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When designing a logo, you need to make sure you’re not working in a “bubble” and you get input from others. Although this logo looks fairly innocent and well-intentioned with an adult protecting/hugging a child it looks more like molesting. The web is full of logos with good intentions like this one – most too inappropriate for our blog.
The web is full of these funny “Web 2.0″ rebrands of famous brands. The Web 2.0 look is known for its bright colors, reflections, and misspellings.
From sheliamullican.com
You’ve probably heard this one before, but I have to ask, “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”
I don’t condone killing & eating elephants; it is a great analogy to tackling an enormous project like a company rebrand or website redesign. Many times, our websites get stalled because our clients gets stuck on the text and refuse anyone’s help. No matter what, you will always know your company & industry better than my team and we can not write your company profile without your input (well we could, but it’d be highly inaccurate).
When we start working with a new client on a large project, we break up the responsibilities on our team and our client’s team. The best way to get everything done is to utilize another saying, “Many hands make light work” by John Heywood.
Getting more people involved not only shares the workload, but also gives ownership to the team instead of just one individual. The best marketers and executives, I’ve seen, involve key people throughout the company. They still have the final say, but sharing the “wealth” gives everyone buy in and generally keeps the team from retaliating against a big change like a rebrand. I’m not saying the design & positioning should be done by committee, that can kill a design by making everything generic. Different tasks such as writing text and finding pictures for projects are great ways to involve others.
Also, maintaining a website, especially with social media is generally best done with a team. Our parent company, Design the Planet, recently started having most of the team blog once a month. The Design the Planet blog is now updated 6-7 times a month by people with expertise in different arenas & mediums. It’s revolutionized the blog’s voice, content, and the website’s search engine rankings.
From Loyola Marymout University
I couldn’t pass up sharing this great cartoon showing the different view points of a business, especially large corporations. I think you’ll enjoy it.
Although it happens less and less, I’m occasionally asked about using Flash on a website. I had an extensive conversation when I spoke at the SMPS Southeastern Regional Conference a few weeks ago and then working with our creative director last week, I found the perfect example of why not to use Flash. Although I thought this topic was dead, it obvious isn’t yet, although it probably be should be.
A client of our parent company, Design the Planet, cited Hooters.com as a reference for their website redesign (Design the Planet’s niche is themed restaurants & bars so that wasn’t that off the wall). If you look at the screenshot on the right, you’ll see one huge problem – no content. Hooters is using Microsoft’s equivalent to Flash, Silverlight, which needs to be preloaded on the device. In this case, my iPad doesn’t have Silverlight loaded and it can’t be loaded.
More people are searching the web on mobile devices and Apple’s iPhone & iPads make up 50-90% of the market depending what source you use. Apple had a very public and bitter dispute with Adobe about the use of Flash on their devices and I doubt Apple & Microsoft get along any better. So why would you want to tell people visiting your website on an Apple mobile device – that’s too bad, you can’t visit our website. What that really says to a customer – we don’t care enough about you to make our website work for you or we’re not up with the times and technology is not our strong suit.
The worse part about Hooters using this much of Silverlight, their logo and website navigation is in Silverlight so you can’t even navigate past the homepage. Whenever we have used Flash, we either have a “skip intro” section that goes to a non-Flash interior and/or use Flash as an image instead of the structure of the website. If a user doesn’t have Flash installed, the website shows a static image. However, if Flash is enabled, the user has a better overall experience.
All websites should be made to fail correctly or as the web development industry calls it, progressive degradation. Progressive degradation means the website is optimized for the best and most current web browsers, but is still viewable and functional in older browsers. For example, a website may have rounded corners in Firefox, but the corners are square in Internet Explorer 7 because it does not support the latest versions of HTML. Or our logo on this website, on an iPad or iPhone it is static, but if you have Flash enabled, it swings in on the crane hook. You also want to make sure your navigation is always accessible regardless of the browser otherwise it’s like having a book that you can’t turn the page.
In summary, if you want to use Flash to improve the customer experience, that’s great, but make sure visitors that don’t have Flash enabled can still access your website via a non-Flash version or mobile website instead of just giving them the hand.
Have you been to a website that made you leave instantly because you couldn’t access it?
Only Google would celebrate Gideon Sundback, the inventor of the modern ‘zipper.’ Today, Google had users unzip their page to see search results for Gideon Sundback. Well done, Google.
So the past few months, I’ve seen my wife spends hours & hours on Pinterest looking for everything from interesting recipes, creative ways to do her hair for a wedding she stood in, to crafts and even a rain gutter garden which we recently completed. I’ve been curious to how businesses could use Pinterest and if it could actually help with online lead generation.
Let me take a step back in case you don’t know what I’m even talking about. Pinterest is a new social media website that launched in January of this year where users “pin” or attach images they like to their profile much like posting a flyer on a virtual bulletin board. Users can have different boards to separate different topics. Imagine Google’s image search with the ability to save images you like to a central location.
After doing some research (playing on my wife’s Pinterest account), discussing it in the weekly #AECSM tweetchat, and then I read a great article by SMPS Wisconsin on Pinterest, I saw this as a great opportunity for any business that can differentiate by design, creativity, and innovation. Artists & crafters on Etsy.com are loving Pinterest as should architects, designers, and builders because it can easily bring visitors to your work and then to your website to purchase your work. For B-to-B companies like in the A/E/C (Architect/Engineering/Construction) industry, Pinterest is an online scrapbook or portfolio of your greatest work.
Don’t think you’re buyers are on Pinterest? They might not be yet–Pinterest is still in its infancy. Metrics and ROI case studies are not there, but some early statistics show the average visit to Pinterest is over 1 hour and 17 minutes compared to 17 minutes on LinkedIn. The new website had over 10 million users in its first 2 months – that’s faster than Facebook & Twitter.
I think Pinterest is ideal for custom home builders because many women (including my wife) are planning their dream house on the site and a local builder with some creative solutions & unique work will easily stand out. If you’re an architect, imagine a hospital administrator searching for ideas to present to the board to help promote a new hospital and that administrator finds your healthcare portfolio on your Pinterest page through Google images.
Don’t believe that can happen? Would you like to wait to see if your competitor believes me? I didn’t think so.
We always love to show ways companies differentiate themselves, especially in commodity-like industries, where low prices run rampant and generally customer service is an after thought.
To many people, an airline is an airline and it is all about cost and schedules. You have to see this company that differentiates and has a sense of humor about things too.
Kulula Airlines out of South Africa also has a Flying 101 plane.
I hope I’m not giving away the farm here, but it’s always good to share your knowledge, right? If you’ve seen me present Websites That Work like at SMPS SRC 2011 (Southern Regional Conference) in Houston, Texas than you probably have this handout. You can also download it from our Resources section if you want to nice PDF.
Now don’t go putting all of these section on your website, its probably to much. Think about your company, your goals & objectives for your website and how your company differentiates from the rest and find the best sections that bring our your brand personality and maximize that differentiate. Yes, I said it, brand personality. It’s not okay to have a personality, it’s great. How are you going to be remembered if you blend in like the rest? 99% of the world doesn’t pick vanilla as their favorite ice cream flavor, even my dad picks mint.
I had to share this because it is eerie how true it is and it makes me feel old (which I shouldn’t).
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