Design Trends: Are they worth it?

May 17, 2012 by · Leave a Comment

Have you looked back at your prom pictures recently? Can you tell exactly what year it was taken just by the clothes? You may have been a victim of a trend. What about your website? Is it also a victim of a trend? In fashion and web design, you should follow a trend only if it’s appropriate for you or your company, and fits in with your look.

Let’s take a look at three of the current website trends to see if any will work for your website.

Illustrations

Definition: pictorial design used to explain or accompany text.

Pros

  • Can make your company seem fun, easy-going.
  • Addition of a mascot to the company brand.
  • Can be a great focal point of the design
 An example of poor use of Illustration

Cons

  • Can make your company seem childish, unprofessional.
  • Can be difficult to find a cohesive design between different illustrations.
  • Expensive if stock illustrations aren’t used.

Skeuomorphic

Definition: a design copied from a physical form of the object. For example: website looking like a desk.
 ReSolve - good example of Skeumorphics

Pros

  • Gives a tactile feeling to the website.
  • Adds depth/ 3D look.
  • Imitates the Apple design for Apps.
 

Cons

  • Can make your company feel small, unprofessional.
  • Can look too much like the Web 2.0 special offer callouts.
  • Looks homemade if not done well.

Circles

Definition: I’m sure you know what this is.
 

Pros

  • Stands out from the crowd of squares and rectangles.
  • Can make the website seem cutting edge.
  • Are smooth and encourage eye contact.
 

Cons

  • Can be hard to manage from a cropping standpoint.
  • Distracts from the content when overused.
  • Offers no visual direct of eye flow

 

Wrap Up

It all comes down to what your company is about. Are you using this trend because it’s “cool” or because it will benefit your company? Does it fit in with your brand? If you’re unsure of the answer, ask your friendly neighborhood designer. (Though if your designer can’t answer, you might want to find another one. And if you are in the market to replace your designer, have you considered eMagine for your next B2B website?)

Jessica Costa, eMagine Senior Interactive Designer 

Filed Under: Web Design ·

How to Speak Designer

March 29, 2012 by · 2 Comments

Many people find designers to be strange. Clients don’t understand how designers work, and believe that they will never understand. While designers DO think about things a bit differently, it is possible to communicate in a way that brings results everyone can be happy with.

Trust

Trust is fundamental to any relationship. However, many people just don’t trust their designers. A good designer should always make the client part of the process, but a great designer should go a step further, and put a client’s business goals before any design decisions.

Ask yourself: Do you trust your designer? Why did you pick this particular designer? Is it because they do “pretty” work? Or is because they show an understanding of business goals balanced with design?

Full Disclosure

Unfortunately, designers are not Jedi masters. They cannot read minds (as much as they’d like to). Any information relevant to the project should be shared, even if it’s just to show what hasn’t worked. Designers need to see the bigger picture to produce the best design possible for you.

Ask yourself: Have you sent your designer any and all information relevant to the project?

Keep Asking Questions

Designers should not be scary at all. In fact, most designers love their work, and want to create something that the client is happy with. Designers want you to be part of the process. So feel free to ask them: What if … ? Why did you … ? How does this work?

Ask yourself: Are you afraid to ask your designer questions?

Present Problems, Not Solutions

Clients try to be helpful by suggesting specific solutions for design issues. Designers often get feedback like “Change all the boxes to pink,” instead of feedback like “The design feels like it has too much blue. What can we do to break that up?” See the difference? Instead of leveraging all the experience and talent that the designer has, the client is trying to do the designer’s job. This goes back to trusting the designer to know what they are doing.

Ask yourself: Are you leveraging the designer’s experience to your advantage?

Wrap Up

With these few simple tips, it is possible to have the communication needed to achieve a design that works for everyone. (Though if your designer doesn’t respond to these techniques, you might want to find another one. And if you are in the market to replace your designer, have you considered eMagine for your next B2B website?)

Jessica Costa, eMagine Senior Interactive Designer 

Filed Under: Web Design ·

Long web pages are okay! 4 ways to convince your visitor to scroll down the page

February 14, 2012 by · 2 Comments

SEO experts have long been saying your ideal web or blog page length should be between 200-250 words, and if you have more to say, break it up into several pages of 200-250 words. This statement has confounded companies who had a lot to say about a subject and preferred to say it all on one page.

Several established authorities have published studies of their audiences, both for Pay Per Click (PPC) landing pages, and for organic web pages. Marketing Experiments found that long copy outperformed short copy by 40.54%, and traffic to the page with longer copy produced an ROI of 21%.

The company 37 Signals tested a client’s page format and found the long form page had a 37.5% increase in net signups compared to the short form.

Conversion Rate Experts create a new, longer version of a landing page for SEOmoz, one of the largest providers of SEO tools, and generated a 52% improvement in sales.

Other companies are finding similar results. But the key to successful conversions on these pages is to make your visitor aware the page is long, and to use techniques to convince them to continue to scroll.

Here are 4 ways to get your visitors to scroll through long pages:

1. Create a design that delineates the four corners of your web page. Creating a defined “border” not only allows the eye to determine the parameters of left and right, but also top and bottom. Consider a contrasting color from your background for added effect.

 

2. Vary your page elements (pictures, columns, heights, etc) to avoid a horizontal line at the page fold. In a previous blog post about making your landing pages convert, we discussed the benefits of being above the fold. Problem is, when you create something eye-catching that creates a horizontal eye-line right at the fold line, users may think that is the end of your page.

By creating varying eye-level page elements around the fold, you show your visitor that there is more information available to them by scrolling down the page.

3. Use call outs in your text and your graphics, to encourage scrolling. Just like a clear call to action (CTA) increases conversions, so too does a CTA for scrolling. You can do this with a textual or graphical element right at the fold lines.

4. Create “anchors” throughout the page that jump to the various sections in the body. Your page often has various links to other pages, both on your website and to other sites. You can also include links in the body of your page to other parts of the page. This practice is most often seen in FAQ pages, with a bulleted list at the top of the page for the questions, and when you click on the question, you “jump” to the answer further down the page.

Conversely, you can also incorporate “back to the top” links throughout the body of the page to bring you back to the top of the page. While these anchors may seem old school, they are familiar page element to your visitor, and will encourage movement throughout the page.

In the end, the best rule of thumb is to have have both long and short pages on your site, and, of course, test test test. You may find that some longer pages outperform their shorter counterparts, and vice-versa. The point is, feel free to generate longer pages without fear of negative conversion rates.

For more information on conversion techniques, take a look at our blog post on 6 ways to make your landing pages convert.

Lee Schwartz, Online Marketing Strategist

Do you have long pages on your website or blog? What techniques have you used to entice your visitor to scroll down the page?

Filed Under: B2B Web Strategy, Engagement ·

5 Steps: Keep your site “fresh” with minimal effort

January 4, 2012 by · 2 Comments

Keeping content up to date isn’t just a matter of being a good do-bee anymore. Beyond visitors staying engaged, the search engines want to know that you care about updating your content (and they’ll start sliding you down the rankings if you don’t).

The problem is that sometimes, there’s just not much new stuff to promote! News might be a little slow, no events are coming up, and no new products are ready to be introduced.

So how are you supposed to maintain that “new site smell” when there’s nothing new to add? Here’s a quick and dirty way to fill in those slower periods:

  1. Pick a content area on your home page to edit. (your content management system lets you edit your home page, right?)
  2. Call it something catchy, but a bit generic like “Highlights,” “Product Spotlight,” “What’s New,” etc.
  3. Choose some aspect of your business – a particular product or service, a certain challenge your users face…any small, digestible morsel of what you do.
  4. Write a 1- to 2-sentence teaser and include a link to an existing page of your site that addresses that product/service/challenge/whatever else. Check and publish your edits.
  5. Repeat this process every 2-3 weeks as necessary.

The great thing here is that almost anyone can do this.  More likely than not, you offer more than one product or service, or can break down your single product or service into smaller pieces or challenges.

There are two great things about this approach:

  • Depending on the breadth of your offerings, you could be sitting on “fuel” for months’ worth of these mini-updates.
  • You’re not actually doing much work – you could probably crank out 5 of these teasers in half an hour or less.

Now, you may have noticed the quotation marks around “fresh” in the title of this post.  Bear in mind that this is no replacement for “real” new content.  When time allows, you’ll almost always be better off composing some white papers or gathering some case studies and client testimonials.

However, if the news train has slowed down, or you’re short on time,  these steps may help preserve the “Illusion of Freshness” just enough to keep your users’ (and the search engines’) faith in you.

Questions?  Concerns?  Let’s hear them in the comments below!

(P.S. If you don’t have access to edit your home page content this easily, consider giving eMagine a call!)

Filed Under: B2B Web Strategy, Engagement, Search Engine Marketing ·

Google wants to help your website serve its mobile visitors

December 22, 2011 by · Leave a Comment

No doubt, the buzz around mobile has increased nearly geometrically of late.  With good reason:  already, over half of all users access the Internet via a mobile device;  and that will grow to 90% by 2015, according to IDC Research VP Karsten Weide.  And don’t be misled that all that activity comes from pedestrians looking for an Italian restaurant or a mocha latte;  your prospects are also killing travel waiting-time by searching on topics that are top-of-mind with them at the time …which may well include the problem your B2B offering solves.

We’ve done our bit to keep this tsunami top-of-mind with clients, through posts such as this one.  But over the past year, mobile has acquired perhaps the most powerful ally possible: Google. Consider these milestones…

  • July:  Google added “Mobilize” to Google Sites (one of the myriad Google Apps available for just $5/month/user), a feature that helps users build mobile-friendly sites.
  • July:  Google’s Mobile Ads Team launched the Mobile Ads Blog.
  • September:  Google disclosed that its Adwords quality score will now include a mobile optimization component (for mobile ad campaigns).
  • November:  Google presents webinar entitled “Making Mobile-Friendly Websites: Best Practices in Action.”  Missed it? …you can get the pdf deck here.

But all that was just preamble.  On November 1, Google rolled out its GoMo initiative, centered around its howtogomo.com website.  It’s complete with all the resources needed for businesses to learn about what makes a good mobile site and to start building one …even including a GoMoMeter that shows you how your current site looks to mobile users (which is likely to be a bit of a shock, if you’ve never viewed your own site while on the road).

So why Google’s mobile focus?

Well, if you’re cynical, you can zoom in on the tea leaf that Google’s mobile effort grew out of the Adwords team …implying that its main interest is in protecting its share of the rapidly growing mobile PPC revenue stream.  And so far, its share of search is 95% in the mobile world, vs. a mere 65% of all online searches (per a very thoughtful post by Michael Boland over on Search Engine Watch).

Or we can take Google at its word, from the blogpost announcing howtogomo.com: “Every day more and more of your customers are looking for you… on mobile devices.  If you don’t have a site that works for mobile, you’re missing out. 61% of users are unlikely to return to a site that’s not mobile-friendly.  On the other hand, customers embrace sites that are built for mobile – consumer engagement increases by 85% with a website designed for mobile devices.”

Also, we can view this as quite consistent with Google’s long-standing efforts to make the Web a better, more useful place for all of us:  which includes the Panda algorithm updates, PPC quality scores, factoring load time into rankings …and now mobile, where access technology has temporarily outpaced the ability or willingness of existing websites to adapt.

Whatever mix of reasons you end up believing, clearly it’s a win/win/win for Google, brands and mobile users when businesses optimize their sites for mobile.  Help is now available – from your friendly Web-design consultants, and now from Google – and your mobile prospects are at your door, waiting impatiently;  so it’s definitely time for action.

Got a mobile site optimization war story? …please share it in the Comments.

Filed Under: B2B Web Strategy, Engagement, Web Design ·

Google’s “Panda” down-ranks sites for poor design/usability

November 8, 2011 by · 1 Comment

Most of the various learned analyses of Google’s Panda search-algorithm update of last spring (and ongoing via numerous micro-updates) focused on its effect on so-called “content farms” …and on those legitimate sites that had the misfortune to be confused with such farms by the new algorithm, and thus were unceremoniously dropped many pages in Google’s results pages.  So if your site was not a content farm – and didn’t resemble one – you probably breathed a sigh of relief and [Read more...]

Filed Under: B2B Web Strategy, Engagement, Search Engine Marketing ·

Online videos “for dummies”: a getting-started guide

August 4, 2011 by · 4 Comments

Continuing our series on online video – the most recent being this one – we realize that most of our clients aren’t General Motors, and won’t be creating videos with truly high production values anytime soon.  But that doesn’t mean that the medium isn’t for them.  Video can tell a story easier and quicker than a written page, and it helps to humanize your company.  And now, video that accomplishes those things is within reach of nearly every firm.

So what may be needed is [Read more...]

Filed Under: B2B Web Strategy, Engagement ·
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