A checklist of issues to consider in a responsive website redesign project
If there’s one thing that every Web and Digital marketing manager has had on their agenda in recent times it’s responsive design! Responsive Web Design has become the defacto standard of web sites in a very short space of time. But is it a silver bullet? Is it a magic cure for many digital illnesses our sites (and visitors!) have been suffering from? It certainly gives many challenges, and in this post I'll share 9 key issues that site managers need to talk through with their designers.
When I first started looking at the concept of responsive websites back in 2010 - I fell in love. This seemed like a proper working implementation of the “fluid websites” that were largely a dream back in the days when we were moving from table based layouts to CSS based ones.
Over the past…
Good User Experience = Good Customer Service = More Sales
Christmas shopping has begun and with it, the stress! And no, I haven’t been shopping offline at all, I’ve been shopping online! But this time of the year always brings to the fore one of the most obvious issues that many Ecommerce Managers have control of, but yet remains to be one of the most lacking in terms of solutions.
Picture this: you go into a store where a very nice assistant helps you find everything you need to purchase. You’re thinking “Great! All my Christmas shopping done in an hour!”.
You walk on up to the till point where the assistant starts totting up all of your purchases, but the sales assistant then suddenly tells you that you can’t actually pay at their till unless you have a specific device. So you…
An introduction to responsive website design for marketers
The Olympics were fantastic this year, the atmosphere was electric and the performances were first class (not to mention Danny Boyle's staggering opening ceremony).
The only problem that I had was that I kept on missing the first and last 5 metres of each race. You see, my television is very old, and can’t cope with content that has been created for the panoramic screen. If only my television was as responsive as an increasing number of websites...
So What is the Responsive Web?
Responsive Website Design (RWD) is a concept widely attributed to Ethan Marcotte, who takes inspiration from the experimental movement Responsive Architecture (see pioneering Nicholas Negroponte for further reading).
The aim of RWD is to create one website design that adapts to each environment that it is being viewed in. Whether being viewed from a traditional PC browser, or perhaps a new android tablet,…
Design, Content or Brand .. is one more important than the other in (re)designing your website?
Website design can be an opinionated business. These opinions are sometimes informed, sometimes not. Occasionally the opinions are not necessarily to do with the design itself, but more to do with the politics within a business.
Personally I am all for design of any nature to be stress tested by a client or the market. However, how many of us have made changes to a successful website design, just so we feel like we have been involved?.
We also need to recognise that website design is a fluid process. We are dealing with an entity that is constantly evolving. This means that when creating a new website design, the Designer has to take into consideration multiple facets; including:
is the website 'on brand' (or does it look…
The perils of Professional Services websites and ten tips on how to avoid the common mistakes.
As we continue to move towards an online world where more and more visits will come from mobile devices, we still have thousands of professional firms either with a poor online presence or even more alarmingly without ANY website at all.
In this post I'll talk about some of the common problems I see daily in professional services websites when benchmarking against competitors. Whether it's sites for accountants, solicitors, law firms or even marketing agencies and consultants, these problems are surprisingly common.
The 10 most common mistakes and how to avoid them
Mistaking Landing Pages with History Pages. Websites should be for the benefit of the visitor, not the client’s ego. Buyers of Professional Services have other concerns first before they care how long you have been in business, how many…
Timeline shows the increasing complexity of web standards
This new HTML 5 infographic from Evolution of the Web reminds us about the power, but also the complexity of developing and delivering web services today.
It shows how the web standards delivered through different browsers (show on each timeline row) have changed from here:
to here:
The infographic itself shows the experiences it's possible to create today in HTML 5, but suggests the difficulty in making them compatible across different browsers. On a positive note, it shows that new standards are now generally implemented more quickly across browsers.
I've also posted this infographic since it gives and introduction to different web standards if you rollover the interactive version:
…
A key mobile design trend in 2013
Mobile usage is only going one way. Up. Rapidly.
[caption id="attachment_9550" align="aligncenter" width="537" caption="UK mobile adoption exploding: 27 million regular users, 54% of all mobile users. Source: Comscore."][/caption]
But how good are the experiences we're building for customers? Designing experiences on mobile is challenging because of the form factor and because it's a relatively new design approach with the tools and technologies evolving fast. Brands also want to get to market fast.
Today's mobile designs often fail to differentiate brands
These challenges can lead to some "screen scrape" design approaches where every site looks similar, with little differentiation of brand or experience. These 4 retail sites show this:
Don't get be wrong, these sites show a lot of features of good…
Do you agree with the importance of these processes?
Here's a cool new infographic. I particularly like it since it's not the same-old, same-old format and it forces you to ask - do we get our design processes right?
Update: I've changed the description from "great" to "cool" based on your feedback in the comments on this post and Twitter. The main criticism was the lack of iteration. I have included two new visuals which better show this iteration. Check out "awesome" process suggestion from conversion rate optimization expert Craig Sullivan which shows how they tackle improvement of website designs at Belron - this is a real-world example to really learn from!
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As well as showing the main activities to plan into a redesign project, it's interesting since it shows circles by importance.
I'm…
Online Customer Experience and Branding - an example of integrating the website and social presence
Today, with so many prospects and customers interacting with you online, I believe your brand really is greatly influenced by the Online Customer Experience you develop. But I think many don't see how a website can support and especially enhance their brand. In this posts I'll share an approach I use with businesses and I hope you can adapt this model for your own business or your clients - it's classic brand marketing.
Brand value mapping
The first stage is to understand where a brand is right now. I was recently discussing this approach with my class for marketing students in Derby. As a starting point we did a brand mapping activity for different companies. The areas highlighted in red are the key review areas for your online brand.
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What do you think are the worst mistakes in website design today?
I'm a firm believer that one of the best ways to learn effective digital marketing is to review examples of good practice in digital marketing from other companies - like this example of good practice in landing pages.
But we can also learn a lot from mistakes that are commonly made. I hope the Smart Insights blog can help marketers avoid the time,money and stress involved with these mistakes by getting digital marketing right first time or fixing problems which mean missed opportunities.
So what are the worst mistakes? Well, last week I gave a choice of 10 and you kindly gave me your view on the worst. This is what you thought:
Well we've got a clear winner which is the main customer journeys / next steps unclear.…
