Tag Archives: strategy

How to improve your site using stakeholder interviews

Posted in Web strategy on by Paul Boag

Most websites are more than a marketing tool. It is therefore important that other stakeholders outside of marketing get a say about the future of your site.

I recently wrote a post talking about the importance of thoroughly researching business objectives before starting your next web project. Although the post focused on expert reviews, heuristic evaluation, stats and competitive analysis, it did make passing reference to stakeholder interviews.

For Headscape, stakeholder interviews are a crucial tool in our web design arsenal. But what exactly is a stakeholder interview, why should you bother with them and how do you run one anyway? These are the questions I wish to address here starting with what a stakeholder interview is.

What is a stakeholder interview?

A stakeholder interview is a semistructured discussion held with any individual with a vested interest in the success of the web project you are undertaking. That may be somebody who works directly on the website (such as a content editor) or other individuals within the organisation who rely on the website to achieve their business objectives (such as departmental heads).

Stakeholder interviews do not need to be limited to people within the organisation. Stakeholders can also include prominent customers or suppliers who rely on the website to do business with your company.

Typically these interviews last for approximately one hour and are held on a one-to-one basis.

Although they have a simple format, they can prove an invaluable tool for setting the scope of the future web project.

Why stakeholder interviews are so valuable.

You would be forgiven for mistaking stakeholder interviews as an unnecessary step that delays a web project from beginning in earnest.

Although it is fair to say that not every project requires stakeholder interviews, we found that in large organisations with complex projects, they are invaluable.

In this type of situation they provide 3 benefits.

  • They bring us (the web design agency) up to speed with organisational requirements. When faced with a complex business model in a new sector, stakeholder interviews are an invaluable way of understanding the unique requirements of a client. Through speaking to stakeholders we learn about the sector and organisation, while also identifying how the website can help meet business needs.
  • They provide a more complete perspective on the role of a web project. Most web projects within large organisations will impact on work being done by numerous parts of the business. To fully understand the role of any new web project it is important to discuss it with all parties. Often these projects are commissioned by a single department such as marketing who have a particular perspective on the projects objectives. By talking to all the stakeholders you ensure that the web project helps rather than hinders others within the organisation.
  • They are politically advantageous. Unfortunately internal politics is a reality of most large organisations. This means when it comes to most web projects there are no shortage of people who want their voice to be heard. Stakeholder interviews provide them with an environment where they can express their opinions and feel they have been listened to. We have found this goes a long way to diffusing potential conflicts further down the line.

In short, well run stakeholder interviews ensure your web project has clearly defined goals which will benefit everybody in the organisation, while at the same time achieving buy-in from all parties.

With the potential benefits so obvious, the next question then becomes; how do you run a successful stakeholder interview?

How to run a successful stakeholder interview.

At first glance running a stakeholder interview is simple. It is just a matter of sitting down with the stakeholder and running through a series of questions in an informal discussion. Of course as we all know things are never as easy as they first appear.

Getting the most out of a stakeholder interview takes a degree of practice. Nevertheless there are some things you can do to improve the chances of success. The most important of these is to ensure you have a damn good set of questions.

The importance of your questions.

In my experience your questions need to fall into 3 categories.

  • Questions about the person. These should focus on the person’s role, responsibilities and objectives. This will help you identify ways that the current web project could help them.
  • Questions about the organisation. The focus here should be on companywide business objectives and the character of the organisation. Knowing the organisation’s business objectives will help inform the focus of your web application. Understanding the organisation’s character will influence the branding and aesthetics of the website.
  • Questions about the website. This is the opportunity for participants to express their feelings and frustrations about the website. This normally consists of things that they do not like, and elements they would like to see on any future site.

Having a good set of questions helps a huge amount. That said, it is important not to be constrained by your pre-prepared questions.

Allow tangents.

The best way to look at your questions is as a starting point for discussion. A stakeholder interview is not a survey but rather a discussion between 2 individuals.

It is important that the conversation is allowed to evolve naturally, which may mean setting aside the questions and following a particular train of thought.

This is important for 2 reasons. First, these tangents often lead to interesting insights that would otherwise be overlooked. Second, it is important that the stakeholder has the opportunity to express whatever he or she wants. These “pain points” often deserve particular attention and even when they do not it is important that the stakeholder feels you have listened to their concerns.

The need to let everybody express all they wish to is one of the reasons that stakeholder interview should always be one-on-one.

Ensure they are one-to-one meetings.

Stakeholder interviews do not work well if treated like a committee or focus group. The problem is that group meetings radically shift the dynamic as one or 2 dominant individuals monopolise the conversation. This has 2 consequences.

First, the dominant individuals tend to be fairly senior and so people do not wish to disagree with them. This means that they tend to get agreement from the rest of the group and use that consensus to amplify their own opinions.

Second, quieter participants don’t have the opportunity to express their opinions. This means that not only do you miss out on their contribution, but they also feel resentful that nobody listened to them.

There is a hidden benefit to these one-on-one meetings. By meeting with people individually you are the only person that has the entire picture. This makes it much easier for you to propose a way forward without it turning into design by committee.

Finally, it is also worth noting that one-to-one meetings offer an opportunity for anonymity.

Keep things anonymous.

The turning point in many stakeholder interviews is when the interviewee gets up and closes the office door and lowers their voice.

When the stakeholder feels that they can share information in confidence, it often leads to revealing insights. These can dramatically change your perspective on the web application you are building.

It is important to ensure the anonymity of those sharing. This means when reporting back, names should not be mentioned even if you shared some of the comments they confided.

For somebody to feel confident enough to share this kind of sensitive information, they need to know you are truly listening to what they are saying.

Balancing listening and speaking.

The primary objective of any stakeholder interview is to get the interviewee talking. It is therefore important not to do too much of the talking yourself.

That said there is a balance to be found here. Without a doubt, good listening skills are vital. Nevertheless, engaging discussions encourage more creative thinking and great ideas.

The interviewer should act as a sounding board for the stakeholder. The stakeholder should do most of the talking, but the interviewer should not be afraid to express opinions or suggest ideas.

A powerful tool

Hopefully this post has demonstrated that done correctly stakeholder interviews can be a powerful tool in defining the shape of a web project.

I believe that they are particularly beneficial when considering broader web strategy that will have an impact across the entire business.

Where once a website was just a marketing tool, now it is a crucial component in everything from recruitment to delivering products and services. As a result it is important that all stakeholders are adequately consulted.

No plans to redesign your site? Now is the time to hire a web design agency.

Posted in Web strategy on by Paul Boag

Many website owners hire their web design agency at the wrong time. Instead of hiring a web designer when you need work done, hire them when you don’t!

Traditionally website owners hire a web design agency when they are unhappy with their website and have the budget to do something about it. However, I have come to believe that the best time to hire a web design agency is when budgets are tight and you are reasonably happy with your website.

Am I mad? Well, possibly. However, let me explain my logic.

Flaws with the traditional model

Image of a web designer reluctant to stop working on a website

prodakszyn, Shutterstock

My madness began with a belief that the current way most website owners engage with web design agencies is wrong. Normally things work something like this…

  1. The website owner becomes unhappy with his site and decides things need to change.
  2. He concludes the site needs redesigning and so writes a brief before asks web agencies to pitch for the work.
  3. The agencies respond and one is selected for a expensive redesign of the site.
  4. The agency throws out the old site and builds a new one.
  5. The website owner pays the web agency and they go their separate ways.
  6. Slowly the site decays as the business changes and new features/content is added.
  7. Sometime later the website owner becomes dissatisfied again and the process repeats.

This approach of sporadic redesign is flawed for a number of reasons…

  • It is wasteful because it throws out the old site and begins again every few years.
  • It is financial painful as a considerable budget has to be found for each redesign.
  • The website owner defines the project alone without the advice and support of a web expert.
  • The user is confused by a dramatic change in the website. This often causes hostility (take for example the campaign against Facebook’s redesign).
  • Choosing the right agency is a huge risk thanks to the large financial commitment involved.
  • The chosen agency lacks the in-depth knowledge of the business required to create a successful website.
  • The site quickly degrades as the business begins to add new content and features. This means that for much of its life the site reflects badly on the business.

Surely there is a better way.

Working in long term partnership

The answer is for the website owner and web agency to work in a much more fluid, dynamic and ongoing relationship. This solves a lot of the problems with the existing system.

Instead of sporadic redesign with its intrinsic waste and enormous one off expenditure, you have an ongoing development process that is constantly tweaking and evolving the website.

Because both parties are working together regularly it gives the agency a chance to really understand the business drivers for the website and how the web can help meet organisational needs.

In turn it gives the website owner the opportunity to build confidence in the agency, so the next time a big project come along there is no risky decision about selecting a supplier.

Most importantly this partnership ensures the website is constantly being given attention, and that the website owner has an outside perspective when making crucial decisions. It also allows him to benefit from the agencies expertise and experiences cultivated from working on other sites.

Of course some of you may have an in-house team that fulfils this role. However do they really?

But we have an in-house team

In theory if you have an in-house web team there should be no need for a web agency who provides an ongoing collaborative role. However in my experience there is a big difference between theory and practice.

Most of the web teams I encounter are unable to fulfil this role for two reasons that are entirely beyond their control…

They are overworked

I am yet to encounter a web team who are not overworked. They are developing new features, dealing with support queries, adding new content and doing endless day-to-day tasks that prevent them from looking at their website from a strategic viewpoint.

Having an outside expert with whom they can discuss the future direction of their site is invaluable. Not only does it help maintain a broad vision, it also ensures that things stay on track and strategy doesn’t get crowded out by day-to-day details.

Let me give you an example. At Headscape we have an outside advisor called Brian who joins us at our board meetings. He serves three roles…

  • He provides an outside perspective that comes from working with many different companies like our own.
  • He forces us to look strategically at our business rather than discussing the delivery of our latest piece of client work.
  • He holds us accountable and will challenge us if we fail to do what has been agreed at previous meetings.

I would argue that every web team needs somebody like Brian.

They miss design details

Most web teams don’t have a full time designer. They are normally made up of content people, project managers and techies. In some way this is understandable. Once a design is set it normally doesn’t need to change very much.

However with the web team focused on content and features there is nobody ensuring the design is maintained. Changes to a website can undermines the consistency in a design that makes a website trustworthy. Suddenly things stop lining up, buttons are styled in different ways and the slick professional feel falls away.

It is also important to remember that design dates very quickly online because of the speed of innovation. It’s therefore important that somebody is keeping an eye on these design details if a major periodic redesign is to be avoided.

So presuming I have sold you on this alternative approach, how does it work practically?

How it works in practice

The key to this approach is one lifted from agile development and is built around a monthly meeting.

Whether our meeting needs to be monthly, weekly or quarterly is entirely up to you. That decision should be based on how much your website changes. For a busy website that is continually being developed you will need frequent reviews. For a more informational site that rarely changes, once a quarter maybe enough. What matters is that the meetings are regular.

The meeting themselves will focus on two areas.

Strategic aims – These meetings are a chance to step back and look at the bigger picture of what you are trying to achieve through the site. This discussion may raise questions (such as what is the competition doing?) or it may identify weaknesses that need addressing. However, whatever the case it is an opportunity to get out of the trenches and see the bigger picture.

Immediate goals – Each meeting should end with a series of immediate goals that need to be achieved before the next meeting. These are practical ‘next step’ actions. They might include a review of the competition or an A/B test on some piece of content. The point is to have some concrete ways of achieving the more strategic goals.

Some of the work to be done will fall to the outside agency, others to the website owner. There may also be times when a third party is required for certain work. Whoever does the work it has to be completed by the next meeting.

This timescale constraint prevents large, time consuming projects that often stall or slip. Instead each development cycle will focus on a few quick fixes.

At the next meeting the actions are reviewed to see if they have been completed before the next steps are set. Once that is done the next meeting is scheduled… and so on.

No strings attached

What is great about this ‘one development cycle at a time’ approach is that it limits the commitment the website owner have towards their agency. If the website owner wished, they could have a single session with an agency and decide never to schedule another meeting if they particularly disliked them.

Equally they could schedule a few meetings and then swap to another agency to gain fresh perspective if the original agency is not coming up with the goods.

Finally, they could choose not to use the web agency for all the work within a development cycle, but to do most of it in-house or even use a student!

There is no contract and no massive expenditure. It is the cost of the next meeting and nothing more.

Of course this is also great in the current economy where management is carefully controlling expenditure. Getting a large redesign approved maybe impossible. However, paying for an hour long meeting once a month is more achievable. The website owner gets all of the expertise of an outside agency, without the long term commitment or big budgets.

Take the first step today

The great thing about this approach is that you can start it today, even if you have no redesign planned and no real budget for your site.

If you have an existing web design agency, give them a call and ask whether you can schedule the first of a monthly meeting to discuss your website. Explain that you are happy to pay for their time, but you want to keep things light weight and flexible. Chances are they will be willing to accommodate you. If they or not, then perhaps it is time to look elsewhere.

If you’re existing agency can’t or won’t help then feel free to drop me an email at Headscape. Personally I relish the opportunity to work with clients regularly and ensure their site finds long term success rather than yet another redesign.

5 'New' Skills that Every Web Designer Needs to Know

Posted in Talks on by Paul Boag

What does it mean to be a web designer? The chances are its a lot more than you think. As the web becomes increasingly complex so do our clients demands.

The world of web design is changing at a scary rate. Where once all we needed was Photoshop and Frontpage [joke], now we have to endure list posts like this one telling us to learn more than ever. It is kind of depressing really.

Of course one option is to specialise. You can intentionally limit your expertise to one area and turn down work outside of that specialism. Although there are a lot of advantages to this approach it is not an option for most web designers.

Many of us are not able to turn away work even if we wanted. What is more our clients tend to presume we know ‘everything about the web’.

For the majority of us we have to continue being generalists. This involves expanding our knowledge into ever more diverse areas.

From my perspective there are 5 skills you would not traditionally associated with the role of web design that are becoming increasingly important. These are…

  • Marketing
  • Copywriting
  • Contextual awareness
  • Strategy
  • Psychology

Let us look at each in turn.

1. Marketing

Increasingly website owners are grasping that their online marketing strategy has to be about more than their website. The ‘build it and they will come’ mentality has gone and they realise that their website is the hub for a broader strategy.

 

businessman drawing a website schema in a whiteboard

Helder Almeida, Shutterstock

Understanding SEO

At the most basic level clients expect us to have an understanding of SEO. Unfortunately their expectations in this area are often unrealistic (“I need to be number one on the term ‘Internet’”). It is our job to educate them about the reality of SEO.

Of course to do that we need to understand the area ourselves. What is best practice within SEO? What impacts does SEO have on usability, accessibility and copy?

However, SEO is not the only consideration. Increasingly clients are recognising the power of social media.

Advising on Social Media

An increasing number of website owners are looking to engage their target audience through the use of social media. They see their target audience gravitating towards services like Youtube, Facebook and Twitter so wish to reach them there.

However as with SEO their knowledge is limited. Often when they try they make horrendous mistakes. Even big brands have suffered from this problem as is apparent from the recent Skittles and Nestle incidents.

Once again they need help and so turn to us. We need to have a clear understanding of community engagement. We need an understanding of how to deal with conflict, encourage participation and spur users into action.

2. Copywriting

Probably the most important new skill we need to learn as designers is copywriting. Let’s face it, most websites have crappy copy.

The majority of that copy is down to the client and so we tend to wash our hands of it. However, not all of it is the client’s responsibility.

Who writes those little pieces of microcopy that appear across the websites we design? You know, the error messages, section headings, instructional text and button labels. Normally it is the web designer.

The problem is that the words we use can have a massive impact on usability, comprehension and conversion. Take for example 404 pages. Other than web designers who the hell knows what a 404 page is?

404 error page from Wufoo.com

It is not just us that needs to learn to write better copy. The client does as well. The question is who will teach them? Once again the burden falls to us.

Setting aside the issue of whether a designer is the best person to teach copywriting (an issue I address later), often there is nobody else. We therefore need to understand the principles of writing for the web and indeed more general copywriting techniques. In particular I think we need to help the client establish consistency and tone in their copy. After all we have worked hard to project the right tone in our design.

3. Contextual awareness

There was a time when you could make certain assumptions about how somebody was accessing a website. The chances were they used a desktop computer and sat at a desk.

However, things have changed. Now they could be using a netbook on the sofa or a mobile phone at the bus stop. This has a profound effect on how we design websites. We need to be contextually aware. We need to understand how both environment and device alters the way people interact with a website.

Child using her phone to access the web on a train

JJ pixs, Shutterstock

The impact of environment

Do you take time to consider the environment in which users are likely to be encountering your website? Do you understand how these environmental differences could impact behaviour?

For example a mother with a new born baby may be accessing the web from a home computer. However, her environment could well be far from perfect. Her child could be crying. She may be sleep deprived. These things impact how easily she can use your website.

The impact of the device

With a growing number of devices accessing the web we need to consider a greater number of factors that influence the users interaction. Screen size, functionality and input devices are just three examples.

When a user could be using a touch screen, a keyboard or a mouse to interact with your website, it makes designing the user interface much harder.

If we are to survive in this multi-device, multi-environment age we need to better understand how these contexts alter the user’s interaction. For example, when was the last time you did user testing that happened in the users normal environment or navigate a website with just a keyboard.

Of course your clients may not want to invest in supporting multiple devices or users who access the web ‘on the road’. They maybe right when they say that it doesn’t justify the investment. On the other hand they might be missing the bigger picture. In which case it is down to you to help.

4. Strategy

So many clients do not really know why they have a website or how to measure its success. They hire you without understanding that the website should be apart of a broader strategy. Often it falls to us to guide them through the process.

 

Vision Success From Goal and Idea in 3d kentoh, Shutterstock

This means we need to brush up on our business strategy skills. We need to be able to help our clients:

  • set business objectives,
  • identify target audiences,
  • establish success criteria,
  • decide on calls to action

It strikes me as insane that many organisations do not already have these things defined. However, they do not.

The question is do you feel prepared to guide users through the process? Are you confident in talking about market segmentation or business analysis? If not then it is time to broaden your horizons.

5. Psychology

My final skills may well be the most important of all (yes I know I said that about copywriting). It is certainly the skill you will use more than any of the others.

In order to be effective web designers these days, we need a good understanding of psychology.

For a long time psychology has been a part of our job. Designing usable websites requires an understanding of how users think and complete tasks. However, it is no loner enough to create websites that are merely usable. Increasingly we are looking to create sites that make users passionate and engaged. That takes a deeper understanding of what makes people tick.

Selective focus on the word psychology. Mark Poprocki, Shutterstock

A good grasp of human psychology goes further than just design and usability. If you understand how people think it can also help with building and engaging communities. It allows you to write better copy, promote your services and win more pitches.

Our role almost exclusively involves understand and engaging with people. Whether users, clients or colleagues, if we understand how they think we can motivate them into taking action. We can convince and persuade, nudging them in the direction we wish to go.

To survive in the modern world of web design we need to really understand the human condition so we can use it to our advantage.

How do I learn all this stuff?

By this point you are probably feeling somewhat overwhelmed. How the hell do you get your head around all of this new stuff on top of everything else.

It’s a fair question and I have no easy answer. However, I would suggest one thing: Do you really need to read yet another CSS article or watch another Photoshop tutorial? Do you need to attend a conference about the latest jQuery techniques or would your time be better spent broadening your horizons.

I rarely read anything about HTML, CSS or Javascript anymore. I do enough to keep up-to-date but other than that my reading is not normally web design related.

I read books on business theory, follow blogs on customer service and listen to audiobooks about marketing.

The problem is that the web design community (like any community) can become very isolated by all talking to one another and regurgitating the same old stuff. If we want to meet the needs of our clients, we must start looking further afield for our education.

Is this unreasonable?

You may suggest it is unreasonable to expect one individual to learn all of this. The answer is yes it is. However, that does not change the reality that this is what our clients want and expect.

Clients are looking for a one-stop-shop. They are not looking to deal with multiple suppliers and the associated work of managing different companies. Obviously this is a generalisation and I am not arguing against specialising.

I am however saying that we all need a broad knowledge in todays marketplace.

Does that mean we need a deep knowledge of marketing or copywriting? No it does not. However, it does mean we need to know enough to point our clients in the right direction. Sometimes that might be us suggesting solutions, sometimes it might be us recommending an expert. However, without some knowledge on our part we cannot make those judgements.

So if you want to delight your clients and deliver above and beyond what they get from the competition, it is time to broaden your knowledge.

SXSW a unique experience

Posted in News on by Paul Boag

For me SXSW is a unique experience. Nothing is quite like it. In this post I ask why it is so special and look at how you can recreate the experience.

This is my fourth year at SXSW Interactive and it is without a doubt unlike any other conference. There is something special about it and I want to take a few moments to look at why it is unique and how you can recreate its benefits, even if you cannot attend in person.

Will you learn stuff? Probably not.

Like most web conferences SXSW is not primarily about learning stuff. If like us you read a lot online and follow many of the figures who speak at SXSW, then most of what you hear will not be new.

If all you want to do is learn, then there are quicker and cheaper ways of doing so.

Why go then?

If you are not necessarily going to learn a lot at SXSW, then why go?

Setting aside the warm weather, great steak and outrageous parties, there are still a lot of good reasons to attend.

An insight into how others work

There are lots of opportunities to see how others work. Whether it is in a panel or a conversation you have in a bar, there are endless insights into other people’s working practices.

This is incredibly important. There are not many other opportunities to see the wireframes of great designers or how top name agencies deal with difficult clients. Getting to peak behind the scenes of other people’s practices is extremely enlightening.

Time to dream

When was the last time you just sat and thought about your business and how it could be improved? When was the last time you chatted with somebody else about how you could do your job better?

SXSW provides a unique opportunity to step out of day to day work and consider more strategic issues that are often overlooked. Its hard to dream dreams when overwhelmed by demanding clients and pressing deadlines.

Your clients might not like you going away for 5 days but in the long run they will thank you.

Because SXSW lasts longer than most conferences it gives you time to think and dream about your own business and websites. Combined with stimulating speakers this extra time is invaluable.

Time to talk and share

Of course this extra time is also valuable for meeting people too. It can be hard to make new friends over a 1 or 2 day conference but SXSW provides more opportunity.

These new acquaintances maybe valuable business partners or just somebody to bounce ideas around with. Whatever the case, meeting people is what makes SXSW so special.

Paul and Andy Budd talking

Being reassured

SXSW is also a great opportunity to be reassured about your own abilities. Sometimes the most satisfying talks are those that tell you what you already know. These prove to you that you are doing a good job.

Even better are the talks where other web designers admit their mistakes. I have also had many conversations in bars where I was relieved to discover others face the same challenges in their business that I do.

An opportunity to go deeper

Another great aspect about the sheer size and duration of SXSW is the ability to delve deeper into some issues. For example where other conferences have one talk on usability SXSW has many, all of which examine in detail one particular aspect of the subject.

SXSW has mainstream talks but it also has niche subjects too like designing for the middle east or the challenges of being black and a web designer.

You just don’t get this breadth and depth in other web conferences.

Be inspired

Finally, and most importantly, SXSW inspires you. Whether it is a talk that rekindles your love for a subject or a passionate conversation over steak, you will go away excited.

It is easy to become demoralised and overwhelmed by daily grind. SXSW renews your enthusiasm for the career you have chosen.

But I cannot go to Austin!

You might be reading this and feeling completely demoralised. For you, there maybe no chance of ever attending SXSW. If that is the case do not despair. Although SXSW is ‘awesome’ (as the american’s would say), there are other ways of capturing its benefits.

Why not try some of the following…

  • Attend meetups – Many of things I have listed above can be achieved just as well by attending local meetups. You will meet great people, get to exchange war stories and be reassured that you are doing things the right way.
  • Go on a retreat – Every once in a while go away for a weekend. Turn off your mobile phone and go somewhere with no web access. Spend the weekend reading books, watching videos and listening to podcasts on web design. Give yourself time to dream and think strategically without the distraction of everyday work.
  • Find a sounding board – At Headscape we are lucky to know the guys over at Clearleft. We often chat about how we run our companies, sharing experiences and techniques. Find somebody you can share with and exchange ideas.

    • Go to workshops – Although conferences are great, consider attending the occasional workshop. These provide lots of opportunity for discussion, but also delve deeper into issues than a conference could.

Moving on from milk

This years SXSW has also encouraged us make some changes to Boagworld.

Since the beginning of the show we have tried to make it accessible to all, even to those just starting out. We have kept things simple and focused on the basics like accessibility, usability and good design.

We feel that it is time to move on from this baby food to something a bit more substantial. We want to start pushing you and challenging you to move on to ‘solid food’.

We are going to do this by delving deeper into subjects than we have done before. We are also going to share some of the processes we use at Headscape that allow us to work on large complex projects.

By doing so we hope to inspire and encourage you to stretch yourself and take your websites to the next level.

What about you?

So what about you? Would you like to attend SXSW? Have you been and what did you get out of it? If you cannot attend a massive conference like SXSW, what methods do you use to keep motivated and informed? We would love to hear in the comments.

Your Starter For Ten: 10 things never to leave out of a web design brief

Posted in Web strategy on by Andy Wickes

Writing a web design brief that is genuinely useful is extremely hard. In this post Andy Wickes takes you through the process to ensure your web designer is as informed as possible.

Brief writing really is a tricky skill to master.

Some agencies like to receive a brief that gives a steer as to the feeling, tone and style of a creative project. Others are far more concerned with the minutiae. And some prefer to write their own briefs based on a consultation with the client.

There is no right and wrong way to draw up a brief, save for the fact that good briefs will provide clear and detailed guidance to an agency, and in doing so produce good results. Bad briefs will do the reverse, wasting time and money and no doubt fraying nerves and tempers to varying degrees.

Web projects in particular have peculiarities all of their own, and in my experience this is for two reasons.

  • Firstly they are a hybrid of pure design and technology. Most project managers will be well versed at briefing in creative projects such as print, but not all will have had experience in web projects.
  • Secondly, it is often hard to know what level of detail to provide a web development agency when it comes to your technical requirements. Should all the guidance come from the agency? How do you know what you want when you have never been in this position before?

The simple answer is you can’t. But you can still write a detailed brief by following these simple steps, and vitally by knowing your own business. Whether you have managed a web project before or not, you will always know a lot more about what you do and don’t want than you might think. Crucially, don’t focus on the technical detail at the expense of the obvious. The list below might form the basis of your briefing document, with all the detail specific to your project tacked on as additional points.

In no particular order, here are ten ‘ignore them at your peril’ tips that any relative novice to a web project ought never to exclude from a brief.

As ever, we’d love to hear yours, so be sure to add them to the comments at the bottom of the page.

1. Budget

There really is no benefit in withholding something as crucial as this, and yet very often that is the case. If you don’t have a fixed budget then perhaps specify a price bracket that you are comfortable with – “between £10,000 – £15,000.” The real reason an agency will want to see a budget is so they can better tailor their recommendation to your expectations. It may be that the best solution to your problem is a site with online ordering, or perhaps a community forum, but if this is not within budget it is therefore discounted. With this, as with every other element of a briefing document, it makes so much sense to be open and honest. It will save you a lot of time in the long run.

Image of Monopoly Board

2. What do your users want?

It might sound like a simplistic statement, but it is rare brief indeed that is written from the perspective of the users. More often a website is built based on what the client wants the public to see of them and their services, rather than thinking of how the site might better aid their customers or prospects. Again, this is a simple wrong that you can right just by knowing your business. Speak to your customers and get them involved in the briefing process. Ask them how your new website might improve your working relationship? Could it offer functionality to make processes easier? Ask as many of your customers as you are able and I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised as to how keen they generally are to be consulted in such a process. When you put this down in writing to your agency, think about creating a pen portrait of your typical customer. Typically what are they like, what do they do with their spare time and their spare money. Bring them to life a little.

Image of girl with sign that says I want to...

3. What do your staff want?

Again, very often overlooked. If you work in a medium to large sized organisation, I would put money on it that you will have numerous processes that could be made easier or even automated by the clever use of a website or an online application. And all you have to do is take the time to consult your staff and bring them into the project planning process. Perhaps you have staff who spend time posting details to customers – this could be handled online with a support section or with downloadable documents. For companies of 50 staff and over I’d strongly suggest consulting all team leaders or managers as to how a website could free up their staff’s time, allowing them to focus on other more vital tasks. You need to ensure that by the time you consult an agency to design and build your site you have considered every way in which that site can streamline back office functions.

Image of company HQ

4. What Sites You Like

And not just a page of links please. Do some structured online research of what websites might be useful to present to the agencies. This should not be seen solely as a beauty contest where you just present designs that you like. Try to find sites that meet some pre-determined criteria. For instance:

  • Links to your competitors’ sites
  • Which of these have clever functionality (which, what, and why is it of interest?)
  • What sites have design features that I like (any sites, what features do you like and why)
  • What sites have a photographic style that you like?
  • Any sites that have a typographic style / tone of voice that appeals

In all cases be as specific as you can as to what it is that appeals to you about the sites you list, being mindful at all times as to how these design features or functions will benefit your users, rather than letting your own preferences get the better of you. If your marketing team have a style guide detailing how your branding must be used then that will clearly need to be sent to your agency before they put together designs.

BBC homepage

5. How Do You Update Your Site?

Copywriting book

It’s a given that a site that is regularly updated with useful and interesting content will attract attention and drive brand allegiance. This much we know. So with that in mind you need to think practically about how you and your business plan to produce this content. As Paul Boag has pointed out, as a project manager your role needs to be one of a ‘brand evangelist,’ encouraging people at your organisation to get behind the website and to produce content and ideas that keep it fresh and engaging. Being clear about what content you are able to produce, what content you need to produce, and specifically who will be doing it, will be invaluable when you scope out what Content Management System you require. It will also help you put in place a web editor or editorial team within your organisation that is already gathering material ready for launch, while the site is still in production.

Do you have any provision in house to resize graphics? Can you source and edit photography if you need to update images? If not then you will need to be mindful that your agency doesn’t produce a design that relies on retouched photography that you can’t maintain. All this detail is, as I hope you can see, crucial.

6. Content Management Systems

Now it’s quite possible that you have either never even heard of branded Content Management Systems, or if you have your experience of using them might be limited. And that’s fine. Being realistic about exactly what level of control you require over a site is fundamental to ensuring that you (a) get the system that is right for you and (b) save money by not developing unnecessary features. So often I hear that question asked ‘What level of control do you want over your sites contents?’ to which the reply is always the same – ‘total control.’ The questions ought to be ‘what level of control do you really need over your sites’ content?’ Hopefully you now know exactly what content you will be producing in which case you will know what level of CMS edibility you must have, and any further functionality you can afford is a bonus. This level of detail is essential for an agency to accurately price, and there is little point in them spending weeks (as they may do) constructing a CMS where only a small percentage of its capabilities are actually used.

Here more than anywhere the devil is in the detail. Think about exactly what control you need. Is it just over text? Do you need to update images? If so, on what pages? Do you need to add files for download, create links, create pages, restructure pages, display news or content from third party sites or provide a facility for customers to comment or get in touch? Don’t assume that any of the above comes as ‘standard’ with any website. Granted they are common requests, but if you are to give clear instructions to an agency, and vitally get value for money, think about exactly what you want well in advance.

WordPress.org

7. Timings

OK, another obvious one. And one that is common to any endeavour right? Building a website, producing a brochure or building a shed. You need to know what is involved and when it’s needed. But websites still often catch people out. More so than any other project they tend to invite opinions from all corners. Some advice to help you on your way with this one; be clear from the beginning who makes up the website project team at your organisation, what the process of approval is, and who is sourcing content. Note the last point. Who is sourcing content? Possibly the greatest cause of delays in web projects come from an under-appreciation of just how much time it takes to source images, text and quotes for the site. Bear in mind that this goes on alongside your day job. Ensure you allow time for sourcing the material and getting approval from your management team. You may also wish to show any new designs to customers to source some opinions from those people who matter most. Presenting accurate timings to an agency will result in a far smoother project. Agencies can anticipate work better, and therefore allocate the best resource to the project.

clock

8. Measure your Success

Has it worked? How will we know? Has it addressed the problem we had before, or do we have the same problem only with new pictures and copy? Put simply, this part of the brief will encourage you to distil precisely what the problem is that you are addressing with a new site. Then you need to address directly how you will judge whether the new site has been a success. That might be an increase in enquiries, newsletter signup, sales, visits or a drop in telesales calls as people rely on online ordering. Either way, be clear about this so you can put in place a method to record this data. It might be an analytics package that does this, or it might be training for telesales to encourage them to ask how a customer learnt of a promotion. Either way, this needs to be thought about in advance and communicated to the agency so they fully understand all factors they need to consider to achieve your goal, and then provide clear evidence of that.

Bar Chart

9. The Future

How do you see the site progressing in the years to come? This is another reason why it is so crucial to have a website working party within your organisation, and for you to encourage people to take part in the sourcing and publishing of new information. If you have a vision for the future of the site then communicate this to your agency, as they can not only make recommendations as to how this might be achieved, but they can also factor this in to their initial designs. Have you scheduled any surround activity that will promote the launch of the site? Perhaps you have PR launching, radio, advertising or e-marketing all set to coincide with the live date of the site. For goodness sake don’t keep this a secret as all of this will be crucial for you web agency to know.

Crystal Ball

10. What exactly is it that you do?!

Never assume that your agency will simply understand what it is that your business or product does! And never assume that they don’t need to know what you do because they are simply building a site from copy and images supplied. Take time to give a short(ish) description of what your business does. Explain what sets you apart from your competitors, and what is special about your approach to your work. Agencies will work with a lot of customers who each offer a variety of services, and once they understand exactly how your business operates you can benefit from their experience in servicing similar operations online.

Pile of smarties with one odd one

More advice

Writing a good brief is just one of the challenges faced by website owners. For more advice on everything from hiring a web designer to planning the long term future of your website, buy the Website Owners Manual by Paul.

Content is King

Posted in Site content on by Paul Boag

If ‘content is king’ then the designer is like the King’s tailor – there to make the King look fabulous without taking any of the limelight for themselves.

Just because content is king doesn’t mean, however, that the designer’s job is any less important. How seriously would people take the King if his suit was poorly made? It has to look good.

An unhealthy obsession with aesthetics

I’ve been a designer for 15 years and I started out with a very unhealthy obsession for aesthetics. It was always about how good, or trendy, or innovative a design was. Making it readable was just an irritating request from the copywriters.

Thankfully, I soon realised just how important content is and began to change the way I worked to suit. And quickly went from being obsessed with immitating every fashionable design going to really thinking about how messages should be presented. Which is pretty important, really, because the message is usually conveniently encapsulated in the copy – which should make it a lot easier to choose the right design style.

It sounds obvious now.

Are you weakening the message?

But I still see bucket loads of designs that don’t do the content any justice because they ignore it and go off and do their own thing.

They end up giving conflicting messages – weakening the overall effectiveness of the piece. I’ve seen many ill-conceived designs that probably damaged the brand that the designer should have been going out of their way to enhance.

The problem is, a lot of designers have a gaping hole in their CV that leads to this misunderstanding about the importance of content. They’re missing experience of working with copywriters.

I’ve been really lucky to have worked with loads of copywriters over the years. There’s one who I’m still in touch with today – who incidentally gave me a lift to my first interview for a design job.

He’s very talented and I learned a great deal from him. He’s very passionate about words – and grammar and punctuation – and it he had a positive influence on me very early on in my career.

These days I’m part of a small – and very active – design team supporting a very large and knowledgeable group of content people. We are a PR agency, so you’d expect a lot of writers! But the crucial thing for us is as an agency we seriously care about the quality of the content we produce for and on behalf of our clients. It can’t help but make a positive influence on our designs.

What can a copywriter  teach you?

So what can a copywriter teach a designer? Actually, a lot. A good writer will have done their research for a start. So the copy they’ve written should be looked at as an integral part of the design brief.

It should tell you in black and white how you should approach the design – regardless of whether it’s online or for print.

Copywriters also tend to know how to spell and, vitally, how to use grammar properly. If you’re a designer and you doodled through English lessons at school, you should do all you can to catch up on your grammar and spelling. A miss-placed apostrophe or hyphen could change the entire meaning of your piece. At which point you’ve failed as a designer.

It also makes proof reading much easier because you’ll actually know what to look for. Trust me when I say copywriters think dimly of designers who drop errors into headlines and don’t clean them up before passing the design back for checking. Learn from copywriters and you will end up with fewer mistakes in your designs as a result.

Copy can be frustrating

Even so, after all these years, I still find it a challenge to get the best out of the copy – maybe it’s the pressure of not mucking up the message. But I’m comfortable with that: setting high standards for the design with content taking the lead just adds to the challenge. Which adds to the fun. And design should be fun and challenging.

I really hope that gives some comfort to any designers who are afraid they’ll relinquish some kind of power by embracing content.

Copywriters aren’t totally perfect though. The big thing is that they tend not to be able to visualise their copy in situ while they are writing it. Certainly not in the same way a designer can.

I’ve often been frustrated that copy isn’t fit for the purpose of the design (the writers here do a great job by the way).

The classic one we’ve all had is when there’s too much copy. But there are new challenges – the online world is creating new rules for writers all the time; keyword optimisation and meta tagging are relatively new concepts for copywriters, as is the importance of micro-copy to usability.

Designers have a responsibility to appropriately present the message, but copywriters should be learning too. And to that end, if you’re going to learn from a copywriter, the learning process should be as mutually beneficial as possible.

Don’t expect too much, though. Copywriters are just wired differently and their primary focus should still be on what they’re absolutely best at – figuring out the right message and skillfully organising the words.

So, as a designer you should take the lead. The ultimate responsibility for the message carrier – which is your design – lies with you.

What you can do to improve your content

So, as well as befriending a good copywriter, what else can you do?

Read. Read everything. Read the free newspaper in the morning, the signs and ads on the bus. Or the back of your coffee cup. Read stuff you wouldn’t otherwise read – magazines and ads that aren’t aimed at you are brilliant at widening your design and copy horizons. And if you haven’t go it, get the internet on your phone. The hour I spend travelling to work and back each day is usually spent reading blogs and news stories, and following random links on Twitter – just out of curiosity. If you don’t travel far to work, get up half an hour earlier each day and grab a coffee. Reading lots will hard-wire correct spelling and grammar into your brain and get you used to seeing words in context. You’ll develop an instinct for what works – in terms of copy and designs. And you’ll learn mega amounts of other stuff as an added bonus.

Content really is the King – and it’s what your audience are REALLY interested in. Embrace it, tailor your designs to fit, and enjoy seeing the quality of your work improve immeasurably.

Website owners need more than web designers

Posted in Web strategy on by Paul Boag

Why is it many website owners are changing their web designer even when he or she has built them a great looking, usable website? What more are they looking for?

The prevailing wisdom within the web design community is that you should specialise. However, does that really make sense? Is that what website owners are looking for? I would argue it is not.

Website owners have an increasingly difficult job. Not only do they need to provide visitors with an engaging, usable and accessible website, they also have to interact with them through social media, great content and other online marketing channels.

Think about it for a moment. The most effective online strategies consist of at least the following elements…

  • An effective website
  • Email marketing
  • Google Adsense
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Youtube

Website owners also have to worry about…

  • Business strategy
  • User profiling
  • Competition analysis
  • Site promotion
  • Site analytics
  • Calls to action

The list could go on.

When faced with such a daunting task they do not want a specialist. What use is an expert in ruby on rails when faced with such a broad and complex set of issues?

The need for generalists

They need generalists. They need people who can advise them on the breadth of challenges they face.

The specialist argues that they can hire multiple specialists to handle these different areas. However, who brings the pieces of the puzzle together? The website owner? I would argue this is asking too much.

Large numbers of suppliers create serious logistical problems, not to mention the potential for shifting blame. Most website owners want a one stop provider who can advice them on the whole range of challenges they face.

Being a web designer in this new decade is about more than building websites. A web designer will need to have a good understanding of business practices, site analytics, marketing, copywriting, social media and more.

Admittedly those who advocate specialising encourage people to have a T shaped knowledge. In other words web designers should have a superficial knowledge of all areas and a deeper understanding of one.

Although I can see the value in this approach as a way to ensure you work well with other specialists, I do not think it will meet the needs of most website owners.

Web designers need a deeper understanding of a broader set of areas if we are to be of real value to their clients.

The alternative is that website owners themselves have to develop this level of knowledge and that is going to be difficult for anything other than a full time website owner.

How then can a web designer broaden his or her knowledge? The answer is simple – start exposing yourself to a great number of sources of information.

Broadening your knowledge

Web designers should of course be learning about the latest CSS techniques and jquery plugins. However, they should also be reading marketing blogs, business strategy books and even attending copywriting workshops.

Here are a few suggestions to start off the budding generalist…

I know what you are thinking – “I don’t have time for that.” Well I am sorry to break the news but you have picked the wrong job!

The web is one of the fastest moving industries on the planet and needs an incredibly broad set of skills. If you don’t have those skills or fail to keep them up-to-date then you will lose credibility. You need to make time.

At the end of the day it is simple. Our website owners are asking for advice on everything from design to facebook and if we don’t give it to them then somebody else will. That is the reality of a consumer culture.

Don't reduce your designers and developers to stereotypes

Posted in Working in web design on by Rob Borley

Rob Borley warns against reducing your designers and developers to stereotypes if you want to get the best work from them.

At Headscape I have the privilege of working with a group of very talented people. Both our development team and our design team are on top of their game and it makes my job of Project Managing a little more straight forward because of it. A big part of my job is getting the most out of both of these teams by facilitating them working together in the most effective way. I’m often asked questions like, “Who do you prefer to work with; designers or developers?” and “how does working with developers differ from working with designers?” So here is my inside track on this age old tussle. Designers or Developers?

Your stereotypical developer is a rather pale individual (as they are afraid of the outdoors) with no social skills. They come in two sizes; 9 stone weakling or 30 stone monster. They spent their childhood playing Dungeons and Dragons and have now matured to a level 70 paladin in World of Warcraft (usually playing as a member of the opposite sex). They were always picked last for any kind of sport and have spent every waking hour since they were twelve in front of a screen, in a room with no natural light, talking to their ‘friends’; online. 99% of all developers die a virgin. 1% are scared of the question, curl up into a ball, and cry.

Illustration of a code monkey

Image credit: JawboneRadio

Your stereotypical designer on the other hand is a charismatic, in your face, individual. Both confident and creative; a dangerous combination. They have lots of real world friends but are secretly hated by most of them. Constantly seeking inspiration they bore easily and become irritable as result. All designers, without exception suffer from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

A recipe for disaster

Putting these two groups together is not a good cocktail. Fortunately, these caricatures, in my experience, are not entirely accurate.

I’m actually loathe to put either designers or developers into boxes. From what I can tell they don’t seem to follow any discernible pattern in character traits. Some developers are quite introverted while others are quite the opposite. Some designers are sporty while others couldn’t catch a cold. Some developers enjoy the great outdoors while some designers find their inspiration in Second Life. In trying to manage the team I need to gather an understanding of them as individuals.

It’s important to understand how your team works. One individual will work most effectively when set a whole stream of tasks with a distant deadline and left to get on with it. While another will be more efficient given bite sized chunks and offered more consistent interaction and faster feedback.One member of your team will thrive on pressure and enjoy short timescales while another will need shielding from the realities of your deadlines and coaxing gentling into delivering on time. You may have an individual that needs to go for a walk regularly to be at peak productivity while another works most effectively if they get their head down and charge for 6 hours straight.

As a PM your goals are always the same. You need to deliver your project on time. However your route to your goal is dependant on the resources that you have available. Your number one resource is your team. Trying to force team members to all work the same way is counter productive and, while you may enjoy some success, is not sustainable.

The best route to goal

Get to know your team. Discover their quirks and eccentricities and use these to get the most out of them. I enjoy my role as a PM because, more than anything else, it’s a job about people. I guess this means that the answer to the question is that I really have no preference over designers or developers. I enjoy getting to know my team and discovering the best way to work with them as individuals.

I believe that this is the most effective way of getting the job done. And hopefully it makes for a better experience for all involved.

What about you?

So what about you? How do you work with designers and developers? What has experience taught you?

Maybe you are a designer or a developer? How have you been treated by clients and project managers? Have you been reduced to a stereotype that you resent?

161. In or Out

Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

On this week’s show: Paul announces Micro-Boagworld, we discuss the pros and cons of outsourcing web work and see what recommendation the Boagworld forum has to offer.

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Housekeeping

For a while I have been toying with the idea of doing a Micro-podcast that works in a similar way to Twitter but with audio. It would provide the opportunity to share hits, tricks and reviews too short for the main show. My problem was that I needed an application which made this as easy as posting a tweet. Anything more and it would prove too demanding.

Fortunately a new iPhone application has launched that does exactly that. Called AudioBoo it allows you to record 3 minute audio snippets that then get posted to a website, twitter, facebook and a podcast feed.

I am therefore pleased to announce Micro-Boagworld…

View Micro-Boagworld posts here

Subscribe to the RSS feed here

Boagworld AudioBoo Homepage

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News

Pricing and projects

Alyssa Gregory has written two good posts this week both relating to the pricing of web projects.

The first post tackles the notoriously difficult subject of How To Estimate Time For A Project. After all, time is money.

Estimating how long a project will take is tricky and although this post doesn’t provide any magic formulas it does provide good solid advice.

As well as considering the obvious deliverables Alyssa also recommends time for project management, reviewing work, debugging and client turn around. Finally, she recommends adding a buffer for the unexpected.

Of course, she doesn’t discuss how all of this time translates into your final price. How much you charge is a matter of conjecture. However, in a second post she does explore a related subject – How To Raise Your Rates.

In this post, she handles the sensitive subject of how to tell a client that you will be raising your rates for future projects. She suggests five techniques you should employ…

  • Give Notice
  • Set a schedule (make increases annual for example)
  • Make it fair (keep the increments small and manageable by the client)
  • Send it in writing
  • Balance it out (Balance your increase with an incentive – e.g. a special, a one-time discount)

Its all good advice and important too. As your skills and experience increase, you will need to ensure your rates reflect that. Knowing how to hand those rate increases is vital if you want to keep your clients happy.

IE8 and IE6

Microsoft have announced that IE8 will be released via the Windows Automatic Update starting on the third week of April.

The final version of the browser has been available since March and yet adoption has been sluggish. Hopefully Automatic update will change this trend significantly. However, it does not guarantee universal adoption. Although the update will be marked as important users will not be forced to upgrade. In fact Microsoft has released a blocker toolkit so corporate users can avoid the update entirely.

Worst of all, it is likely that the update will impact the numbers using IE7 more than IE6. IE6 users tend to be hold outs and are unlikely to upgrade now when they did not upgrade to IE7.

The only hope is that many IT departments have a policy of running a version behind the current release. If that is the case, the arrival of IE8 may encourage some of them to adopt IE7.

The entire web design community is keen to reduce its level of support for IE6 and hopefully this update will allow that. In fact, another post this week entitled – 10 Cool Things We’ll Be Able To Do Once IE6 Is Dead – points out just what a wonderful world it would be.

Once IE6 is gone we will be able to…

  • Use child selectors
  • Make full use of 24-bit PNGs
  • Use attribute selectors
  • Use a wider range of display properties
  • Use min-width and max-width
  • Throw away 90% of CSS hacks (and 90% of the reasons for needing them!)
  • Add abbreviations that everyone can see
  • Trust z-index again
  • Save time and money
  • Enjoy ourselves again!

Simple and impressive design techniques

Last week I was doing a consultancy clinic with a developer who wanted advice on designing his website. He was a great coder but did not have much experience designing.

Although I recommended The Principles of Beautiful Web Design by Jason Beaird it would have been great to point him at the latest Smashing Magazine post – 10 Simple and Impressive Design Techniques.

This post has some easy to implement techniques that are ideal for developers trying to improve their design skills. Techniques include…

  • Adding Contrast
  • Using Gradients
  • A Better Use of Colour
  • Improved Letter Spacing
  • Changing Case
  • Use of Anti-Aliasing
  • Adding Imperfections
  • Implementing blurring
  • Careful Alignment
  • Trimming the Fat

Read the whole articles for more details and great examples of these techniques in action.

Influencing user behaviour

A big part of good design is guiding the user to complete the actions you want. Influencing user behaviour can be achieved through a variety of techniques. However, it can often be hard to know where to begin.

One resource that might help you influence user behaviour is The Design with Intent Toolkit. This is essentially a printable ‘cheat sheet’ that suggests a variety of techniques you can apply to your projects.

The techniques do not just apply to web design but all aspects of design. Consequently not all of the techniques will apply. However a lot do, ranging from the use of metaphors to setting up good default options.

Some of the techniques contained in this cheat sheet are also beautifully demonstrated in another post I wanted to mention. Entitled 12 Excellent Examples of "Lazy Registration" it addresses the problem of user signup.

Essentially it is a post that showcases methods for getting around the problem of user registration. As the post itself says…

Signup forms have long irked the casual visitor. During the process of discovery, nobody wants to stop and fill out details before they can "unlock" the rest of the site’s potential.

It has certainly been my experience that signup forms are a barrier and so it is interesting to see how different web applications have overcome the problem.

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Feature: When to outsource web work

Your in charge of your organisations website. It has become moderately successful and now you have a decision. Do you hire a full time web designer or outsource to a web design agency?

Read the full article

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Listeners feedback:

In this week’s listener feedback section we look at a series of recommendations from the Boagworld forum…

A good introduction to Javascript

Jake writes: I’m curious as to whether or not anyone on the forum has strong opinions on a good introductory javascript book? And by introductory I mean something that’s more about initial learning steps such as syntax, etc. and then talks about best practices.

Doug answers: You might want to look at one of the books out for coding in jQuery, if you’re planning on going in that direction anyway. As for how to learn javascript I usually push people towards Lynda.com.

Matt also replies: Awesome book – DOM Scripting – I’d start with this before jQuery as I think you need some javascript knowledge to use jQuery to its fullest.

A good but free survey tool

Simon asks: I want to create some simple(ish) survey’s to get clients to fill out after a training session. I know of some paid for solutions, but does anyone have any suggestions for any free tools?

Laura replies: For something short, I’d use the survey function on PollDaddy. You can get up to 100 responses, and I think ten questions. Ten isn’t many, but you can do conditional branching for free, which is rare, and good.

I’ve also used SurveyMonkey before, it’s clean and simple.

A review of Clicktales

Peter shares his experiences of Clicktales…

On the recommendation of Paul, I tired out ClickTales.com; and I have to say the results have been interesting (sad, in my personal case) to say the least.

For those of you not in "the know", or missed episode 141, ClickTales is an app that lets you record and review the actions of your website’s visitors. And I’d agree with Paul: inexpensive, revealing, but limited in essence because you can witness what a user goes through.

In my case it was most effective because my results have been telling me that I should redesign my website’s structure completely… so I decided I should start from scratch all together and redesign. :)

Web Design for ROI

Bill reviews Web Design for ROI by Lance Loveday & Sandra Niehaus…

Each year I find one or two books that really stand out. This book, Web Design for ROI, changed the way I look at current eCommerce projects and helped me identify better strategies for building web sites.

Rich adds: I agree this is an excellent book.

Not too much new for a seasoned pro like myself, but I did still learn a fair bit and I’d recommend it to anyone with an interest in websites that make money.

Pro Paypal e-commerce

Finally, Ian shares an extensive review of the book ‘Pro Paypal e-commerce‘. Ian writes a very thorough review but here are a couple of highlights.

I thought this was a great read. It’s not often you finish a book and feel confident you have all the information you’re going to need to complete your project. The book isn’t just technical but also has lots of useful nuggets on business practices and background on payment systems in general for those that are unfamiliar with them at this level.

I feel confident in recommending this book to anyone who is involved with developing E-commerce systems or is going to be in the future. The author Damon Williams has a very readable style that is mercifully faux-humour free but never dull and explains everything clearly and concisely and despite its relatively low page count at 260 pages or so, still manages to cover a lot of ground without ever feeling as if it’s being too terse.

For more reviews about everything from web design books to software visit the Boagworld forum. We are also going to do some cool new stuff on the forum over the coming weeks. Keep an eye on it. We have already added a Jobs category for those of you who are looking to hire a web designer, so be sure to check that out.

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Three secrets to simplicity

Posted in User experience on by Paul Boag

Many website owners damage their sites by continually adding features and content when they should be simplifying. In this post I reveal why that happens and how to simplify your website.

In my post ‘5 options when website budgets get slashed‘ I explained that many organisations waste money adding ever more functionality and content to their sites when they should be simplifying. Unfortunately it is much easier to add content than take it away. But why is that?

The 3 lures of complexity

In ‘10 harsh truths about corporate websites‘ I outlined 3 reasons why website owners shy away from removing content…

  • A fear of missing something – By putting everything online website owners believe they are giving users easy access to everything they need to know. Unfortunately, with so much available, it is hard to find anything.
  • A fear users will not understand – Whether it is a lack of confidence in their site or their audience, many website managers feel the need to provide endless instructions to users. Unfortunately, users never read this copy.
  • A desperate desire to convince – Many website managers are desperate to sell their product or communicate their message. Text becomes bloated with sales copy that actually conveys little valuable information.

However, I think there is more to it than that. First, there is a general laziness. It is easy to leave content online. It takes effort to remove it. Second (and more importantly) there is a desire to please users. If a user asks for a feature or piece of content, we feel obliged to provide it.

3 questions that encourage simplicity

Adding functionality requested by users is not always a good idea. You need to ask 3 questions…

  • How many people are asking for it? – If only a few people request a piece of functionality, there may not be the demand to justify the time and money.
  • Who is asking for it? – If it is not being requested by your primary audience then you should probably not be building it.
  • How will it affect others? – With new functionality comes complexity. Will that functionality confuse some users? Will it distract from your main call to action?

What then do you do if your site has become overly complex? How do you achieve simplicity?

3 steps to achieving simplicity

According to ‘The Laws of Simplicity‘ there are three practical ways you can simplify anything, including your site. These are:

  • Remove elements
  • Hide elements
  • Shrink elements

Let’s look at how these steps work in practice.

1. Remove

Headscape Website

The first step to simplifying your site is removing unnecessary content. This is by far the hardest step for the reasons I have outlined above. However, it is necessary as Steve Krug explains in his book ‘Don’t Make Me Think.’ He identifies two benefits of removing content…

  • It reduces the noise level of your site
  • It makes the useful content more prominent

Removing content really does make a difference. We applied these principles to our own website at headscape.co.uk and saw a significant increase in conversions (those visitors who request a quotation for our web design services) and some amazingly positive feedback on the site itself.

In fact we took the principle so much to heart that we went from a 40+ page site down to a single page! Of course, that kind of radical approach is not for every site. However, even removing some content can make a huge difference.

2. Hide

Unfortunately, it is not always possible to remove as much as you wish. Sometimes you need to keep content to serve secondary audiences. That is where hiding content comes in.

It is important to cater for secondary users, but you do not want their content to distract or confuse your main target audience. Instead of removing their content, you can hide it deeper within your site or within the interface itself.

Menu on the Wiltshire Farm Foods website

An example of this is a recent homepage redesign we completed for Wiltshire Farm Foods. Most of their sales come from 6 categories of meals. However, they also offer a number of other categories. On their old homepage the 6 main categories were lost among the other categories. Users felt overwhelmed by choice and sales were lost.

One option would have been to reduce the number of categories to focus on the 6 big sellers. However, this would upset a sizeable secondary audience. So instead, we hid some of the categories under a show more link. This meant that their secondary users could still be served, without overwhelming the primary audience.

3. Shrink

Finally, there are occasions when content can be neither removed or hidden. This is often because the content is of critical importance to a secondary audience and needs to accessed quickly. In such cases the content can be shrunk.

Take for example University websites. Their primary audience is almost always prospective students. However, they also cater for staff and existing students. These people need quick access to intranet tools such as the institutions address book. The solution is to add a small inconspicuous link on the homepage that takes them quickly to this content. By keeping the link small (shrunk) the site serves their needs without distracting or confusing the primary audience.

A similar approach was used on the Wiltshire Farm Foods new homepage. However in this case the content was actually shrunk.

Because of the elderly demographic it was important that we provided lots of help to new users. We therefore wanted to dedicate a substantial amount of homepage real estate to meet their needs as they arrived. Our solution was this…

WFF get started guide

Unfortunately this became distracting once the users were familiar with the site. It became a usability hurdle. One solution was to remove it. However, this would make it impossible for users to refer back to if they became stuck. The next option was to hide the content elsewhere (for example in the help section). However, previous usability studies of this demographic showed they develop ‘habits’ in the way they navigate. If we moved these links that they relied upon, it could prove confusing.

Our final solution was to shrink the content. So instead of moving or removing it we simply collapsed it…

WFF get started guide, collapsed

This meant the content continued to be accessible but did not become a distraction or take up too much real estate.

Conclusion

Although the ideal scenario is to remove content, it is also possible to simplify in other ways.

This should not be mistaken as an excuse to avoid removing content. However, you could use hiding and shrinking as the first step towards removing. If these techniques do not alienate your users, then it maybe appropriate to remove that content entirely.

Whatever the case, we should all be looking for ways to improve our sites by simplifying rather than adding more and more content.

What's with the attitude?

Posted in Working in web design on by Paul Boag

We face many challenges as designers and developers – IE6, the fast pace or change, meeting the needs of disabled users. However, I am coming to believe that our biggest challenge is our own attitude.

This post started off as a bit of fun. It was going to be another spoof, this time in the form of a top 10 list of harsh truths. However, as I began writing I found myself actually believing many of the points. In the end I was forced to scrap that draft and start from scratch.

I am worried about how people see us as web designers. More than that, I am worried how we behave as web designers, both with our clients and towards one another.

Let me explain what I mean, starting with the more obvious and damaging area – our attitude towards clients.

Our attitude towards clients

I speak to a lot of web designers and in all of those conversations I rarely hear a positive word said about the people who keep us employed.

The overwhelming attitude towards clients is one of disdain. Oh, we hide our feelings reasonably well when dealing with them face to face. However, behind their backs we are often critical and derisive.

We see clients as stupid, awkward, or intent on derailing the project. In short we see them as the enemy.

We have to change this attitude. Not only is it damaging to the relationship, it is also untrue. Just because somebody doesn’t understand the web, does not make them an idiot. Without a doubt they will be far more knowledgeable than you in many, many areas.

You cannot have it both ways. On one hand we set ourselves up as experts who should be listened to. On the other, we are surprised that the client doesn’t instinctively know, understand and except everything we suggest. If they could, we would not be the expert!

We need to recognise the critical role the client brings to the web design process and stop trying to exclude them for fear they might bring something different to the table we might not like.

Stop treating your clients like children and start treating them as peers. That means listening to their contributions even when it does not sit comfortably with your own views. This involves us losing our sense of moral superiority.

You do not have the moral high ground

I do not hide the fact that I am an evangelical christian. That means associating myself with some people who have an enormous sense of smug satisfaction and moral superiority. Some of these people really think they are ‘Gods gift,’ literally! However, they pale in comparison to the moral and intellectual snobbery I encounter in the web design community.

I am fed up with web designers who judge others (and their own clients) with such passion and vigour it borders on the fanatical.

We are not poets, artists or preachers. We do not have the luxury of free thinking theory. We should be pragmatists that work in the real world and solve real world problems.

The problem is that most of our high minded ideals are nothing more than ego. It is about exalting ourselves at the expense of others. Let me give you a few examples of what I mean…

Why doesn’t your site validate?

I can’t believe they code in .net

He is always asking people to retweet his posts.

Oh, they are just link baiting

Comments like that are just about pulling others down. Validation isn’t everything and how can you judge somebody’s decision to code in a certain language without any background information? Hell, what does it matter to you anyway? As for link baiting and retweeting – what is wrong with wanting to drive traffic? There seems to be an attitude that desiring your site to be popular and working towards that end, is in someway wrong! Admittedly new traffic is not the whole story but it is a part of it.

Promoting your sites or services is not desperate or needy. It is good business. If all you offer clients is moral superiority and a well built site, then you are only offering them half a service.

I am not saying there are no lines. I do not condone black hat SEO techniques and I hate SPAM as much as the next person. However, I think we need to drop the attitude and consider the broader picture. We need to consider the business behind the site.

Stop trying to be intellectually superior

Unfortunately we do not just like to feel morally superior, we also like to feel intellectually superior.

We dress our profession up in impenetrable jargon and give ourselves fancy job titles. In many ways we are like teenagers trying to appear more grown up by smoking and drinking.

I guess this is not surprising. Our industry is barely in its teens. We are trying to find our identity and justify our existence. However, in the process we are in danger of becoming elitist and inaccessible to outsiders.

Take for example the recent rash of Top 10 posts. It is something I have started doing myself and have received a massive amount of criticism for it. I have been accused of dumbing down, catering for the lowest common denominator and being desperate for traffic.

Indeed top 10 posts do drive more traffic. That is because people like them. They like them because they are accessible. They are easy to scan and easy to assimilate. In what way is that bad?

Those who criticise do so because they feel that in some way these posts cheapen the industry or devalue what we do. I get the same criticism about my podcast. We joke on the show and have fun. We make the information accessible. Therefore we must be devaluing it.

In my opinion this is a view driven by insecurity. By wrapping up what you say in long words and impenetrable jargon you can hide the truth. You can sound better than you really are.

Unfortunately this just isn’t true. By making it impenetrable you are actually hiding its worth. By explaining what you know in a clear and accessible way you demonstrate its real value.

The desire for exclusivity

All of this is driven by a desire to the ‘cool kid’. Perhaps it is a hang over from our school days when geeks were far from popular. We try to impress and dominate, when we should be empathising and working together.

Another manifestation of this cool kid mentality is our rejection of anything mainstream. As soon as something becomes popular we drop it like a stone. Now our clients are talking about twitter, we accuse them of ruining it and start looking for the next thing. We want to be exclusive, special, different.

The trouble is the mainstream pays the bills. We need to break out of our exclusive little bubble and try to associate more closely with that mainstream. We need to understand what the general populace are embracing and go with that, even if it means still supporting IE6.

Conclusion

This post is aimed as much at myself as anybody else. I catch myself doing many of the things I have written about here.

In many ways the web design community is awesome. There are not many industries where direct competitors talk to one another so openly and freely. However in doing so we have become somewhat insular and very intense. I think sometimes we are under the impression that we are shaping the future and that every choice we make is of crucial importance.

At the end of the day we are just building websites. We need to get some perspective.

Thus ends the rant :p

7 Harsh Truths about running online communities

Posted in Site content on by Paul Boag

In ‘10 harsh truths about corporate websites‘ I highlighted some of the problems I perceive in how companies run their websites. However, many organisations are not content to simply run a website, they want to run an online community too.

Don’t get me wrong, I am excited to see organisations embracing the idea of community. I have been involved in running virtuals communities since 1996 and in 2004 I wrote about the business benefits of community. To this day I encourage Headscape’s clients to build relationships with their users.

A well run community can…

  • Drive traffic to your site
  • Generate a passionate, evangelistic users
  • Encourage repeat traffic
  • Help develop your products and services
  • Save you money

This is not a ‘rant’ against community, or even corporations running communities. It is an argument against the way they sometimes choose to do so. I continually see the same mistakes being made by organisations. It is time that they faced the harsh realities of running an online community.

1. Technology does not create community

When clients ask for help to build a community, they almost always talk in terms of technology. “We want to add a forum to our site” or “can you create a profile system”.

In ‘10 harsh truths about corporate websites‘ I write about how a CMS will not solve your content problems. In the same way a forum will not create a community.

Vanilla Website

Community is about people and relationships, not technology. The technology is the easy part. You can have a forum like Vanilla up and running in minutes, but it will take months of hard work to build a vibrant community.

If you implement the technology and just sit back then your community will fail. The technology merely allows you to engage with your community in the same way as a telephone lets you talk to your friends. It is a tool and nothing more.

2. Show some commitment

I have already said that building a community takes time, but it also takes commitment.

Too many website owners start communities only to give up when they do not see fast results. A community can take months to get off the ground and years before it shows real returns.

It also takes ongoing input. To make your community successful it must be nurtured on a daily basis. When a user posts, you need to replying promptly. Until your community is well established it will need monitoring multiple times a day.

You also need to demonstrate commitment to the individuals that make up your community. You need to take on board their input, address their concerns and encourage their contributions. You need to show you care.

3. Learn how to lead

As well as caring for your users, you also need to know how to lead them.

This is not leadership in the ‘managerial’ sense. These people are not obligated to listen to you or do what you say. You need to inspire, excite and encourage them.

Running a community requires you to be more like a politician or preacher than a manager. You need to mobilise people around a common cause and stamp your personality on the community.

Unfortunately there are few course that teach these kinds of skills. However, I would encourage you to look at great leaders like Gandhi, Martin Luther King and even Barak Obama for inspiration. These men can teach you a lot about engaging with people and encourage others to follow your direction.

Photograph of Barak Obama

4. An antisocial community is your fault

As the leader of your community, your personality sets the tone. As a result if the community behaves in ways you do not want, then you only have yourself to blame.

I have seen many bloggers write about the negative comments they get on their posts. In most cases this is due to the tone they themselves strike in their writing. Although there are exceptions I believe that users will respond in the same voice you yourself set. If you are irreverent, then so will your users be. If you are rude, expect rude responses.

A good example of this is the social news website digg.com. Digg has developed a reputation for its ‘harsh and juvenile’ comments. I believe this comes from the leadership of founder Kevin Rose in his associated podcast Diggnation. This irreverent, comically and highly entertaining podcast has set a tone that has been carried across by users into the comments.

Diggnation Homepage

This is not a criticism of diggnation. Digg.com has become very successful because of their passionate community. It is merely an observation that you reap what you sow.

5. You need to swallow your pride

Another aspect to leading a community is the need to learn humility. No matter how well you run your community, you will mess up. When you do, how you respond is of crucial importance.

Because of the ‘distance’ that the web affords, people are often more critical than they would be face to face. Feelings are overstated and there is an inability to read the non-verbal signals we normally rely upon. This can often lead to confrontation and disagreement.

I have seen communities fail because the organisation alienated its community by responding badly to criticism.

If you want to run a successful community you must swallow your pride and never respond defensively to criticism. Instead acknowledge the comments and thank people for their honesty. Ask others what they think and hopefully they will come to your defence. If not, then you must seriously consider whether the criticism is valid. If it is then you need to admit your mistake and correct it.

By admitting you are wrong, it is possible to heal a relationship with your community and actually leave them even more enthusiastic about your brand than before.

flickr blog post - Sometimes we suck

6. Stop trying to control the message

If you work in marketing some of these points may make you feel uncomfortable. It feels messy and you do not have control over your message. Unfortunately that is the reality of community.

Community is not marketing in the traditional sense. It is not a broadcast medium, it is a dialogue with your users. Failing to grasp that will rip the heart from your community and force it underground.

I have seen unsuspecting companies experience a terrible backlash from a community simply fed up with being sold at rather than listened to. Users do not want a sales pitch or a feature list. They want the opportunity to feedback and a chance to help shape the future of the product or service they use.

Another tactic for controlling the message is to moderate. In extreme cases I have seen organisations moderate every single user contribution that appears on their site. However, I have also seen companies quietly remove negative comments made about their products and services. This is enormously counter productive because people feel censored and will go elsewhere to express their feelings.

That is the trouble with community, you simply cannot control it. If you do not allow it to flourish on your site and engage with it there, then it will pop up elsewhere where you have no control over what is written.

Adobe complaints on Get Satisfaction

7. Nobody likes to be alone

The final harsh truth I want to raise is that “users don’t want to be alone”. Too many organisations launch a forum with a plethora of topics and discussion areas only to have it lay dormant and unused. The reason – it appears empty, so what is the point of posting.

Before you can even consider adding community features to your site you need a critical mass of users that want to get involved. A lot of companies add community features not because users are asking for them but because management wants it. Communities like that rarely succeed.

Also there is a tendency to go straight for a forum. However, a forum requires a substantial number of users to work. Contributions can often become buried in some thread or topic and remain unanswered because it is never seen. If your community is small you may be better starting with comments, reviews or a mailing list. User contributions are much more likely to be noticed using these tools.

Finally, make sure you are seeding the discussion through new topics of your own. Asking lots of questions is a great way to stimulate discussion and prevent people from feeling like the only kid at the party.

Conclusions

After reading this you might feel that running a community is too much like hard work. You may decide not bother at all. However, that would be a mistake.

The ultimate harsh truth is that your users will be talking about your website, services and products, whether you want them to or not. The only question is whether you want to engage in that discussion.

10 ways to Battle Site Bureaucracy

Posted in Web strategy on by Paul Boag

Running a large institutional website is frustrating. Your site is often held back by internal politics and bureaucracy. Let me show you 10 ways to cut through the crap and get results.

My recent post ‘10 harsh truths about corporate websites‘ generated a huge number of comments both on my own blog and on Smashing Magazine. I seemed to tap into an undercurrent of frustration that exists within the industry.

However, although there was a lot of agreement about the points I raised, there was also resignation. There was a feeling that little could be done to overcome these problems because institutional websites are too entrenched in bureaucracy and politics.

Although I can sympathise with this position and have myself suffered from the problem, I am not one to give up! Over the last decade of working on these sites, I have developed a number of techniques which (sometimes) help to smooth their evolution. Hopefully they will help you too.

1. Educate and inform

At the heart of any technique for dealing with politics and bureaucracy has to be education.

Although there are occasions when people are just ‘trying to be difficult’, in most cases their objections are based on ignorance.

You cannot expect people to be as knowledgeable as you about the web. If you want people to make informed, sensible decisions you must educate them.

Education is also not just about giving them the background to a specific decision so they understand ‘why you are right’. It is about increasing your organisations general understanding of the web.

Run workshops, publish email newsletters, do anything that informs people about the latest web innovations. Increasingly I am invited into organisations to run short seminars on everything from accessibility to facebook! This kind of ongoing education means people are better informed when tough decisions need to be made.

2. Hold stakeholder interviews

One technique that we find very effective at Headscape are stakeholder interviews.

Stakeholder interviews involves meeting individually with anybody who has a ‘stake’ (interest) in the website. This is typically members of the marketing and IT teams, as well as departmental heads and senior management. However it should also include suppliers, customers and users of your website.

These one-to-one meetings provide two opportunities…

  • Requirements gathering – It is easy for website owners to live in isolated bubbles, separate from the rest of the organisation. These meetings provide an opportunity to understand the real needs and objectives of others within the business. It will highlight ways that your website can help, which you might not have previously considered.
  • To be inclusive – Stakeholder interviews offer a ‘political benefit’ as well. By meeting with people individually they feel included in the process. They feel their opinions are valued and listened to (which they should be!). People are much less likely to object if they have been consulted before a decision is reached.

People often complain about the website in stakeholder interviews. Allow them to do this and avoid becoming defensive. They will feel more favourably towards you and your website, if you listen to their concerns. We all like to be heard.

3. Avoid group committee meetings

The key to stakeholder interviews is their one-to-one nature. Group meetings can be very destructive. This is for a number of reasons…

  • The need to defend – In large organisations that have internal politics, everybody feels the need to defend their own ‘turf’. If somebody criticise the website, you are forced to defend it to ‘save face’ in front of others. Equally others feel the need to defend their own positions for the same reason.
  • A tendency to compromise - When two individuals in a group reach an impasse, the others try to find a compromise. This kind of ‘design on the fly’ inevitably leads to a bland solution. It will neither offend or inspire anybody. Unfortunately, to create a successful website you need to make tough choices that some will not like. A group approach does not lend itself to this.
  • A loss of control – It is easy for you to loss control in a group meeting. One-to-one meetings work better because you can divide and conquer. Only you know what the other stakeholders said. This puts you in charge and allows you to ‘cheery pick’ the feedback you receive. In a group meeting things can easily get out of hand and decisions are made without your buy-in.
  • The dominant individual - Every group has one or two dominant individuals. These are the people who bounce the rest of the group into agreeing with them, forcing their agenda through. A dominant individual drowns out quieter members, who become resentful later that nobody listened to them. Meeting with people individually prevents this because the dominant individuals cannot force their point of view on others or overwhelm quieter ones.

One cannot expect a larger organisation to run its website without some form of committee. However, there is no reason why that committee needs to meet as a group.

4. Target your influencers

Talking of dominant individuals, another successful tactic is to target influencers.

An influencer is somebody that others respect and follow. Their opinion is incredibly valuable and if you can sway them to your cause, others will fall into line. However, be careful not to confuse dominant people with influencers. A dominant person will ‘bully’ others into publicly agreeing with them. An influencer will fundamentally alter somebody’s attitude.

Identify who influences your decision makers and speak to them personally. This person might not even be a decision maker themselves, but they carry enough clout to make them worth your time.

When you meet with your influencers, really listen to what they have to say. They often have valuable insights which may change your strategy significantly. Do not go into a meeting with an influencer simply intent on pushing your own agenda. Instead try and shape your approach around their perspective.

If you get an influencer enthusiastic about your project it can make a huge difference.

5. Use third party experts

A variation on the influencers technique is to back up your ideas with third party expert opinion. This can be done in two ways…

  • Reference the work of a third party expert – For example, if you wish to discourage internal stakeholders from overwhelming users with options on the homepage, you might refer them to Steve Krug or Jakob Nielsen who have both written on the subject.
  • Hire a third party expert - I often find myself brought into companies simply to confirm what in-house staff have already been saying. Unfortunately, decision makers often doubt the opinion of their web team because they either undervalue them or feel they are pushing a hidden agenda. An independent expert can add creditability to your opinions.

Of course, for this approach to work the stakeholders need to respect the expert. There is no point referencing Steve Krug or hiring Jakob Nielsen, if the decision makers have never heard of them. It is often necessary to sell the credibility of your expert first.

6. Rely on evidence, not opinion

Sometimes it is better to avoid personal opinion entirely (even if that is the opinion of an expert). In such cases statistics can be your friend.

Nothing is more powerful for driving home a point than referring decision makers to Google Analytics. However web stats are not the only evidence you can draw upon. Others include…

  • Surveys and polls are an excellent way of getting feedback from your users that can then be presented to decision makers.
  • Twitter search and Google Alerts can be used to gauge how people view your site and brand. These can be powerful testimonials to present decision makers.
  • Heat maps can be used to take some of the subjectivity out of design.

Of course one of the most powerful evidence you can present is the results of usability testing.

7. Focus on the user

As website owners we know that a successful website is user focused. However, not all our decision makers will understand this and even those who do may get ‘distracted’ sometimes.

It is therefore important to constantly move our decision makers away from their own personal preferences and back on the needs of users.

User testing is one way of doing this. Being able to show decision makers how real users interact with your website is incredibly powerful. It helps them empathise with the needs of users rather than thinking only about their own agenda. Play them video clips of users interacting with your site or at the very least quote them the feedback of users.

However, even if you involve decision makers in user testing, they can still get caught up in their own agendas. One gentle way of preventing this is to word your questions carefully. When you need a decision makers response to something don’t ask…

What do you think?

Instead ask them…

How do you think users will respond to this?

This will keep them focused on the needs of users.

8. Control the feedback

As well as wording questions carefully there is also a need to control the feedback you receive. This is important if you want the decision makers to make considered decisions.

Take for example design sign off – never ask a decision marker if they like a design. It is too broad a question that will lead to a plethora of uninformed and ill considered responses. Instead ask them more specific questions such as…

  • Does the design conform to the brand guidelines?
  • Does the design meet the needs of our users?
  • Does the design emphasis the right content?
  • Does the design have a clear call to action?
  • Does the design fulfil our business objectives?

This prevents the decision maker from falling back on their gut reaction (i like it / I dislike it). It forces them to focus on the issues that define whether the design is successful or not and ignore personal preference for specific colours or layout.

Of course, sometimes you will not like the answer to these specific questions. When that happens you need to ask why.

9. Ask why

This is probably the most powerful of all the techniques I have listed here and yet by far the simplest.

When you face opposition to your plans, always ask why. Too often we switch to defensive mode and focus on better communicating our own position rather than understanding the opinion of the person opposing us. This is a mistake.

The question why is powerful for three reasons…

  • It informs – Often the objection raised initially is not the true underlying issue. By asking why you get to the root of the problem and that allows you to offer alternative solutions. Asking why ensures you have all the information required to deal with the issue.
  • It can confound – Most of us make decisions based on an intuitive leap. We do not always think through our decisions and so find it hard to articulate the underlying reason. By asking why you force people to stop and consider their logic. When they struggle to express the underlying reasons, they weaken their position.
  • It shows interest – By asking why you allow them to have their say. You demonstrate an interest in their opinion and establish empathy with their point of view.

    • Ultimately asking why avoids the disagreement from turning into an argument with entrenched position.

    10. Avoid confrontation

    I avoid confrontation at all costs. Going head-to-head with somebody especially in front of their colleagues achieves nothing. You can rarely get somebody to shift their position through confrontation.

    Once a disagreement escalates into a confrontation, nobody can afford to ‘lose face’ by backing down. It becomes a matter of ego, where pride dictates the outcome. Your website will almost certainly be caught in the cross fire.

    A better approach is to agree. The word yes can be immensely powerful. Whenever somebody suggests something to me, no matter how stupid, I will do the following…

    • Acknowledge and thank them for their input.
    • Say yes we could do that.
    • Go on to explain the consequences if we did.
    • Offer an alternative which could achieve the same aims.

    In short I tend to go around problems rather than bashing my head against them. I always look to work with others rather than against them.

    Conclusions

    So there you go, 10 techniques for battling site bureaucracy. I do not claim these techniques are foolproof. Neither do I suggest they are always appropriate. However, they are useful techniques in your arsenal which you may want to call upon from time to time.

    Finally, this is not a definitive list. I could have written more but then it wouldn’t have been a ‘top ten list!’ However, I would be interested to hear what works for you. Post your techniques in the comments.

    152. War?

    Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

    On this week’s show: Daniel Burka and Joe Stump from Digg discuss the supposed war between designers and developers. Paul talks about using twitter effectively and we ask ‘are you placing too much emphasis on your homepage?’

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    News and events

    How to film video case studies

    Increasingly your web strategy is about more than a website full of pretty pictures and well written copy. Video in particular is playing an increasing role, whether it is embedded in your website or shared via YouTube.

    Video can be used in all kinds of ways from product demonstrations to viral marketing. However, a growing use for video is customer case studies.

    This week 37 Signals have published a fascinating insight into how they created their customer case studies for Highrise. The article covers everything from…

    • How they chose who to interview
    • The way they shot the videos
    • What questions they asked
    • How they conducted the interviews
    • How they edited the videos
    • The time they spent preparing the whole thing

    There is little written about producing quality videos and even less about customer case studies. Without a doubt these kinds of videos are extremely powerful and so it is great to read quality advice about their production.

    Effective communication in web design

    Smashing Magazine has posted an excellent article that I would highly recommend to all website owners. No, it is not my excellent Twitter article that I will cover later. It is actually an article entitled – Clear And Effective Communication In Web Design.

    In essence it talks about how to communicate on the web through both copy and visuals. It is a comprehensive overview (if somewhat superficial) of all the key considerations of communicating effectively through your website.

    The article focuses primarily on your website, largely ignoring broader communication issues. However it does tackle…

    • The different methods of communication – Images, text, titles, icons, design styling, colour, audio and visuals.
    • The challenges of clearly communicating – This includes the curse of too much copy, the need for personality and much more.
    • What you should be communicating – Your company vision, the websites offerings, the benefits to your users and calls to action.

    It also nicely demonstrates how the design and copy work together to communicate your message. This is something I will be discussing with Jeffrey Zeldman in an upcoming show.

    Do we place too much emphasis on the homepage?

    Following on nicely from my recent post about where we invest our money, Christian Watson recently wrote about one of his clients who requested a homepage redesign.

    In the article he writes…

    Sure, I could refresh the colors and move some content around. But is this a good use of my time and her money when the home page represents 20-25% of page views?

    It is a good question. Christian goes on to argue that we often place far too much emphasis on the homepage and that in fact it is little more than a gateway page to direct users to more important content.

    He uses a nice analogy borrowed from Jared Spool. He compares the homepage with a hotel lobby…

    When visitors arrive at your hotel, certainly they should find that the lobby represents the hotel favorably. It should be attractive, spacious, with elegant lighting, welcoming colors, and the odd feature here and there.

    The lobby should make it easy for the visitor to orient themselves — to see where the front desk is and where the lifts are. It should make it easy for the guest to find out any important information at a glance — upcoming events or where the conference is being held.

    However, hotels are ultimately judged by the quality of their rooms.

    It is an excellent post that provides real food for thought.

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    Interview: Joe Stump & Daniel Burka on War Between Designers & Developers?

    Paul: So I am really excited to have joining me today Daniel Burka and Joe Stump from Digg. Hello Guys

    Daniel: Hello

    Joe: Hey hey

    Paul: I have had both of you on the show individually and Joe you were on not long ago were you really…

    Joe: ermhh yes a couple of months ago maybe

    Paul: What can I say, we cannot survive without you. So erm but I though lets bring the two of these wonderful people together and talk about designer,developer relationships and how the two of them get on together working at Digg. I mean I have to say this is just a rip off really isn’t it, it’s a rip of a panel you did. Was that Future of Web Design (FOWD) you did that panel?.

    Daniel: Yes it was Future of Web Design in New York. I think we are rehashing the panel at South By South West (SXSW) this year so if anyone is there it would be awesome if you dropped by.

    Paul: Excellent, I need to persuade you two to come along to the SXSW live Boagworld as well, but I will hassle of of air so that you can back out if you want to without committing yourself live in a interview.(Paul laughs). OK so lets kick off by talking about the designer and developer relationship and really I think that it strikes me there is a lot of mythology around this that you know designers and developers hate one another and I am not convinced it actually works like that in practice. When you guys did your panel at FOWD you actually were agreeing on a lot of points so I though we would start of by maybe highlighting some of the differences and then look at ways of working together er mm further down the line so lets talk about to begin with what you guys see as the main differences in outlook I guess between designers and developers. How do you look at the world in different ways, do you think? Maybe Joe do you want to kick us off. How do you think developers see the world differently to designers?.

    Joe: Sure I think erh developers are definitely, their default kind of response erm is that they would rather, I always make the joke that coders by default are lazy, good coders are extremely lazy people that’s why they’re good coders because they want to automate as much of their lives as possible. Ermm so I think that erm developers tend to get a little complacent when it comes to the actual erm product sometimes because they are so busy and so interested in and so worried about the actual code or the more nerdy side of things you know like are we running the latest greatest versions of different softwares. Developers also tend to be a lot more interested in what the new hip nerdness is as opposed to what’s actually going to make the product better for users, you know so like I have been in product review meetings where people are like “well Why isn’t this new version of some strange bizarre open web specification that nobody has ever heard of ahead of some major forward user feature” . (laughs)

    Paul: (laughs)

    Joe: So ermm I think that that tends to be like a big difference. The designers you know it is their job to be curators of the website in my opinion and kind of move the user experience forward and often times developers don’t have a whole lot of interest in that. (laughs)

    Daniel: On the flip side of that if we are both going to slag our own professions ermm I think designers are often you know pushing unrealistic goals. They are interested in building you know the perfect product and you know aiming straight for that instead of looking pragmatically at doing things in steps and figuring out what is technically possible and I think there is also a gap where designers can only see sometimes what features that they can view and don’t understand, don’t see the vision, of where developers can see you know amazing things they can you know do pro grammatically that designers just aren’t envisioning.

    Paul: Yeah

    Joe: I think that’s er is another key difference that I know that there is a lot of, there have been struggles and tensions between Daniel and I in the past over this idea of a holistic approach to design where where Daniel designs his vision and his vision is normally version 10.0 and I am looking at you know the technical roadmap and things that I need to do and like I am OK well lets talk about version 1.0 and then we can start talking about 2.0 like, developers are much more focused on an iterative process as far as releasing, you know like small chunks, reducing risk etc. etc. and designers tend to kind of like go well erm you know it is like I wanna build a pyramid it’s like great well how about first we start out by finding some limestone and then we work our way up to building a pyramid.

    Daniel: So what you are saying is we have got a fantastic optimism. (laughing)

    Joe: Yes

    Daniel: But I think that’s partly it. Developers are very interested, as Joe was saying,in mitigating risk and in a lot of ways designers are very adverse to even thinking about risk and want to think about opportunity. So I think this is kind of the crux of the whole thing and what we are trying to talk about on that panel is that both of those views are super valuable and if you manage to find the right mix of those two things then you can develop a fantastic product that is both concerned about risk and pushes the boundaries of what is possible.

    Paul: Mmmm I remember one point that came out from the presentation which is one that you made erm Joe which is about the dangers of if that mix is not right. It is always the designer that’s in front of the client or the boss or whatever ermm the kind of realism of the developer is kind of left out of the process and ideally the developer either needs to be involved in those kind of meetings or there needs to be a conversation that happens between the designer and the developer before anything is ever presented. Is that kind of, do you still feel like that is that still a valid point?.

    Joe: Yeah, I feel that is a extremely valid point for two reasons erm and this is a discussion that Daniel and I just had yesterday in fact. The thing is as a developer the reason I want to be involved early on in the development or in the design and like development of the product phase you know when requirements are coming together and when you know the first kind of formations come out of the clays so to speak is because two reasons. One ermm and they all kind of come back to this same kind of problem, is that the designers and the product people don’t know the system, the actual bits and bytes that like you know go into making the product, as well as the developer like the data and the code and the actual systems and stuff like that and how they are put together. So Often times two things happen Daniel comes up with a design and there is like one small minute detail on the page that would require you know one of the largest computer farms in the world to calculate in real time. Whereas in lots and just as often as you know that happens where it is like Daniel I can’t calculate that number in any meaningful way on a regular basis so you gotta remove that. But just as often as that happens because of you know as a developer I have such like intrinsic knowledge of the relationships in the data and what data we are storing and stuff like that just as often I am like well why don’t we expose this data or do this and Daniel is like I did not know we could do that actually I totally would have done that if I had known that that was possible or feasible.

    Daniel: Yeah and that’s, especially that side of things designers often hear the first part Joe is talking about, the you know well that is just not possible or more difficult than you think. Any designer that has worked with a developer has heard that aspect of it you know and that is of course very valuable but it is the other side of things that I think people fail to leverage most frequently is the ability of developers to see different patterns than you in the data and come up with those suggestions, you know it might still be your call whether or not that is a valuable thing for the user but just hearing these ideas coming out is is amazingly valuable. That has shaped a lot of Digg.

    Paul: So would you say that is a kind of you know a common mistake that maybe designers make with developers that they don’t communicate enough with them ermm

    Daniel: Absolutely

    Paul: yeah

    Daniel: Designers often see developers as mules its like I made this thing go build it and that is a bullshit attitude, its terrible.

    Paul: mmmm what …

    Daniel: Its not just designers either all product people have a tendency to do that. In some ways, as Joe was talking about developers being involved in the process, at Digg we’ve got a pretty good structure where design actually falls under the marketing team and in some ways I see design as a bridge between marketing and business development you know product interests and the development team. Because I am often sitting over here and I hear you know someone from business development or marketing throwing around an idea and I am like “I’m no developer but I have a good sense of what the developer sees as important and you’re talking crazy talk like that is going to be nuts” and they are about to go and pitch that to a potential partner and you know like every week I put the brakes on from that kind of thing I am like listen you need to talk to Joe you need to talk to a developer because that what you are talking about is going to be months of development and you are promising it to a partner in two weeks that’s nuts and so I like that in you in some ways the design team can often be a bridge between product marketing people and the technical teams.

    Paul: Joe from your perspective what kind of, you know as your communicating with Daniel and other designers within digg looking back where do you think you’ve made mistakes in your relationship with designers?.

    Joe: Ermm I mean the mistakes that I often make ,its a not even a mistake are I don’t wanna say are what we do are like flat out mistakes it’s just more ermm you know being a bit more reserved and not necessarily defaulting your answer to no. Err You know I think that Daniel often talks about how a natural tension between design and product and development is actually good for the product because you have eventually, as long as you can keep that at a good tension and not you know bad or where things are breaking but ermm I think often times developers are quick to say no. You know they will be sitting in a meeting and it is just immediately no I am not going to discuss that when in reality if they sat back and let the idea germinate you know they would, Its kinda weird because I have in a lot of meetings where things were, where the developers were like be oh my god that is an amazing product but we will never be able to build it and so it is like they want to build it but their default is to avoid risk so they say no. So a lot of the times when I talk with Daniel now and this is something I like quit doing I try not to say no unless it is just like blatantly in black and white no way that is possible kind of thing. I might let the idea germinate more I might no say no immediately I might want to go back and spend a couple of hours thinking about it if it is actually feasible because maybe you know. That’s what engineers love doing they love solving difficult problems and if you are saying no to difficult problems then you are failing at what your passion and hobby is. Ermm so I think that ..

    Paul: There is also an aspect is there not of not just saying no but explaining why you are saying no so that the other party is kind of educated into the kind of problems you face so as Daniel said earlier that they can be the bridge to you know business development or whoever else.

    Joe: Yeah absolutely, I am the king of analogies at this point ermm but the other thing that developers erhh, this is extremely common that they utterly fail at is that they think for some reason that they are like the target demographic of the product so they will come into a meeting and say this product will absolutely fail because it doesn’t have key binding so I can keyboard shortcuts it’s like nobody uses keyboard shortcuts like in the real world, they are all mice people like you know. It is stuff like that that a lot of the time developers are like “this will never work unless you have least 14 completely nerdy niche features in it” you know and I think developers too often you know they do that and that is just silly.

    Daniel: Hey guys that’s been a special problem at digg,since we started of as the pure technology side so it was seen as by developers for developers and you know we have obviously branched out from there and now we have got other interests I want to make sure peoples mums can use the website and that’s you know certainly a , you make different choices based on that.

    Paul: I mean it is very timely from my point of view to have this interview with you because on Friday we had a internal meeting in Headscape where we talked about all kinds of production things and one of the things that came out of the development team was this desire to be involved in the process more and err to have their say more and just to be included earlier. So I am quite interested in you know because obviously you guys have been working together for a long time what kind of practical advise would you give to a , maybe this is just a question for me and not for anyone else, but what kind of practical advise would you give for designers and developers working together within the organisation. How can that relationship work better?

    Daniel: Yeah, absolutely involving your development team earlier in the process but that doesn’t necessarily mean sitting around brainstorming right at the beginning of a feature with them. I mean I try to sit down work out an idea get it 20% of the way there, you know work out some of the basic issues figure out what this thing really means what’s at the core of it you know it might be ten different features together but what are we actually trying to achieve with it right so at least get that far even throw down so basic wire frames or some really basic comps and then present it to the developers its like listen this isn’t just an idea I came up with you know last night I just want to spill my entire brain out in front of you it is something at least I have thought through you know I have put a few things through my brain and now here is this totally unformed, not totally unformed, slightly formed idea but it is not baked you know don’t wait until you have got it baked and then you are so disappointed when the development team says well that’s not possible or have you really though about this and you have got this complete package already made up in your mind but come to them with a least you know the kernel of the thought out idea and get them to poke holes in it. Get them to push it in other directions and show you what else you could be doing and then go back to the drawing board again.

    Paul: What about from your point of view Joe?

    Joe: Well yeah, So ermm I agree with Daniel in some sense on that I think it is crucial to before you take it to developers to formulate a cohesive problem or hypotheses. Like if you come to the developers with a half baked problem that you are trying to solve you are going to get like, they are just going to run wild with it and it is like you know difficult sometimes to keep developers focused when they get excited about a problem. So have a formulated problem that you know you have a small idea of how you are going to fix but not fully baked. The other thing too and this goes on both sides of the aisle it shouldn’t be get developers plural involved and it shouldn’t be get. like a lot when you are first germinating that idea and you haven’t really moved it forward start small and then continuously expose it to more and more people errmh because I find if you involve too many people early on in a the process whether it is designers, developers, product people things tend to , you tend to loose focus quickly and everyone wants you know it’s kind of like port barrel spending and major bills its like everyone wants to piggy back extra features and stuff and pet projects that they have wanted for so long into like some major new feature.

    Daniel: It is just simple death by committee

    Joe: Right

    Paul: Yeah Yeah OK That’s interesting a little random question I remember going to a talk once where, and I can’t remember who it was who was giving it, where they suggested that errmh designers and developers swapped roles for a while. Where you try and sit in the other persons shoes and I was just interested whether you two had tried anything like that?

    Joe: That would be disastrous for me. (laughs)

    Daniel: I I mean I appreciate development roles and I am you know somewhat technical for a designer but yeah I know I have never done that but I have always worked so closely with the development team like at silverorange where I worked previously to digg there was only ten of us and I sat in a room with developers all the time. I worked in their code with them and worked on problems as a group so I think I, you know I have never worked in a place like say you worked in a big enterprise and your in this classic where designers are in one office and developers are in the other office and you toss stuff over the wall yes then I think that would hold value at least go and sit in the other office, go work in the other office for a few months just hear the other discussions that are going on because there are a totally different set of concerns a totally different set of values than what you are doing and if you don’t at least appreciate and understand that, and not just understand it so you know what you are fighting against but understand it to know what is important and how you can work with it then you know you would be really missing out.

    Joe: I think I am ermhh I think I am kind of spoiled at Digg because you know I work with two of the webs brightest, you know Daniel and Mark Trammell as well so I actually push back on my developers pretty frequently where they you know we will leave a meeting and they are like I really really completely disagree with what Daniel or Mark are doing with the design and you know I tell them all the time like look you are not a designer and you definitely not at the level that those two are at and you sometimes have to defer to them and trust that they are doing their job and they are doing it well you know and ermhh I think developers don’t do that often enough they make these assumptions that you know the arty-farty designers are doing stupid shit again and that’s not the case. I mean they would not be especially where we are at at Digg and what not I mean Digg is able to be very picky with who they bring on and the people Daniel has brought in to design are extremely competent at what they do err so I am probably not qualified to answer that question because I am so spoiled at Digg but that is a common problem I see from developers where ermhh they don’t let the designers do their job and they try and be designers when in reality you know they do not have the experience or the expertise so.

    Paul: Lets talk about conflict resolutions, sounds very grandiose but basically you know how do you go around resolving a situation where you know OK you kind of respect each others skills and you respect each others competencies but you know where some feature is suggested by Daniel and you know and you Daniel from your point of view it is absolutely core to what you are trying to achieve you know it is extremely important and then from a technical angle Joe it just seems incredibly complex and very very difficult. How is the eventual decision made as to whether that feature should be implemented and in what way it is implemented? How do you go about resolving that difference?.

    Joe: Ermhh Well I mean I think as far as making the decision whether or not the feature makes it in, because there is actually two possibilities when it comes to the conflict resolution. Whether or not a feature actually makes it into the product and in what capacity does that feature make it into the product and I think in the former whether or not the feature actually makes into the product if Daniel comes to me and he’s resolute like this feature has to be in the product the feature is going to be in product. I am always going to defer to Daniel on on, if he feels that strongly and is that passionate about it you know and it is not something completely hare-brained like I want magic ponies to come flying out of the screen I am going to defer to his expertise on the fact that feature needs to be in the product. Where the conflict resolution comes into it is what capacity is that feature going to come into the product like a perfect example of I think of something where there has been we have had a recent discussion at Digg and where this has happened we have, and I talked about this probably in our last talk but, there are these little green badges on the digg buttons and they indicate one of your friends has dugg that story and when you hover over the digg button it shows like a little sample of the people that have dugg it. Ermhh So those were causing significant strain and problems with our systems and our code and on our databases so I came to Daniel and of course again as my risk aversion developer brain was coming to Daniel I was like Can we axe this feature until we can figure out how to like fix it. He was like “No” that feature cannot absolutely be axed and then we came to a resolution which was a short term solution until we can get a better solution in place where operations now have knobs they can dial down so the green badges don’t show up on stories older than 48hrs, they don’t show up on stories that have more than say 5 or 600 diggs and stuff like that. So the conflict resolution came in basically making trade-offs in how that feature is surfaced in works ermhh at our scale more often than not what that means is that Daniel has to give up the notion that everything is in real time. The feature will work it is just that it may take you know thirty seconds to a minute for an action to be distributed across the entire system, that is probably more how things are now at Digg so.

    Paul: What about from your point Daniel, when do you back down over something and when do you keep pushing on it? How do you decide you know how serious Joe is about something and whether you should keep pushing or not?

    Daniel: Right I mean it kind of comes down to you know when I am looking at the product I am not thinking of any one feature, I am thinking about the whole set and I want it all to work together and so you know I know I want to push out six different features this month and if I push and push Joe to do the one really hard one well that is going to affect the other five I wanted to get done. So any feature is tied to other features and it is also based on a time line if I want something done in a certain time line and that’s just not possible well then I have to start making compromises so you know you have to be realistic and then at the same time you have to realise developers work well with shame and so if you tell a developer well I bet a good developer could do that (All laugh) they will go back to their cube grumbling at you and figure out a more efficient way to do it.

    Paul: OK. So now we are getting into the realms of how to manipulate each other.

    Daniel: Absolutely.

    Joe: That’s definitely err one that I agree does work but is not a trick you want to pull out of your bag too often.

    Daniel: No it is the same with designers too, it is like I want to do this really complex thing, no way I can explain that to users in a way they will understand. “I thought you were good” arhh shit I will go back and try that again.

    Paul: That is quite interesting what you just said there because so far we have talked very much about you know designers initiating features and that kind of stuff I mean are there situations where the developer is the one initiating features you know just said there a developer wanted to do something really cool and you said you couldn’t explain it. Does it run that way as well? or is it always the designer who drives first?.

    Daniel: No Absolutely that happens at Digg, it happens sometimes at Digg so Joe yesterday sent me an email that had two big feature ideas in it. They may not be things we implement this month but maybe later on this year. I was looking at them and you know it is easy to disregard well he is a developer he does not understand what’s going on with the product but you look at the ideas and they are strong and they fit in with what we are doing and now I am trying to figure out you know how they make sense in the big picture I guess. So we have got a brilliant development team a lot of people over there with great ideas and we try to sit down, you know I guess Kevin has been doing those where we do meetings once a month I guess where developers if they have been working on a side project you know something they have always wanted to build into Digg they can present this at the Digg ideas meeting.

    Paul: Ah OK

    Daniel: A bunch of those products will make it into the full Digg I mean its awesome these brilliant people go and throw around crazy ideas and show you what is possible.

    Joe: I think err yeah I mean I agree with that you definitely have, it is a two way street erm largely stuff comes from product at this point the Digg ideas meetings is definitely helping that you know open that up and kind of what I would call level that playing field a bit. But one of the things I think developers are in a in a unique position just like Daniel I work with people across the entire companies so I know initiatives that are going on in marketing I know initiatives that are going on in PR and biz dev etc. and you know if nothing else developers are very good about noticing and pointing out and discovering patterns and err a recent product that made it out that err was a developer initiated product was Digg dialogue because basically I noticed this common pattern where business development and Marketing and PR were setting up interviews and then like reaching out to people to like conduct interviews using the Digg engine kind of thing and I was why don’t we bake this into like a cohesive feature that’s turnkey because you know business development like Daniel was saying earlier lots of times they are just making these one off deals you know and they don’t really recognise when there is a product to be had there erm so that is another one that recently went out. It was like I recognised a pattern and baked this into something cohesive and move it forward.

    Daniel: That is a good example of where we are being lazy some people want to do this one off thing over and over again and it is a bunch of work to don it each time well like we will just build a system to do it and we won’t have to do all the work every time. It was great.

    Paul: OK that is really good lets leave then with one final question or one thing from each of you. Which is if you could give you know one piece of advice to either designers or developers on how to kind of interact with their counterpart what would that one piece of advice be?. Lets kick of with you Daniel what would be your one piece of advice to designers about dealing with developers?.

    Daniel: My one piece of advice would be to see the big picture, you know aim for version 10 like we were talking about earlier and know what you want to build in the future but be realistic enough to back it up and build it in stages. You know waiting and building a feature over six months and eventually launching it is a terrible way to develop and it’s a terrible way to design having an idea of where you want to be in six months but realising in one month increments is so much better you’ll end up in a different place but at least you know where you are heading and you can adjust that goal as you go forward

    Paul: Yeah. Brilliant. Joe what about you?

    Joe: Ermhh I would say to the developers out there that there is different shades of no ermhh that you know there is the, the default should not always be no and remember what I said about the conflict resolution you should be deferring to the people that are experts in their field by default for the most part and to work on compromise in how the feature operates and make your concessions and have them make their concessions rather than just defaulting to saying no to the entire feature.

    Daniel: And as a developer push to be involved early in the process, even at Digg we struggle with that a lot and as a designer I appreciate when developers want to be involved I want to hear their opinions you know it is fun to have them involved I hear all kinds of crazy stuff I never even considered that’s awesome.

    Paul: Excellent. Thank you so much guys that was really good I appreciate you coming back on the show yet again. It was really good to get your perspectives together on that relationship because it is one a lot of people struggle with. So it is good to hear that it can work most of the time. Thanks for your time

    Daniel: Thanks for having us on Paul

    Joe: Bye

    Thanks goes to Shaun Hare for transcribing this interview.

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    With everybody from Britney to Obama now on Twitter it is safe to say the social networking platform has gone mainstream. But what does this mean for the service and how can we as website owners use it? Read More

    10 harsh truths about corporate websites

    Posted in Web strategy on by Paul Boag

    We all make mistakes running our websites. However the nature of those mistakes varies. As your site and organisation grow, the mistakes begin to change. This post addresses common mistakes in larger organisations.

    Most of the clients I work with at Headscape are larger organisations – Universities, large charities, public sector institutions and large companies.

    Over the last 7 years I have noticed certain reassuring misconceptions within these organisations. The idea of this post is to dispel these illusions and encourage people to face the harsh reality.

    The problem is that if you are reading this post you are probably already aware of these things. However, hopefully this article will be a useful tool for convincing others within your organisation.

    Anyway, here are my 10 harsh truths about larger websites.

    1. You need a separate web division

    In most organisations I work with the website is managed by either the marketing or IT department. However, this inevitably leads to a turf war and the site becoming the victim of internal politics.

    In reality running a web strategy is not particularly suited to either group. IT maybe excellent at rolling out complex systems but they are not suited to developing a friendly users experience or establishing an online brand.

    Marketing on the other hand is little better. As Jeffrey Zeldman puts it in his article ‘Let there be web divisions‘:

    The web is a conversation. Marketing, by contrast, is a monologue… And then there’s all that messy business with semantic markup, CSS, unobtrusive scripting, card-sorting exercises, HTML run-throughs, involving users in accessibility, and the rest of the skills and experience that don’t fall under Marketing’s purview.

    Instead the website should be managed by a single unified team. Again Zeldman sums it up when he writes:

    Put them in a division that recognizes that your site is not a bastard of your brochures, nor a natural outgrowth of your group calendar. Let there be web divisions.

    Screenshot of Zeldman's website

    2. Managing your website is a full time job

    Not only is the website often split between marketing and IT, it is also normally under resourced. Instead of having a dedicated web team, those responsible for the website are often expected to run it alongside their ‘day job’.

    Where a web team is in place they are often over stretched. The vast majority of their time is spent on day to day maintenance rather than longer term strategic thinking.

    This situation is further exaggerated because the people hired to ‘maintain’ the website are junior members of staff. They do not have the experience or authority to push the website forward.

    It is time for organisations to seriously investing in their websites by hiring full time senior web managers to move their web strategies forward.

    3. Periodic redesign is not enough

    Because corporate websites are under resourced they are often neglected for long periods of time. They slowly become out of date both in terms of content, design and technology.

    Eventually the site becomes such an embarrassment that management step in and demand it is sorted. This inevitably leads to a complete redesign at considerable expense.

    As I point out in the website owners manual this a flawed approach. It is a waste of money because when the old site is replaced the investment put into it is lost. It is also tough on cash flow with a large expenditure happening every few years.

    A better way is continual investment in your site, so allowing it to evolve over time. Not only is this less wasteful it is also better for the users as is pointed out in Cameron Moll’s post ‘Good Designers Redesign, Great Designers Realign‘.

    Screenshot of Cameron Molls Article

    4. Your site cannot appeal to everyone

    One of the first questions I ask our clients is ‘who is your target audience?’ I am regularly shocked at the length of the reply. Too often it includes a long and detailed list of diverse people.

    Inevitably my next question is which of those many demographic groups are most important. Depressingly the answer is that they are all equally important.

    The harsh truth is that if you build a site for everybody it will appeal to nobody. It is important to be extremely focused in your audience and cater your design and content around them.

    Does this mean you have to ignore your other users? Not at all. Your site should be accessible by all and should not offend or exclude anybody. However, it does need to have a clearly defined audience that the site is primarily aimed at.

    5. Your site is not all about you

    Where some website managers want their websites to appeal to everybody, others want it to appeal to themselves and their colleagues.

    A surprising number of organisations choose to ignore their users entirely and build their websites entirely around an organisational perspective. This typically manifests itself in inappropriate design that caters to the managing directors personal preferences and content full of internal terminology and jargon.

    A website should not be about pandering to the preferences of staff but about meeting the needs of users. Too many designs are rejected because the boss doesn’t like green. Equally too much website copy uses acronyms and terms that are only used internally within an organisation.

    6. Design by committee brings death

    Illustration showing why design by committee fails

    The ultimate expression of a larger organisations approach to website management is the committee. A committee is formed to tackle the website because internal politics demand everybody has their say and all considerations are taken into account.

    To say that all committees are a bad idea is naive and to suggest that a large corporate website could be developed without consultation is fanciful. However when it comes to design, committees are often the kiss of death.

    Design is subjective. The way we respond to a design can be influenced by culture, gender, age, childhood experience or even physical conditions (such as colour blindness). What one person considers great design another could hate. This is why it is so important that design decisions are informed by user testing rather than personal experience. Unfortunately this approach is rarely followed when a committee is involved in design decisions.

    Instead, design by committee becomes about compromise. Because different committee members have different opinions about the design, they looks for ways to find common ground. One person hates the blue colour palette while another loves it. This leads to design on the fly when the committee instructs the designer to ‘try a different blue’ in the hopes of finding a middle ground. Unfortunately this can only leads to bland design which neither appeals to, or excites, anybody.

    7. You’re not getting value from your web team

    Whether they have an in-house web team or use an external agency many organisations fail to get the most from their web designers.

    Web designers are much more than pixel pushers. They have a wealth of knowledge about the web and how users interact with it. They also understand design techniques including grid systems, white space, colour theory and much more.

    Post from Twitter complaining about being a pixel pusher

    It is therefore wasteful to micro manage them by asking for ‘the logo to be made bigger’ or to ‘move that 3 pixels to the left’. By doing so you are reducing their role to that of software operator and wasting the wealth of experience they have.

    If you want to get the maximum return from your web team present them with problems not solutions. For example, if you have a site aimed at teenage girls and the designer goes for corporate blue, suggest that the audience might not respond well to the colour. Do not tell them to change it to pink. That way the designer has the freedom to find a solution which might be even better than your choice of pink. You allow them to solve the problem you have presented.

    8. A CMS is not a silver bullet

    Many of the clients I work with have amazingly unrealistic expectations about content management systems. Those without one think it will solve all of their content woes, while those who do have one moan about it because it hasn’t!

    It is certainly true that a content management system can bring a lot of benefits. They…

    • reduce the technical barriers of adding content,
    • all more people to edit and add content,
    • facilitate faster updates,
    • allow greater control.

    However, many content management systems are less flexible than their owners wish. They fail to meet the changing demands of the websites they manage.

    Website managers also complain that their CMS is hard to use. However, in many cases this is because those using them have not been given adequate training or are not using it regularly enough.

    Finally, a content management system may allow for the easy updating of content, but that does not ensure it will be updated or even that the quality of copy will be maintained. Many content managed websites still have out of date content or are filled with poor quality copy. This is because the internal processes have not been put in place to support the content contributors.

    If you are looking to a content management system to solve your site maintenance issues you will be disappointed.

    9. You have too much content

    Part of the problem with content maintenance on larger corporate websites is that there is too much content in the first place. Most of these sites have ‘evolved’ over years with more and more content being added. At no stage has anybody ever reviewed that content and asked what can be taken away.

    Many website managers fill their sites with copy nobody will read. This happens because of:

    • A fear of missing something – By putting everything online they believe users will be able to find whatever they want. Unfortunately, with so much information being made available, it is hard to find anything.
    • A fear users will not understand – Whether it is a lack of confidence in their site or in their audience, many website managers feel the need to provide endless instructions to users. Unfortunately, users never read this copy.
    • A desperate desire to convince - Many website managers are desperate to sell their product or communicate their message. Text becomes bloated with sales copy which actually conveys little valuable information.

    Steve Krug in his book ‘Don’t make me think’ encourages website managers to ‘Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what’s left’. This will reduce the noise level of each page and make useful content more prominent.

    10. You are wasting money on social networking

    I have been encouraged that increasingly website managers are recognising that a web strategy is about more than running a website. They are using tools like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to increase their reach and engage with new audiences.

    However, although they are using these tools, too often they are doing so ineffectively. Corporate twitter accounts and posting sales demonstrations to YouTube miss the essence of social networking.

    Social networking is about people engaging with people. Individuals do not want to build relationships with brands or corporations. They want to talk with other people. Too many organisations are throwing millions into facebook apps and viral videos when could be spending that money on engaging with people in a transparent and open away.

    Instead of having a corporate twitter account or indeed even a corporate blog, encourage your employees to start tweeting and blogging themselves. Provide guildelines on acceptable behaviour and the tools they need to start engaging directly with the community that surrounds your products and services. This not only demonstrates a commitment to your community but also a human side to your business.

    Screenshot of Microsoft's Channel 9 website

    Conclusions

    Large organisations do a lot right in the running of their websites. However, they also face some unique challenges that can lead to painful mistakes. Resolving these problems will involve accepting mistakes have been made, overcoming internal politics, and changing the way you control your brand. However, doing so will give you a significant competitive advantage and allow your web strategy to become more effective over the long term.

    For more information on how you can make your site more effective read the Website Owners Manual or discuss your site with Paul personally.

    There is a followup to this post entitled ‘10 ways to battle site bureaucracy.’ Check it out!

    Tips for a transformed twitter

    Posted in Marketing on by Paul Boag

    With everybody from Britney to Obama now on Twitter it is safe to say the social networking platform has gone mainstream. But what does this mean for the service and how can we as website owners use it?

    Paul Carter from New York writes:

    Paul, I notice that you have been lamenting a lot on twitter about it becoming a marketing tool. Is that really wrong? Shouldn’t we be embracing and using it?

    I sent my first twitter in November of 2006, only 7 months after the services launch. For me it was a way to keep in touch with new friends I had made at the Refresh 06 conference. It was less intrusive than instant messaging and less formal than email. I quickly became hooked.

    For the longest time it was the tool of geeks. My friends laughed at me as I sent tweets from the pub, my family stared blankly as I explained the service. However, that has all changed now.

    Like Facebook before it Twitter is everywhere at the moment. It was even recently discussed by Stephen Fry and Jonathan Ross on the BBC in front of 4 million viewers. It has become mainstream and increasingly it is being used as a marketing tool. There is no going back.

    However, Paul is right. I am wrong to lament what Twitter once was and should embrace it as a tool I can use. Nevertheless like everybody, I need to be careful how I use it. I do not believe Twitter users will allow the tool to be reduced to a broadcast mechanism for pimping the latest blog post or special offer.

    So how am I choosing to use Twitter?

    I guess the first thing to say is that I am not a Twitter success story. Sure I have nearly 4000 people following me but that pale into insignificance when compared to others. That said, Twitter is turning into a third string of my online presence, alongside this blog and podcast.

    With that in mind let me share with you a few tips that have helped me better utilise this interesting new tool.

    1. Above all, keep it personal

    Although twitterers like CNN breaking news have been very successful, generally I feel corporate twitter accounts are a mistake.

    In my opinion twitter is about person to person communication and not a broadcast tool for faceless corporations. To use it in that way is to miss the potential of twitter.

    Does that mean you cannot have a twitter account for your organisation? Not at all. For example if Vitaly Friedman created a twitter account you might not recognise the name. However, if he used the name SmashingMag you are more likely to follow because you know the Smashing Magazine website.

    It is not the name that matters so much as the tone of posts. In my opinion your tweets should be more than an endless string of press releases and links. It should include personal content and a dialogue with followers.

    This is important because it enables you to make a connection with your users. An open and honest relationship with users is very powerful. It builds trust, loyalty and engagement. It encourages repeat traffic and word of mouth recommendation.

    CNN Breaking News Twitter Page

    2. Learn from others

    I have learnt a lot about Twittering just by reading the tweets of those I admire. Merlin Mann for example injects a lot of humour into his posts and his followers really respond to that. Darren Rowse on the other hand strikes a good place between recommending content others have written with promoting his own posts.

    As well as examining the style of others you can also examine statistics. Use a tool like TweetStats.com to examine how often others tweet and how often they reply to their followers. All of this helps to build up a picture of what makes a successful twitterer.

    There are also a growing number of great sites which give advice on how to get the most out of twitter. One of my personal favourites is TwiTip that covers subjects such as “The Merit of Twitter Competitions” and “How To Get Unfollowed On Twitter“.

    TweetStats

    3. Get a good desktop client

    Without a shadow of doubt the most powerful twitter client currently available is TweetDeck. This air application not only runs on Windows, Mac and Lynx but also provides a range of superb tools for managing your life on Twitter.

    With TweetDeck you can create groups, filter tweets, monitor certain subjects as well as tweet, reply and retweet posts.

    In fact it is so powerful that it can be somewhat intimidating at first. Don’t let that put you off. Check out this short tutorial into TweetDeck’s core features and you will be up and running in no time.

    TweetDeck

    4. Use twitter on the road

    If your twitter account is going to be personal as well as professional then you will almost certainly want to use it on the road. One option is to simply use Twitters mobile website. However if you are fortunate enough to have an iPhone then there is a wealth of Twitter clients available to you.

    I think I have paid for and tried almost every twitter client on the Iphone, but the winner hands down is Tweetie.

    I love Tweetie. It has a clean, easy to use interface, and yet is packed with powerful features including the ability to:

    • Handle multiple twitter accounts.
    • Navigate reply chains.
    • View twitter trends and perform custom searches.
    • Access complete user profiles.

    In many ways it is even better than TweetDeck because it has much of TweetDeck’s power, but in a much cleaner interface. If only they did a desktop application!

    Tweetie Screenshots

    5. Tracking the results

    Although I have already mentioned TweetStats, that is just the tip of the statistical iceberg.

    There are an ever growing number of tools you can use to track your activity on twitter. However, the ones that really interest me are those that track click throughs. What I really want to know is if I mention a link in twitter, how many people click through.

    If the link is one on my own sites I could use Google Analytics using their URL tagging tool. However, this is somewhat fiddly and only applies if I am linking to my own site. What is more these URLs can get long, which is a problem when limited to 140 characters.

    Fortunately there is a tool called TwitterBurner which solves these problems. It shortens the URL and tracks all click throughs even to sites you do not run yourself. Best of all it is now supported from directly within TweetDeck (although not Tweetie unfortunately).

    Tweetburner Homepage

    6. Follow as well as be followed

    Always remember that Twitter is a two way conversation. A big part of successful twittering is about replying to those who tweet you.

    Twitter is also not just about who follows you. It is also about who you follow. One service that I find particularly useful is Mr Tweet.

    Mr Tweet will provides two type of information.

    • First it suggests people you might want to consider following because they fall within your broad network (people who are followed by your friends).
    • Second it suggests those from your list of followers who you should follow back.

    For each of these people it provides various stats including:

    • The number of followers they have
    • The chance of them replying to you
    • How often they update

    This is a great way of extending your network of contacts and potentially increasing the chance of your tweets being retweeted. Its also a great way of meeting new people!

    MrTweet homepage

    7. Integrate whenever possible

    If you are intending to use Twitter for anything other than personal use it needs to be incorporated into the rest of your web strategy. That means it needs to linkup with your other online activity including your website and other social networks.

    There are no shortage of tools that help you do this from the basic twitter widget to a tool for sending your tweets to facebook.

    One tool that particularly caught my attention is called TwitterFeed. It posts content from an RSS feed to Twitter which is a useful way of updating your followers about new posts.

    However, use any tool that automatically posts to Twitter with caution. It can easily become annoying if used too much. Also it lacks the friendliness of a personal post.

    twitterfeed homepage

    8. Don’t over think it

    Of course the problem with all these tools, statistics and analysis is that it can suck the spontaneity and personality from your tweets.

    Although some of those late night drunken tweets are best gone, you want to avoid your tweets becoming too sterile.

    Let me explain what I mean. I am naturally a fairly good public speaker. However, once I was sent to a public speaking workshop. They taught me all the techniques you should use to be exceptional. However, instead of it improving my skills it made me so amazingly self conscious that I was paralysed. I was over analysing what I was doing.

    The danger is we do the same with Twitter. Sure, Twitter can be used as a marketing tool but that doesn’t mean it cannot be fun too. Don’t let articles like this suck the joy out of twittering!

    Twitter message from Boagworld: mmm... caburys cream egg and redbull. Nice post lunch snack