Do any of you remember the 1987 comedy film Ishtar? Most of you probably don’t, but many of you are probably rolling your eyes because it is notorious for being one of the absolute biggest box office flops in movie history.
$55 million dollar budget.
$14 million dollar take at the box office.
You do the math.
So what in the world does a movie from before the Internet age have to do with your web development and web design? Well, our friend Mark Boyd – aka Marqeteer – is just strange enough to track down a movie like this and draw an analogy. While reading this analogy, remind yourself of how quickly viral marketing spreads online – especially if the news is negative – and you will see the correlation.
Ishtar was pretty much doomed as soon as it hit theaters. It ranked #1 its first weekend with a fairly modest take and fell rather quickly due to a merciless barrage of negative reviews, all fueled by negative commentary about the ridiculous budget, infighting, actor/director clashes and other things that had nothing to do with watching the movie itself. The negative word spread and colored people’s perception of the movie without them even seeing it.
If you were to ask someone today if they were familiar with Ishtar, there will be those who say yes. Of the people who say “yes” only a small portion of them have actually seen the movie. Most of those who haven’t seen it will undoubtedly be familiar with the negativity surrounding Ishtar…and maybe even offer an opinion, however uneducated. However uneducated those opinions were, they led to the movie being so badly reviewed that it’s not even available on DVD here in the US.
Which means people will give opinions even though they have no first hand knowledge about something. How you present yourself online and communicate through your website speaks to people either positively or negatively. Whatever reaction you get from people will be spread quickly through their circles of friends. These people are then likely to offer opinions to others…sometimes without having visited your site themselves (i.e. Ishtar).
Obviously, you can’t please all of the people all of the time…but you CAN put thought into your content, your pictures and your overall presentation that will be inviting to people and create more positive buzz.
Don’t make your website too nice or milquetoast…let your personality, humour, creativity and opinions shine. It humanizes you to visitors and leaves either a positive or negative opinion with them. This opinion will be spread by both those who know and don’t know. Heck, look at the layout of the MIND website. Think we like rock n roll and retro pictures? Hell yeah! That’s us. We love it and, fortunately, people love us for it.
What do you love? Remember, people will love you for it.
As long as it’s not Hot Fudge Love…
We’re about a third of the way through the last quarter of the year (how ’bout THEM fractions?) and now is a great time to take an inventory of your website’s SEO. Much of your SEO actually occurs offsite through link building. However, if your foundation on your site is not solid and well thought out, you’re just spinning your wheels.
Work with your web development and web design team on these things and your search engine ranking will improve. Not overnight, but you will build a solid foundation that will make your offsite SEO that much more effective.
Titling: The title of your web page appears in search engine results as a link to that page. It should not be more than 60 characters long, as most search engines (especially Google) won’t index past 60 characters, including spaces. The title should use relevant key words.
Meta Description: This tells searchers the purpose of your site…basically what it’s all about. It usually appears below the title in search results and helps people decide if your site interests them enough to visit. Your meta description should generally be no longer than 150 characters, including spaces, and should contain the most important keywords for your website. Search engines will read 200 – 250 characters, but only the first 150 are displayed. “Trim the fat” when you write your meta description and keep it relevant, using keywords your potential clients/customers are using to search. Admittedly, Meta Tags aren’t heavy in SEO weight but they ARE part of an overall SEO picture and certainly help in describing your site.
Content: Content is king, linking is queen. You’ve heard it before. We’ve said it many times. Since we’re talking about your onsite SEO, we’re talking about your website content. Is your content relevant? Is it genuinely helpful and not just an afterthought? Most importantly, is it engaging? What style or flair do you bring to your website’s content?
Remember, there’s no magic pill. It’s a growing process. Start with your onsite SEO and make sure your content is engaging. Who cares if someone finds your site if the content is lackluster? That just means they won’t return and will tell their friends not to go there, either. Follow the simple guidelines above and you will be on your way to better online optimization for your website.
As people move towards a more web-based life you find that many tips and ideas are still spread by the most common way; word of mouth. Only this time “word of mouth” is actually something that is posted or shared on a social network and not at the water cooler. As a Web Development Company that handles Web Design in Lancaster we often browse message boards like ones found on LinkedIn and Facebook. What we read sometime, however, is a little scary and somewhat demonstrates how word of mouth can sometimes be a detriment rather than a benefit.
Many companies tout their experience on their sites. “We’ve been designing websites since 19 something and something”… “1,000 years of experience from immortal website designers”! All kinds of grand claims… heck, even we do it! There is nothing wrong with that, however, there is something to be said about staying current. Sure, you’re company has been around for years — does your website show that? How many sites have you been to that say, “Designing Websites for 15 Years” and their site LOOKS 15 years old? How many times do you click on a portfolio link and see the same basic design elements repeated over and over? What about the site that takes for god-awfully-long to load and then it’s just a big picture with a couple links? This is the problem with being an old web designer.
How does one avoid this problem? Answer: you must stay current!
Web design and web development are two ares where technology constantly changes the landscape. Specifically for development; newer updated codes and scripts allow you to do more with less strain on browsers. Are you one of those people who “needs Flash” on their website? Did you know you can do the same effects with just a script? You’d also save space making the site load faster AND it could potentially still be searchable where Flash is not. In order to keep going in this business you need to know what people want and how to best deliver it to them. With new scripts and programs coming out everyday it’s important to keep up — and keep on it! Web design typically follows trends but one trend that will never cease is clean design. A few years ago grungy graphics and websites were cool. A few years before that flash and shockwave were the rage. Before that there were animated GIFs and scrolling text… They all have their place in time however these trends are well passed their prime and probably should be put away with other childish things 
In short, you can tout your web presence and your experience all you want. However, if your website is out-dated, old, or just doesn’t work right — how does that make you as a company look? How current is your web team?
There’s a great lesson of business to be learned on exit 137 in Salem, Virginia on Interstate Highway 81.
It’s hard to believe, but if you’re willing to drive a half-mile extra you can save 30-cents per gallon on gas. Yep.
The Exxon and BP stations located just off the exit are typically 25 to 30 cents per gallon more than the Go-Mart located only a half mile further down the road. My parents alerted me to this as they have taken advantage of the savings for years.
When you first see this for yourself, your first thought is “No way. That can’t be right.” Doubt creeps in because we want to trust what we’re told. What we find out is that there’s much more flexibility on gas prices in any given area than we ever realized, which raises the question of just how arbitrary all pricing of all products and services are.
Admittedly that’s going to one extreme, but think about it for a moment. It’s these kinds of everyday experiences that shape our beliefs and attitudes that ultimately affect and determine our decision making process. If our everyday experiences include doubt and unexplainable discrepancies such as this gas station example, then our brain is being trained to not trust what is put in front of us.
In your web development and web design efforts, content is king. How transparent you are on your website and in your overall marketing presence is more important than ever. Ask yourself these questions:
How are such price discrepancies justified? How do you justify what you charge for your product or service?
How much are you questioned about the price of your product or service and how prepared are you to answer?
How much of your answer is defensive as opposed to being focused on the value to your customer?
The Exxon and BP stations on this exit are charging 25 to 30 cents per gallon more for their gas for one simple reason…they CAN. They’re the first stations travelers see when they get off that exit and most travelers will stop at one of them to get gas because it’s convenient…not realizing that only a half-mile away is significant savings. However, think of how those travelers feel when they eventually find out about the Go-Mart and the price difference.
How will those travelers feel about Exxon and BP?
It’s amazing what a big difference a little more effort can make on both sides of the equation.
Keep your content consumer focused and full of truly valid info. Give truly helpful information on your site where a visitor will go away with new useful information. It’s through this kind of content that you build inherent value with visitors and ultimately lead to a better understanding of cost with the consumer.
In closing this, ask yourself “If one of my clients found someone offering the same product/service as me at a lower price, why would that client sincerely be compelled to stick with me?”
It happens often. A graphic designer decides to expand their skillset and delves into web design. This is typically a good move. Anything that can make you more valuable as a designer is realistically a bonus. The problem however comes when the designer doesn’t have the necessary background or experience when dealing with web design and web development. Print is great because you can pretty much design as you want. You have a blank canvas and can place type, crop images, do sweet cut-outs and “photoshop magickery” as you please with little or no consequence to the overall project.
This is not the case for web.
When you design for a website one of the first things to tackle is the background. This is probably one of the easiest pieces to overlook because as a professional print designer your canvas is your border. You can bleed over it and it won’t matter because the visual ends at the edge of the physical page. When you design for web however, those elements that are left cropped or hanging off the page have to go somewhere. Since you typically do not know how large a viewers screen size is it is difficult to accommodate everyone so they all see the same thing. Some folks still use the 800×600 browser size while others go full screen on 30 inch monitors. If you have a web graphic that ends or is abruptly cut off at the 1600 pixel mark then you may get the “unfinished site” look when you expand past 1600 pixels. What you are left with is a 1600 pixel wide website with large colored bars and cut off images on either side that just don’t promote that professional look you were originally going for.
Another issue that plagues would-be-web-designers is the use of shadows and gradients. Now it is true that CSS3 and HTML5 have resources built in to show these effects but that doesn’t mean that you should use them for EVERY LITTLE GRAPHIC. Print designers must understand that the photoshop drop shadow isn’t necessarily going to look as good on web so it sometimes benefits them to avoid it if possible. If you want to add a little shadow to the page outline to show some depth, fine, but if you intend on putting a drop shadow on a drop-down navigation along with a gradient in the buttons, gradients in the background and shadows on all text, you are just making the job harder for the end developer.
Resolution should obviously play a part in designing for web but sometimes gets pushed aside. Regardless of how big your screen is and regardless of how some devices may claim to be ultra high resolution, your screen is only (always) 72 dpi. Having your graphics at 72 dpi helps the load time of the page. The larger the images, the longer it takes to load the page. If you’re a print designer you know that nothing looks good that small and that anything with finer detail will virtually disappear. This includes backgrounds and graphic textures. Ideally you want to start with a canvas that is higher than 72 dpi and then “save for web” or manually “res-down” the images.
Finally, it is important to realize that different browsers will undoubtedly display your website differently from one another. A site viewed in Firefox is going to appear slightly different from one viewed on Internet Explorer. Sometimes the differences go beyond the visual interface and items in the CSS need to be changed on specific style sheets for those browsers. That being said, someone who is designing a layout for a website must take this into consideration. As we stated above, CSS3 and HTML5 have certain “effects” built in however they are not all fully supported yet by the majority of browsers. This may make those effects not show up and cause the consistency of your site to be lacking across multiple browsers.
At the end of the day we as designers all are able to “put pen to paper” but often times are called for us to expand our tool box and learn a few things to make our jobs, and the jobs of others, easier. If you decide to make the leap from print design to web design be sure to remember that your canvas is infinitely larger than the screen your working on, always res down (not up), and not all browsers are created equally!
