Stop Doing The Website Designer’s Job

The “wow” factor in a website is not the design. It’s the planning, ideas, approach and execution.

Good design is about clear visual communication. Brilliant design is what helps your customers achieve their goals. But excellent design is; branding, visual communication and goal-oriented.

That’s the website design you must have and that’s the website designer you need! So, find one.

This is your second step to design a website made for users.

Be the man, or woman with the plan!

Stop saying or thinking, “I’m building a website because my competitor…”

Yes! Stop thinking you’re SECOND best! Start to determine your own set of measureable goals and objectives. For example, I want to increase my website sales leads for Product A within 6 months.

Become the man or woman with the plan! Think about ONE (1) goal for your website now. Write it down on the nearest piece of paper and keep it! Write on a napkin or tissue, if you have to.

This is your first step to design a website made for users.

Boost Your Website with Video

Video is becoming the next mainstream media for the web. Flash may be more interactive but video hosting websites like YouTube have made it possible to interact with a video.

Create your website in YouTube!

It was a great idea to capture attention and boldly tell others BooneOakley isn’t your average advertising agency. Ideas like this, I simply love it!

The KISS video technique for websites

KISS or Keep It Simple Stupid is really about simplicity. If you can’t innovate, don’t bash yourself up. Just start thinking how can you enhance your website with video. Take the SanDisk website for example.

They’ve included a simple video player to feature product videos which you can cycle. It’s easy for larger companies like them to produce and showcase their product advertising videos.

Video podcasting opened a new avenue for you

Video podcasters are like bloggers except they record their thoughts in a video and publish it online. Due to this growing market, you don’t have to have a professionally done video for your website. All you need is:

• A handycam – not necessarily HD.
• A suitable scene – sofa and clean wall.
• Average lighting.
• Editing tool – plenty of free and simple ones on the Internet.
• A script or plan on what the video will be about.
• 1-hour to edit and publish your video.

Don’t sweat the small stuff

Everyone starts somewhere. You don’t have to get it perfect in the first take. Just remember it’s the idea of how to enhance your website and it’s products/services which matter in the video.

E-Commerce Design Mistake to Avoid

I’ve never been a fan of website templates. Half the time they may look good but experience wise, they can be horrible because they lack user experience. If you’ve not heard of user experience, simple to say it’s about designing a good experience for the user.

How do you design an experience?

Well, in short it’s making the user’s life easy and mindless to fulfill the objectives they need to accomplish. By Wikipedia’s definition, user experience is:

User experience design is a subset of the field of experience design that pertains to the creation of the architecture and interaction models that impact a user’s perception of a device or system.

Source: Wikipedia

Shopping Cart is below the line

Whenever you add an item to your shopping cart, you’d like to keep track of it. Therefore, users would expect it to be in the most convenient place it can be referred and access.

That’s why I consider placing it below the line one of the worst e-commerce design mistakes to avoid. Especially if you’ve a lot of clutter in the area it’s positioned.

If there isn’t a shopping cart list, ensure the shopping cart button is clear and by default, should display the:

• Number of items
• Total amount
• Link to view all items
• Checkout link

What other bad e-commerce experiences have you had?

Why Must You Buy a .COM Domain Name?

Back in 2006, I wrote an article titled; Domain names made simple, and it was about interesting facts about domain names. But what I’d like to discuss about today is the importance of owning a Top-Level Domain (TLD) domain. And, the most recognized TLD domain name today is the .COM suffix.

Although most countries today have their localized domain name suffix, it’s important to register and own the .COM suffix because it’s an internationally recognized signature. It’s the first thought which comes to the mind of anyone you’re sharing your website address with.

Here’s a classic example I found as Malaysia’s independence (Merdeka) day is coming round the corner on August 31. It’s in regards to the 1Malaysia campaign.

Unofficial 1Malaysia (.COM) website

Official 1Malaysia (.COM.MY) website

Clearly, there’s a miscommunication in online branding now and I’d say the .COM is borrowing the media awareness of the official campaign whenever someone doesn’t tpye in the correct website address.

The Malaysia web industry is still plagued by many fundamental mistakes made by personal, corporate and government agencies. Why are the corporate and government agencies facing such problems I dare not bring up as I know there’d be much to debate later.

But the fact remains, whenever possible you should always register your .COM suffix if it’s available.