You have a gift to share with your customers.
My name is Andy. I’m going to help you deliver.
I upgraded to a “Standing Desk” today:
After learning in college about the downside of having a job where you sit on your butt all day long, I proceeded to do just that. So, today I created a hybrid standing desk by putting one of my spare desks on top of my main office desk.
It is pretty stable, so it should work, as long as I don’t get too frustrated and start pounding downwards with extra force.
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Last Winter, I found that I was spending long days in my office and getting an average amount of work done. At the end of each day, I would look at my hours and see that I put in the time, yet feel as though I didn’t accomplish much. This lead me to putting in more hours, and yet – still – getting an average amount of work done.
I was frustrated with my “lack of productivity,” and the waning hours in the day. So, I tried Cherry Picking.
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I found $20 in the post office today. It was sitting in the middle of the floor. A woman with a purse had just walked by. I picked it up and went up to her. “Is this yours?” I asked. She replied, “No. Sorry.”
Another woman had just entered the line. She had a purse, and also recently walked by. “I’m sorry, I think you dropped this,” I said to her. “No. I don’t think so. Thanks, though.”
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Today I launched a new website for Jim Ordway at Beckon Call Window Cleaning, out of Halsey, Oregon. Jim’s a great guy and we got this project under-foot and moving along at a very quick pace.
I’m very happy with the final product. Take a look, and get in touch with him for your Windows if you’re local to the Willamette Valley. He’s a professional who takes his business seriously, and he does some great looking work.
I’m really excited to announce the launch of John Turman’s “Turman Financial Group, LLC” website, as of this weekend.
We worked together with Trent Bingham to create the awesome logo. The site itself was built using Wordpress for the CMS, and XHTML/CSS for the front-end.
There’s been a lot of buzz around Corvallis lately about local business reviews. Yelp has been a platform of choice for many of these reviews, as it provides a chance for patrons to put a quantitative star-value on their experience(s) and couple it with a qualitative comment, for browsers to pay heed. This pairing has worked quite well, and Yelp is getting much-deserved attention as a purveyor of the democratic process.
However, not all businesses are equal (or even good), and this sometimes leads to a less-than-optimal review. The social-media Luddite shirks in fear that the negative reviews are open for all to see. His business may actually be influenced if someone sees it, and the less-discussed competition is likely to reap the rewards. In a fearful last-ditch effort, he calls out the reviewer as being biased and too influential, and he must repent by removing the review. Resigned, the reviewer admits that maybe he had a singular bad experience, and is willing to remove his bad review. After all, he doesn’t want to harm anyone’s business. He just thought that he finally found a place where he could be honest. With a sigh of relief, the Luddite settles back in his seat, content in the silence on the social media front. “I would rather have nothing said than something bad said,” he erroneously thinks.
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Today, I reflected on websites I’ve built in the past and the tools I’ve come to deem essential along the way. Essentially, my evolution as a professional web developer.
When you first start a vocation, highlighting your strengths is the most pressing need. It’s difficult to stand apart from the crowd, differentiate yourself, and often justify that you’re worth the amount you charge. As you progress, your skills gain refinement, your strengths have been highlighted time and again, and the rate you charge is put to question less often.
Then there’s a shift in focus.
Some catastrophe occurs, or you’re put on the precipice of disaster. Inevitably, if you keep working in this profession, you recover, and the situation rights itself. But, you don’t want it to happen again. Hence, the shift in focus. Your weaknesses become the recipient of attention. Resources are allocated to fixing these weaknesses and tools are put in place to ensure success.
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Most websites are designed to direct you towards a “call to action.” This may be a call to purchase, contact, subscribe, tweet, or download. “Click here” and your wildest fantasies will come true…
This is a very important component to brick and mortar businesses on the Web that need to quantitatively measure the number of contacts, revenue generated from each contact, and cost to acquire these contacts. For a digital downloads site, it’s an even cleaner and more direct route. Set up an Google Adwords campaign, measure the number of exposures, cost-per-click, clickthroughs, and the number of downloads or purchases. It’s a direct funnel with little wavering and clearly defined holes*.
The analytics funnel can be measured simply with numbers in, numbers out, and diversions along the way. 0-100% optimized.
What about blogs, online books in HTML, magazines, or art exhibitions and galleries? An argument can be made that for these types of sites, the goal is to get the user to engage more than it is to get the user to click, buy, or contact. If you are using a photo montage, slideshow, or writing thought-provoking blog articles, is your goal to ship the user away via a click, or to get her engaged, talking about your story, and believing in your vision? A “call to engage” is what this site needs. Design to lead the user into your story, captivate her with your photos, and rid the landscape of peripheral “calls to action.”
Most news sites follow a three or four-column approach to their website. This can be understood, as the news business model is tied around advertising. But, wouldn’t it be nice if you read your articles with big type, restful whitespace, and engaging pictures? Many follow the recipe, but forget that the signal gets lost for the noise when your reading one amongst four columns, and the highest contrasting elements on the page are the banner ads, trying to get you to click away and buy a cell phone.
The next time you redesign, consider if it would be most appropriate to have numerous and loud calls to action, or provoking and relaxing calls to engage.
*The attrition and loss of users along the way due to checkout abandonment, site bounces, or click-aways.
“Stop and Smell the Roses”
…is a famous saying to people who are constantly rushing from here to there, without any enjoyment of the process, no time to reflect on life. In recent history, this statement had validity. People were goal-driven, results-oriented, and didn’t pay attention to anything but the bottom line.
Then came the “Social Web.”
The Social Web gets us all to “Smell the Roses” much more than we used to. We may not acknowledge it, given our history and value for results. But, it’s permeated our culture. And, it may be to our detriment.
Take Facebook, for example. Last Month, Facebook exceeded Google in the number of U.S. visits, and (I’m sure) has a significant advantage in time spent on site.
What behaviors are the average Facebook user engaging in? Social interaction, gaming, browsing photographs, notes, comments, etc. From a user-experience perspective, this is largely “browsing.” There is a frequent lack of purpose, motivation, or driver behind each click. There is a limited number of conversions, and searching yields only the next page of browsing.
One of the more frequent complaints I hear about social media is one of spending too much time and getting nothing accomplished. With a user-interface and design ecosystem engineered to reward browsing, it’s apparent that social media can be both addictive and quantitatively unrewarding.
The results may speak otherwise. I have on frequent occasion received a lead or project due to social media interaction. However, the deal was closed outside the social media arena, and measuring the resources of input in getting that job was difficult.
Facebook, Twitter, and blogs all have value. But, there have been many days where I’ve been socially engaged and feel extremely connected, but accomplish nothing towards my goals. I urge you to be conscientious of your behaviors and the results of those behaviors. Awareness is the first step.
There’s little that annoys me as much as going to a website that is an authority on some subject, and it has an outdated copyright.
Here’s a very simple script to replace all of your copyrights, so that they are constantly updated with the latest year.
<p>Copyright 2007-<?php echo(date('Y'));?>.</p>
This is, of course, assuming that your copyright began in 2007. Replace 2007 with the year in which the copy was originally created.
