Website design

I had an interesting experience on the road last week that made me think of how the decisions we make as travellers should affect website design.

Before going to visit a potential client I plugged their address into Google Maps to see how to get there, and I was suprised to see the route that it showed.

To me, the obvious path seemed to be straight up the highway and then down a major road that their business is on. But Google said the quicker and shorter way was along a series of smaller back roads.

I pegged out the route I thought better on the map and found that it was several kilometres longer and would take me three minutes more.

Recently a friend asked me to look at a website he's creating for a church organisation he's part of.

My friend is not a website designer by trade but he's done a fairly good job with the site. There were a few things I told him to change, but I went easy on him for the most part. One thing I was adamant he remove is the 'search the web using Google' box he had place in the header on the front page.

'But if I put it on there people will bookmark this page and use it regularly,' he said.

No, they won't.

People will use google.com if they want to search using Google. Why would you ever go to a site other than a search engine to perform a search?

If you want people to visit your website you need to offer them something unique, something they can't get elsewhere. It doesn't have to be complicated but it should be information or a service that people want.

Choc Chip recently completed a major website design and online marketing campaign for www.visitgreatoceanroad.org.au using the Drupal CMS (Content Management System).

GOT (Geelong Otway Tourism) contracted us to build the new website to provide tourism information and represent the tourism association members by giving them prominent pages on the site.

Site Build

As well as an attractive, dynamic design, this site includes a considered navigation structure and content targeted to attract site visitors and lead them to the member pages.

The challenge in building this site was to incorporate data for the tourism association members from two different external sources.

One of the most exciting things that your business website can do is increase the recognition and perception of your brand.

Branding

As a small to medium business, increasing your brand's fame is often one purpose among many in the marketing and advertising that you do both online and in other media.

"Branding" means making sure that people hear about your business in a consistent, positive way, and connect it with solutions or emotions that relate to your product or service.

This is very important for ongoing recognition and sales, so even if you are advertising a specific product or offer you should think about the lasting impression that your ad will leave with the viewer. Use every ad or public interaction to produce a positive impression or memory.

This article continues on from the first in this series where we learnt that the goal of your website is the most important factor in deciding how it will function and what it will look like.

One possible purpose for an online presence that is often overlooked by small businesses is the way in which having a website can save you money.

Think about banks for a perfect example.

Banks used to employ lots of staff to serve customers face-to-face, whereas now the majority of banking payments and transactions take place over the web using a secure banking site.

In web design we use a 6-character hexadecimal code to represent each colour, it's a little technical if you haven't used it before but every web designer will understand what I'm talking about.

Using hex for a colour means that we use a string of 6 characters made up of numbers 0 - 9 plus the letters A - F to create each colour.

This week I was thinking about how we can use the letters part of this equation to make colours that spell a word. This is geeky on two levels: a mix of web-design geek and anagram geek.

Below are some of the words that I came up with that can be created as colours. I could only think of a few that work properly, and a few more that slightly cheat by being combinations of two-, three- and four-letter words.

It's fun: the colour "beaded" could be used for a jewellery site, while "facade" should always be used for those scam phishing sites that pretend to be someone else.

Internet Explorer 8 was officially released by Microsoft a few weeks ago, meaning that many users who allow Windows automatic updates will now have it running on their system.

If you did not recieve it as an automatic update, you can download it free from Microsoft.

Why upgrade?

The problems with Internet Explorer 6 have been widely documented, but unfortunately many users still seem to have that version installed on their Windows XP system. What this has meant in the past is that as web designers, we have to work around the problems with IE 6 to make sure that our designs still work with that browser.

Drupal has become a growing force in building Social Websites and sites that have a high level of user interaction.

A recent article by the National Wildlife Federation hails using Drupal as one of the Top 10 ways to change the world using social media.

The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle was orating in the town square long before he could check his email or tweet his thoughts, but what he understood about communication is still relevant today.

Aristotle taught that to be an effective communicator we need three attributes, which he named ethos, pathos and logia.

Ethos

Ethos means something like 'credibility' and is the Latin root for our word 'Ethical'. Aristotle taught that we must have a credible reputation so that people will listen to what we have to say. Become an authority on a subject, write about it and conduct yourself professionally both online and face to face. Ethos is yours.

I recently learned about social objects by following a link a friend sent me to Hugh MacLeod's 'gapingvoid' blog. The concept of these objects has become popular in marketing circles as businesses continue to grapple with social media and how to use it.

While I was studying I worked early mornings at a local bakery. I didn't have a lot in common with the bakers but I made a point of finding out who had won the football on the weekend so that I could talk about it with them. I'd never been interested in footy before, but for the two or three seasons that I worked there I enjoyed following it purely for the social aspect.

In this interaction, football acts as a social object. It's something that we talked about and shared with each other. It could have been anything, but the bakers liked football so I did too.

If you're a web designer or are interested in web technologies and social networking tools, join the Geelong Web Technology Meetup Group and come along to the next get-together.

A loose connection of web designers and users from the Geelong region have gathered informally a few times over the last 12 months for a good time discussing our passions and learning from each other. We're now getting slightly more organised and plan to get together regularly, every month or so.

In the first part of this series I pointed out that the goal of your website is the most important principle to consider right from the start of your website project.

One of the most obvious purposes for your business website is to make sales.

The most classic sales site is a simple online store, an eCommerce website that sells products like books, computers or any other simple products.

Your website's place in your overall marketing is important, and I was reminded of this by an email I received recently from Jay Conrad Levinson of Guerrilla Marketing.

While a website can be a very valuable and low-cost form of marketing, it is not a magic bullet. It requires planning, careful content creation and ongoing promotion through other media channels if it is to truly succeed.

A website is sometimes seen by business owners as a static asset rather than what it truly is: a tool that needs to be used and cared for to be most effective.

Here's the checklist that Levinson prepared to help you create a winning website. Consider the eight steps and ask yourself if you've paid enough attention to all eight.

An instructional video with a difference - I came across this little gem on YouTube the other day. Rap's not really my style, but when it's about web design I'll make an exception.

The 'Poetic Prophet' raps advice on how web standards and good website design can increase the ranking and conversion rate of your site.

Didn't quite catch it? Despite being kind of geeky, the advice he's rhyming is sound. Here's the lyrics:

Your website can be one of your best assets but let's face it - for lots of people the money they spend on their website is wasted.

A friend of mine - let's call her Carol - is a classic example. She runs a furniture business. She told me, 'We got a website a few months ago, but it hasn't done anything for our sales.'

Her business primarily advertises though brochures and the local newspaper. Each ad includes their website address, but a visit to the site shows that it focuses more on the business than the products, provides very little useful information and doesn't engage customers. It's got some photos of bedroom suites and table settings, but Carol says most of those are out of date anyway.

What's the problem with this picture?

Answering a question this morning about how Google Analytics helps your website made me think about how important it is to target your perfect customers.

It's a fairly basic marketing principle: to create a persona of your ideal customer and then target your marketing to that person. It helps with all sorts of creative decisions, from content to colours, to think about what would appeal most to your ideal customer.

Recently I've had two different clients feel that their sites are outgrowing their current hosting plans, either by running out of space or by loading... very... slowly...

Sometimes these problems are easily rectified with the current hosts or may be caused by a temporary glitch on the server computers that is quickly set right. However, if problems are consistent or if you are setting up your site for the first time I have put together some of the most common hosting solution that I offer to clients.

There are many hosting companies offering different solutions out there, this is simply my own experience of the ones I have found to be the best with a simple explanation of how some of the packages work. Also, this is by no means comprehensive and I'm really talking about hosting suitable for small to medium sites.

Reviews are a great way of adding user-generated content to any website, but what happens when your reviewers turn nasty and leave very critical comments? Not only does it reflect negatively on your own site, but here in Australia there can be legal ramifications.

The laws I am talking about are regarding libel, the written form of slander. It prohibits a writer from damaging the reputation of someone else, known as 'defamation', and the laws are designed to temper the power to falsely sway public opinion that an unscrupulous member of the press or other influential writer might have.

Neither freedom of speech nor freedom of the press are constitutionally guaranteed in Australia in the way they are in US. Instead, there are several acts under which civil or even criminal action action may be brought, with statutes in some jurisdictions providing for fines and even imprisonment for serious offences.

Here's an experiment. Unplug your mouse and monitor, and try to use your computer.

Even browsing the internet becomes next to impossible. Yet for many people who have sight problems or other physical disabilities, this is what they are faced with every day.