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.
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.
Today I switched my body font from Qlassik to Museo Sans 500. I also replaced the italic styles to Museo Sans 500 Italic. It’s a great-looking sans-serif font created by Jos Buivenga based on the Museo font.
I downloaded the fonts from MyFonts and created the @font-face stack through FontSquirrel.
Let me know what you think.
Chess Puzzles is a website that I designed and strategically programmed for John Bain two and a half years ago. It’s still going strong, with over ten-thousand visitors monthly playing and participating in the daily puzzles.
The website was built using Wordpress as a CMS, and the chess tactic engine was programmed using a custom Javascript library.
I’m still very proud of this project, and occasionally go back to do a mate in three.
In November, I had the pleasure to work with Dr. Michael Klautzsch, and John Admire at All Family Vision Care working on a re-design for their existing eye center website.
I partnered with Trent Bingham on this project, and we launched a slick new design that adds personality to the previously templated-design, common to vision care providers. The site is built using Wordpress for the CMS.
This last Fall, I had a great time working with John Bain on the redesign of his Chess for Students website.
I went for a more fun, friendly design to target his key demographic – kids and scholastic chess programs. The original design had a very aggressive red, blocky-look to it. I softened the design, improved the home page hierarchy, and really highlighted the key products his site offers.
Today, I changed the look of my website for a few reasons:
Anyway, let me know what you think.
It has been interesting getting back “in-the-game” of independent web design. I missed it, and it’s always the best to be back working for myself.
Since I did the redesign on my website, I have gotten some interesting feedback. Some good, some negative. But, in-all, I have learned what people like and don’t like about my approach.
Some good: Many people really like my font-face for my logo. This wasn’t unexpected, as I had spent considerable time choosing it, and both Stacey and I were in love with it. For those of you curious, it is P22’s Cezanne Regular with loose kerning.
Some bad: I haven’t achieved the “Wow” factor that I aim for – and that’s lame-duck. So, I will keep working on the wowiness, in order to give you something to remark on.
One of the funniest remarks I have received has been from three separate web designers whom have commented that they all wished they had “thought of” the “Your website sucks…” campaign slogan first. I figured it was simple, straightforward, and honest. Something I always try and achieve. It’s funny that it’s new. Perhaps many have thought of it before, but just not had the balls to put it on their website. Well…here’s to you, then. Your website sucks, and you know it!
Here are some notes that I took during yesterday’s Cre8Camp. Enjoy.
Thanks to Truen, Jeff, Rebecca, Lainie, Element Graphics, NWGI, Santiago (for the shirt design), and everyone else for participating and helping in a successful event.
