Tag Archive for: Communication

Start designing emotions

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Despite the somewhat provocative title, you shouldn’t really stop designing aesthetics.

Gradients and colors and contrast are all good, but there’s a more important side to web design that many people overlook most of the time: Designing emotions.

Discussing emotion in design is a bit of a hot topic at the moment, it seems to be popping up in more and more blog posts and speaker sessions. In fact I saw at least three different web designers say that it was the subject of the talk which they had recently submitted for next year’s SXSWi.

So what’s all the fuss about? Today we’ll take a look at what that means, how you can do it and why you should. This is taking design to the next level, beyond the norm.

Emotion Design

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Emotions are important in design because emotions are important in absolutely everything.

Everyone is trying to make their brand, their website, their name the most memorable thing possible but how are they going to accomplish that? Think of the most memorable times in your life, right now, go ahead.

I’ll wager a good amount of money that the three to four things that you just thought of all involved a lot of emotion. The death of a loved one, the birth of a child, your wedding, the day you bought your first car. We remember the things which instill powerful emotions within us.

In his book, The Alchemies of The Mind, Jon Elster emphatically states that “Emotions matter because if we did not have them nothing else would matter. Creatures without emotion would have no reason for living, nor, for that matter, for committing suicide. Emotions are the stuff of life…. Emotions are the most important bond or glue that links us to others…. Objectively, emotions matter because many forms of human behaviour would be unintelligible if we did not see them through the prism of emotion.”

Using Emotion in Web Design

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As a web designer, it’s very easy to get caught up in just the design of the graphics. Of course the next step beyond that which everyone gets stuck on is usability.

So many people talk about usability like it’s the be-all and end-all of web design. As one speaker at the Future of Web Design in London succinctly put it this year: “Designing a website to be usable is like baking a cake to be edible. It’s simply not enough. A usable website should be the minimum requirement, it should go without saying that a website should be absolutely usable. It’s time to look beyond that.”

At the most basic level of considering your users’ emotions, you can consider letting them choose how they want your site to work. What content do they want to see on the home page? What order do they want to see it in? What’s their favorite color? Allowing users to customize your site to their preferences (without having to sign up for anything) creates and emotional attachment to the site with which the user is interacting. They’ve just invested time, however little of it, to make this site perfect for them. They’re going to remember that. Check out the BBC website if you want to see this in action.

What about making users happy without them having to do any customizations though? What about creating something that is so naturally pleasurable to use that people can’t put it down? Well, allow me to introduce you to my good friend: The iPhone.

The iPhone isn’t actually the story here, it’s the touch based device, regardless of who it’s manufactured by. As human beings we live in a real world, touching real things, moving them with our hands. In fact, if you think about it, computers are incredibly unnatural to use: We move one thing on our desk that moves another thing on a screen, and we spend hours pushing complex button combinations with our fingers whilst looking in a completely different (vertical) direction.

People are enthralled with touch based devices because they make computers work in a way that we’re naturally programmed to understand. We see something, we touch it, and it responds in some way. I recently watched a three year old girl navigating her way around an iPhone with absolutely no problems at all. The best part? No one had ever taught her to use it.

Touch based devices create emotions within us: joy, intrigue, and surprise. We understand them perfectly and yet they still thrill us because they’re so clever.

 

Creating Emotions

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So how can we create emotions for users of our websites outside of the UI? Well, to an extent you need to put your marketing cap on here. You need to think about people, not design.

You need to think about perception, not composition. If you can ask yourself a few vital questions about how your users are feeling, then you can go a long way to pleasing them.

Consider FreeAgent for a moment, a fantastic piece of accounting software in the UK, they know that typically people who visit their website are angry, frustrated, and fed up with trying to do their accounts (and failing). Their website is targeted almost solely at cheering you up and telling you not to worry, there’s an easier way to do things. They win.

 

Desire

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But what about creating emotions at more of a root-level? Apple (yes Apple, no article about design would be complete without some mention of them, so we might as well get it over with) create astonishing levels of desire and jealousy amongst their customers.

Despite producing over-priced, under-performing, over-rated products they still retain unprecedented success, constantly. Apple are the biggest fashion label of the tech world. That’s not an insult by the way, sex sells, and everyone else needs to catch up. Apple makes desirable products.

“Thin, beautiful, portable, durable, accessible, powerful, unlimited, magical, revolution.“

Sound familiar? All of those words and sentiments were used in Apple’s 30 second advertisement for the iPad, and not a single one of them has anything to do with what the product does.

 

Sympathy

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Another common case study of companies creating emotions in customers, and this is going to be a controversial one, is with charities.

Charities instill sadness and sympathy from deep within you, in order to make sales. Think of every advertisement you’ve ever seen for a charity… most of them go like this: “Sally is a [starving child / stray dog / person with a terminal illness], she’s all alone. Her parents died just after she was born and she’s been living on the streets like this ever since.”

The cause may be just, but don’t mistake the marketing tactics as legitimate sentiments appealing to your moral integrity. The people who create those advertisements know exactly what they’re doing. They’re making you sad, they’re making you sympathetic, and they’re making you want to reach out and help – with your wallet.

 

Anger

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Possibly the most interesting way to look at deliberately instilling emotions in users is from the perspective of anger.

Now, this has been suggested before, but to my knowledge never confirmed. What do we consider to be great customer service? Usually it’s when a company gets something really wrong, they own up to it, give you a full refund and treat you really well.

It’s unexpected and we absolutely love it. It may be cynical, but is it really unreasonable to think that companies may now be screwing up your order on purpose? If I was running an ecommerce store I would deliberately screw up about 5% of all my orders – then give the customer a full refund and send them the product anyway.

You can’t buy publicity like the way they’re going to talk about that to all their friends.

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Lessons and examples of how to create a Viral Launch Page

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Google+, Hipster, Connect.me and Instagram! They all hit a gazillion users in no time at all — and you can even read all about it in everyday media today. This is every product creator’s dream. Ok, granted, Google already had their users well before the launch of its social extension. But how did the other ones succeed in building such a strong fellowship in a few months (or even days)?

Turns out that many of these services’ creators were very busy bees and made small details about their product’s launch addictive. It even turns out that many start-ups were indeed able to launch to a strong following (not much unlike Google+) through collecting interested users, email addresses, Twitter followers in any way they could well ahead of their public appearance using a combination of very common and old marketing strategies with clever launch pages.

In this article, we’ll outline some best practices and examples of successful viral launch pages. Let’s define a viral launch page not only as a “Coming soon” landing page, but also as a usable beta page or even in some cases a finished product page.

Fundamentals Of The Viral Launch Or Landing Page

The first rule of viral is of course that you must build something that other people would actually be interested in for one reason or another. Let’s emphasize this, using the words of Robert Scoble: “The best launch is if you have a product that other people like using so much that they tell other people about it.” The users you target need to know at least one bit of information in advance that will make them care. Then, only then, can you move on to the next step, which is to facilitate and encourage sharing.

Normally, you’ll want to (1) let visitors know what you’re doing, and then (2) spark some interest. Then you should (3) make use of that interest by giving them a chance to subscribe to your news updates, doing so with a bright call-to-action button. Lately, so-called stealth start-ups have become quite popular because of the interest they are able to generate. They typically won’t tell you what they’re doing, which means they’re ignoring step (1), but somehow they still manage to grab your attention.

Here are the basic elements a launch page should have:

  1. A clear value proposition that interests people. (What problem will you be solving?)
  2. If your strategy is stealth, then why should people care? (For example, are you Jack Dorsey?)
  3. A notification form, with a bright call-to-action button.

Examples of Basic Launch Pages That Spark Interest

Even very basic launch pages can do a great job of advertising the product if they are memorable, viral in some way or desirable to visitors (or all of the above). You can read more about these characteristics in the recent Smashing Magazine article “Building An Effective ‘Coming Soon’ Page for Your Product.”

Stripe
Stripe has a simple landing page ready for visitors, with one concise sentence: “We’re making it easier to accept payments online.” This is followed by a simple call to action: “Get notified when you can use @stripe”. The app’s name is also the company’s Twitter handle, so you can opt to subscribe to updates through Twitter. This implementation is very minimalist and suggests that the service does one thing very well. Who wouldn’t want an easier way to accept payments online?

Stripe-screenshot in Elements Of A Viral Launch Page
Elements: slogan; notification form; call to action; Twitter handle in copy.

Milk
Milk doesn’t tell you what exactly it’s building, but it makes sure the team can reach you once it has something to say. What makes this landing page so successful? It’s the new venture of Kevin Rose (Digg’s founder). Also note the subtle “pleasantly infrequent updates” for email, Facebook and Twitter, which puts us much more at ease with subscribing.

Milk-screenshot in Elements Of A Viral Launch Page
Elements: slogan; notification form; call to action; Facebook and Twitter handles.

VaultPress
You may need to give more information up front in order to get the message across. Here is how Automattic launched VaultPress, a back-up service to give WordPress bloggers peace of mind. The text does three things:

  1. It sets your expectations of what VaultPress will do (which is to keep your blog and server safe).
  2. It collects data from those who fill out the sign-up form (data that will validate their idea).
  3. It creates a sense of exclusivity, because not everyone can join immediately.

Vaultpress-screenshot in Elements Of A Viral Launch Page
Elements: copy that explains what VaultPress does; an integrated sign-up form.

Sumazi
Instead of focusing on the product itself, Sumazi tries to get you to follow it on its social profiles and to share the news with your contacts. Registration is done through Facebook. It’s a first attempt to add a small viral loop to the launch page.

Sumazi Landing in Elements Of A Viral Launch Page
Elements: simple copy; integration with social networks (for sharing).

Let’s see how other start-ups have used the viral loop, and how this effect has sparked real enthusiasm for start-up launch pages.

Additional Elements That Can Make A Launch Page Go Viral

In addition to the basic elements covered above, start-ups have recently been using some of the following elements to make their landing pages more enticing:

  • Viral loop,
  • Exclusivity and scarcity,
  • Glimpses of the beta,
  • Social proof,
  • Viral content.

You will find all of these in the examples below. Many of the elements are often combined in meaningful ways.

Adding a Viral Loop

The viral loop is a kind of “sharing cycle” or “multiplier effect” that is built into the launch page. It’s an incentive for people to share news of the start-up and to share the sign-up form with their friends and followers. Forkly’s landing page was one of the first to successfully tap into this effect .

Forkly
Forkly is an innovator in this popular viral invitation system. If you want to be notified of Forkly’s launch, you can leave an email address in the form on the landing page. Once you hit the “Go” button, the page reloads and gives you a personalized link that you can share with friends and followers. If at least three of your friends join, then you will get early access to the service. And the more friends who join, the earlier your access will be (Update: they’ve just launched their app to the public) .

Forkly Landing in Elements Of A Viral Launch Page
Top: a simple informative landing page. Bottom: a simple viral loop.

Add an Incentive to the Sign-Up Process

Forkly’s incentive to share is a strong one: you’ve signed up to use the service anyway, so why not share it with a few friends so that you can gain access even earlier. This was a smart move and has been copied repeatedly since. But there are countless other ways to incentivize sharing.

ResourceGuru
ResourceGuru is giving away an iPad 2 to one of the people who share its link. Who doesn’t want an iPad 2 these days? Think about it: would you subscribe to ResourceGuru if it had only used Forkly’s strategy? Would you subscribe if an iPad was (potentially) waiting for you? These incentives are most effective when the item has an aspect of exclusivity. That’s why you see so many give-aways close to the launch dates of Apple gear, when no one yet possesses the gadget.

Resourceguruapp Landing in Elements Of A Viral Launch Page
ResourceGuru throws in the prospect of winning an iPad for sharing a personalized link.

Alternative Ways to Subscribe

In some cases, you might want to offer other ways to subscribe to your news, particularly if your users are mainly on Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr and like to consume news in ways other than through email.

RumpelDealSkin
RumpelDealSkin offers various ways to get the inside scoop: email, phone, text message, postcard. Additionally, there are links to its social profiles.

Rumpeldealskin Landing in Elements Of A Viral Launch Page

Stealth Start-Ups

Lately, the “stealth start-up” method has been quite popular, due to some spectacular successes (including Hipster, Connect.me and Kohort). It’s a way of making something publicly known without actually letting people in on what you’re doing. This could elicit another level of interest in your start-up, but let’s face it: it’s a tough ride. Are you able to leak as little info as possible but still make people genuinely excited?

Hipster
Hipster is a good example of a stealth start-up. Hipster managed to gather 10,000 addresses in just two days after its public marketing launch. And it happened before anyone knew what it does. The cool name and slogan (“Something cool is coming to San Francisco”) turned out to be the perfect marketing mix. The story was picked up widely and quickly by bloggers and media alike. People wanted to know what it is, and they left their email addresses in bulk and shared the links happily with their friends (Hipster used the Forkly approach) to be among the first to see the service.

Hipster Landing in Elements Of A Viral Launch Page
Elements: intriguing name; fitting slogan; fitting background image; call to action.

Notice the value proposition that complements the name. Then there’s the simple call to action button, and the background that would appeal to San Francisco residents and others. (Wouldn’t you want to know what you’re missing out on?) This happened in January 2011; as of this writing, Hipster is still building its service which will be some kind of local Q&A. But take a moment to check out the hiring page to see how it’s still using its name to tell a story.

Supyo
Supyo has received a lot of attention as a result of its founders, long-time collaborators Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker. They have set up nothing but a splash page for now, which means they cannot collect addresses. (Update: they’ve just added an email notification form.) Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker will create buzz even if only for their Web celebrity status.

Supyo-screenshot in Elements Of A Viral Launch Page
Elements: logo; social proof.

Amen
The same is true for Amen. Their landing page doesn’t sport anything but a cryptic (and interesting) message of what it is going to be: “The best place for having an opinion in the World”. Rumors of what the service will be and the fact that Ashton Kutcher and Madonna’s manager invested here keep the interest alive (also the first Twitter engineer Florian Weber is a co-founder).

Amen Landing in Elements Of A Viral Launch Page
Elements: explanation of what it does; Similarly to Hipster: an unconventional branding.

Allow People to Reserve User Names and Integrate With Social Networks

Connect.me
Connect.me is another stealth start-up with an incredibly viral sign-up page. Apart from its memorable domain and brand name, it communicated almost no information on what it’s about; an “About connect.me” link appeared in the bottom-right corner, but it didn’t really explain what the app would do.

Connect Me Landing in Elements Of A Viral Launch Page
Top: reserve your user name; get early access; register only through social networds. Bottom: revamped landing page with the same structure but with an explanation of the service.

Unlike the services mentioned above, Connect.me did not ask you to leave an email address. You could only register through Twitter or Facebook. Also, did you notice that instead of something like, “Invite friends to get early access,” the copy says, “Reserve your username to get early access”? This makes it clear that early adopters will have dibs on vanity URLs. This can be very effective with people like me, who have common names and want to register a good URL.

If you went through with the registration, the app would automatically tweet or post a simple message on Facebook: “Reserve your Connect.me username [link].”

This simple approach generated roughly 20,000 sign-ups in a short span of time and even provoked fears of a scam in the blogosphere shortly after. When you visit the website now, you’ll find a landing page (in green) telling you exactly what the service does. The “Reserve your username” is still there, but it has been turned into a central call-to-action button.

The success of strategies like those used by Forkly, Hipster and Connect.me have even led to the creation of a start-up that takes care of the sign-up process for you. LaunchRock does all the heavy lifting, leaving you to concentrate on building the actual software.

LaunchRock
Once you’ve submitted your email address, you’re immediately given the option to do a few things with your link: tweet it, share it on Facebook or email it to friends. The tweet is pre-written and contains a lot of important elements:

  1. Your brand name, and an announcement that you will be launching soon;
  2. Social proof: “Follow me! I’m first in line.”
  3. Your personal link;
  4. Your brand’s Twitter handle.

Launchrock Landing in Elements Of A Viral Launch Page
LaunchRock will take care of your viral launch page.

Even if you don’t use LaunchRock as a service to launch your product, it still has a lot to be inspired by. I would even argue that now with so many newly unveiled LaunchRock sites you would do your launch a disfavor for looking like another me-too.  LaunchRock’s blog provides a good analysis of the viral “Coming soon” page.

Especially Twitter Integration

Many services that succeed in generating some idea or product that people want to share on Twitter (and Facebook) experience a hell of a growth rate. This was the case with Threewords.me and Turntable.fm, which recently became the most shared music start-up on Twitter, because people love to announce what they’re doing at a given moment (check out the real-time search results of Turntable.fm’s hash tag). Let’s look at two examples:

Shuush
Shuush is a Twitter reader that scales back users who tweet too often and amplifies people who don’t tweet as much. As a byproduct, users are assigned Shuush levels that they can tweet out. Users like to share facts about themselves, which we’re seeing over and over again.

Shuush Twitter Integration in Elements Of A Viral Launch Page
Elements: explanation of the service; sign in with Twitter only.

Instagram
Instagram has no conventional landing page (and didn’t have a conventional viral launch page when it launched). Rather, its viral circulation comes from people sharing their images on social channels, mainly Twitter. You can instantly recognize these images by the branded URLs, like of this image by Justin Bieber, http://instagr.am/p/IMhuj/, which made the service literally explode on July 21st.

Instagram Twitter Integration in Elements Of A Viral Launch Page
Elements: landing page has a call-to-action “Download” button; the viral loop comes from people who share the service’s output (images) on Twitter and other services.

Sell a Half-Baked Product for Half the Price

Minecraft
Minecraft is an online gaming phenomenon, and its adoption has been mind-blowing, with 2,932,884 licenses sold in the beta phase. People are willing to sign up early, especially if a discount is offered because the product is not yet ready. When Minecraft is finished, it will sell for €20.00. Right now, at 25% off, you can get it for €14.95. Discounts for early adopters are a no-brainer.

Minecraft Landing in Elements Of A Viral Launch Page
Minecraft offers a discount during the beta stages. As the product advances, the discount shrinks.

Lifepath
Lifepath turns this approach on its head. The service is invite-only, and because people might very well want to use it, the company invites visitors to buy an “entrance ticket”. The closer the service gets to completion, the lower the entrance fee gets. Note that registrations fared better when the fee was $10 than when it dropped to $3 . This is an interesting insight that the creator Dustin Curtis shared on Twitter.

Lifepath Landing in Elements Of A Viral Launch Page
Elements: exclusivity; call to action.

Exclusivity

Exclusivity can be a powerful way to convince people to join. Facebook, which started out as private to one university, now has the biggest following of them all.

Sugarhigh
When you receive an invitation to this invite-only newsletter, you’re redirected to the landing page, where a counter displays the time you have left to register.

Signup-screenshot-88 in Elements Of A Viral Launch Page
Elements: invitation only; sign up within 24 hours of being invited.

Turntable
Turntable is the red-hot music start-up that allows you to join rooms and DJ along with other people, mainly friends. The landing page says, “If you have a Facebook friend already on Turntable, you’re in!” This enables the company to grow the service organically, making sure that only like-minded people join and slowly adjusting and scaling up its servers. If you know no one on the service, you can leave your email address.

Turntable Landing in Elements Of A Viral Launch Page
Elements: exclusivity; social proof.

Tell a Story, Add Personality

Telling a story is a powerful way to interact and tell people about your product (and has a clear psychological aspect). Stories can captivate an audience, which is exactly what you want for your launch page.

Evertale
Evertale is an Android app that automatically scrapbooks your life. The creators explain this very visually as you scroll down the page. Your path is marked on a map, and when you reach the bottom you’ll see a call to action, where you can leave your details.

Evertale Landing in Elements Of A Viral Launch Page
Evertale gives its elevator pitch as you scroll down the page.

It turns out that scrolling is a useful technique for making information engaging and telling a story. Check out these other services with slightly alternative approaches:

  • Ben the Bodyguard
    A Frenchman protecting your secrets is the theme of the viral launch page for this iPhone app.
  • Nizo
    Another launch page for an iPhone app. Notice how the page elements move around.
  • Kaleidoscope
    The landing page for a Mac OS app. Each major feature is given its own section.
  • Ala
    The landing page for a Swiss illustration and interface design studio.

The Last Rocket
Telling a story has a lot to do with authenticity and staying true to one’s purpose. The Last Rocket is 8-bit at heart and conveys it well on its launch page.

Last Rocket Landing in Elements Of A Viral Launch Page
Story told exclusively in 8-bit.

Social Proof

Social proof (one of six “weapons of influence,” according to Robert Cialdini) can be a powerful and compelling way to get people to sign up for your service (or at least for the launch news). In a nutshell, the concept states that people will do what they see other people doing. We have seen this demonstrated with the viral invitation system used by Forkly and the social network-only system used by Connect.me. A complementary feature would be to showcase your sign-ups or Likes front and center on the home page.

Gidsy
Gidsy is an online marketplace, and as such it needs the trust of the community. Therefore, the company shows the love it’s gotten from real users on its home page, along with two key elements: a few explanatory words, and a sign-up form with a call-to-action button. You’ll find a button labelled “Host an activity” in the header, although the service is not yet fully operational. By checking it out, however, a lot of people will be convinced to come back once it’s ready to go.

Gidsy Landing in Elements Of A Viral Launch Page
Elements: copy with slogan; subscription form; call to action in the header; social proof.

Fellody
Fellody has taken quite an interesting approach with social proof and exposure. If you’ve signed up and uploaded an image to your profile, the picture could be included in the background of the home page.

Fellody is a music social network with dating elements, so showing off its members to prospective users makes sense.

Fellody Landing in Elements Of A Viral Launch Page
Elements: social proof.

Honestly.com
Right after you sign up (through Facebook), Honestly.com sends you an email showing your friends who have already signed up. It establishes trust in those few moments after sign-up, while helping you find people you know on the service.

Honestly Notification in Elements Of A Viral Launch Page
Elements: confirmation email (social proof, instead of the usual gibberish).

Fab
We saw earlier with Justin Bieber on Instagram how social proof from celebrities can create an instant surge in traffic and sign-ups. Ashton Kutcher, who actively invests in start-ups, knows this well. Whichever start-ups he invests in get not only funding but an instant push in visibility. Fab is a start-up that recently pivoted from Fabulis and has gotten funding from Kutcher among others. TechCrunch even did a celebrity endorsement face-off between him and Kevin Rose.

Fab Landing in Elements Of A Viral Launch Page
Element: social proof from celebrities.

Sharable (i.e. Viral) Content

Another strategy for gaining traction ahead of launch is to create sharable or viral content. This could be anything that people want to consume and that solves a problem they have. (KISSmetrics covers the topic in depth on its blog.)

BestVendor
BestVendor shared a statistical document on its blog (“The Startup’s Toolkit”) that was picked up widely in the blogosphere and start-up world, which is exactly the market it is targeting. Its launch page, however, is a simple sign-up form for collecting email addresses.

Bestvendor Landing in Elements Of A Viral Launch Page
BestVendor shared its document “The Startup’s Toolkit.”

Visual.ly
Visual.ly spread around its video explaining what its service is about, along with its “Coming soon” page. The video was well done and for that reason was shared by others.

A good video is enough to get attention.

Fake Readiness and Skip “Coming Soon” Altogether

Recently, doubt has been cast on the effectiveness of these viral launch strategies. Some of the criticism questions how much a sign-up is worth if people don’t really know what they’re signing up for. Turning someone who has signed up into a user after launch could prove very hard. So, you could skip the “Coming soon” approach entirely and make it look like you’re ready for users to sign up. Make the launch page look like an actual landing page for your product.

By skipping the “Coming soon” page, you can test your idea on visitors directly. The goal is still to get as many sign-ups as possible, but in the process you are gaining validated insights into your start-up. Is your page ready, but no one is giving you their address? That’s a good sign that you need to clarify your vision.

Joel Gascoigne, who launched his start-up Buffer that way, has this to say:

“Treat your idea as a hypothesis that needs rigorous testing, and treat the emails as people who are happy for you to get in touch to discuss your product idea further in order to validate that it would solve a real problem for them and that they might actually pay. I don’t think the idea of having a conversation with the people who give you their email comes into the minds of new start-up founders enough.”

EyeEm
EyeEm currently has an Android app out in the wild. And if you browse the company’s landing page, you might assume that the iPhone app is ready to download, too. But if you hover over the iTunes button, it lets you know that it’s “Coming soon,” and then you can leave your email address on the dedicated iPhone launch page. You sign up for an email notification by setting up an account, so once the app is out, you’re already registered and ready to use the product (you will no longer see this, since the launch has now been done).

Eyeem Landing in Elements Of A Viral Launch Page
EyeEm’s App Store button tricks you into thinking that the iPhone app is available.

The OpenFeint Bluff
The developers behind OpenFeint, the social gaming network for iPhone, started with a bluff. They sent a press release to TechCrunch and got the blog to cover the story, which claimed that they were almost done and would be releasing the product soon. Only after many people signed up did they decide that building out the concept was worthwhile; till then, they had not written a single line of code. So, they worked away at it for 45 days straight. The company later sold for $104 million.

Websites That Respond to Visitors

Thermo
Thermo, the landing page for an iPhone “pocket thermometer,” does a great job of telling you what the app does and being responsive to you. It tracks your location, fetches the temperature there and then displays it in a graphic on the left. Moreover, the developers allow you to tweet the results (not unlike what Shuush does), thus gaining even more exposure.

Thermo Me Landing in Elements Of A Viral Launch Page
Thermo responds to your location and temperature.

Sign-Ups as a Qualifier

Joel Gascoine proposes taking the conversation with prospective users to the logical next step. Whenever someone signs up or tries to sign up, you could give them a few questions to answer. There’s a thin line, though, between annoying visitors (and thus driving them away) and making them feel valued.

Monotask
Monotask asks subscribers key questions that will immediately inform its product decisions before launch.

Monotask Landing 1 in Elements Of A Viral Launch Page
This looks like a normal, simple launch page.

Monotask Landing 2 in Elements Of A Viral Launch Page
After you sign up, Monotask asks why you subscribed and how it can build a great product for you.

Joshua Porter analyzes Monotask’s implementation more in depth in this article “Using Your Sign-Up Form as a Qualifier.”

Make It Easy for People to Love You

The last and simplest advice is this: make it easy for people to love you. This love could be for any number of things: your design, your ideas, your approach. Or perhaps they just love that you make their lives easier in some way. Visitors will always reward you for that.

Akismet
One detail on Akismet’s home page is a good example of making people’s lives easier. When you right-click its logo, a window opens that asks you, “Looking for the Akismet logo?,” followed by links to download it. How many bloggers and journalists try to copy logos into their articles? I don’t know how many, but everyone will love you for such attention to detail and for making their life a little easier.

Akismet Logo in Elements Of A Viral Launch Page
When you right-click the logo, a pop-up lets you download files in different formats.

Conclusion

The strategies listed above provide a glimpse of how launch pages could be made more intriguing and shareable. Many of the start-ups we’ve analyzed have made use of various strategies to grow their numbers. Most importantly they built a service that people were interested in and they managed to share their vision among the right people making use of the viral loop.

But the list is by no means exhaustive and certainly the launch page was not the only reason the services took off. A well thought out placement in blogs, social media and among friends is often a necessary accompanying move. However: the launch page is always the first thing a potential user sees of a new idea and it would be wise to cater for the best possible conversion right there.

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How to work on your website content

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In content strategy, there is no playbook of generic strategies you can pick from to assemble a plan for your client or project. Instead, our discipline rests on a series of core principles about what makes content effective—what makes it work, what makes it good. Content may need to have other qualities to work within a particular project, but this list is limited to qualities shared across all sorts of content.

If this looks like theory, don’t be fooled. It’s really entirely practical: if we consciously refer to principles like these as we go about our work as info-nerds of various kinds, we’ll have an easier time making good, useful content—and explaining our priorities when we’re called to do so.

Good content is appropriate

Publish content that is right for the user and for the business

There’s really only one central principle of good content: it should be appropriate for your business, for your users, and for its context. Appropriate in its method of delivery, in its style and structure, and above all in its substance. Content strategy is the practice of determining what each of those things means for your project—and how to get there from where you are now.

Right for the user (and context)

Let us meditate for a moment on James Bond. Clever and tough as he is, he’d be mincemeat a hundred times over if not for the hyper-competent support team that stands behind him. When he needs to chase a villain, the team summons an Aston Martin DB5. When he’s poisoned by a beautiful woman with dubious connections, the team offers the antidote in a spring-loaded, space-age infusion device. When he emerges from a swamp overrun with trained alligators, it offers a shower, a shave, and a perfectly tailored suit. It does not talk down to him or waste his time. It anticipates his needs, but does not offer him everything he might ever need, all the time.

Content is appropriate for users when it helps them accomplish their goals.

Content is perfectly appropriate for users when it makes them feel like geniuses on critically important missions, offering them precisely what they need, exactly when they need it, and in just the right form. All of this requires that you get pretty deeply into your users’ heads, if not their tailoring specifications.

Part of this mind-reading act involves context, which encompasses quite a lot more than just access methods, or even a fine-grained understanding of user goals. Content strategist Daniel Eizans has suggested that a meaningful analysis of a user’s context requires not only an understanding of user goals, but also of their behaviors: What are they doing? How are they feeling? What are they capable of?

Venn diagram of user's contextsFig. 1. The user’s context includes actions, constraints, emotions, cognitive conditions, and more. And that in turn affects the ways in which the user interacts with content. (“Personal-Behavioral Context: The New User Persona.” © Daniel Eizans, 2010. Modified from a diagram by Andrew Hinton.)

It’s a sensible notion. When I call the emergency room on a weekend, my context is likely to be quite different than when I call my allergy specialist during business hours. If I look at a subway map at 3:00 a.m., chances are that I need to know which trains are running now, not during rush hour tomorrow. When I look up your company on my phone, I’m more likely to need basic contact info than your annual report from 2006. But assumptions about reader context—however well researched—will never be perfect. Always give readers the option of seeing more information if they wish to do so.

Right for the business

Content is appropriate for your business when it helps you accomplish your business goals in a sustainable way.

Business goals include things like “increase sales,” “improve technical support service,” and “reduce printing costs for educational materials,” and the trick is to accomplish those goals using sustainable processes. Sustainable content is content you can create—and maintain—without going broke, without lowering quality in ways that make the content suck, and without working employees into nervous breakdowns. The need for this kind of sustainability may sound boneheadedly obvious, but it’s very easy to create an ambitious plan for publishing oodles of content without considering the long-term effort required to manage it.

Fundamentally, though, “right for the business” and “right for the user” are the same thing. Without readers, viewers, and listeners, all content is meaningless, and content created without consideration for users’ needs harms publishers because ignored users leave.

This principle boils down to enlightened self interest: that which hurts your users hurts you.

Good content is useful

Define a clear, specific purpose for each piece of content; evaluate content against this purpose

Few people set out to produce content that bores, confuses, and irritates users, yet the web is filled with fluffy, purposeless, and annoying content. This sort of content isn’t neutral, either: it actively wastes time and money and works against user and business goals.

To know whether or not you have the right content for a page (or module or section), you have to know what that content is supposed to accomplish. Greater specificity produces better results. Consider the following possible purposes for a chunk of product-related content:

  • “Sell products”—This is so vague as to be meaningless and is likely to produce buzzword-infested fluff.
  • “Sell this product”—Selling a product is a process made up of many smaller tasks, like discussing benefits, mapping them to features, demonstrating results and value, and asking people to buy. If your goal is this vague, you have no idea which of these tasks (if any) the content will perform.
  • “List and demonstrate the benefits of this product”—This is something a chunk of content can actually do. But if you don’t know who is supposed to benefit from the product, it’s difficult to be specific.
  • “Show how this product helps nurse practitioners”—If you can discover what nurse practitioners need, you can create content that serves this purpose. (And if you can’t find out what they need before trying to sell them a product, you have a lot more to worry about than your content.)

Now do the same for every chunk of content in your project, and you’ll have a useful checklist of what you’re really trying to achieve. If that sounds daunting, think how much harder it would be to try to evaluate, create, or revise the content without a purpose in mind.

Good content is user-centered

Adopt the cognitive frameworks of your users

On a web project, user-centered design means that the final product must meet real user needs and fulfill real human desires. In practical terms, it also means that the days of designing a site map to mirror an org chart are over.

In The Psychology of Everyday Things, cognitive scientist Donald Norman wrote about the central importance of understanding the user’s mental model before designing products. In the user-centered design system he advocates, design should “make sure that (1) the user can figure out what to do, and (2) the user can tell what is going on.”

When it comes to content, “user-centered” means that instead of insistently using the client’s internal mental models and vocabulary, content must adopt the cognitive frameworks of the user. That includes everything from your users’ model of the world to the ways in which they use specific terms and phrases. And that part has taken a little longer to sink in.

Allow me to offer a brief illustrative puppet show.

While hanging your collection of framed portraits of teacup poodles, you realize you need a tack hammer. So you pop down to the hardware store and ask the clerk where to find one. “Tools and Construction-Related Accessories,” she says. “Aisle five.”

“Welcome to the Tools and Construction-Related Accessories department, where you will find many tools for construction and construction-adjacent activities. How can we help you?”

“Hi. Where can I find a tack hammer?”

“Did you mean an Upholstery Hammer (Home Use)?”

“…yes?”

“Hammers with heads smaller than three inches are the responsibility of the Tools for Home Use Division at the far end of aisle nine.”

…

“Welcome to The Home Tool Center! We were established by the merger of the Tools for Home Use Division and the Department of Small Sharp Objects. Would you like to schedule a demonstration?”

“I just need an upholstery hammer. For…the home?”

“Do you require Premium Home Use Upholstery Hammer or Standard Deluxe Home Use Upholstery Hammer?”

“Look, there’s a tack hammer right behind your head. That’s all I need.”

“DIRECTORY ACCESS DENIED. Please return to the front of the store and try your search again!”

Publishing content that is self-absorbed in substance or style alienates readers. Most successful organizations have realized this, yet many sites are still built around internal org charts, clogged with mission statements designed for internal use, and beset by jargon and proprietary names for common ideas.

If you’re the only one offering a desirable product or service, you might not see the effects of narcissistic content right away, but someone will eventually come along and eat your lunch by offering the exact same thing in a user-centered way.

Good content is clear

Seek clarity in all things

When we say that something is clear, we mean that it works; it communicates; the light gets through. Good content speaks to people in a language they understand and is organized in ways that make it easy to use.

Content strategists usually rely on others—writers, editors, and multimedia specialists—to produce and revise the content that users read, listen to, and watch. On some large projects, we may never meet most of the people involved in content production. But if we want to help them produce genuinely clear content, we can’t just make a plan, drop it onto the heads of the writers, and flee the building.

Of course, clarity is also a virtue we should attend to in the production of our own work. Goals, meetings, deliverables, processes—all benefit from a love of clarity.

Good content is consistent

Mandate consistency, within reason

For most people, language is our primary interface with each other and with the external world. Consistency of language and presentation acts as a consistent interface, reducing the users’ cognitive load and making it easier for readers to understand what they read. Inconsistency, on the other hand, adds cognitive effort, hinders understanding, and distracts readers.

That’s what our style guides are for. Many of us who came to content strategy from journalistic or editorial fields have a very strong attachment to a particular style—I have a weakness for the Chicago Manual of Style—but skillful practitioners put internal consistency well ahead of personal preferences.

Some kinds of consistency aren’t always uniformly valuable, either: a site that serves doctors, patients, and insurance providers, for example, will probably use three different voice/tone guidelines for the three audiences, and another for content intended to be read by a general audience. That’s healthy, reader-centric consistency. On the other hand, a company that permitted each of its product teams to create widely different kinds of content is probably breaking the principles of consistency for self-serving, rather than reader-serving, reasons.

Good content is concise

Omit needless content

Some organizations love to publish lots of content. Perhaps because they believe that having an org chart, a mission statement, a vision declaration, and a corporate inspirational video on the About Us page will retroactively validate the hours and days of time spent producing that content. Perhaps because they believe Google will only bless their work if they churn out dozens of blog posts per week. In most cases, I think entropy deserves the blame: the web offers the space to publish everything, and it’s much easier to treat it like a hall closet with infinite stuffing-space than to impose constraints.

So what does it matter if we have too much content? For one thing, more content makes everything more difficult to find. For another, spreading finite resources ever more thinly results in a decline in quality. It also often indicates a deeper problem—publishing everything often means “publishing everything we can,” rather than “publishing everything we’ve learned that our users really need.”

There are many ways to discover which content is in fact needless; traffic analysis, user research, and editorial judgment should all play a role. You may also wish to begin with a hit list of common stowaways:

  • Mission statements, vision statements, and core values. If the people within your organization are genuinely committed to abstract principles, it will show in what they do. The exception is the small number of organizations for whom the mission is the product, as is the case with many charities. Even then, this kind of content should be supplemented with plentiful evidence of follow-through.
  • Press releases. These may work for their very narrow intended audience, but putting them undigested onto a website is a perfect example of the how-we’ve-always-done-it mistake.
  • Long, unreadable legal pages. Some legal awkwardness is acceptable, but if you want to demonstrate that you respect your readers, take the extra time to whittle down rambling legalese and replace needless circumlocutions with (attorney-vetted) plain language.
  • Endless feature lists. Most are not useful to readers. The few that are can usually be organized into subcategories that aid findability and comprehension.
  • Redundant documentation. Are you offering the same audience three different FAQs? Can they be combined or turned into contextual help?
  • Audiovisual dust bunnies. Do your videos or animations begin with a long flying-logo intro? Do they ramble on for 30 minutes to communicate ten minutes of important content? Trim, edit, and provide ways of skipping around.

Once you’ve rooted out unnecessary content at the site-planning level, be prepared to ruthlessly eliminate (and teach others to eliminate) needless content at the section, page, and sentence level.

Good content is supported

Publish no content without a support plan

If newspapers are “dead tree media,” information published online is a live green plant. And as we figured out sometime around 10,000 BC, plants are more useful if we tend them and shape their futures to suit our goals. So, too, must content be tended and supported.

Factual content must be updated when new information appears and culled once it’s no longer useful; user-generated content must be nurtured and weeded; time-sensitive content like breaking news or event information must be planted on schedule and cut back once its blooming period ends. Perhaps most importantly, a content plan once begun must be carried through its intended growth cycle if it’s to bear fruit and make all the effort worthwhile.

This is all easy to talk about, but the reason most content is not properly maintained is that most content plans rely on getting the already overworked to produce, revise, and publish content without neglecting other responsibilities. This is not inevitable, but unless content and publishing tasks are recognized as time-consuming and complex and then included in job descriptions, performance reviews, and resource planning, it will continue.

Hoping that a content management system will replace this kind of human care and attention is about as effective as pointing a barn full of unmanned agricultural machinery at a field, going on vacation, and hoping it all works out. Tractors are more efficient than horse-drawn plows, but they still need humans to decide where and when and how to use them.

Of theses and church doors

One of the great images of the history of the Protestant Church is that of a German priest standing in the cold in front of the Castle Church in Wittenberg on All Saints Eve, nailing his manifesto to its wooden doors.

The reality of the publication of Martin Luther’s 95 Theses is messier, and whether the church doors were really involved at all is the subject of academic dispute, but one thing is clear: Luther published his theses to begin an open, public conversation.

Our industry doesn’t lack for manifestos, some of them even explicitly modeled after Luther’s. This article—and the book from which it’s extracted—is not one of the firebrand, nailed-to-the-door attempts at full-scale revolution.

But it is intended to continue conversations we’ve been having for years, and to spark new ones, about the shared principles and assumptions that underlie our work, and the weird and interesting things we can build on top of them.

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Communicate from human to human

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It’s not new to say that we now live in an age in which survival in business depends on your ability to communicate effectively through the internet.

What is new is the realization that just having any old website isn’t enough. The quality of your site and the nature of its content are paramount and your ability to communicate with your audience is the key.

A good website is built on two basic truths—that the internet is an interactive medium and that the end user is in fact human. In other words, it is meant to be an experience. As with any adventure, a little strategic thought is needed to ensure that the experience is enjoyable.

Respect me

Remember that the person on the other side of the computer screen is a human being. They want to know that your business understands them.

Take the time to find out who they are and what they like. Then tailor your message and design to suit them. A real-life analogy is the approach you would take to initiate a conversation with a stranger at a party (a person with whom you hope to become better acquainted). You would do well to listen intently to what interests them and then craft your conversation to suit. You wouldn’t bore them with a lengthy extolment of CSS or Ajax on a Saturday night, would you?

Try to think beyond the demographic and envisage the individual. Many web briefs contain a far-reaching description of the audience. During the briefing session, try to narrow the focus. A brief may begin at:

Intranet Audience: 20–50 year old real estate agents

This can be divided into a primary and secondary audience, as follows:

Intranet Primary Audience: 20–35 (sales agents)

Intranet Secondary Audience: 35–50 (middle and senior managers)

From that point, it helps to imagine yourself as the agent, logging onto the intranet with a cup of coffee in hand half an hour before tackling early open houses. Do you see your desire for flash animation disappear in a puff of smoke? Do you see how “get to the point fast and be obvious” becomes a distinct directive? How about the need for personalization, so the agent can see what they require immediately, for example, appointments for the day, contacts, and their sales pipeline?

Closing the gap between yourself and your audience will help you to make the right decisions and tailor the design to their needs.

Tell me a story

Harness one of the oldest and most effective ways of communicating knowledge on your site.

Storytelling is a rich and compelling way to involve the user in a design, evoke an emotional response, or enhance a user’s learning experience. The question to ask is:

Is there a more creative way to present the required information to increase the user’s involvement?

News websites are increasingly rising to the challenge. In the past a breaking story would have been a single page of written text. Now it may be enhanced with multimedia to offer alternate ways to view the story including interactive timelines, streaming web-cam, animation, sound, and video. These elements can give the audience a broader and deeper understanding of the topic and the issues, which surround it.

The most wonderful thing about using the internet to tell a story is that it can be non-linear—the user can click to view fragments of information that interest them, rather than viewing the entire story from beginning to end. By telling a story through user interaction, you enable users to choose their own path according to their preferences or needs.

Engage me

As broadband becomes prevalent, web designers have increasingly begun to combine visual design with interaction and motion. Their role has become less that of a designer and more that of a director of experiences. To illustrate the difference between those roles, let’s look at the way the creative direction of a design might be described:

To promote your strength, which is the local content of the entertainment news, we will include the cityscape of each state within your brand.

The direction of an experience, on the other hand, would require more documentation in the conceptualization stage. An experience director must pull together content, formulate an interactive approach and style, and orchestrate the creative elements in which to propel the story. The web designers of the future may even be required to write a treatment, melding the design process with that of film direction.

By attending to the entire user experience, designers can create a rich, sensory experience, which helps to immerse users and encourage them to become fully involved in the site and its message. When a site is intended to educate, immersion is particularly important, as it can increase learning speed and overall understanding—especially when a site’s main users are children.

Through immersion, the user experiences joy and satisfaction: positive qualities that will be transferred to your brand.

Inspire me

Some people believe that web design starts and stops with branding. Their view is the visual identity of the brand is easily applicable to the web through the transference of common elements such as logo, colours and typography.

Indeed a lot of the traffic that will come to your website will be people who know or chose your brand in the real world. So when they arrive at your virtual world it is an ideal opportunity to reinforce it.

However, your site can do much more than mimic your identity. It can encapsulate the brand personality, whether that is inspirational, trustworthy, or authoritative. These traits were part of the reason why they chose your brand in the first place.

During the filming of Withnail and I, the director told lead actor Richard E. Grant to “stamp the celluloid”, meaning to go full pelt, not half-measure. It’s timely advice for when you want to inspire your audience and make them take action—don’t be polite, grab them by the throat—and bring your brand to life!

Enchant me

A beautiful design will give the user the impression that the site is easy to use, whether it is or not. Also, it is more probable that the design will be used because the human psyche is inexorably drawn towards beauty.

Transactional sites often fail miserably in the aesthetic stakes. The reigning thought is that it is the domain of the usability consultant—that design is secondary and often confined to the “coloring in” of table cells.

Yet highly complicated processes and pages can look deceptively simple with the right styling. Spacing becomes increasingly important as it allows the user’s eyes to rest before taking on the next batch of information. Design can create order and instill a feeling of peace and serenity—positive attributes when you are asking your user to complete a lengthy and profit-creating form. Professional design can also increase user trust levels, the single most important trait to attain for any transactional site.

If you’re not a professional visual designer, you can engender trust and loyalty and foster attraction by consulting a high-level designer for business-critical or transactional sites.

The principles of good human-to-computer interface design are simplicity, support, clarity, encouragement, satisfaction, accessibility, versatility, and personalization. While it’s essential to heed these, it’s also important to empathize with and inspire your audience so they feel you’re treating them less like a faceless user and more like a human being. In doing so, you will extend their affinity with the design and foster positive attitudes towards your brand, company, or product.

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4 simple ways how designers should protect themselves

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4 simple ways how designers should protect themselves

People who don’t understand the true value of graphic designers will try to take advantage of them, especially if they’re newbies.

Others will try to calculate the time and effort involved in designing and then assume you’ll meet their expectations, however unrealistic.

This can wear on you both financially and mentally, so you have to find ways to protect yourself. Here are four ways to keep your work and your clients in check.

Have a look through them and let us know your experiences and whether you would add anything to this list.

1. Contracts and terms of service

Whenever you land a gig, be as clear as possible with the client so that they understand what will happen. I like to have a full consultation with new clients, and once we come to a basic agreement, I go over what they can expect from me and what I expect from them.

You may want to draw up a contract to get everything down on paper and to make sure everything is clear, just in case you run into trouble later on. There are a few essential things you’ll want to put in the contract or terms of services…

Deliverables

What exactly will you be giving them when all is said and done? This is usually specified by the client; they may want your PSD files or perhaps just a format that can be printed. Let them know what they will be getting so that there is no confusion.

Contributions

In addition to the deliverables, let the client know a bit about your process and what you expect from them. One of my biggest pet peeves is clients who don’t answer emails in what I think is a timely fashion; if you’re the same, why not put that in your contract? Spell out (and agree on) what you expect from the client and what they expect from you. This alone will clear up much confusion and hold each party accountable for the duration of the project.

Revisions

This is the cause of most headaches for designers. Spell out as clearly as possible what you consider to be a revision. This is key, because one person’s idea of a revision may not be the same as another’s. Is a revision moving the logo to the left or completely redesigning the page? Once you’ve come to an understanding, specify how many revisions you think are reasonable for the project (and the budget).

I personally don’t mind minor revisions, but complete redesigns are the death of me. To avoid this, you may want to provide several different designs at once and then narrow down as time goes on. But if you do this, make sure it’s contracted. Be up front when talking about revisions as well, and when you submit updates, remind the client what you’ve agreed on.

Payment

This is probably the most important part of the contract. How do you want to get paid? Do you want a deposit? If so, how much? Answer all of these questions so that the client knows what to do.

I strongly suggest some type of deposit before you start a project, just so that you know the client is serious about getting work done. Some designers require payment in full up front, while others have certain conditions depending on the total amount of the project. Figure out what works for you, discuss it with the client, and go from there.

Cancellations

We never like to think that someone would cancel on us. It’s one of the worst feelings in the world. But the truth is, it happens, and you need to protect yourself in some way. Perhaps give the client a time period in which they can cancel, or request a non-refundable deposit. Find something that works for you, and, of course, state it clearly in the contract. You never want to do a ton of work only to have the person back out on you with no consequences. Make no exceptions.

2. Say no

Some designers are so eager to stay busy with work or make money that they have a hard time saying no to projects. Too many projects coming your way is not the worst problem to have, but eventually you’ll get frustrated or burnt out. You’ll want to avoid certain types of projects…

Baby budgets

Be absolutely clear with yourself about how low you are willing to go on price for the work involved. You may have to pass on a ton of projects, but people who are willing to pay will eventually come forward. You don’t want to find yourself zipping through a bunch of cheap projects.

Outside your skill set

Be honest about your skill set. When I started out, I took on projects that were outside my skill set, just so that I would stay busy. I had no working knowledge of Flash, but I would guarantee someone a Flash intro or banner. That was a huge mistake, because I had to learn the skill and execute the task to the client’s liking by the deadline. That’s a recipe for stress.

Only take on work that falls within your skill set. Be honest with yourself and your client. Perhaps you could convince them of an alternative solution that does fall within your skill set.

Full plate

If you’re already up to your eyeballs in work, don’t take on more. You’ll just be getting more deadlines and more stress for no reason. Pace yourself; avoid burning out or getting into a creative slump. Give yourself some breathing room between projects so that you have time to rejuvenate and come up with fresh ideas.

Speeding through projects and working at your limit all the time is not good for your mental or physical health. Don’t be so quick to accept whatever crosses your path. Just let good work come to you, and do it on your own terms.

3. Charge more

Protecting yourself has a lot to do with the types of clients you attract. If you attract ones who you just don’t get along with or who are rude and hard to work with, consider increasing your prices.

The amount you charge correlates to the value (and quality) of your product. If you charge pennies for big projects, you might attract a bunch of clients, but they won’t necessarily understand the value you are delivering. When people don’t understand your value or feel you offer little, then they will treat you accordingly.

If you purchase a $100 digital camera, you can enjoy the product, and if you drop it or scuff it up a bit, you won’t be terribly upset because it was only $100. If you purchase a $1500 camera, you’ll be much more careful with it. That’s the kind of mentality most people have with service providers.

Unfortunately for us, working with people who don’t value our services can be very stressful. Consider increasing your prices in order to attract a different type of client, one who values your work.

4. Set barriers with family and friends

This is a touchy subject for most. We all cherish our friends and family, but we are often the only graphic designer they know. And when they come to us for work, they expect a deep discount or even no charge. Figure out beforehand where you’ll draw the line.

If you offer a discount, make sure that at least your time spent on the project will be covered. Beyond that, treat them just like a regular client. Of course, you might want to be a bit more flexible in the number of revisions you allow and things of that nature, which is fair.

Dealing with requests for free work is a bit more difficult. If I accept a project for free, I treat it as my own personal project. I retain total creative control, and once it is delivered, few or no revisions are allowed — and certainly no redesigns. Again, figure out what’s best for you and your business, and sit down and go over it with your relative or friend.

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Difference between journalism and blogging

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The Web is a galaxy of information that is rapidly expanding. Blogs and online magazines are helping shape the future of this Information Age that we live in. Those of us who read, write and design blogs and online magazines possess extraordinary power and potential. How will we choose to use it?

If you use your website to publish news, events, opinions or interviews, you should familiarize yourself with the basics of journalism. These tools can help us develop and share information that is exciting, intelligent, and responsible. They can provide guidance and support as you pursue a career or hobby writing online.

Newsstand2 in We Can Do Better: The Overlooked Importance of Professional Journalism

This article is accompanied by examples of photojournalism, which is the practice of communicating news through photographs. The above photo of a 1940′s newsstand in New York City was taken by photojournalist Ruth Orkin

We, designers, go on all day about the usability of our WordPress layouts and the readability of our typography, but all of those things have been considered in vain if our writing is poorly spelled, riddled with inaccuracies, or based on second-hand assumptions that will leave our audience misled, confused, or worse. Even if you’re just casually writing about why you personally love/hate the iPad (for example), you can do so in a truthful way (truthful to your own opinions and truthful to the information you are discussing).

Whether or not you strive to produce writing that you consider journalism is not all that important. What is important is that no matter what writing genre you specialize in, you have a responsibility to your readers to publish high quality writing that is truthful, accurate, and readable. Oh, and this applies to your professional Twitter stream and Facebook updates, too. All of these elements have a reflection on you and your brand.

Trained professional journalists spend years studying the complex techniques and thorny philosophical values that define the trade of journalism, so don’t expect to receive a Master’s degree from Columbia by the end of this article. What this piece can serve as is a crash course designed to introduce concepts that will improve your writing, pique your interest, and instill a sense of respect for the fundamentals of a noble profession.

What is Journalism?

The most familiar function of journalism is ‘hard news’ reporting you’ll see on the front page of the New York Times or the Washington Post. But journalistic writing also extends to editorial writing, cultural reviews, interviews, and more.

According to The Elements of Journalism (written by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel), “Journalism’s first obligation is to the truth.” Journalism is the pursuit of truth, accuracy and fairness in the telling of a story. Journalists serve and inform their audience by investigating and reporting on news, trends, issues, and events. Much like designers, journalists pride themselves on a duty provide their audience with useful, high-quality content.

What’s the difference between Journalism and Blogging?

CNN.com delivers journalism. Your cousin’s homemade Twilight fan fiction site, on the other hand, is a blog. However, somewhere in between lies a hotly debated grey area.

So can blogs be journalism? According to NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen, “They can be, sometimes.”  How can you tell the difference? Depends on who you ask. Rosen himself is both journalist and blogger (he runs PressThink, a weblog about journalism and the press). In his essay ‘Bloggers vs. Journalists is Over’, Rosen decides that the sometimes indiscernible difference between these two forms of writing is less important than the implications of massive shifts of power in the media. Rosen acknowledges what Tom Curley (Chief Executive of the Associated Press) called “a huge shift in the ‘balance of power’ in our world, from the content providers to the content consumers.” What does that mean for those of us in a position to take advantage of our newfound power?

It means we should move forward with a spirit of responsibility and immense excitement. We live in a revolutionary time when just about anyone with access to a computer can make his or her writing available to an enormous international audience with the click of a button. As Web designers and online writers who are experienced with the Web, the potential of our medium is tremendous.

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How to design attraction

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“Look at her: so beautiful, so friendly, so smart. And what a personality. She must be mine. Hooking up with her would make me the envy of all my friends. Sure, she’s young and she’s gorgeous. Besides, I can easily try something new if I get bored or something better comes along.”

No, that’s not an excerpt from Lolita. As cruel and inappropriate as they might seem, these thoughts are fairly common in our society. In fact, in the past year, millions of people have entered into exactly that type of relationship. Don’t bother calling the Special Victims Unit; what we’re discussing here is not what you think it is. It’s the Apple iPad.

Apple seems to have entranced people. It’s hard to walk down the street without passing someone who is plugged in to those iconic white headphones or to enter a coffee shop without hearing someone gabbing on their iPhone. Apple’s stores are crowded, and its products sell in absurd quantities.

Why is this? Apple might be a visionary company with a strong grasp of what’s hip. Yet I believe Apple’s appeal lies in something more than trends, something deeply ingrained in our psyche: relationships.

Relationship-engineering-title-image in Relationship Engineering: Designing Attraction

Psyche Revived by the Kiss of Love, Antonio Canova. (Image: Wikipedia)

We don’t simply own products; we have relationships with them. Intimate ones at that. We are in a state of courtship with every brand in existence. Each of them wants to be a part of our lives, and each wants love in return. Thinking about our relationships with particular products and brands in the same way that we think about interpersonal relationships yields interesting insights. When we decide to bring a person or product into our lives, we must first evaluate our options. The criteria we use to decide whether we love, hate or are indifferent to another person are the same we use to judge a product or brand.

There are many types of relationships, but we can put brand-consumer relationships into three categories: acquaintance, friend and lover.

When someone purchases a bag of apples at the grocery store, they’re demonstrating an acquaintanceship with apples. They’ve interacted with apples before, but there’s no deep attachment, and there has been very little bonding with the product.

The next step up — friendship — emerges because of branding. For example, I always purchase a certain brand of gum. I’ve come to know the brand and its offerings, and I enjoy having its product in my life. We’re friends, but that’s where the relationship ends. There’s no romance involved, and no longing or desire is felt.

Only certain brands manage to take the step from friend to lover. Apple is one of the most valuable companies in the world. It also provides a useful model of consumer courtship. Just about any iPhone user will proudly tell you, like a love-struck teenager on prom night, that they “love” their phone and would be “like, totally lost without it.” There are dozens of cell-phone manufacturers, but only one iPhone. Successful visionary companies, such as Apple, have mastered the art of relationship engineering.

Designing Attraction

Ring-of-fire in Relationship Engineering: Designing Attraction

Love is often likened to fire. In the early stages of a relationship, things start heating up. As the love grows stronger, the flames grow higher. When a relationship falls apart, we say that the fire has gone out. Whether someone lights or douses your fire has to do with the two core aspects of their being: how they appear on the outside and who they are on the inside. That is, a person’s appeal is based on two things: looks and personality. Let’s take a closer look at each of these aspects of appeal and examine how they influence people into relationships with brands and products.

Looks

Baby-got-back in Relationship Engineering: Designing Attraction

Attractiveness spurs lust. It’s a simple cause-and-effect paradigm ingrained in our very nature. We all long for the cute guy or girl in class, and that same desire guides us when choosing a product.

Since the days of Plato, philosophers and artists have tried to pinpoint exactly what makes something aesthetically pleasing. No universal formula for beauty has ever been agreed upon. Beauty is subjective. The designer’s job is to appeal to the collective subjective, or the average of personal preferences. Doing so ensures a product appeals to the largest audience possible.

Making your product visually appealing is not superficial. In fact, design is often a product’s primary competitive advantage. iPod wasn’t the first MP3 player on the market; it didn’t have the largest capacity; it didn’t have the most features; and it certainly wasn’t the cheapest. It was, however, sexy. It was simple and self-explanatory. Its scrolling wheel was as intuitive as it was revolutionary. Perhaps most importantly, it introduced a unique and (now) iconic form factor. The market had been flooded with matte gray devices with black headphones, but this entrant had a clean white front and mirrored back. Even the earbuds were white. Many people tuck their devices into their pockets, which makes the headphones the most visible hardware. Apple exploited this and turned the earbuds into a mnemonic device. Spotting someone with white earbuds, even from afar, immediately told you which brand was on the other end.

The iPod now accounts for well over 70% of the audio-device market. Why? I think it’s because the iPod is just more distinct than its competitors. In a market full of brunettes, the iPod is Marilyn Monroe.

Facebook vs. MySpace

Facebook has more than 500 million users, and that number is growing steadily. MySpace has plateaued at around 125 million. How has MySpace, once the leading social network, fallen behind by such a large margin? There are a number of reasons, but design seems to be one of the most obvious (Newsweek and Mashable seem to think so, too).

Much to its detriment, MySpace allows users to apply their own style sheets. I can imagine the brainstorm that led to this decision: “Wouldn’t it be great to let users customize the look of their page? People love to make things their own and flaunt their personalities. This will surely encourage new users and give us the edge on Facebook. Hurrah!”

MySpace somehow failed to realize that most people’s design education consists entirely of WordArt tutorials taught by Microsoft’s Clippy. Perusing MySpace profiles is torturous. Hideous background images overshadow content, while animated GIFs and illegible text make for an irritating user experience.

Facebook realized that people want to connect with friends more than they want to customize style sheets, so it offered users a clean and uniform interface. Everything was nicely designed; nothing was gaudy or tasteless. The whole experience was much more visually appealing. While MySpace was pushing personalization, Facebook was refining a community to change the way we interact.

To Sum Up

  • People are programmed to judge by appearance, so every interaction they have needs to be groomed to visual perfection.
  • To maximize appeal, designers must be observant of the collective subjective.
  • Design is not superficial. It can be your greatest competitive advantage.
  • Visual distinction becomes a mnemonic device for your product. Incorporate it to increase awareness and encourage recall.
  • Allowing others to control your appearance, while nice in theory, can lead to chaos and brand deterioration.

Personality

Arrested-development2 in Relationship Engineering: Designing Attraction

As we get to know someone, the novelty of their appearance fades, and something more substantial is required to maintain our interest. We start looking beneath the surface and noticing abstract qualities: intelligence, sense of humor, likes and dislikes, ambitions. These qualities have the power to shape how we see the true person. A person’s personality — the DNA of their character — builds lasting appeal.

Character compatibility forms friendship and love. Looks alone might seal the deal for a one-night stand, but acceptance of personality is required for healthy long-term relationships. We’re often told to “be ourselves.” This is good advice. Like a pheromone-ridden glue trap, flaunting your personality attracts and ultimately bonds you with like-minded individuals.

Personality has this effect in the commercial realm as well. Aligning yourself with your target audience is critical to success. I’m sure this is excruciatingly obvious, and many organizations are already tuned into their demographics, but many others either are too shy to display personality or fail to do so properly.

Humor is one of personality’s strongest pheromones. If done right, humor evokes laughter. And yes, laughter is enjoyable in itself, but have you every wondered why we laugh? Anthropologists are discovering that laughing is not necessarily something we do merely for enjoyment, but is actually a subconscious technique that builds rapport. By laughing, we indicate to others that we agree with or accept them. Dr. Robert Provine, who has done extensive research on how, when and why we laugh, likens laughter to a glue:

…“Ha ha ha’s” are bits of social glue that bond relationships… When we laugh, we’re often communicating playful intent. So laughter has a bonding function within individuals in a group.

Applying a coat of humor to your product or advertising campaign is a great way to spark the subconscious urge to bond. Just make sure people are laughing with you, not at you.

Going back to Apple, its “I’m a Mac; I’m a PC” ads focus explicitly on personality by actually personifying brands (Apple and Microsoft). The casual dress and easygoing nature of the Mac character exudes fun, simplicity and intelligence, especially when juxtaposed with the conservative, uptight PC character.

Also, the subtle dose of geek humor gets you laughing (and thus successfully bonding) with the Mac, and laughing at (disapproving of) the PC. These ads strengthened Apple’s reputation as a hip, intelligent, friendly company, while pegging Microsoft as uptight and out of touch with users’ needs.

Microsoft attempted to salvage its reputation by recruiting — or shall we say, throwing money at — Jerry Seinfeld, who starred in a series of ads alongside Bill Gates. For personality, Jerry Seinfeld is a great candidate. He’s famous, his show had some 75 million viewers, he understands everyday people with everyday problems, and he’s funny.

In a swing-and-miss attempt at comedy, the ads follow Bill and Jerry as they “connect” with “real” people. Is it me, or do these ads actually enhance the perception we have of Microsoft as unhip and out of touch?

Digg vs. Reddit

Have you seen the top story on Digg today? Neither have I. A year ago, I would have been able to recap all of the top stories for you. The website was powered by people like me, so I came to rely on Digg to keep me up to date on topics I was interested in. My personality meshed with those of other Digg users, and visiting the website became part of my daily routine. Yet I rarely visit this social-bookmarking website anymore. Instead, I look to Reddit for my democratically selected links.

What has changed? Ever since Digg released version 4, back in August, content quality has dropped significantly. Front-page stories lack relevance, top stories are now decided by far fewer Diggs, and the sponsored links disguised as genuine articles sour the whole experience.

Digg’s personality changed. It destroyed the very foundation upon which it was built. Suddenly, publishers could auto-submit content and bypass the users who once acted as a filter to determine whether articles were relevant to the Digg audience. No longer was Digg a democratic platform. The power shifted from user to publisher. In other words, Digg sold out.

This personality switch rightfully pissed off the core user base. Alienated users began flocking to… well, an alien. Some stayed to plead with Digg that it revert to its earlier version. Digg refused. In revolt, users began to submit direct links to Reddit. Within months, Digg crumbled and users flocked in hordes to Reddit.

Reddit offers a platform similar to Digg and, despite being owned by Condé Nast, lacks the tinge of corporate influence. Before Digg’s redesign, Reddit was serving a respectable 429 million page views per month. Condé Nast has just announced that Reddit now serves more than 1 billion. That’s more than double its pre-Digg-blowout numbers and a 300% increase over its January 2010 figures. Digg has finally pulled some of the features that led to the mutiny, but it might be too little, too late.

A valuable lesson can be learned from Digg: stay true to yourself. With followers come expectations. Personality attracted them, and every action that is out of character will push them away. Introduce advancements incrementally, and users might put up with it; change drastically, and they’ll leave.

To Sum Up

  • Personality builds rapport. Don’t be afraid to flaunt it.
  • Laughter is a powerful social glue, but use it with caution. You want people laughing with you, not at you.
  • Define your personality and stay true to it. Out-of-character actions will be seen as inauthentic and will alienate your audience.

Conclusion

Studying the art of seduction and the rules of relationships can help you craft engaging user experiences and forge strong connections with users. Getting your audience to fall in love with your product is no easy task. It requires a holistic approach involving members of every team. As interactive professionals, our work bridges brand and consumer. We are the cupids of commerce. Sharpen your arrows; it’s time to spread some love.

This has been the first in a two-part series on relationship engineering. In part two, we’ll explore the art of maintaining a relationship and how to trigger purchase recursion via timely break-ups. Stay tuned!

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Lessons from mobile web design

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Mobile development is all the rage, and the interactive industry is in great turmoil as countless tablets and smartphones come to market.

Mobile app development gets most of the attention, while the mobile web somewhat quietly creeps along. But the mobile web is making progress every day as more and more developers launch mobile-optimized interfaces.

The great thing about the mobile web is that it is fundamentally built with all of the same tools used in traditional web design and development.

This makes it far more approachable than app development. Also, many users will want to visit a company’s website on the go, without necessarily needing a full-blown app.

Building websites optimized for mobile is so similar yet so different then designing for the desktop. Certain factors take on a far more significant role. For example, screen size variations, user attention spans and usability issues are more critical then ever.

These same issues are ever present on the desktop but are sometimes easier to overlook. Here we’ll look at some lessons to learn from the optimization that is happening on the mobile web. The lessons can directly inform how we design and how we think about traditional web design and website architecture.

 

Simplified navigation on mobile websites

One of the first things that becomes evident when digging into mobile websites is the extreme simplification of the navigation. Navigation not only becomes very prominent and central on a mobile website, but is also quite often trimmed down substantially to focus on only the most critical elements.

I find it amazing how top-level navigation can be boiled down to two to four items on most mobile websites. Of course, I recognize that the content on a mobile website is quite often optimized for the intended audience. For example, Truth Tabernacle Church has six options in its main navigation, only one of which has made it into the navigation for the mobile version; and the one that made it (“Contact”) is the focus of the entire home page.

The content that didn’t make it into the mobile version is, of course, still entirely relevant. The mobile interface is intended to catch people trying to find the church or check out the service times or simply contact them. These are the most likely objectives of the mobile surfer. Those hitting the full website on a desktop computer are as likely to want those things as they are to want to research the church to see whether it is the sort of place they would like to visit.

So, what is the lesson to learn? Don’t these two interfaces target totally different audiences and have totally different purposes? Perhaps, but we can learn a lot from the extreme focus of the mobile interface. Notice how everything is about the actions you can take? The church has eliminated all of the navigation elements that feel like boxes to check off.

One interesting element is the “About” navigation option on the full website. The mobile website may be optimized for people on the go, but there is no reason to assume that they wouldn’t be interested in reading about the church and its beliefs. Someone may have mentioned the church to you in passing, prompting you to look it up on your phone.

So, the navigation option for this element should be changed. What if, instead, it communicated something like, “What you should know about us”? While a bit long, it reflects a more helpful attitude. A general “About” bucket feels like a place to hold all of the information that no one reads. “A visitor’s guide to our church” feels a lot more useful and targeted.

The simplicity and focus of the mobile interface shows that everything must have a purpose to earn a slot on the website. If the same were true of the full website, we would be less inclined to fill it with seemingly important content and more inclined to make sure everything has a clear function.

This reflects a very task-oriented mentality. Every option challenges the user to take some active step. It is as though every passive option has been purged and reduced to actionable items on the mobile website. This leads us to the next lesson: be extremely task-oriented.

 

Mobile websites are task-oriented

With a task-oriented mindset, let’s reconsider the full website. While the home page is beautifully designed, the call to action is far less evident. The content is full of bits of information waiting for you to decide to be interested.

For example, the large banner highlighting a coming event fails to call me to some kind of action; very passive. With a task-oriented mentality, we could vastly improve on the “Read more” call to action. This could be as simple as making the call to action much more prominent; for example, a large button in a contrasting orange. Additionally, the call could be changed to “Learn more and sign up.”

Another example is the welcome message. I appreciate the intention and the message being communicated here. The message shows that real people are behind the website, and it attempts to make the page feel personal. But again, let’s dissect this with a task-oriented mentality. A great follow-up to an introduction like this would be a clear call to action encouraging visitors to take the next step. After all, the only people who will be reading this are newcomers. Current members will skip right past this to things like the event calendar. So, offer a conversion point for users, like “Ask us a hard question” or “What to expect when you visit.”

By contrast, the “Special guest” box is fantastic. It addresses key issues and drives people to dig deeper. I only wonder whether it could be a more prominent element of the page. Again, members will get to where they need to go; so focusing on those who are new to the website and the church would go a long way to maximizing the opportunity.

I know I am really beating this website up, but it is not because I dislike it or think that it doesn’t serve its function. My goal is only to challenge our thinking and our preconceived notions of what a website should look like and do. I actually commend this church for having a beautiful and functional website, with a mobile extension to boot!

 

Mobile websites dramatically shrink their content

Another obvious lesson related to paring down the navigation is that mobile websites invariably shrink their content. Not only are the number of options reduced to the core functionality and purpose of the website, but the copy is vastly reduced, too.

In some cases, much of the copy is eliminated entirely! This begs the question, is this content necessary on the full website if the mobile version functions well without it? Divi Aruba is a great example of this. The alluring marketing speak laid overtop the photo might seem like a must-have element for the home page, but it has been nuked on the micro mobile website.

On the mobile version, the logo is placed on top of the same image, and yet it still conveys the exact same message: if you want to go some place like this, read on. Why not use this prominent spot to drive people to the desired action? Surely the designers know what is the most critical element for converting visitors to customers. Put this information to work, and drive people there with a prominent call to action instead of fluffy marketing speak.

 

All the good stuff, sans fluff

This leads us to the next lesson: lose the fluff. The next example is a positive demonstration of this. Travel Tex is a travel information website for the state of Texas. It has a clear purpose and audience in mind. Fortunately, the designers have fully embraced the fluffy-less mindset.

Not only does the mini mobile website focus entirely on the topic at hand and the key actionable items, but so does the full website! What a relief to see almost no fluff at all. Including something dreary like a history of Texas would be all too tempting. If people wanted a history lesson, they wouldn’t come this website. You will be hard pressed to find content that is not relevant to this website’s singular purpose.

Get into the habit of questioning everything. This is the only way to really boil a website down to its critical elements, which is exactly what happens on a good mobile website. Tough choices are made and otherwise valuable content is cut in order to streamline the website. Call fluff for what it is and nuke it!

 

Branding is king on the mobile web

I am all about creativity on the web. In fact, many of the greatest changes in the industry have come about as a result of a refusal to stick to the status quo. But there is a time and place for everything. So many designers use their assignments as an excuse to release their creative juices, for no other purpose than to do something creative. This turns the website into a design for the designer, not for the client and their needs. This is one thing the mobile web warns against rather boldly.

Branding is incredibly consistent on the mobile web, and one of the most consistent parts is the placement of the logo. On mobile websites, you won’t find any crazy logos at the bottom with fixed footers. Functionality is king, and logos always appear at the top. Can you imagine hitting a mobile website and not seeing the logo right away? Yet this is commonplace on many full websites.

Here are a few websites that, while minimal and lacking in mind-blowing style, are rich in branding that can’t be missed.

The lesson here can have a profound impact on how you approach your work and on the fundamental value you pose to your clients. For every designer who figures out that the client’s needs should be their entire purpose for the project, there is another who wants to show the world how creative and original they are.

Like anyone else involved in the production of a website, the web designer should be single-minded in serving the client, helping their business and improving the bottom line. With every element you put on a mobile website, considers its role and the benefit it will bring. Apply this mentality to everything you do, and you will soon find a strong ally in your client.

The more we embrace the needs of the client and do everything we can to bring value to their website, the more we will see a fundamental shift in our work. We will go from building “cool stuff” to looking at everything from the client’s perspective. Does this feature stand to increase their profit? How can the design be changed to improve their business? If a byproduct of your work is more money for the client, then you will find opportunity everywhere.

 

Websites without the gimmicks

One of the greatest achievements of the mobile web is the total lack of gimmicks. To be fair, there is a time and place for gimmicks on the web. In fact, I dedicate whole sections of my books to them. But the lack of gimmicks on mobile websites demonstrates that these seemingly great ideas serve no real purpose.

Everything that goes on a mobile website should go through several filters. Is the content relevant and utterly useful? Is the content critical, and does it serve the core purpose of the website? Is the website easy to use and understand? Is the navigation unconventional? If so, is it critical to the function of the website? The answer may well be yes, but more often than not, it will be a decisive no.

Some gimmicks that are noticeably absent from mobile development are splash screens, unusual navigation, meaningless animations and interactivity, inline scrolling regions, odd layouts and fixed-width layouts. The efficiency of the mobile web is amazing.

 

Conclusion

As you can see, we have a number of lessons to learn from the mobile web; particularly, its ability to reveal unnecessary elements of a website. As with many things in life, a slight change in perspective often opens our eyes to the true value of things we have long taken for granted.

I am not suggesting that we have lost sight of the purpose of the web. Rather, I am proposing that we adopt a far more strategic mentality.

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How to identify good clients

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Peter Drucker is one of the most influential business writers of the last century. His ideas have shaped the ways we conduct business today. One of Drucker’s main ideas was the notion that without a customer, there is no business. Furthermore, customer satisfaction is the key to the success of any business, or in his words: “The single most important thing to remember about any enterprise is that there are no results inside its walls. The result of a business is a satisfied customer.”

To that, I say amen. Here’s the tricky part, though: satisfying all of your customers is simply not feasible unless you choose the right ones and let go of the rest. How do you do that? First, you have to set principles for identifying good customers. Then, evaluate potential customers against those principles, and bid farewell to those who don’t measure up… yes, even if you currently work with them.

Crafting Your Principles

The quest for good customers starts early on. It starts with deciding who your ideal customer is. Different companies have different ideals and cultures, and a variety of parameters are important for making this decision.

Here are the parameters to consider:

  • Size
    What sizes are the companies you have enjoyed working with? Do you prefer to work with small family businesses or large corporations?
  • Budget
    What is your minimum project budget? Will you take on a project with a tight budget if the customer is strategic?
  • Payment schedule
    Would you agree to receiving the full payment at the end of the project? If not, what’s the minimum up front that you require? This is often a pain point for small businesses and freelancers, and I strongly recommend following a harsh rule here with no exceptions.
  • Technical knowledge
    Are you willing to work with a customer who has minimal technical knowledge? How might this affect the outcome of the project?
  • Project dynamics
    Are you looking for a customer who will just give you the requirements and then wait for the deliverables, or would you prefer a more engaged client? On projects in which you collaborated with the client daily, were the results better or worse than those of projects with less interaction?
  • Length of relationship
    Are you interested in one-time gigs or a long-term working relationship? If you are thinking long term, estimate whether a particular customer would have enough projects to sustain that.
  • Personality fit

    What kind of people do you like to work with? Check with other companies that have worked with your prospective customer to find out whether there were any personality clashes during their projects.

Qualification Is Crucial

If you get this right, you will gradually see your customer relationships improve. More importantly, you will be less likely to wake up asking yourself why you are working on your current project.

To keep it simple, I’d recommend a total of four to five principles; but as with everything, tailor it to your own business. One effective method I have found is to set your principles in a spreadsheet, rank them, and then decide on a cut-off average for qualification. This is a great tool for identifying deals with higher average scores or for deciding between two potential deals. We’ve prepared an example of such a spreadsheet (Excel Spreadsheet).

A simple and efficient way to determine whether you’ve ranked your principles correctly is to look at past projects and make sure they align with your cut-off average. Specifically, make sure that past projects that really sucked get a low score, so that you avoid taking on similar projects in future.

Don’t be afraid to share your principles with potential customers. Some might show flexibility. A few years ago, when I approached a freelancer for a potential design project, he made it clear to me that he would charge 50% up front and 50% upon completion of the project. I told him we couldn’t accept such payment terms. He immediately wished me luck. You know what? I was so impressed by his confidence that I called him back and hired him anyway.

Self-Qualification

The qualification principles are important because they can also be a great time-saver. I call this self-qualification. The idea is simple. Now that you know what matters most in your relationships with customers, you can signal that on your website, filtering customers who you would never want to work with.

For instance, you can be clear about the prices you charge and the projects you’ll take on. Read this beautifully crafted message from Forty:

“We try to avoid very small projects (under $10k) because our process doesn’t work well at that scale. Likewise, we also pass on very large projects (over $300k) because they’re just not much fun to work on.”

Forty in How To Identify Good Clients (and Avoid Bad Ones)

You can be sure that Forty is saving a lot of time by not dealing with customers who want a plain WordPress skin for $500. The company also subtly hints that the big guys needn’t call it either. It has decided that it doesn’t enjoy big lengthy projects, which are usually initiated by big messy corporations. To make sure prospective customers get the picture, Forty specifies its hourly cost straightforwardly: “Our base rate is $145/hour.”

Another beautiful thing to notice is that personality comes through the text on the website. You can be sure that anyone who takes themselves too seriously won’t be contacting the company. And that’s perfect! It helps the agency focus on the right set of customers.

We see the same approach with Blue Flavor: clear, detailed pricing accompanied by a clear message, setting the stage for the initial communication:

Bluefavor in How To Identify Good Clients (and Avoid Bad Ones)

Nclud takes a different approach by including a drop-down form in which the customer can indicate their budget. This again makes clear the range of projects the company is willing to take on:

Nclud in How To Identify Good Clients (and Avoid Bad Ones)

Ngen uses the same “trick.” The difference in the messages that these two menus send is interesting. Judging from the budget ranges, Nclud probably handles bigger projects:

Ngen in How To Identify Good Clients (and Avoid Bad Ones)

Never Too Late To Say Goodbye

Assuming you’re passionate about your profession, let’s make one thing clear: you should enjoy the work that you do. If you don’t enjoy your work, that means you’ve taken on a frustrating project or, worse, a frustrating customer.

That can happen. In fact, it happens a lot. And even if you employ the principles mentioned above, it will still happen. But that doesn’t mean you have to continue suffering. No matter how many hours you have invested, if a project doesn’t work, it will continue not to work, and you will only experience more grief. Kill it as early as possible. That would be best for both you and the customer.

So, why would you fire a customer? Let’s look at five reasons:

  1. The customer is abusive.
    This is an easy one. You should be treated with respect and dignity, and you should not tolerate any kind of abusive language or behavior. Period.
  2. You don’t get paid on time.
    You are not a bank. Be willing to bend over backwards for your clients, but they must pay you on time. A customer who doesn’t understand this will hurt your cash flow and, eventually, your business.
  3. You get phone calls at nights or on weekends, even though you insisted otherwise.
    People have to respect your time and not act as though they own it. You are selling your professional services, not yourself.
  4. The scope of the project perpetually increases, but the customer refuses to increase the budget.
    This happens a lot. You start a logo, and then the client asks you to throw in a website. The responsibility for setting expectations is yours, but if you do that, and the customer still pushes for more without being willing to increase the budget, then you’ll end up with an unprofitable business.
  5. The customer doesn’t respect you professionally and ignores your recommendations.
    To stop caring and just take orders from the customer takes all the fun out of a project. It kills your productivity, erodes your portfolio and stunts your skills.

Obviously, an important question is whether you can afford to fire your client. This is a valid concern, and it depends on the circumstances. This goes back to what you value in customers, and so this will vary from company to company.

If you have many projects waiting on deck, you could probably fire a customer without hurting your revenue. In fact, by working with someone who don’t fit your business values, you are probably giving up on great customers who could take your company to the next level. Take all of these factors into consideration when deciding.

If you do decide to fire a customer, you should seriously consider how to go about it without hurting your relationship with them and without risking your reputation.

Some ways are better than others. The fact that you didn’t get along with this person doesn’t make them bad. It simply means that your values or personalities do not match. More often than not, you will be the one who has to pick up the phone. Follow these steps:

  1. Prepare for the call. Look hard again at your decision to make sure it is the right one.
  2. In the call, explain the reasons for your decision, and point out that it was a business decision, not a personal one.
  3. Help the customer find someone else who would be willing to work with them. Other firms or professionals would likely be happy to get the opportunity.
  4. Bill what you deserve.
  5. Note what you learned from the relationship, and add it to your qualification process.
  6. Most importantly, move on.

At the end of the day, the Pareto effect applies to some degree: 20% of your customers are profitable, fun to work with and contribute to 80% of your growth. The ideas explored above could help you increase that 20% to 30, 50 or even 90%.

In Conclusion

Working with the wrong customers has ramifications. Designer David Thorne relates one email exchange of his that serves as a funny yet unfortunate reminder of this. It didn’t matter to David that he had already spent hours working for that customer; he understood that the relationship was not for him, so he ended it.

If you are disciplined and follow this simple process, you will see an increase in successful projects. And your life will be better, too.

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How to avoid redesign failure

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How to avoid redesign failure

We’ve all seen or heard about the horrors of failed redesigns. Regardless of the size or scale of a site, any redesign is frought with potential perils and pitfalls. Alienating your existing users is probably one of the biggest dangers of any redesign project.

Of course, the larger the site, the greater this danger becomes. But even a small site can suffer from ill-will if they don’t consider their existing visitors when tackling a redesign project.

The following guide should keep you on the right path for creating a revamped and re-imagined site that keeps your users happy.

And if you’ve already found yourself in the midst of a failed redesign, we’ve got help for you, too.

Redesign right

When you decide a redesign is necessary for your website or web app, there are a number of things you need to consider beyond the technical aspects. Remember, your site likely already has regular visitors or regular users, and they’ve come to expect certain things when they visit your site. You need a good reason for changing those things, and you need to take them into account when starting on your redesign and throughout the process.

Communicate with your existing users from the beginning

Unlike a new site design, a site being redesigned likely already has a user base. Involving that user base from the beginning on your redesign can result in a much better user experience in the end. After all, these are the people who are already using your site, who are already familiar with what you have. Sure, some people are resistant to change in any form, but others may be able to offer you some fantastic insight into what’s great as-is and what could use some revamping.

It’s important to take into account the way visitors use your existing site. Just because you wanted them to use the site in a particular way doesn’t mean that’s necessarily the way it’s being used in the real world. Take this into account when you’re redesigning, and don’t break existing user patterns.

Test for both new and existing users

Conventional testing wisdom often says you should only test on new users to get the most accurate results. This is a great strategy if you’re testing something like a sales page. But if you’re redesigning your entire website, you want to get feedback from people who are already using your site. The last thing you want is to launch a redesign and alienate every existing user you have.

Let your existing visitors know that you’re testing out a new site. Consider giving them the option to test the new site if they choose to do so, and then ask for some unobtrusive feedback in the form of a survey or similar mechanism. Then, listen to what they’re saying.

Let users upgrade on their own schedule

This is particularly important with more app-like sites. Letting users switch to the new site version on their own schedule is a great way to prevent complaints. Social media sites are probably the most common sites to do this type of thing (like Twitter did with their new layout). This prevents surprises for your existing users, and lets them make the switch when they have time to get used to the new interface.

It’s important to set a deadline for the switch, though. Make sure you let users know that they can switch any time between now and some future date, and let them know that on that future date everyone will get the new interface. This prevents surprises while also preventing stragglers from requiring you to support the old site indefinitely.

Make it easy for users to offer feedback after the change

There are a ton of tools out there for collecting user feedback. Use them to find out what your visitors like and don’t like as you launch or as you’re testing. Then, make sure you address anything that’s raised by more than a handful of visitors. Remember, for every visitor who voices a concern, there could be dozens who feel the same way who aren’t saying anything.

Make your reasons for redesigning clear

It’s important to let your regular visitors know that you have reasons for redesigning your site. Too many people who aren’t familiar with the technical aspects of running a website think redesigns are purely for aesthetic reasons. Let them know what functionality you aim to add or what user interface improvements you’ll be making before the fact. A blog post addressing your redesign plans can be a great way to open up a dialogue with regular visitors and users.

Offer a tour or tutorial for any major user interface changes

If you’re changing the way parts of your website work, or drastically rearranging elements on the page, it’s a good idea to offer a video or other tutorial or tour of the new design and features. This can help your existing users quickly adapt to the new design, and feel less alienated. It gives the impression that you care about the experience your users are having, and that you want that experience to be as good as it can possibly be.

What if your redesign has already failed?

So you’ve launched your redesigned site already, and now all you’re hearing is complaints from new and old visitors alike. What do you do? Should you just go back to the old site and try again? What if that’s not an option, or you’ve invested thousands of dollars and months of time in the new site? What then?

It’s all about damage control

The first thing you need to do is acknowledge that your redesign hasn’t gone over well with everyone. Let people know that you hear what they’re saying and that you’re considering their concerns. Whether you do this through Twitter, your blog, or some other outlet depends on where you can reach the highest number of your users.

Acknowledge and address complaints

Acknowledge specific complaints if you can. If everyone is complaining about how a certain function is hard to find, then address that. There are a few ways to do that: you can simply post on your blog or send out an email about it with any helpful information or tips, or you can make a change to make it easier on your visitors. If it’s a really big problem, making a change is probably the better solution.

Don’t be afraid to roll back

If there are huge complaints, or if you see that your traffic numbers are going down, don’t be afraid to roll back parts or all of your site to the previous version until fixes can be implemented. If your website’s success is suffering because of a redesign, there’s no sense in sticking to the new design. You’re better off rolling back and acknowledging that your visitors are unhappy (and therefore showing that you place user experience above all else) rather than trying to blindly insist that the new site is better.

Monitor carefully

Whenever you’re launching a new design, it’s important to track your analytics carefully. Set up goals and funnels for various functions on your site, and then make sure the you’re not suddenly losing a lot of visitors at a particular point.

Analytics can help you make proactive changes to your site, anticipating what visitors are getting hung up on. Make sure you have some baseline statistics to refer to and compare.

Also monitor the tone of social media posts about your redesign. If you see a lot of complaints circulating, or even a lot of confusion, be proactive and engage with those people. It’s important to be engaged throughout a redesign so that your users know you’re making changes in an effort to benefit them, and not just for some undefined goal.

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