations fail to include their telephone number and postal address on their sites.

Different mediums are good for different things and although a website can be an amazing tool there are some times when you just want to pick up the phone and talk to somebody. If you fail to put traditional contact information on your site then you do it at your own peril.

Dealing with feedback

Although the different communication methods are interesting, I guess the real question is how do you deal with enquiries when they come in (from whatever source). It is in this area that my own site currently fails and that is what got me thinking about how we approach the problem with our clients. This is the advice we normally give:

Feedback manager

One of the biggest problems I encounter when it comes to handling enquiries is that nobody sees it as there responsibility. Probably the best thing that can be done to improve how feedback is handled, is to ensure that there is at least one person in the organisation that has a clearly defined responsibility to respond to these correspondence.

Depending on the size of the website and the structure of your organisation, this may need to be multiple individuals, but the key is to ensure that these individuals are in no doubt about what is required from them.

Collection mechanisms

As I have learnt from personal experience over the last week the way that feedback is collected and processed is crucial. When somebody completes an online form where does it go? What happens if the person collecting those emails is away? How do you make sure that email is not lost in transit? How do you ensure the feedback has been responded to?

I remember working on a classic example of a bad collection mechanism a few years back. We were working for a travel company would created personalized quotes based on a form completed via their website. The problem was that enquiry form was sent as an email to a public folder in outlook. Sales staff would check that folder periodically and respond to any outstanding emails.

The whole process was incredibly painful. The folder wasn’t checked regularly enough and sales people would cherry pick the best leads leaving many emails unanswered in the hope that some other “sap” would deal with them. Emails would be responded to multiple times in some cases while others were simply lost in the scramble.

Eventually we built them a backend system that allowed administrators to assign enquiries and track their progress through the system, as well as provide reporting on response times and conversion.

Having a clearly defined and efficient mechanism for dealing with feedback from your site ensures that nothing slips through the cracks.

Speed of response

Ensuring that you respond quickly to enquiries is one of the best ways of differentiating yourself from your competition. One of the most common ways of achieving this is with an automated response as soon as a form is completed or an email sent. Although these kind of responses do provide some value as they let the user know the enquiry has been received, they do nothing to improve the users perception of your service. Automated response are impersonal and are the email equivalent of an automated telephone system saying that “your call is important to us”.

In my opinion nothing is better than a quick personal email thanking somebody for their enquiry and promising a more detailed response as soon as possible. Of course this isn’t always possible if you are dealing with a large number of enquiries, but for most businesses this is more than achievable.

Tracking feedback history

There is nothing more annoying than having to repeat yourself and with electronic communication at least, there should be no need to do so. Make sure that whatever system you use to track feedback also has the ability to archive and retrieve previous correspondence so that you don’t need to ask the user to cover old ground.

Personally I am a fan of customer management systems that allow for the tracks of all correspondence with a client whatever method is used. There are loads of greats systems around with something appropriate for your business, whatever its size.

Choosing a response mechanism

Finally I wanted to mention the mechanism by which we choose to respond to an enquiry. I recently listens to an interview with the authors of “Send: The How, Why, When – and When Not – of Email” who talked about the importance of knowing which medium to use in communications. The temptation is to respond in the medium with which you were originally contacted. For example, if somebody sends you an email you should respond with email. However, depending on the nature of the enquiry and the dialogue you need with the enquirer, it might be better to pick up the phone, instant message them or even use good old snail mail.

As with so much in life, always pick the right tool for the job.

Advice for CMS users

Posted in Accessibility, Site content on May 23, 2007 by Paul Boag

I have been putting together a document for work that provides some basic advice for people who work with content management systems. It covers things like accessibility and writing for the web.

Introduction

Although content management systems enable anybody to publish content to the web, they do not guarantee the quality of what is published. Many content managed websites are hard to use, inaccessible and poorly structured not because of any failure in the design or technology but simply because the quality of content is poor.

This document aims to introduce the reader to good practice for generating web content. In particular it focuses on advice about writing for the web and ensuring that what is produced is accessible to the widest audience possible.

Writing for the web

Writing great web content is a particular skill. Although it shares some characteristics with writing for other medium, there are many unique elements too.

Two traits make writing for the web, particularly challenging. Firstly is the perception that most people have that computers are being cold and impersonal. Many see technology as the enemy and so a good copywriter has to work hard to ensure their copy has a friendly and approachable tone.

Second is the fact that users rarely read pages in their entirety, but rather scan read. The emphasis is on looking for the next link that will take them one step closer to their goal.

Below we investigate these two challenges in more depth and suggest some possible solutions.

Writing style

Well-written copy should be both engaging and accessible. In other words it should overcome people’s inherent suspicion of technology and ensure that, as wide an audience as possible understand what is written.

Engaging with the user

Computers are immensely unfriendly. This is mainly due to their total inability to interpret or communicate the more subtle forms of human communication such as body language and tone of voice.

The result is that most people find interacting with a computer a cold and frustrating experience. However, there are techniques you can use to avoid the problem. These include:

Using a personal tone

By ensuring that your copy is friendly, informal and approachable, you help to counteract the inherent lack of personality associated with computers and the web. Even on a relatively formal site add more informality than you normally would in order to offset the users default perception.

Writing how you speak

If you are experienced in writing more formal offline documentation, writing in a more informal manner can be difficult. Although there is no one catchall solution to this, writing as you speak will certainly aid comprehension and generate a more informal feel.

Avoid being patronizing

The danger of writing in a more informal tone is that you overcompensate and your writing style becomes ‘chummy’ and patronizing. The writing as you speak rule comes in useful here. Picture your audience and ask yourself whether you would speak to them like that in a face-to-face meeting.

Making your copy clear

The W3C accessibility guidelines clearly state:

Use the clearest and simplest language appropriate for a site’s content.

In other words ensure that your reader can understand what you have written.

Many people make huge assumptions about what their audience understands and careful consideration needs to be put into this subject. Particular assumptions are made in regards to:

Jargon

A common pitfall is the use of abbreviations and acronyms within web copy. The assumption is that your target audience will already be aware of the jargon used. However, this is an entirely false assumption.

You cannot always assume that your audience will be aware of every acronym around. For example there are so many acronyms within web design that it would be impossible for one individual to know them all.

Secondly, the reader maybe relative new to your target audience and so still learning much of the ‘lingo’.

When writing copy ensure that whenever possible jargon is avoided and where that is not possible that it is accompanied by an explanation. We discuss acronyms and abbreviations further in the accessibility section.

Reading level

There are reasons why tabloid newspapers like the Sun sell so well. One of those reasons is because they require such a low reading level. As many as 40% of the population have a low literacy level and yet little consideration is given to their accessibility needs.

Even when writing for a well-educated audience you cannot make assumptions about their reading level. Many people suffer from attention deficit disorder, dyslexia or other conditions that could affect their ability to process what you have written.

Below is some advice on how you might go about improving comprehension of your copy:

Simplify punctuation – People suffering from a low literacy levels struggle with long sentences that include a lot of complex punctuation. Keep your sentences short and your punctuation simple.
Be consistent – There is often a desire when writing copy to vary your language to prevent a document appearing repetitive. Although this has its place it does make copy harder to comprehend. Where possible, use terms in a consistent manner across the whole site.
Use numbers not words – By simply referring to 1223 instead of ‘one thousand two hundred and twenty three’ you increase comprehension dramatically as well as shorten sentences and aid scanability.
Specify clear actions – If you wish a user to complete an action (for example to click on a button) clearly specify this. Do not assume the user will instinctively understand what is required of them.
Use imagery – The saying ‘an image speaks a thousand words’ is very true for low literacy users. If an image will help to convey the meaning of a page be sure to use it to support existing copy.

Although the techniques above are of particular benefit to low literacy users, they do actually offer benefits to all users. Ease to comprehend copy aids the speed at which information can be digested and helps users scan copy as we are going to look at next.

Making web pages easy to scan

It can be a depressing realization that users will probably not read your carefully crafted text. However, the sooner you accept this reality the sooner you can start to adapt copy to aid users in their hunt for information.

There are a number of techniques that can be used to help a user quickly scan through a page and identify the information they require:

Front loading

Front loading applies in two different contexts. Firstly, front-load the page by including a summary of the entire page right at the beginning of the document. This helps the user ascertain quickly whether the page is relevant to them or not. Secondly, front-load each individual paragraph so that the main point is first. Ideally a paragraph should only make a single point (see 2.2.2) but if it is longer then the user can get the gist by reading the first sentence.

Keep it short

Usability expert, Steve Krug recommends in his book “Don’t Make Me Think!: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability” that a copywriter should take his copy, edit it down to half its original length and then half it again. This sounds like an impossible task but it is often easier than it appears. By removing repetition, marketing speak, and ‘happy talk’ (content with no real substance like ‘welcome to this site’) you will quickly find your content substantially reduced.

Keep paragraphs short

As well as keeping the page as a whole sort, you should ensure individual paragraphs are short too. Each paragraph should make a single point as this aids both user scanning and comprehension.

Keep sentences short

At a micro level you should also endeavor to keep each individual sentence as short as possible. Again this aids scanability and comprehension but also helps to remove any unnecessary ‘waffle’.

Break your copy up

As well as breaking up copy into short sentences and paragraphs you can also aid scanability by using other techniques as well. Look at each paragraph and ask yourself the following:

Can I associate a heading or sub heading with this block of text?
Could this paragraph be reduced to an easy to scan bullet point list?
Is there a key message in this paragraph that users need to instantly see?

If the answer to the last question is yes, then you might wish to use a breakout box (also known as a pull out). This is a technique originally introduced in magazines to ‘hook the user’. They would take a key line from an article and highlight it in someway (usually in a separate box) to draw the reader into reading the rest of the article. The same technique can be used on a web page to draw a users attention to a key point that they maybe searching for.

Many good content management systems (including Headscape’s own CMS) provide this functionality.

Accessibility

We have already touched on the importance of accessibility when talking about writing clear copy, however accessibility extends beyond simply the copy you write.

As a content management system user, you are required to go beyond just writing the copy. You are also required to enter the copy into the system so that it can be displayed on the site. This requires you to ‘markup’ your copy correctly.

The importance of markup

So what exactly is markup? Markup is the method by which you tell the browser what the content you are entering is, so that the browser knows how to display it to the user. This markup is usually written as HTML.

So, if for example you want to tell the browser that something is a heading you would mark it up like this:

<h1>This is a heading</h1>

or a paragraph would be marked up like this:

<p>This is a paragraph of text</p>

Of course, one of the main attractions of most content management systems is that you don’t have to know how to write HTML. Instead the content management system will add the code for you.

Historically content management systems didn’t even try to understand what any individual piece of content was. Instead they let you as the content management user, style the content to look however you wanted. So instead of telling the system that this is a heading you simply made it look big and bold so users of the site would know.

Although this sounds like a good approach in principle, it actually opens up a whole load of problems that are too extensive to cover here.

More modern content management systems, such as the ones deployed by Headscape, ask the user to explain what each piece of content is so that the system can add the proper HTML code.

The way the content management user does this is normally through a drop down menu of styles much like you find in Microsoft word. You simply select a block of text and choose the style which best describes that text.

Marking up content in this way brings a whole host of advantages including (but not limited to):

The ability to redesign how an individual style looks universally across the entire site without editing each page.
The ability to change the appearance of styles based on what device is accessing the content (for example a mobile device style).
The ability for screen readers and other assistive technologies to understand the site.

In short, a well marked up piece of content will be available to a much larger audience and is easier to change and adapt.

Text alternatives

Well marked up content is not the only way to improve the accessibility of your site. Another is to provide text alternatives for elements that some users will not be able to access.

The most common example of this is with the inclusion of images into your pages.

There are a number of reasons why a user may not be able to see the images on a page. These could range from viewing the page via a mobile device to the user suffering from some form of visual impairment. However, whatever the reason the solution is the same; add alternative text that describes the image.

Alternative text is only visible to users who cannot see the image and so does not impact the design in anyway. The method of adding alternative text will vary between content management systems but in most cases (including on the Headscape system) you will be asked to add some text when you try and insert an image. A good system will go as far as requiring alternative text before approving an image for insertion.

A common mistake that is made with alternative text is to use it as a caption for the image rather than a description of the image. The difference is subtle but important. An image of Marcus Lillington our sales director might read ‘Marcus Lillington is more than happy to speak to you about your requirements’. This would be a caption rather than alternative text. Alternative text should describe the image and nothing more. So in the case of our example it should read simply; ‘Photograph of Marcus Lillington – sales director’.

Finally it is worth saying that the principle of alternative text does not apply just to images. It should apply to any screen element that can only be understood visually. That includes Flash, video, audio or other plugin.

Meaningful links

Another common accessibility mistake is with link text. When a content management user creates a link between pages it is not uncommon to see links with phrases like ‘click here’ or ‘read more’. This presents a problem for two reasons:

Firstly, users who access the web using screen readers often have all links on a page read back as a list in order to save listening to every piece of text when all they want to do is find the next link. A link like ‘click here’ means nothing when read out of context.

Secondly, many users will scan a page looking specifically at the links. They don’t read the text before or after the link so again they see it out of context. The result is that, like screen reader users, terms like ‘read more’ mean nothing.

This problem is easily avoided by ensuring that all links make sense out of context. So instead of linking the words ‘click here’ in the sentence ‘click here for more news’ you simply link to the phase ‘more news’ or ‘news archive’.

Acronyms and abbreviations

Earlier we talked about how where possible jargon, acronyms and abbreviations should be avoided. However there are occasions where that is not possible.

In such situations your choices are very much dictated by the functionality provided by the CMS you are using. Unfortunately, many content management systems are not particularly helpful in this regard and you maybe limited to typing out a description in brackets each time.

However, more modern content management systems such as that provided by Headscape, allow you to select an abbreviation style. You can then enter the full description and this becomes available to the user without destroying the flow of your text.

This is achieved in a variety of ways but the most common is using a dotted underline. If a piece of text has been marked up as an acronym or abbreviation it will appear to the end user as text with a dotted underline. When the user moves her cursor over the text the cursor changes to a help symbol and displays the full description as a tooltip.

This provides a full description to users encountering a piece of jargon for the first time, without getting in the way of those who already know what it means.

Using tables correctly

Web design has changed a lot over the last few years and so have content management systems. One of the most significant changes has been a move away from table-based layout.

Table-based layout is a technique that uses tables to position content on a page. However this is an abuse of the table feature in HTML and can cause significant accessibility problems especially for users running on older PCs or using mobile devices.

We therefore strongly recommend that using tables for layout is avoided at all costs. Instead clearly markup the content using the descriptive styles provided. The system will do the formatting and positioning.

That said there is still a place for tables. Tables were originally intended for tabular data (data made up of columns and rows, like that found in a spreadsheet). If you have information like this you wish to include on a page, then this is when you should use a table.

Working with imagery

Although we have already spoken about imagery in the context of alternative text it is worth noting that there are other accessibility issues relating to imagery you should be aware of:

Animation

Animation can be a problem area if not handled correctly, so generally speaking it is better to avoid the use of animated imagery unless it helps explain the content in someway.

The main reason that animation can be problematic is because certain forms of cognitive disability can be made worse by flashing animation. It can prove distracting and make it harder to process the content being read.

If animation is to be used we recommend:

That the user is given the ability to disable the animation
That the animation is not too rapid so that it proves less distracting

Colour

Finally, it is worth noting that a considerable proportion of your users will suffer from some form of colour blindness. For example almost 1 in 10 men are colour blind. In addition it is possible that other users will be accessing your site through black and white monitors on mobile devices. It is therefore important to ensure that any imagery you use is not reliant on colour to communicate information and that there is sufficient contrast between foreground and background colours.

These two issues are addressed in the W3C guidelines on accessibility:

2.1 Ensure that all information conveyed with color is also available without color, for example from context or markup.

2.2 Ensure that foreground and background color combinations provide sufficient contrast when viewed by someone having color deficits or when viewed on a black and white screen.

Further information

Hopefully this document has been useful in outlining some of the basics of writing content for a website. However, we have obviously only been able to scratch the surface.

If you would like further information, please do not hesitate to contact Paul Boag (the author of this document) using [email protected].

Keeping your home page clean

Posted in Design, User experience on May 16, 2007 by Paul Boag

In the fight for real estate, usability and design aesthetics are often the first causalities.

One of the most common sticking points I encounter when developing a website is the sign off of the home page. Client’s want to cram it with as much content as possible, while the designer is seeking to maintain the integrity of the design. So, what is the best way of avoiding this kind of confrontation?

I am sure you have come across requests like this before…

I need the logo bigger, more space for news, events and features, shortcuts to key applications, more prominent navigation and can you make the search stand out. Oh yes, and I don’t want the page to scroll at 800 by 600. Also, sales would like to add banner advertising across the top and down the side.

In many cases these absurd scenarios occur because of a perception that the home page is the most valuable location on a website. As a result all the various departments clammer to get their piece of the limelight.

In the fight for real estate, usability and design aesthetics are often the first causalities. Below I outline four techniques I am starting to use in order to bring some sanity back to the home page scramble.

Recognizing the changing role of the home page

One of the first steps to home page utopia is to get the stakeholders (those who are fighting for home page prominence) to recognise that the home page doesn’t have the importance that it once did. In fact I think it would be fair to say that we are going to see a continued decline in the traffic going to home pages over the coming years.

Jakob Nielsen in his book “Prioritizing Web Usability” talks about a change he is seeing in the way users are interacting with the web.

There was a time, says Nielsen, when users who had a specific task would go to a site where they thought that tasks could be completed. For example, if they wanted information on the Crisis in Darfur they would go directly to CNN or the BBC. However, more and more it would appear that instead of turning to a specific site and finding content via that sites home page, they are instead looking to search engines. The search engine takes the user directly to the information they require thereby completely bypassing the sites home page. Obviously, this deep linking seriously reduces the prominence of the home page.

Add to this the rise of RSS feeds and more people accessing information via mobile devices, and you begin to see the focus shifting from the website home page towards the individual pages of content. That is not to say home pages are no longer important, they are simply not as important as once they were and so do not justify the level of competition they receive in some organisations.

Don’t rush into the home page

Another technique I am starting to use more often is to avoid addressing the home page too early in the process. By starting with standard textual pages (which after all make up the majority of the site) you get to set the design style before it gets diluted by the land grab for home page real estate. Once the client has “bought in” to the design they will perceive it as being more important and so are less likely to allow it to be railroaded by content demands.

However, delaying the home page development isn’t just a “political” move. It is also the right thing to do. A home page should reflect the sites content at the highest level and signpost the user to key content deeper in the site. In the majority of projects I work on the client hasn’t finalized all of the content in the initial design stage. In my opinion it is hard to create an effective home page until you have a full understanding of what content it is meant to signpost and represent.

Communicating the importance of white space

In the case of home page design the heart of the conflict between designer and client is often a perception of the importance of white space. Every designer knows that white space is a fundamental tool of good design, but we are often bad at expressing why in a way the client can associate with.

This is an area I have been thinking about a lot recently and I have come up with a possible solution which I am yet to try. It was inspired by the book “The Laws of Simplicity (Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life)” which I am currently in the process of reading. On the subject of white space the author says:

“The opportunity lost by increasing the amount of blank space is gained back with enhanced attention on what remains.”

Or in other words; the more you add the less importance anything has.

I think this is where we sometimes go wrong as designers. We sell white space on the basis that it looks better. Instead we should be selling it on the basis that every item you add to the page detracts from the rest.

To help the client think this through I am wondering whether a point system of some kind might help. You might want to suggest that a user has 10 points worth of attention they can give to the home page. Every “module of content” added to the home page takes a minimum of 1 point. More points should be assigned to more important elements. This approach will quickly show that the more you add to a page, the more likely important elements are going to get lost in the crowd.

I am not sure whether the approach would work in practice or not, but it does strike me as a good way to focus the clients mind on what is important.

Embrace rather than fearing the fold

The killer blow to any home page design is when the client says: oh yes, and we want all of that to fit above the fold. This inevitably leads to smaller typefaces and less white space.

I think we need to work hard as designers to dispel the myth that users never scroll. Sure, users don’t always scroll but that is okay as long as we put less important elements further down the page.

The idea that users don’t scroll is horribly out of date and probably comes from the very early writings of Jakob Nielsen. However as early as 1997 he was suggesting that users were becoming more comfortable with the idea.

If your client needs further proof then install Crazy Egg or some other heat map service on the clients site. This will actually show where on the page a user chooses to click. You will see a decline lower on the page but not enough to justify putting everything above the fold.

The emphasis should be prioritizing content rather than cramming everything into the small space above this ill defined line that we call the fold.

But how?

Of course the fundamental problem with educating our clients, is that in many cases you cannot talk to the people that are demanding home page space. This is a very real problem and in many cases there is little you can do to overcome it. However I was impressed by Shane Diffily’s idea of running stakeholder workshops in his recent A List Apart article. Having a workshop at the beginning of a project where you can talk about good practice and dispel some of these common myths is a superb idea and should help a lot of projects run that much smoother.

Show 76: Clients and Agency

Posted in Classic shows on April 24, 2007 by Paul Boag

Marcus talks about setting up a web design company while Paul talks about the role of the client and Derek Featherstone talks about making your web application accessible.

Podcast: Download (27.5MB)

News and events

Eric Meyer’s reset style

I have talked before about the idea of having a CSS file that removes all of the browsers styling in order to allow you to work from a clean slate across multiple browsers. Well, over this last week Eric Meyer has picked up on the idea and has been collaboratively developing a reset CSS file via his blog. If you do a lot of CSS work, this is definitely worth getting your hands on.

Microsoft Silverlight

Microsoft are gunning after Adobe on all fronts at the moment including a flash competitor called Silverlight. Like flash, Silverlight offers animation, interactivity and cross browser compatibility (although I don’t seem to be able to get it working on a mac). However, their real focus is on video where they trump Flash by offering high definition quality. It also appears to offer more “standards friendly” methods of inserting and manipulating movies, however as I said I have been unable to test this so far.

The biggest hurdle Microsoft faces will be take up. At the moment Flash dominates partly because in many cases it is installed almost invisibly in the background. In contrast, at the moment, Silverlight is a separate installation that takes place outside of the browser. No doubt this will change in the future.

35 Designers, 5 questions

Smashing magazine are certainly on a role at the moment, publishing a range of superb web design articles. One of the most recent is a post where they asked 35 designers (of which I was one) 5 questions about their approach to web design. The resulting article is a fascinating read and gives you a real insight into how other web designers work. The questions included:

1 aspect of design you give the highest priority to.
1 most useful CSS-technique you use very often.
1 font you use in your projects very often.
1 design-related book you highly recommend to read.
1 design magazine you read on a daily/weekly basis (online or offline).

CSS tools

Another Smashing magazine post. This one lists some very useful CSS tools including form builders, list makers, CSS layout templates and much more. If you are starting out in standards based coding some of the tools here will produce you some brilliant examples of clean code.

Client corner: The role of the client

Myself and Marcus swap roles this week and I take a look at our client corner issue; the role of the client. There is a lot written about the role of web designers but very little written about what part website owners play in the evolution of their sites. It is an area I have been thinking a lot about recently and I wanted to share a few thoughts with you. It is a subject that I have recently blogged on so if you want more information on what I consider the role of the client to be then I suggest you check that out.

Ask the expert: Derek Featherstone on ARIA

We are lucky enough to have accessibility expert Derek Featherstone on this week’s show talking about making web applications accessible. He talks about how HTML is not designed to support web applications and that the methods used to make it work are often little more than hacks. He then introduces a new standard from the W3C called ARIA and explains how this will assist in making web applications more accessible. If you want to know more about what ARIA is and how it can make your applications more accessible then Derek recommends a recent article on the List Apart website.

Agony Uncle: Setting up a web design company

Marcus takes on the lofty role of Agony Uncle this week responding to a question on the forum about setting up a web design company. The question, from Stanton, starts with him setting the scene of someone wanting to break out on their own but worrying about how they will cope without that guaranteed income.

Marcus gets all nostalgic about the early days of Headscape and then provides advice about starting up. He covers all the boring bits about incorporation, insurance, funding and documentation. He then talks about getting business in and not forgetting that someone has to be the salesman!

Show 73: Drone

Posted in Classic shows on April 3, 2007 by Paul Boag

Marcus makes sweet love to our clients. I fiddle with my captions and our lead developer drones on about setting up a development server.

Podcast: Download (28.3MB)

News and events

This year saw some of the best April fool technology jokes around and so I do my best to convince Marcus that they are real news. Spot the real from the fakes:

Dutch to revert to table based layouts

According to quirksmode.org, the Dutch government has been forced to revise its accessibility guidelines due to an estimated € 20 million it would cost for government sites to make the move from table based design to web standards.

WCAG 2.0 finally here

Accessify has announced that WCAG 2.0 has finally been released. This extremely controversial revision to the WAI gudelines has been pushed through despite strong objections by the web design community.

Amazon to become accessible

Amazon has always been held up as an example of quite how hard the web can be for those using assistive technologies such as screen readers. Nevertheless a press release on the National Federation of the Blind site seems to indicate that Amazon maybe willing to change its ways as they announce a partnership with the NFB to clean up their act.

Google TiSP

Google are finally releasing their much-anticipated free wi-fi network (Google TiSP) that will span much for the USA. Rumours of this network have been circulating for some time, however nobody anticipated the innovative way the network would be laid.

@media 2007: Antarctica

Following the failure of @Media Hong Kong, which was cancelled due to lack of demand, the guys at Vivabit have decided to launch @Media Antarctica. Like Web Directions North, this conference will combine web design talks with outdoor sports in probably the most ambitious project of its kind.

Get Naked Day

Dustin Diaz is once again encouraging all website owners to get naked on the 5th April by exposing your HTML to the world. This superb publicity stunt is a great way of demonstrating the flexibility of web standards. Good on you Dustin!

Making love to your clients

Marcus continues his series on selling web design services by looking at the process of managing your clients:

You may build the best websites in the world but if you do not know how to sell your services then nobody will hire you. Web design, like nearly everything, is a competitive marketplace and simply being a good designer/developer is not enough. You also need a sales and marketing hat.

That said, it does seem that there is more work out there than agencies to do it.

Play to your strengths
Don’t bite off more than you can chew when pitching for work. Do not pitch for contracts that are too big for you and avoid relying too heavily on outsourcing, as many clients are uncomfortable with this. Also, from personal experience, contracting or partnering can end up being very expensive – don’t make everything you do a loss leader! In particular don’t promise something unless you are 100% sure that you can deliver on it. Failure to deliver can seriously undermine your company’s reputation.

In summary, be honest with the client. If you can’t deliver by a particular deadline or you don’t have the skills in-house, tell the client. Try and find a workaround e.g. splitting the work between you and another agency. In the end, you will gain more respect from the client.

Love your clients – old and new
With existing clients, if you pay attention to them and care for them, you will have a very small cost of sale for a significant proportion of your work going forward.
This gets harder and harder the longer you are around and the bigger you get. I haven’t really needed to chase work for a long time now (because we’ve been so busy!) so I try to make sure that when an existing client contacts us to discuss further work we are responsive and helpful. For most clients I would recommend carrying out annual review meetings – both parties are encouraged to think about new features for the site and the meeting is used to discuss the merits of the ideas, likely budgets, timescales etc.

From listening at SXSW… with new clients you should try to befriend them (get drunk with them one Swedish guy said) before working with them. This is great if they want to be friends and I expect quite a lot do. However, we work with a lot of public sector clients who get nervous if we offer to buy them an ice-cream, let alone lunch.
I guess the message was ‘put the effort in, not only will it be appreciated, it will make your life easier going forward’.

Question the client
Don’t be afraid to ask questions about a brief supplied by a client. You may even be in a position to help the client write their brief. Asking questions and making suggestions is a great way to build a relationship with your clients and make you stand out from the crowd. Of course, ultimately it will allow you to put together a better proposal that meets the client’s needs even when they are not fully expressed in the brief.

Also, stand up for yourself! If you think your idea is just what they should be doing instead of the daft stuff in their brief – tell them. Again, this will probably bring a lot of respect your way.

Ask an expert: Rob on setting up a development environment

Rob Borley the lead developer at Headscape talks about how to go about setting up a development environment to allow you to work on dynamic websites. He talks about some of the potential dangers, recommends some great resources to get you started and reviews some different development tools.

Easy styling of images

Here is an interesting problem that keeps cropping up. How do you balance the need for easy update by web editors with the desire to make a site as visually appealing as possible? Take for example the images that website owners inevitably want to add to their site via a content management system. They don’t have the skill to add captions or add styling so how do you make the process simple for them.

A while ago I wrote a post suggesting one solution to the issue. Recently it got dugg and has since proved very popular. In this week’s show I talk through the process and explain some of the benefits.

Review: Oxygen XML editor

In last week’s show I suggested it would be great to receive some reviews from you the boagworld listener. This week I received the first one from Tom and so we have included it on the show.

He reviews Oxygen an XML editor with some quite remarkable features. If you work regularly with XML you will definitely want to check this out.

Show 72: Neverending Beta

Posted in Classic shows on March 27, 2007 by Paul Boag

On this week’s show: web stats meet usability testing, Apollo and why it is important, working with corporate colour palettes and how to sell your web design services.

Podcast: Download (24.1MB)

News and events

This week appears to be the week of never-ending betas however I have managed to squeeze in some pointless fun and an article about accessible content management systems:

Click2Map

There seems to be a growing number of tools out there that make the management of Google Maps easier. One that I have just discovered this week is Click2Map. You can easily and quickly add custom markers by entering an address (even if you are outside of the US). It is still in beta and needs a lot of work (for example you cannot integrate the maps directly into your site) but it is still great for a quick and easy way of linking to locations.

Popuri.us

Another “beta” service I spotted this week is Popuri.us. This site provides SEO reports on your site including rankings on Google, Yahoo, Alexa, Delicious and Technorati. Currently it seems to be suffering from some performance issues; nevertheless it gives a good indication of your online visibility. Of course if you are a Firefox user you may find the SEO add-on more convenient.

Finding an accessible CMS

One of the biggest complaints against content management systems is that they are often not very accessible. Gez Lemon has been kind enough to do an analysis of a whole bunch of them for us and provides a great article on the pros and cons of each from an accessibility point of view. If you are considering implementing a CMS and care about accessibility (which you should do) then check this out.

Arial vs Helvetica

So you think you know your typefaces? Maybe you are even a bit of a typography snob? But, can you tell the difference between Arial and Helvetica? Of course you can, at least that was what I thought until I actually tried.

Selling your web design services

So this week’s client corner is seriously lacking advice for clients (sorry about that). Instead Marcus takes a look at the subject of selling your web design services. Surprisingly for Marcus, he has written fairly comprehensive notes on what we covered so here you go…
You may build the best websites in the world but if you do not know how to sell your services then nobody will hire you. Web design, like nearly everything, is a competitive marketplace and simply being a good designer/developer is not enough. You also need a sales and marketing hat.
That said, it does seem that there is more work out there than agencies to do it.

Cold call?

Don’t buy databases of ‘quality’ contacts in a particular sector. I may be cynical but I reckon the vast majority of these ‘leads’ were tricked into supplying their details. You’re trying to sell solutions to your potential clients’ online problems not pallets of dog food. I my experience, cold calling is a waste of time and effort – the only way you’ll win work is if you’re lucky enough to call someone when they’re about to release a tender.
The only exception to this rule are local businesses where picking up the phone and saying ‘hi, we’re just over the road from you and we’re really good at what we do. If you ever need the services that we provide please do include us in any suppler selection process you intend to go through’. If they’re friendly why not meet up for a beer (see Love Your Clients)…

Focus on a specific market sector

If your only case study is a sewage works site then go after other sewage works sites first. This is common sense: you have a proven ability to produce a website with probably very similar features to the one the other sewage site wants. You have a real, live working example to show them and a client who will (hopefully) say nice things about you.

Tender sites

I get asked about these a lot. They are (I think) better than straight cold calling but not much. Golden rule – don’t do any speculative design work as some may be a scam. I think most of these are simply there because a lot of tenders are required to be competitive but the client already has a preferred agency. I have generated a ‘nose’ for when we are making up numbers so, if you get that feeling, be brave, walk away…
Of course, try to talk (and I mean talk not email) to the client. Be bold, ask questions about how many others are going for the project, what is the budget (we need to know to be able to provide the most appropriate solution), are the deadlines set in stone etc etc etc… If you’re getting negative feelings… guess what… walk away…
If you do decide to go for something off one of these sites, I recommend the following as a response:

boiler plate ‘Why Us’. You should already have this in another proposal. Up to 10 pages of skills, experience, examples of design work and above all USP.
No more than 2 sides of A4 of ‘your solution’ i.e. a summary.
Tasks by task breakdown of price (inc. payment terms with at least a third up front (‘on delivery’ if you’re really worried about the client!)

The trick here is to start at the bottom. Do the task breakdown first (it may put you way over budget if you know it – if so, walk away) which will lead to an obvious solution summary then tack the ‘aren’t we great’ on the front.
The idea is to put as little effort in as possible without making it look that way.
Much better idea to…

Market, market, market!

There are so many ways to market yourself. For example, you can drive round your local neighbourhood shouting through a loud hailer if you like! Headscape’s marketing effort is focussed virtually solely on Boagworld now. The point is, try to find something that you can do that you feel passionate about and will get people either ringing you directly or, just as good, recommending you to others.

Know when to walk away

It is the hardest thing in the world to do, but it is important that you know when to turn down work. There are times when the clients requirements are unrealistic or the job is simply too big. On other occasions, the chance of winning a job does not justify the investment involved in pitching for it. There is a natural tendency to want to run after every piece of work, but sometimes you just have to say no.
I got the impression listening at SXSW that the agencies I most admire (e.g. Happy Cog) simply wait around for projects that they are interested in and the clients should be damn grateful! Or maybe that was the impression that Mr Z wanted to convey.

Ask an expert: Aral on Apollo

Aral Balkan is one of my favourite speakers and this week in the “ask an expert” section he puts his enthusiasm and humour into an insightful introduction of Apollo. Apollo is a new development platform from Adobe that allows web designers to start developing desktop applications.

Working with corporate colours

This week’s agony uncle question is based on something I found in the boagworld forum. Pecko asked whether we should use Photoshop to convert corporate colours for the web or whether we should do it by hand. A lot of the people on the forum argued that you should allow Photoshop to take the strain but in the show I argue that we should do it by hand. My argument was based on something I had read before and yet I couldn’t for the life of me remember where I had read it. I eventually found it was from a brilliant article by Jason Santa Maria on 24 Ways. I hope he will forgive me for not crediting him on the show.

Review: ClickTale

I was recently asked to beta test ClickTale, a new statistics-tracking tool. Not only does it provide you with all of the basic web stats you would expect, it also allows you to watch recordings of how users interact with your site. You can see their cursor move around the screen, watch them scroll and even move between pages. The product is currently in closed beta but it is definitely worth keeping an eye on because it is extremely powerful and acts as a passable alternative when usability testing is just not an option.

Podcast 53: Ecommerce Usability

Posted in Classic shows on October 9, 2006 by Paul Boag

Product information can make or break an ecommerce site. In this week’s show we look at the usability of ecommerce sites and in particular how you display your products.

Recently I have been reading Jakob Nielsen’s book “Prioritizing Web Usability”. Although I don’t always agree with everything Jakob says this is an invaluable resource and I strongly recommend that you consider buying it.

I have just finished the chapter on product information for ecommerce sites. What he had to say on the subject was so good that I thought I would share some of it with you.

We cover:

Pricing – What to display and how to display it
Common Questions – Ensuring you address FAQs on subjects like delivery, returns and security
Product descriptions
Layering product information so as not to overwhelm users
Product imagery
After sales support
Supporting articles on your products and the benefits these provide you as a website owner

Later in the show we also discuss some of the comments about ecommerce usability made, in the boagworld.com forum. Unfortunately we couldn’t cover all of the issues discussed so if you would like more detail visit the ecommerce thread on our message board.

In the news

There are some very interesting stories in the news this week. Probably the biggest story is the possibility that Google intend to by YouTube. For more information on this acquisition check out TechCrunch’s report. However, more interest to me are two stories found on the BBC website. The first is a report stating that people are more concerned about net crime than being burgled. This remarkable report emphasises the need to reassure users continually about the privacy and security of their personal information. The second article exposes the fact that despite people being more tech-savvy than ever before, they are still left confused by the mass of technical jargon online.

Review

Finally, we review an easy to implement ecommerce system called Shopify. Although not quite as straightforward as RightCart it does have considerably more features and is definitely worth checking out if you are considering a small scale ecommerce website. For a more complete rundown of the different ecommerce packages available read the ecommerce software thread on our forum.

The Business of Web Design

Posted in Web strategy on October 6, 2006 by Paul Boag

I have been thinking a lot about our motivation as web designers (as you do!) and am becoming increasingly concerned that in many cases our motivation in projects is entirely wrong.

I say “our motivation as web designers” but what I really mean is “my motivation”. I guess I have been doing some soul searching and have not been entirely happy with what I have found. However, I suspect that if you look honestly at yourself then you will find that, if you are a web designer, you suffer from a similar problem.

Personal motivation

So what am I talking about? Well, the web is a really exciting place at the moment. There is so much innovation and so many new technologies and techniques emerging. From tagging to AJAX, we are surrounding by cool things we are just itching to try out. We are constantly looking for opportunities to experiment with this stuff and that is no bad thing because it is by experimenting that we learn. If you are anything like me you are a diehard geek and love playing with new technologies and ways of doing things. That is what gets you up in the morning.

Benefiting our users

Of course, our desire to use all these techniques and technologies isn’t entirely selfish. Another motivation for us is the desire to benefit our end users. After all we are “user centric designers” right? Technologies like AJAX create a more pleasant user experience and the “trendy” web 2.0 design style, makes a site easier to navigate and read. The fact that we will look good to our peers and more attractive to prospective clients by using these approaches is a secondary consideration… isn’t it?

Business benefits

There is an added bonus to all these innovations too. In many cases they will benefit the clients business. Benefits such as reduced maintenance costs, increased customer satisfaction, fast development… the list could go on. All of these arguments are incredibly useful when trying to convince a client that they need to let you implement the latest “good practice”.

The underlying problem

So what is my problem? It is not that I have an issue with the three motivating factors outlined above. What I am uncomfortable with is the order. If we are completely honest with ourselves, in many cases the order is the same as that outlined above:

Personal motivation
Benefits to users
Business benefits

We are primarily driven by personal motivations and the desire to “play” with new technologies. The business drivers for implementing a new technique come at the bottom of our list and are really only a useful way of justifying what it is that we want to do anyway.

I would argue that the list should actually be completely inverted. I believe that business benefits and objectives should be our primary concern even above the benefits to users. At the end of the day a website has to meet client objectives. Of course, in the majority of cases these objectives are best met by providing a good user experience, but our motivation should primarily be driven by business demands and not user needs. As for personal motivation, well that should come last of all.

There are too many implementations of AJAX which exist only for personal gratification rather than business need. The same applies for design, standards, accessibility and indeed any other “best practice” you care to mention.

Please don’t misinterpret me. I am not saying any of these things are wrong. They can all be hugely beneficial to most businesses. What I am saying is that each of us as designers or developers has to take a long hard look at why we are recommending various approaches to clients and ensure that our motivation is primarily business focused.

As web designers, many of us somehow perceive ourselves above such torrid pursuits as business objectives. There is a definite climate of moral superiority at the moment as we focus on accessibility and best practice. Although it is good that web design is moving away from the early days when we were the web equivalent of time share salesmen, we need to be careful that our new found enthusiasm for best practice doesn’t divorce us from the realities of business online.

Podcast 46: Selling web design services

Posted in Classic shows on August 21, 2006 by Paul Boag

This week on Boagworld.com, we discuss how to sell your web design services, the pros and cons of HTML emails and we review the .net web design magazine.

Podcast: Download (30.6MB)

For more information on the pros and cons of HTML emails read Paul’s post on the subject.

Selling your services

You may build the best websites in the world but if you do not know how to sell your services then nobody will hire you. That is the sad state of the world. Web design is competitive marketplace and simply being a great developer or designer is not enough. You also need to know how to write good proposals and come across well in presentations.

That is why in this show we take a long hard look at the sales process and how to become more effective at promoting yourself. Below is a rough outline of what we covered in the show:

Play to your strengths

It is easy to bite off more than you can chew when pitching for work. Do not pitch for contracts that are too big for you and avoid relying too heavily on outsourcing, as many clients are uncomfortable with this. In particular Marcus recommends that you never promise something unless you are 100% sure that you can deliver on it. Failure to deliver can seriously undermine your company’s reputation.

Focus on a specific market

Marcus and Paul both heavily favoured identifying a sector in which you have some good case studies and focusing on winning work there. Given time you can build up a strong reputation in that sector which will in turn attract more clients. Clients seek out web design companies that have experience working on similar projects so this approach works much better than the scattergun mentality applied by many agencies.

Care for your existing clients

Marcus reckons it is ten times easier to win work from an existing client than it is to win from a new one. He has a good point. Not only is it easier to win new work from a happy client but they will also recommend you to others. It is vitally important that you keep existing clients happy because they should be the lifeblood of your business. If you are in the position of having to constantly find new work then you are doing something wrong. Concentrate on nurturing your existing clients and then you will quickly find new business coming to you.

Know when to walk away

Question the client

Don’t be afraid to ask questions about a brief supplied by a client. Asking questions and making suggestions is a great way to build a relationship with your clients and make you stand out from the crowd. Of course, ultimately it will allow you to put together a better proposal that meets the client’s needs even when they are not fully expressed in the brief.

Write a good proposal

Marcus provides a huge raft of suggestions for writing a good proposal including (but not limited to):

Make sure you carefully cover any special requirements requested by the client (financial reports in your business etc).
Respond to the brief by taking each of the issues raised on a point-by-point basis, rather than using a standard template for all your proposals.
Be detailed but don’t overdo it (nobody will read a 100 page document).
Include screenshots and diagrams but be wary of file size if you are intending to email the proposal.
Provide modular pricing so people can choose which functionality to include.
Always include relevant references.

Ensure your presentation is slick

The presentation is the last obstacle to overcome and so often it can be where mistakes are made. Ensure your presentation fits into the time available with ample left over for questions. Remember, by this stage the client has read the proposal and know what you are offering. The reason for the meeting is to ask questions and have a chance to find out if they feel they can work with you. Everybody prefers to work with people they like, so be enthusiastic, helpful and professional. Be prepared to discuss prices and timescales but do not promise things you cannot deliver.

Questions and comment

On this week’s show, we have a great question from Aaron about building HTML newsletters with web standards. This sparks an interesting debate between Paul and Marcus about the pros and cons of HTML emails. The conclusion was that if possible send plain text emails and link back to a webpage containing more information.

Also in the show

Also in the show, Paul recommends the .net magazine on web design, highlights two new courses on accessibility from the RNIB, and introduces a new sponsor in the form of RightCart (possibly the easiest to implement ecommerce system ever!)

Refresh Keynote

Posted in News on July 23, 2006 by Paul Boag

A number of people have asked me what I will be speaking on at the upcoming Refresh conference. Well, now you know.

The Refresh site now includes a schedule and description of the topics covered.

From folksonomy and web standards to accessibility and microformats, the web is full of new techniques and philosophies. But how can all of these new approaches to web design be applied to real projects for real clients that are constrained by tight budgets and tighter deadlines?

I am assuming that the majority of people at the conference don’t work for Yahoo or Google and aren’t going to be running some "trendy" web 2.0 company. My guess is that most will work for agencies or are in house designers within some large organisation. They will be dealing with the development of "traditional" sites, which are more marketing & sales focused rather than application led.

With this in mind, I want to talk about how to take some of the emerging technologies and apply them in a more traditional setting. We will cover, balancing the desire to integrate the latest "cool technology" with the business needs of the organisation you are working with. In short we will be looking at how to be pragmatic.

If you have any specific issues you would like to see covered (whether you can make the conference or not, as I am sure they will podcast the event) then add a comment and I will see what I can do.

No more speculative designs

Posted in Design on April 5, 2006 by Paul Boag

Arriving at a design for a website is a process rather than a flash of creative inspiration. A whole range of factors influence how a design develops and none of these steps are present in speculative work.

One of the worst parts of my job is doing design work for pitches. You simply don’t have enough information to produce a quality design. Recently I discovered I was not the only one to feel like this and that in fact there was a growing movement campaigning for an end to speculative work.

It’s not that I have a particular problem with doing speculative unpaid work in order to win a new client. I have no problem, for example, in the hours spent producing a proposal or going to presentations. My problem is that speculative designs provide no real value to the client in making their choice of a web design agency. They might perceive them as useful but in reality they are less than worthless.

Design is a process

Producing a truly good design involves:

A collaborative process with the client in which you understand their organisation and vision for the site.
Usability testing with end users to see how they respond to different design approaches.
An understanding of the competition and how they present themselves online.
Detailed analysis of brand guidelines and other marketing collateral.
An iterative process where a design is refined and evolved through a number of stages.
A solid grasp of other external factors which may impact the look and feel, including accessibility, technology constraints and internal business factors.

At the proposal stage of a project you have little or no communication with the client, have undertaken no usability testing and have little in the way of background information on the company and their objectives.

Everybody loses

Of course many clients see things differently. They want to see what the design agency is capable of “creatively”. Of course the web design agencies are all too aware of this and so the designs produced are often not realistic. Instead the designs become part of the sales process and are more about selling than providing a viable solution. The emphasis is on “looking cool” and “creating impact” rather than tackling the harder to understand issues of accessibility, usability and business objectives. Showmanship replaces substance and everybody loses.

The client loses because they are being shown the superficial rather than a real world solution.

The design agency loses because even if they win the project they will almost certainly have to throw out the initial design work done as being unfeasible.

If you are in the process of issuing an invitation to tender, seriously consider whether you need to ask for speculative designs. Instead, take the time to review the web design agencies portfolio and speak to their clients. Far more can be learnt from accessing their “final designs” on actual sites than can ever be gleaned from a design produced with the single objective of selling you their services!

Check out the NO!SPEC campaign

Podcast 22: How your website sells

Posted in Classic shows on February 6, 2006 by Paul Boag

Whatever your website is about, it has to sell something. From selling an idea to a product or service, every site has its place in the sales process. This podcast looks at what that process is and how your website plays its part.

Podcast: Download (23.8MB)