Website Planning - A Developer's Perspective

As any of the designers/developers at Adido will tell you, it is important to plan ahead. Knowing what you want is an important part of the web design and development process. But what are the differences between the two and how to they relate to each other? Let’s look at a real world example here at Adido, using Paul, Jamie and Ross.

Paul is a web designer. His job is to tell us how the website will look. He has an eye for detail and brings his artistic talent to bear on any project he works on. After some discussion with the client and a few concept designs, Paul will produce an image that looks like a finished website.

Jamie (that’s me) is a front end web developer. My job is to take Paul’s work and pass it onto the development team in a form that they can work with. Basically I create a website to look like Paul’s design. If it was a building, my end product would be an empty structure with no plumbing, no electric. It looks, however, like a finished product.

Ross is a web developer (in fact he’s the boss of development). Ross’ job is to take my website and make it work. Again, using the building analogy, Ross puts in all the plumbing, wiring and generally makes the building/website functional. Nothing much changes visually, but the website will actually start working as intended.

Every change that one of the three makes can affect the other two. Ross can’t add new pages without making sure Paul has a design for them, just as Paul can’t add pages into the design that haven’t been agreed upon by the development team. Without clear boundaries there are a thousand ways a developer and designer can start treading on each others’ toes.

The most important thing to know before you start creating a website is to know what it will do. Where does this link go? What should this button do? What text boxes should be on this form? If you know all this, then Paul can create a design that incorporates every facet of the finished website. Jamie can build the website with development in mind, and Ross can work efficiently without having pages redesigned to incorporate functionality that wasn’t thought of in advance.

What happens if you do not plan ahead? Designers and developers will trip over each other making changes and progress will slow while every change is run by the client repeatedly. And at the end you might have a website that makes a lot of noise but doesn’t go very far. This blunderbuss of a website will cost a great deal more than it should have.

Are Social Networks Low Value Traffic Sources?

Nothing new in Jakob Nielsen's new article, it is pretty much same what SEO and Analytics community has been advocating for years. Unique visitors are not an effective way to measure traffic, you will most likely wish getting most of the traffic from loyal users and search engines.

However, in his latest article, Reduce Bounce Rates: Fight for the Second Click usability guru Jakob Nielsen definitely undermines the value of social networks. He believes traffic from Digg is of "low value” as diggers are notoriously fickle and leave the site immediately, once they've satisfied their idle curiosity.

I think it is not the case, diggers are witty, they don't waste their time. You must have interesting and relevant content on your website to engage your visitors with website.

Do you believe in Jakob Nielsen? Post your comments here.

The decline of traditional marketing Vs the growth of online marketing

I joined Adido after studying marketing at Southampton Solent University and throughout my three years there we not once taught about online marketing techniques. Given the growth in online spending in the last few years it now seems strange why we didn’t even cover some of the basics of online marketing.

Given the current financial climate, I’m glad I know about online marketing now but wonder why more companies don’t make more use of effective online marketing strategies which can help businesses outperform the competition and stay ahead of the game?

The growth of the internet within our homes, work and education has brought many very distinctive benefits to marketing. Online marketing lowers costs of distribution to a vast amount of people, and can bring you an immediate global audience if you want it (although most SMEs still need to have a local presence).

Traditional marketing is normally the most expensive way of advertising and in the current financial climate businesses are trying to cut back on costs. However I’ve learnt that Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC) are both online marketing methods which can be controlled in-house where the out-goings and results can easily be monitored.

I’m not the only one who thinks that traditional advertising is on its way out, Wikipedia also agrees that online marketing is cost effective;

“Internet marketing is relatively inexpensive when compared to the ratio of cost against the reach of the target audience. Companies can reach a wide audience for a small fraction of traditional advertising budgets. (Wikipedia, 2008)”

So can the traditional marketing methods be repaired and make a come back?

Well…I’m not too sure about this question, working alongside SEO and PPC professionals has made me realise that these methods are easier, more cost effective, save time, have a better response rate and can reach a vast audience with a click of a button. However, I’ve also learnt that most people need some help from an SEO/PPC professional to get the best results (like us!)!

I’m not saying that the traditional marketing methods do not work anymore as they do for specific products and brands, however for most SMEs I would definitely recommend using online marketing techniques first to get the most from smaller budgets.

Where will SEO be in five years?

One of the best questions to come from my talk in Southampton today was related to the future of SEO. Following on from my point that most people click on the left hand side of the search engine results pages (SERPs) or 'natural listings' or 'free listings', as opposed to the Pay Per Click listings. The gentleman in the audience wondered where SEO will be in five years time? If everyone cottons on the facts that SEO is a good thing and results in great things for their business (more sales, more brand awareness, beating the competition etc) then how will businesses be able to optimise their website and get it to the top of the search results?

This is something that I've seen a lot of in the last few months and was going to write about anyway. Already the competitive phrases all pull up very similar looking results, as most companies start to target the same phrases and use the same techniques (e.g. improving title tags, writing great META descriptions).

An example is shown below for 'chocolate fountains'


As you can see here, nearly every website has the phrase 'chocolate fountains' mentioned twice. This results in the pages looking very similar as the key phrases is highlighted in bold. As all of the websites are highlighted, there is little differentiation between the listings. As a result the user is going to find it difficult to make a decision between clicking on the first listing or the fifth.

It is a not very well known fact that 42% of searchers hit the first result regardless of what is returned. However, if all of the results look the same, will this still be the case? Will people trust Google to still give them the best result, or will they see a page of bold text and results all looking the same and not bother?

I would assume that Google are watching this activity very carefully to analyse the effect of optimisation on rankings, perhaps even to the point where they don't use the bold matching on some occasions.

Maybe in five years time, we might not be even worried about Google rankings and all searches maybe carried out in some other way or with some other company (Facebook? MySpace? Someone else?).

In the mean time though, companies serious about the Internet and getting the best results should look to maximise their returns through effective search engine optimisation. We're happy to talk to any company who wants to do this :)

If you have any views about where SEO is heading or where you think it will be in five years, please share your views with us below.

An example of how a poor website can effect your business - a business leaders point of view

As a fellow business leader, I wanted to share with you how a badly designed website or a poorly updated website can seriously affect the bottom line of your business when it comes to gaining new contracts.

Back in 07, I was with a new client discussing their website, and as part of the brief I asked how the current old site has affected their business. They told me how they lost a large contract with plenty of ongoing work due to the fact they had an old, outdated and poorly designed website, which was not good as they were in the process of growing their business and this contract played a large part of this growth.

Let me share with you how this happened. The website had not been updated in years, they had no control over it and the design was seriously dated and looked very unprofessional. As they tendered for this new contract, all was going well, in fact they were about to sign on the dotted line except they needed the approval from the Board of Directors from the holding company (this should have been only a pen pushing exercise) as my client was the preferred supplier and was going to be appointed the contract. The Board of Directors on this occasion decided to look at the website of my new client to check out who they were, and when the saw the old website they stopped the contract and enforced that a new company was found.

Now this is only one example that they were told about, god knows how many more they could have lost due to a poorly designed outdated website, this when they brought us in to solve this.

Businesses must realise that their website is a critical part of their brand and cannot afford to take shortcuts when designing their website and having control over it.

Conversational media Vs Traditional media - Will the winner please listen up?

One of the big areas of speculation from the mainstream 'people in the know' is where advertising and marketing is heading online. It appears the big media players are all fighting it out to create massive ad networks, buy buying numerous media properties/networks, to supply the media agencies and please the publishers at the same time.

In a very good article by John Battelle today discussing the growth & creation of ad networks, he mentions the power of 'conversational marketing' and how big companies have yet to figure out how to make the most of it and make it scalable, especially in relation to building brands online.

I was watching TV tonight and saw an advert for Shredded Wheat cereal;



and realised that some times getting the right message across is very difficult.

In this Shredded Wheat example, all I can see when I watch the advert is the ad agency sat in the big office coming up with ideas on whiteboards, not the people talking. I know it's not real and I'm not engaged with it. I can see why the idea of various people talking about how great the various features of the product could be good. Yes, it will work for a lot of people. Unfortunately I've become so involved/cynical about the whole 'mass media' advertising process that all I see are story boards and people sat in big offices coming up with lines to use on the advert.

The use of aged people = targeting the different demographics, very clever. The fact there are no artificial flavourings or colours = appeal to the health conscious consumer etc etc.

Big ad agencies are very used to creating adverts in this way, as pointed out by Mr Battelle. However can the message be conveyed in a better through conversational media and channels? The use of this new medium, conversational marketing, where communication is to two way, rather than one, is a big change and one which will appeal to different audiences. But with more and more ad spend going online and more and more time being spent online (up to six hours a week), how long is going to be before companies and agencies 'get' that broadcasting your messages isn't the best way to communicate?

Listening is becoming more important than ever, especially online, and companies who 'get' that, will succeed online.

Why (most) forums DON'T work

Whilst doing a bit of research a few days ago, I came across a website which had a 'Forum' link. This also reminded me of a talk I did at the Business South exhibition in 2007, when someone in the audience from Southampton Chamber asked me if I thought having a forum was a good idea or not. My answer then is the same as now. In 99% of cases, NO.

Now back in the day, forums where were it was at. Big banks of forums and threads with people 'chatting' around themes and ideas and sharing knowledge. Then along came social networking and sort of replaced the whole idea of chatting to people in virtual rooms by closing the conversion to people who we're in their 'network' or part of a bigger, approved network.

That's not to say that website forums are dead because they aren't. Some forums to this day still get hundreds of thousands of visitors a month. Some are still hugely important and have great influence (esp. in the web design and SEO arena). Infact, one forum post in China about the Nanfang Weekend managed to get nearly 250,000 views (if you can read Chinese you can read it here), while some forums still get over 500 people online at any one time. (bit of trivia for you pop pickers there...)

However, most forums fail. They just don't work. Why? I've tried to get to the bottom of the reasons, and I've come up with my (quick) top five list below;

1. Promotion
   I often speak to companies who think that when they have their website designed that adding a forum will automatically get loads of people coming to their website. This isn't the case as the forum is just added on the side of the website instead of traffic being driven to it. How is anyone going to post on a forum unless they know about it? If the website isn't properly marketed or optimised, then no one will find that, let alone the forum. Still a very common assumption by 'non web people'
   
2. Audience
   Many of the forums which I find myself emptyily trawling through, seeing unloved thread after unloved thread with no activity, are aimed at small businesses. Small businesses find themselves too busy to get the books done, let alone find the time (or even have the skills) to post in forums. Know your target market before you start one up!
3. Effort
   It takes a lot of effort to post regularly in forums to make them interesting. Additionally, if it is your forum, you need to oversee it. Who's going to make sure those pesky 'medicine' automated posts are going to be deleted? If you're going to make your forum work, you need to look after it and this can take some time.
4. Focus
   This comes back to point 2, really. When you go on some forums, you can be overwhelmned with the number of choices that you're faced with. Do I post in this section? What about this one? The fewer the choices, or the better they are chosen, the better the experience for your users. Make their choice easy, they're more likely to post and stay. If you've got lots of ideas and growth plans, add them once established, not before.
5. Bloggin'
   Forums need input from a hardcore set of users. Blogs only need one person. Sure, forums are more of an open platform, but they need a few key posters in order generate regular discussion. As anyone (like me!) can set up a blog and start posting in minutes to drive content, then the chance of success is much greater.

These are just some the ideas which came off the top of my head. If I really sat down and thought about it a lot more, I could have come up with at least, oh I don't know, one more reason, but I thought I'd leave the question open to see if anyone else had any other ideas? Any one?

Taking a look at Google tools - #1: Google Trends

This is going to be a regular feature on this blog. Google as we all know, is the best biggest search engine in the world (up to 77% search market share in 2006). But what alot of people don't know, is that Google also produce a wide (and growing) range of product and services which fulfil a wide range of needs for it's users. These products aren't all very well known, so we're going to look at each of them one by one, to raise awareness of what they do and how they can be used by 'normal' website users.

Where to begin? Ok, let's start with Google Trends. Why? Well, I can't think of anything else at the moment :) But also Google trends is very, very useful tool to help users identify how popular given search phrases and words are, as well as when they are popular.

Google trends allows users to compare up to five key phrases against each other to see which one is more popular. It does this by drawing nice looking graphs so you can see instantly which one is the best.

Let's have an example. Below shows an example of 'web design' vs 'online marketing'


What does the screen show? First, it shows the nice graph. What you can see is that 'web design' alot more popular than 'online marketing'. However, web design has been on the decline over the last few years, while online marketing is very gradually improving. Underneath the main graph si the graph which show the trends of news items. This is a rough figure of how many times the phrase entered has been used in Google News items. You'll see that the most important or 'relevant' (this is Google remember - relevancy!) news items are shown on the main Google trend graph along the time line and listed to the right of the graph, which can then be clicked on to to go the story.

Underneath the graph are the countries and towns which are have done the most searches on Google, for the phrases you entered. So, in this example, the Google users in Indonesia have made the most searches for web design. It is important to note, that Google 'normalizes' the search data from the towns and countries. What is normalization? It basically means that a calculation is made to reduce the amount of searches overall and shows which places have a higher propotion of searches. For example, London would nearly always have the most searches, as it has the most amount of people. But proportionally, for some phrases, other parts of the country might have comparatively more.

Why is Google trends important then? Well, prior to this tool, we had know way of knowing which phrases were more popular on Google. We had no idea of when the phrases we popular. We had no idea which places made the most searches. Google trends allows us to peak into the head of searchers across the world to help us better understand their habits. Using this information, we can now put together better and more efficient online marketing strategies and gain better results for our clients. And all this for free!

Even, if you are not bothered about search marketing, it's just fun to play with. Who's more popular? He-man or She-ra? Star Wars or Star Trek? Man Utd or Liverpool? Beatles or Rolling Stones? The list is endless.

Have fun!