The Diablog - it’s Diabloglical™

The one thing you must have to succeed in business.

2 September 2010

Simply having a website isn't enough any more. As a business owner, you threaten the success of your company if you don’t understand how to leverage the internet to bring in customers and increase sales.

When talking with site owners, I am often asked to explain the concept of content management. Believe me, it’s OK to ask, “What exactly is a content management system?” If you don’t understand current technology, your competitors will pick you apart.

The true power of a content management system (commonly referred to as a CMS) is often overlooked. The top two reasons most businesses say they want a CMS are:

• non-technical people can edit content
• content can be kept fresh because editing is so easy.

There are much more compelling reasons to power your site with a CMS like Dialogs. Dynamic CMS websites are far more flexible than the hard-coded sites of the past. You can do more with your content than leave it sitting on one page of your site. You can spread around your content so it catches more attention. You can personailize content for individual site visitors. Content can adjust itself based on external conditions like the date. You can also win Google’s attention with less effort if you have the right CMS. If Google likes you, you will find more customers.

One of the hidden benefits of developing websites with a CMS is development efficiency. On more than one occasion, a web developer has told us that their customer decided they didn’t want a CMS, but the developer was going to build the site in Dialogs anyway (and not even tell their customer). They know that manually building every page is much more work than configuring Dialogs. It’s also harder to maintain.

Building a static website is like building a house completely from scratch. And I mean completely from scratch, like a hand made cabin in the woods, not a custom modern house in the burbs. Before you can frame the house you cut down some trees and cut up the logs into lumber. If you want nails, you heat up a forge and hammer out some nails from raw steel. Some things are just too difficult to do from scratch, so you settle for less. For example, you dig a well for water, but you opt for a bucket instead of running water inside the house.

Building a dynamic website is like building that modern house. Milled lumber, nails, pipe - all the parts needed to build your house - are purchased. Someone else expended the effort to make the materials you need so you can jump right into the construction. When compared to first scenario, your house was 30% finished on day one of construction. Plus, you don't have to settle for anything. You can have running water and electricity and internet access.

You might think, “Nobody builds houses from scratch any more.” Well, successful websites aren’t built from scratch any more either.

Building a website in Dialogs is like being 30% done before you start. It’s also like building a house with power tools instead of a hammer and a handsaw. Ask us for a tour. We’re sure you’ll like what you see.

Graphic design ≠ UI design.

19 August 2010

The most important part of a website is the navigation. When someone visits a website for the first time, they must learn how to use the navigation before they can absorb the site’s content. That means that poor navigation design can ruin a site visitor’s experience.

Website design is a combination of two different design disciplines - graphic design and user-interface (UI) design. Understanding one doesn’t always mean an understanding of the other.

Some sites are beautiful to look at, but navigating around inside the site is confusing or difficult. Here is an example. This site is very distinctive - a creative concept that stands out like nothing you’ve seen before. The problem is the navigation. I spent a couple minutes clicking on things, but I’m still unsure what they are selling, how they sell it, or what it costs. Several times I clicked on something (I can’t recall what) that moved me onto a totally black screen. If they feel like they are wandering aimlessly, most people won’t stay on a site for more than a few seconds (maybe a minute if there are naked bodies).

Other sites are so easy to use you don’t even think about the navigation system. Take www.apple.com as an example. The graphic design aspect to the site is good - clean, current, and easy to read - but the graphic design doesn’t conflict with UI design. They have a lot of information to convey, and their UI makes it easy to find what you’re looking for.

Here are some UI design suggestions to consider as you design your next website:

• The UI should suit the client and their audience. If your client sells shovels to construction contractors, a wildly exotic UI will likely hurt their business by confusing their non-technical audience.
• Accept current web UI conventions. Some aspects of UI have been executed the same way by so many sites that they have become the norm. Site search and user login very commonly appear in the upper right corner of a site. Primary navigation commonly runs horizontally near the top of the site or vertically down the left side. If you’re looking for ways to make a UI easier, work within the web norms and focus your creativity on your client’s message.
• Design only one UI. I know - I have ranted about this one before. Design one UI system for the entire site. Don’t change the UI from one page to another. Read my rant.
• The iPhone and the iPad have changed the rules. I have heard many different statistics about the market penetration of the iPhone/iPad. Mobile browsers will outnumber desktop browsers in 2010 (some say 2011). Apple sells an iPad every three seconds. Apple has sold over 50 million iPhones. However you look at it, the needs of mobile browsing cannot be ignored. An iPhone-friendly UI has a navigation system that doesn’t require a mouse hover to make secondary navigation available. iPhones can’t hover; they can only click. Being iPhone-friendly also means your navigation can’t be built in Flash. It is highly likely that the iPhone will never use Flash.

Keep UI in mind as you design your next website. If you can create a memorable aesthetic and a functional UI, you will stand out from the crowd.

Dialogs Professional Services includes creative consulting. Our seasoned producers can help you make good UI choices as well as help you leverage the power and flexibility of Dialogs. Talk to a consultant today.

You don’t know what you don’t know.

30 July 2010

Nobody knows how to do everything. It's better to be good at a few things than to be a hack at many things. A wise person accepts this, while a fool plows ahead into the darkness, acting on things without understanding, making a lot of mistakes along the way.

Here’s a simple example/ This actually happened to one of my friends. His dad was staying at his house for a while and wanted to do something nice as a grateful gesture. He found a bucket and a sponge in the garage and used it to wash my friend’s car. Here’s the problem: his dad doesn’t know anything about laying tile. If he knew how to lay tile, he would have recognized that a bucket that contains a sponge, trowels, a grout float, and a mortar mixer that fits an electric drill are all related items. More importantly he would have assumed that the sponge had been used to clean up grout and mortar. Dad just thought it was a miscellaneous pile of tools. The sponge looked clean, but it actually was embedded with sand. When dad finished washing the car, a circular scrubbing pattern was etched into the paint from bumper to bumper.

The problem with “winging it” is that making mistakes is unavoidable because you have no frame of reference. Even if you look back on past attempts to work outside your expertise in an attempt to learn from your mistakes, you’ll still make mistakes. You probably don’t even recognize many of the mistakes you made.

My advice is simple - you’ve heard this from me before. Do what you do, and don’t do what you don’t do. Applying this advice to business, someone who manufactures widgets for a living shouldn’t assume they know how to do marketing. They should get professional marketing advice. If they decide to sell their widgets online, they should get professional ecommerce advice.

For many businesses, the internet is unknown territory. Get professional advice, and get it before you take your first misstep.

Dialogs Professional Services can help you grow your business. Contact us before you make your next move on the internet.