Five Tips for a Smooth Website Project

What can cause a web design project to go over budget or off schedule? This question is often asked of web firms. Similarly, client’s ask, “What can we do to ensure success with our website project?”

Good news, bad news: this is not rocket science. In design, success is often subjective. Reigning in subjectivity is where we can realize economies, both in money and in time. To that end, the following recommendations apply to a majority of website projects, regardless of industry and irrespective of intentions.

Read more

/by

Do People Read Long, Scrolling Web Pages?

Mobility has rendered the long scrolling web page the design standard for modern websites. But does it work? By work I mean does it provide a good user experience for your visitors and do people actually scroll down to that 3rd, 4th, 5th panel and beyond? Even as someone that is creating scrolling sites, I’ve had a gut feeling that few visitors venture “beneath the fold,” just as few Google visitors venture past page one of Search results. So I did a little research to either support my instincts or cause me to reflect on my dinosaur delusions. Read more

/by

Six Easy Ways to Update Your Corporate Website Design

Cruise around most neighborhoods this time of year and you’ll see people outside pruning, fertilizing, watering and planting. Like a garden, your website is a living, growing thing. Many people believe that maintaining a website is a lot of work, so we’ve brainstormed six quick ways to revitalize your website design that will improve your marketing and visitor engagement.

Read more

/by

Use Ambient Video on Your Website to Enhance Your Brand

Much like last year when websites with Parallax scrolling took off, we’re seeing a growing number of sites using video on their websites, in new ways, to enhance their brands. But rather than, and in some cases in addition to “talking heads,” we’re seeing “ambient video.”

Ambient video is background video whose purpose is to establish a visual brand identity. While words and still images do the heavy lifting in terms of creating messages, the addition of web video can provide an emotional resonance that can help an otherwise purely rational brand become a more emotionally satisfying user experience.

Read more

/by

The Five Most Relevant B2B Website Trends in 2015

seinfeldWatching “Seinfeld” and then “Curb your Enthusiasm,” has taught me to look for the universal truths, if not humor, in the mundanity of everyday life. Web design has as much mundanity as any other profession, but if you look carefully, there are patterns or trends (in addition to Responsive Design) worth noting that can help you transform your website from mundane to magnificent.

Content Now Drives Design
This may sound obvious today, but for most of the history of the web, we (web designers) designed the site first and fit the content in later. This is how it went:

  • Define your information architecture (site map) and navigation;
  • Layout the various design templates, which represent the different standard page types, i.e., About, Products and / or Services, Solutions, Contact Us with a form, etc;
  • Write copy;
  • Define visual assets;
  • Drop lengthy copy and images into template.

With this process, design could sometimes be a formulaic exercise. Read more

/by

Do I Need a Brand or a Visual Identity?

Sometimes when people come to us for “branding,” I quickly ascertain that what they really mean is an updated “visual identity.”

“So, you’re looking for help integrating your vision, competitive positioning, audience messaging, market perception and corporate culture,” I might ask. Just as often they respond, “I just need an update to our logo, collateral templates, PowerPoint, web design, etc.” For many, the visual manifestations of a brand are “The Brand.”

Read more

/by

How to Build B2B Websites That Serve Multiple Audiences, Part I

Maybe it is the function of the multi-product, multi-tasking, multi messaged nature of businesses these days but it seems that practically all of our clients share a common problem, which is how to create B2B websites that effectively speak to two or more disparate audiences — without diluting the user experience for each of those audiences. In this two-part blog post, I will address this “multi-audience” web problem, which spans brand, design, information architecture, content creation, and SEO.

B2B Branding for Multiple Web Audiences

Read more

/by

Why EXPERIENCE MATTERS””

Why_Experience_MattersI write regularly about how branding impacts your website, your marketing and your business. Last week, in celebration of RainCastle’s twentieth anniversary, we launched our new website, in which we introduced our new brand theme, “EXPERIENCE MATTERS,” here’s why.

Read more

/by

An Effective Web Design Strategy Starts with Your Brand

We’ve talked about Market Strategy, Brand Strategy and Content Strategy, so why do we need a Web Design Strategy? Because, of all of these strategies, only your Website Design Strategy is externally facing. Let’s put Website Desgn Strategy into context to clarify how these strategies work in tandem.

Strategy_ffunnel2Using a funnel metaphor, your Market Strategy is your highest level strategic decision, in which you define the markets for your products and/or services and determine whether your market approach is industry specific, solutions or applications-focused or some combination.

Once this is determined, your Brand Strategy encompasses the way you describe what you do, for what audiences with a compettive value statement, which sets you apart from your competition. You socialize this brand internally, and externally at every customer and employee touchpoint.

The power of a relevant Content Strategy — based on sound Market and Brand Strategies — is to create a program to disseminate and exchange your valuable content across all media and over time, which leads us to your Website Design Strategy.

Read more

/by

How To Make a Responsive Website & Why Your Site Needs This Facelift

In my last post, I discussed the pros and cons of Responsive website design and concluded that, while not perfect, the pros outweigh the cons. Now that you may be ready to take the plunge, let’s talk about what makes a Responsive design successful and why your site may need a face lift.  Read more

/by