The Website Owners Manual is finally out this friday! To celebrate its launch, I will be running free public Consultancy Clinics on the 20th November starting at 3PM (UK time). If you would like free advice about your website or would just like to hear the advice given to others, then join the conversation via the Boagworld blog.

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Mockingbird

A big part of most webs projects is wireframing. A wireframe is a communication tool, a design tool and a specification tool. Without it, there can be misunderstanding and miscommunication.

I have written about wireframing before. In that post I outlined the benefits of wireframing, but I also recommended tools including something called Balsamiq.

Balsamiq is a cross platform application that allows you to quickly put together wireframes that can later be easily edited.

Although Balsamiq is a great application it does suffer from one major flaw (beyond comic sans being its default font!). Balsamiq is great for creating wireframes but is not good for sharing them.

Balsamiq saves files in its own propitiatory format and although it will allow the export of images, this does not work well for interlinked pages.

There is a plugin called Napkee that allows you to export Balsamiq as HTML and CSS. However, this is clumsy at best and still needs to be hosted somewhere.

Enter Mockingbird. Mockingbird has obviously been closely modelled on Balsamiq and yet has the advantage of being an online application. It can do pretty much everything that Balsamiq can, but also allows you to share wireframes with others. You can even embed them on your own website, so others do not know you are using a third party tool.

So whether you are a web designer producing wireframes for your clients or a website owner building them for your own site, I would recommend giving mockingbird a try. Best of all its free, so there is no reason not to.

More on redesigning

Two weeks ago we featured a Web Designers Depot post entitled “Preparing and planning for a redesign.” It was a good post that focused on what clients need to do as part of a website revamp.

This week a post entitled “Redesign: When To Relaunch The Site and Best Practices” tackles a similar topic. However, what makes this one different is that it is focuses on web designers redesigning their own websites.

It is an interesting topic that certainly comes with its own unique challenges. As the author says:

How can we work on designing our clients’ websites successfully every day and then perpetually neglect our own?

The post goes on to answer this question as well as suggest ways we can avoid our own websites becoming neglected. Subjects she tackles includes:

• Why we struggle to redesign our sites
• Whether we should be redesigning at all
• Finding the time to redesign
• Planning a redesign
• Updating your brand
• Wireframing
• Design
• Development and testing

The advice is great and although this post is aimed at web designers redesigning their own sites, it has lots of good advice that applies to any website owners. Certainly worth checking out.

Run IE6, IE7, and IE8 on the Same Machine Using Windows 7 XP Mode

It’s frustrating but testing your websites is an important part of our job. To make matters worse, it is much harder to test in multiple versions of Internet Explorer than it should be.

The problem as I am sure you know, is that it is impossible to install IE6, 7, and 8 side by side under the same operating system.

One solution to the problem is IETester. This truly remarkable piece of software allows you to easily switch between different versions of IE and even provides a load of development tools similar to Firebug.

Although there is no doubt that this is an impressive application, it is not perfect. No matter how good an emulator is, it is still not the same as using the real thing. As a result I am only willing to use this for ‘in development testing’. Before launch, I would still want to test in an actual build.

In the past this would have involved running multiple operating system using Virtual Machine software such as VMware or VirtualBox. However with the arrival of Windows 7 we now have another choice.

According to a post on Sitepoint this week it is now possible to ‘Run IE6, IE7, and IE8 on the Same Machine Using Windows 7 XP Mode.’ The post explains that this miracle is possible thanks to Microsoft Virtual PC.

Virtual PC is Microsoft’s alternative to VMware and VirtualBox. It’s available as a free download for most versions of Windows. As a standalone product, it’s functional but offers fewer facilities than the competition. However, XP Mode is Virtual PC’s killer feature. It provides:

• a fully licensed, stripped-down, virtual copy of Windows XP SP3.
• a clever facility which integrates the guest Windows XP OS with your Windows 7 host. In effect, you can run XP applications as if they were native Windows 7 programs. Although the XP application is isolated, it can still access the host’s files and systems.

The tutorial then goes on to explain how this technology will allow you to run the three versions of IE side by side.

Whatever our role, we should all be testing websites. As a result this is an absolute must read.

How to create clear web navigation menus

Last week I found myself in the unusual position of disagreeing with Gerry McGovern. Fortunately that has quickly changed with his latest post entitled ‘How to create clear web navigation menus.’

Gerry presents four ways you can improve your navigation in his own tongue-in-cheek style:

Stick with conventions

Every year a phone directory is delivered to my home and every year it’s the same. Have they no imagination in those phone companies? I mean, come on, hasn’t A-Z been done to death at this stage? Why don’t they try Z-A for a change?

Avoid audience based navigation

We once dealt with a department of agriculture who had the following menus: Farmers, Producers, Exporters, Researchers. What if you were a farmer who was also a producer, who exported most of your produce, and who right now wanted to do some soil analysis research? Where should you click?

Be consistent

Have a consistent place for your navigation. If you use the left column, keep it there. Don’t start shifting the navigation into the center or right columns as you go deeper into the site.

Avoid quick links

“Come, little links, gather round,” said the designer to the links. And the little links gathered round, all happy and expectant.

“Well, the good news is that we think you’re very special links and because you’re so special we’re going to call you Quick Links,” said the designer.

“Quick Links!” they shouted in unison. Then a silence fell and a little voice was heard to say:
“Master designer, does that mean the other links are Slow Links?”

I am being to wonder if Gerry is loosing the plot ;-)

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This week we are doing something a little different for our interview segment of the show. We have two great interviews with two up and coming stars of the web design scene. There is some real talent emerging and we are keen to showcase their work and passion here on the show.

Jamie Rumbelow

Paul: So, yet another interview from Future of Web Apps and this time we are talking to Jamie Rumbelow. Good to have you on the show Jamie.

Jamie: It’s great to be here, it’s unexpected and …..

Paul: … and cool

Jamie: … and very cool. It’s very cool to be here on Boagworld

Paul

Anna: Hello Anna

Paul: There we go, good. Anna likes this, so much I know. Um, yeah, so we thought we’d get you in. Um, I know nothing about you. We’ve talked a bit on Twitter

Jamie: We have

Paul: But that’s about it, so tell me a bit about yourself, your background, a bit of what you’re doing and that kinda thing

Jamie: Right well, um, well my name’s Jamie

Paul: Ok

Jamie: Jamie Rumbelow and I’m fourteen so I’m still…

Paul: Excuse me! You’re fourteen!

Jamie: Fourteen

Paul: Ok, I just wanna establish that, that’s fine

Jamie: So, I’m, I’m, I’m kind of a developer, um but not quite cos I’ve still got stuff to do…

Paul: Yeah

Jamie: Like school and…

Paul: (laughs) just GCSEs and stuff like that, yeah

Jamie: You know, um, yeah I’m trying to get my name out into the scene. I’ve been actually started to do talking, I’ve been kinda launching a ‘speaking’ career

Paul: Yeah

Jamie: So I’m hoping to follow in the footsteps of the great Paul Boag

Paul: Oh well, you know

Jamie: Um…

Paul: Don’t laugh Anna. Show respect

Jamie: Well yeah, I spoke at Tomorrow’s Web which was a conference run by a guy called Grant Bell and it was all about young people in technology

Paul: Yeah

Jamie: And Anna spoke at it too and um it was, it was really good a day, wasn’t it?

Anna: Hmmm, yeah it was really good

Jamie: So yeah, really enjoyed that, um…

Paul: Ok. So, I mean…..you’re fourteen and you’re trying to get your name known in the scene. Um, that’s quite ambitious to start that at fourteen. Why? Why, why are you so desperate to kinda get in there now?

Jamie: Well, I’ve always been quite enthusiastic and quite…..driven, um, and I really want to, you know, come out of school, come out with…….education (laughs)

Paul: Yeah that would be good

Jamie: Yeah but actually having made a name for myself and already have people knowing about me, interested in stuff I do, so that eventually, when I do actually launch as a full time career I’ll already have good grounding to work on. But it’s not just that, I want to meet cool people and I wanna do stuff like this, cos I…..you know, meeting loads of amazing, great people it’s a really really good benefit.

Paul: So, I mean, you know do you find with the…you know….as you wanna do loads of speaking stuff, you’ve set up and run your own event as well

Jamie: Yeah

Paul: So, tell us a little a bit about that actually before I go on to the next thing

Jamie: Oh well, it’s called Cambridge Geek Day, um, I had the idea …last year, in December and my mum said ‘It’s the most expensive, time consuming thing you could possibly do, why are you doing it?’ And she actually forbidded me from doing it.

Paul: (laughs) So that went well didn’t it! (laughs again)

Jamie: Yeah, so anyway, I, I hid it from behind her back, um, for ages…..and you lying to your mum, it’s really…..

Paul: That’s not good. Kids don’t lie to your parents

Jamie: Yeah exactly. But I knew….I knew that I could pull it off. Anyway I got sponsorship

Paul: Really, you managed to get sponsorship?

Jamie: Yeah. I got sponsorship from loads of really really good sponsors. I got loads of great speakers lined up and……anyway it’s all steaming ahead right now. So I… my… I woke up to 300 T-shirts being delivered to my door and my mum had no idea about it. So I just told her that I got sponsorship and she was very fine with it

Paul: Your mum is very cool, I have to say. That is impressive after she banned you

Jamie: But yeah, I think she was just worried about me cos, you know, I’ve got more important things to do.

Paul: Yeah

Jamie: So yeah (laughs) back to the point. Um, yeah so it’s a conference for developers, it’s about developery topics

Paul: Right

Jamie: And that’s kind of…because that’s what I know about, that’s what I do, I’d rather run a developer conference than a design conference, purely because…….

Paul: Yeah. And it’s the same…..specifically young people or…

Jamie: No, no, there aren’t enough young people in Cambridge

Paul: In the Cambridge area

Jamie: So, I did an internship with a company called Broader Sheet. Have you heard about them?

Paul: No I haven’t actually

Jamie: Well they’re making an intelligent news aggregator, um but they’re a small start up and they work from the Red Gate offices, have you heard of them?

Paul: Yes

Jamie: Um, so I was in the Red Gate offices and Red Gate do a start up incubator where they have loads of start-ups working within the offices and getting the food and that sort of thing. Um, and I met loads of really really cool people, really passionate, intelligent people, in Cambridge, doing start-ups stuff and being…..you know, so I thought it would be a really great opportunity to kinda capitalise on that amount of people and it’s a bit of a faff to come to London and go to Brighton and you know all the places where the conferences are held. So I thought I’d run my own one

Paul: Yeah, good for you…totally. So when’s that happening?

Jamie: November the 21st

Paul: Ok, so not long then

Jamie: No, not long at all, we haven’t started selling tickets yet but depending when this is out, if it ever is (laughs)

Paul: It will be out don’t worry

Jamie: We’ll probably be selling tickets by then. Tickets are gonna be £60

Paul: Ok

Jamie: But with that you get coffee when you’re….and biscuits and tea and stuff when you arrive and during all the breaks and you also get a two course meal for lunch. Um, and we’ve got an after party and it’s gonna be well put together and I’m making sure it’s high quality

Paul: See, I mean, that…. you gotta say is really impressive because so often I’m like, encouraging you know people to start up local groups and to get meeting up and if there’s nothing in your area then just to do something. And people always come back with ‘Oh I don’t know if I could do that’. And you think, no disrespect, but if a fourteen year old could that then you know then these guys who are web professionals should be able to do it. So, I think you’re a…..you’re actually incredibly inspiring from that point of view.

Jamie: Well, I’m honoured, thank you

Paul: (laughs) So, I mean what’s the plan? You’re gonna do your GCSEs. Are gonna go through the normal career path of GCSEs, A Levels, University? Or what, you know….have you got any thoughts on that?

Jamie: Well, I wanna do A Levels, purely because……it’s shows a certain level of intelligence, you know to have A Levels and they’re good qualifications. Um, but I’m not quite sure about Uni. Now a lot of people who are young and have already got a bit of a head start in the tech scene didn’t go to Uni, Anna included

Paul: Yeah, Anna for example, yeah

Jamie: So, I don’t know whether it would be so much benefit….educationally. As far as life skills go, maybe it would be good, so you know, be able to grow up a bit and live by yourself and that sort of thing. But I think I’d still be able to cope with that so…….my family want me to go to Uni but I don’t particularly want to

Paul: Well, you know you don’t have to make that decision yet which is helpful

Jamie: No, plenty of time

Paul: So I mean…….Ok let’s get your perspective on the web scene as it stands at the moment because you know there’s a lot of old crusty people like me that are, you know, saying what the next big thing is and what we think is important and all of the rest of it but I’m quite interested in your perspective you know…you’re gonna be…so…..let’s say you…….let’s say you went to University, so you’ve got two years of A Levels, well you’re fourteen at the moment so it’s two years until your GCSEs isn’t it

Jamie: I’m doing….I’m starting my GCSEs this year, I’m in Year 10

Paul: Right, so that is one or two years……one…two until those are taken? Let’s say two. Then another two years A Level, right? Let’s say you didn’t go to University, cos otherwise we’re getting too far ahead. So, let’s say four years time, what do you think you’re going to be doing when you come out and start work? What do you think is gonna be different?

Jamie: Well, I think the….I think the Web’s being opened up a lot more in terms of actually a platform rather than just a resource. So, I spoke about this at Tomorrow’s Web and it was talking about how the….that actually from the very beginnings of the Web it was always documents, it was always……you know just information linking to one another. No we’re starting to see things popping out from that like the Web 2.0 movement, and Google Wave, which is really cool

Paul: Don’t tell me you’ve got…….

Jamie: I’ve got a…..do you want an invite?

Paul: Yes, I flippin’ do

Jamie: Ok, I’ll send you an invite

Paul: Thank you. How come he gets a copy of Google Wave before me?! How did you manage to swing that?

Jamie: Oh, I was in the Developer Preview and…..

Paul: Ah, that’s just mean…..

Jamie: Oh and I know Bob from Huddle, he’s CTO at Huddle ….I think

Paul: God, he’s fourteen and he’s better connected than I am. That’s really irritating

Jamie: I’ll send you an invite

Paul: No more. No more of these young talented people. We’re not interviewing anymore young, talented people on the show. It’s just depressing. Anyway, sorry you were saying…..cool stuff

Jamie: So, yeah Google Wave is really cool and I don’t think it’s the end all solution to communication on the Web, definitely not. And it’s…..the Developer Preview especially was mediocre in terms of implementation, how it was written, it was buggy, the user interface was terrible, etc. Um but I can see the ideas behind it and the way it’s going forward and I really think that within a few years if we…..I think we really need to re-think how we talk and how we use the Web to communicate. Cos as I said it’s very kinda…..almost linear conversation, it’s been….you know we’ve always had bulletin boards or blogs with comments that you know…emails, all these communication platforms that we have on the Web aren’t particularly…….well they’re not particularly suited to the Web

Paul: Mmmm, and even if you ….email is like the kinda equivalent of the page-based stuff is just sending letters backwards and forwards isn’t it?

Jamie: Exactly. It’s like faxing

Paul: Instead of things like APIs and stuff like that you know you’re passing data backwards and forwards which in much more inline with Google Wave and passing….you know….chunks….packets of data of information backwards and forwards, so….

Jamie: But APIs really excite me

Paul: Oh do they?

Jamie: Yeah A) from a techie point of view cos I you know…um and also cos you can do so much with so little code, so little time and you can actually make some really cool stuff. This guy called Chris Harlman

Paul: Yeah I know Christian

Jamie: Yeah, he’s good fun

Paul: Yeah he is

Jamie: Um, he’s the …..he’s the Developer Evangelist for Yahoo I think

Paul: Yes, that correct, something like that

Jamie: And he’s been preaching YQL a lot and YQL is this um….SQL-like which is the query language that communicates databases. But YQL is like that but for the Web so you can query APIs effectively and then it all goes to Yahoo, Yahoo caches it, it will go to Yahoo servers, all that sort of thing but it’s all actually really really well thought out and well put together and his blog is all powered by YQL. So, it’s got all his presentations, all the books he’s written, all of the events he’s going to… from up coming, he’s photos from Flickr, he’s tweets from Twitter, all of his social presence is all combined into this one through a couple of YQL codes and I think it’s really cool that now we can do that. I think that we just need to start thinking about how we can use that data in different ways and just expanding that more and making that even…..

Paul: So that’s the kinda stuff you’d like to get into when you’re actually…in the…

Jamie: Yeah, maybe

Paul: Maybe?

Jamie: If I don’t…if my ambitions of being a rockstar don’t….you know…….turn out, yeah

Paul: Yeah, don’t pan out. I think you’re going down the wrong route for that, I have to say. You’re mixing with the wrong crowd if you wanna be a rockstar.

Ok well, it’s really good to talk to you Jamie and it’s good see the future of Web Design is safe, that there are people like you out there and that you’re getting stuck in now. I hope it’s a real encouragement to…..cos I know a lot of students listen to this and so it’s really good to hear that there are other young people out there getting stuck in. So, thank you very much

Jamie: Thank you

Thanks goes to Debbie-Jayne Reyes for transcribing this interview.

Also one quick note about the geek event Jamie was organising. Unfortunately this has had to be delayed. However, if you follow Jamie on his blog then you can find out when it is rescheduled.

James Proud

Paul: Ok, so joining me is James Proud from GigLocator. Good to have you on the show James.

James: Thank you for having me.

Paul: Now basically I’m doing this interview because Anna told me that you’re really cool and you talk some great stuff and I needed to get you on the show, so Anna is here too. Come on say “Hello”.

Anna: Hello.

Paul: And she’s now going to ask all the questions. Go Anna.

Anna: Oooh.

Paul: I’ll break you in. So first of all, tell us about GigLocator.

James: Sure, well GigLocator is a live music site, basically. Its completely worldwide, so whatever country, genre of music, artist and we will hopefully have all their past and upcoming gigs, and you’ll be able to easily find the tickets for the gigs so you don’t have to pay through-the-nose, for example, if you saw a gig on ticketmaster and it was £20, if you come to us you might see was the seetickets gig link and that’s £15. So you can get the cheapest tickets always up to date and you don’t have to miss out on gigs and its just making it a lot easier to go to music you love without have to trawl through all the ticket sites etc.

Paul: And you said you created this yourself and with one other guy?

James: I have got a co-founder. He’s mainly dealt with all negotiations with the ticket providers, I’ve done the design front-end and back-end stuff.

Paul: The immediate thing that springs to mind is: flipping heck that’s a big lo’ job to undertake! You’re looking at being worldwide here and you’ve had to arrange and negotiate with all the ticket providers.

James: Yeah, it’s been quite hard, he’s been dealing with people in the Czech Republic and GermansÉ Yeah it’s quite hard, but we’ve managed to get a lot of good data.

Paul: Ok, so you’ve got some good data, but all of these ticket people all round the world have all got their different systems, how the hell do you build something like that?

James: Three months of building a system that can normalise all of the different types of data. So whenever we get a new feed in, for example, you have a really decent feed that has all the artist names and the address of venue, then you find another feed that doesn’t have the artists name, it’ll just have ‘the artist name – Live Tour’. So all you’ve got to work with is ‘Madonna’s Live Tour’. So you’ve got to build a system that can decipher that its actually Madonna performing though you only have that title. They might only give you the name of the venue, so we’ve got to deal with finding all these things and putting them all together, but things are going quite well and we managed to sort it out.

Paul: That’s pretty impressive. So is this venture capital funded or is it being boot-strapped, how are you going about building it?

James: We are boot-strapping at the moment. We didn’t want to go down the route of getting seed funding early on because I could build it without the funding so we’ve just basically knuckled down and lived without money for a bit, but we’re going very well at the moment.

Paul: That’s quite a scary thing to do, did you work somewhere previously?

James: I was doing my A-Levels and doing some freelance work on the side, so I used to work with my co-founder for Coca-Cola music, Universal music doing freelance work there and that got us into the live music space. Then 6 or 7 months ago I said ‘I’m not doing freelance work anymore and I’m just going to focus on this’. So i’ve not earned any money for our consultancy and he’s just done small jobs on the side to pay for server costs, and it’s going fine.

Paul: That’s a really brave decision to make. So how old are you?

James: I was 18 a month ago.

Paul: Ok, so you’ve come out of A-Levels straight into this. That in itself is a big thing to do. You have the thing: ‘Do I go off to university? What about my career path?’ Why have you gone down this route?

James: I’ve taken a gap year out, so at the end if this goes tits-up I could go to univ, but the rate that things are going now I hopefully won’t. I’ve never really wanted to work for anyone else at all and I saw this as a chance at an idea and I was getting some great feedback so I thought let’s just do this and focus my time on it.

Paul: Its really interesting, this is what ScrunchUp is all about, which is now online and up and running. Little cheer from Ryan in the background there. This is something you struggled with as well Anna, what you’re doing: you did freelance for a bit, now maybe you’re looking for a permanent position. Do you ever regret not going to university?

Anna: Of course I do, all my friends are at uni, they’re all having fun, they’ve got it quite easy. Sometimes I feel like I’m not ready for this. I don’t regret not going because I just think working is better for me, but I do sometimes wonder: ‘What would it have been like?’ So either way I would’ve regretted my decision.

Paul: You’re just someone that’s ‘glass half empty’ kind of person. The green isÉ ‘The green is always grasser on the other side’? The grass is always greenerÉ

Anna: One things I wanted to ask you James, has your age got in the way of what you do or has it helped you?

James: When I was first developing, it got in the way because I couldn’t spend my whole waking life doing it so I’d have to go to college. So now that it’s finished its no longer a factor. It’s helped in a way, I always tried when doing work before launching before I had to show my face I never really promoted my age I just didn’t think it was important. But it’s helped me the fact that people are amazed that you’ve done this at this age, but I’ve done coding since I was 9 and I was paid at 12.

Paul: You got paid? Hang on, you got paid to code when you were 12 years old?

James: Yes.

Paul: I fell really old! When I was 12 they didn’t have blooming computers! So what’s next then? Is this actually launched and up and running?

James: Yes it’s been up and running for about 7 weeks, the reception, the things that have happened are amazing, it’s phenomenal.

Paul: Give me some examples.

James: Im now getting paid to speak at places. I was on the TV.

Paul: You were on the TV? Tell us about that, being on the TV’s cool.

James: A couple of days ago Channel 4 were looking for someone that runs a website but also has experience with Google Wave and I did a small piece on the news about Google Wave and how it affects me as a web developer and a site owner.

Paul: Ok, let’s go off on a complete tangent because I haven’t played with Google Wave. What’s it like? Is it as good as everybody says it is?

James: It’s quite good, but at the moment it’s lacking features. But Google’s made it so open that people can make features. So today they released it to 100,000 people. So hopefully with all of the developers that are now on it some amazing things will happen, give it a month or so and it should be quite a good platform.

Paul: That’s the big hurdle, you can build a great app, but if no one has heard of it then you fall down. Especially when you’ve spent so much time negotiating all these deals and developing it. So how are you – you’re boot-strapping it still, you haven’t got a lot of money behind you – how are you building a bit of momentum behind this?

James: We were at FOWA today, I was invited to come down. I got a free ticket. So I’m doing a bit of work with Sun, promoting it that way. But we’ve not actually gone full steam ahead with our PR or press because we are waiting to develop a few exciting new features that we think a lot of people will be interested in. So we’ve built a solid platform that does what it does: gigs, tickets etc making sure that’s perfect. But now we’re building on some extra things onto that so later in the month we’ll release those and alongside that we’ll start doing press.

Paul: So how are you intending to do it, or is it mainly your colleague that’s doing that?

James: The press stuff? Well because I’ve been doing all the speaking and I’ve been around London and all the events, I’ve built up a good relationship with quite a lot of people. So we are going to be targeting some music related stuff, just try and get it out there. Whatever that it takes. I’ll do anything. Take one for the team.

Paul: That’s a good entrepreneurial spirit. I like that very much. Have you got any more questions?

Anna: Yeah, so where do you see yourself in the next 5 years?

James: I’d like to say a year or so after I’ve had my exit. Either this is doing tremendously well still, or its had the exit. But hopefully I’ll still be working for myself working on fun things whatever it may be.

Paul: So that’s the plan, to go for an exit point where you sell the app and move onto the next thing?

James: Yeah, I think everyone is looking for their big exit. It’s either an exit or an IPO. If you’re money orientated. Work for the love of it. No I love it, its a great thing, it’s my life.

Paul: You could build a lifestyle business, for example, the business I run is a lifestyle business. We run the company so that it gives us a good standard of living and we’ll run it forever like that. Im not criticising, but looking for an exit is a different way of doing things. Well that was really interesting, i think its great to talk to people that are actually out there building these web apps but not with massive budgets and not ‘in the Valley’ and all the stereotypical stuff, you’re boot-strapping it, there’s just a couple of you guys doing it and it’s still possible.

James: It’s not about having a mass of money, it’s about losing control of your company. Why would you want to be a minority shareholder in a company, it’s your baby. I personally wouldn’t be motivated to work if it wasn’t mine still.

Paul: Of course. Thank you for your time and we’ll get you back on in the future.

Thanks goes to Simon Hamp for transcribing this interview.

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We are introducing a new segment to the show this week. It is called Elevator Pitch and is produced by our very own Paul Stanton. The idea is that Paul interviews companies who have a product that might be of interest to you guys. They give a quick elevator pitch and Paul asks them some questions.

We start the series with ABtests.com.

Stanton: OK so today I am here with Joshua Porter, Hello Joshua

Joshua: Hi Paul;

Stanton: How are you doing?

Joshua:I am doing good, what time is it there?

Stanton: It is about 10:30 in the morning.

Joshua: Ok it is still dark here so

Stanton:(laughs) So where abuts are you based

Joshua: I am north of Boston in a small sea coast town called Newburyport, Massachusetts

Stanton: Ok so is it night time there? I can never figure out the timezone differences.

Joshua: yes it is still dark, nobody is up so this is usually when I get most of my work done actually

Stanton: Nice and quiet I guess

Joshua: Yes absolutely

Stanton: So we have got you on today to talk about a website you are involved with called abtests.com, so give us the elevator pitch, what it is and why you made it.

Joshua: Sure, so yes its abtest.com and it is a really simple site the idea is that we upload and allow other people to upload the results of A,B tests. For those not familiar with A,B testing it is really pretty simple if or while you are designing a web page or screen in a web application you might design two separate instances of that page and then test to see which one works better. So you split up your traffic your audience coming to the page into two and 50% of the people see design A and 50% of the people will see design B and then you measure to see which audience converted better against some goal you have set up. For example say you have a sign up in a web application and you have a sign up page and you want to test two different variations to see which one works better, that is essentially the gist of A,B tests. The reason why we created the site was for people to share their tests with others so the way it started was I had been doing a bunch of testing and I had seen some people online writing up some of their tests and what I found was that I always found the results really fascinating. So for example we have some write ups on the site now where people have provided two screenshots of design A and design B and the only thing different is simply the placement of the call to action button, the primary sign up button and after doing testing it turns out that sometimes the placement actually matters, if you place the button in a place on the page then you actually get more people clicking on it. So these sort of things fascinated me and I had seen a few of them written up in blog posts and things online but I wanted a lot more of them and the designers that I have talked to really liked that concept as well so we created the site. I created it with a couple of guys from a start up called performable that I am involved in as well. You know we are kind of seeing where it goes at this point. We have had a lot of interest in it and we have found some interesting issues around it such as for example some people will never upload the results of their test because they want to keep them secret but others see it as a great way to promote their startup or something like that.

Stanton: Right so you are not actually providing the mechanism for people to do A,B tests this is simply for people that have had results and want to publish them and share them with other people, that right?

Joshua: Right now yeah, we do have quite a few things in the works but we will not be providing like a piece of software that allows you to do A,B testing. We might provide some other software that does things in and around testing, ermm but there are plenty of tools out there one of the tools the most popular one is google website optimiser which is a free tool which allows you too do A,B Testing and one of the folks who is promoting abtest.com with us is kissmetrics they have some tools in that space too. So we are not going to compete with them in any way.

Stanton: OK so how long has the site been running for now?

Joshua: The site has been running for about a month now I think

Stanton: OK and roughly how many tests are up there now

Joshua: We have er gee I don’t know what the number is 12 or 15. I haven’t actually been spending as much time as I wanted to on the site because I am actually working on a startup and building some other software. But we are .. the big challenge again is kind of getting people comfortable with the notion of sharing their tests. That is kind of the big challenge now so we are working on that.

Stanton: Sure, it is quite amazing to look through the stuff that people have put on there and you see the screenshots side by side and you have to look closely on them to see what has changed because it shows how just the tiniest change in either the text or the placement or the colouring in some cases can lead to quite big percentage improvements on calls to action so I think it will be really useful for people to come and have a look through and hopefully share their own tests as well.

Joshua: Yeah, one of the big findings that we are seeing is that testing like this or viewing the results of these tests really changes peoples perceptions of design, I mean it is kind of a pretty big insight to some people to see that OK you know the colour of a button does change things, the call to action copy can have a dramatic effect so what I hope kind of for the site and the test results is that teams can take them back and start talking about real design issues and hopefully push to the background things like politics and emotional debates and “this is what I think” and so this is what we are going to try type of arguments and say you know what testing really does work. lets really start testing things. I think at some point teams will start focusing more on really important things, like their users, the words that matter to their users, the things that motivate their users and really kind of return to the basics of design.

Stanton: Great so you have kind of given us a couple of hints to where the site may go in the future, have you any other plans

Joshua: SO two things I am working on right now. One is to really fill out the site with information how to test. as I mentioned we are not planning on providing a tool to test, but people want to know what A,B testing is. They want to know how to do it and they want to see examples of what other people have tested so they can get a idea of what they should test. That has been one of the biggest surprises that people do not know what to test so people you know have the question shall we test another colour?, should we test different copy or different button styles? whatever. So that has been a big thing so we are going to round out the site with a bunch of information, content basically around where to test and some of the interesting topics. So for example actually I am working on some copy now that is what A,A testing is, a version of A.B testing but is a version of testing where you test the same thing twice so 50% of people, you basically segment your audience into two parts and the two parts seem the same thing and that might sound like a ridiculous idea because you are testing the same thing twice but it is actually valuable thing to do early on when you are getting into testing because it tells you how much noise is in your system. So if you run design A versus design A itself and you have some difference there, so one has slightly higher conversion than the other and of course all of the numbers you get from testing are fuzzy to a certain extent the question is how much, so if you have some variance there and you know there is noise in your testing setup and you know that is your margin of error. So after you do A,A testing then when you move on to A,B testing you can say the margin of error is about 1% so then in that case if B outperforms A by 1% you know it is not really, it may not be a significant result because there is that much noise in your system to begin with. Anyway tat is just one example of some of the content stuff we are going to fill the site out with going forward.

Stanton: So sounds really good. A,A testing is something I have never heard of before so that is quite interesting and I will guess you will become quite a good resource for all this testing, for people to go to.

Joshua: yes I hope so.

Stanton: So where can people find out more information.

Joshua: So they can go to www.abtests.com check it out we are actually going to push some changes up soon that allow you to view tests and view related tests so hopefully it will be easier even than it is now.

Stanton: Good stuff, well thank you for that

Joshua: Thank you Paul

Stanton: We will hopefully check back with you in the future to see how things are going.

Joshua: Great sounds good.

Thanks goes to Shaun Hare for transcribing this segment.

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If you are considering going to Future of Web Design New York on the 17th November then you will be pleased to hear that we have managed to get you a 15% discount.

I went last year and can honestly say it was the best conference I have ever intended (although the hype around the election might have helped!).

To claim your discount just enter the code ‘boag15′ at checkout.

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Does aesthetics need to be compromised for the sake of usability?

As you will know if you have followed me for any length of time, I have great respect for usability expert Gerry McGovern. We work on similar projects and share a similar view of the web.

However, this week I parted company with Mr McGovern over his most recent post “Why web links are calls to action.”

In it he wrote:

It’s hard to read what Dustin writes on this black background; gave me a bit of a headache actually. But that’s okay. I had a great overall experience of the page because its black background communicated an important emotional, aesthetic thing to me.

Seriously, it’s a bit of a pity Dustin makes it so hard to read his stuff because what he has to say is quite interesting.

Later he went on to attack designers for their dislike of underlines.

Isn’t it amazing how many designers hate underline? They think it’s ugly, that it takes away from the look of the page.

Finally he reached the crux of his argument:

Have you read any grey books recently? I mean, have you read any books that use grey text or that have black backgrounds? Or, for that matter, have you read any print newspapers or magazines that use grey text? It’s well documented that it’s harder to read on a screen than in print. So why do designers deliberately create webpages that make reading even harder? Simple, really. Many web designers are more concerned with how the page looks than how it reads and functions.

In essence Gerry seems to be arguing that aesthetics should always take second place to usability. I disagree with this. It depends on the type of site. On some sites it is important to communicate more than information. Some websites are about conveying emotion and feeling too.

As for particularly targeting black backgrounds and underlined links, this is entirely unjustified.

Black backgrounds can (if done right) actually aid usability. Contrast is the issue here, not the colour of the background. As long as there is sufficient contrast a black background can actually reduce eye strain caused by white light, aiding on screen reading.

As for underlined links, I again disagree. Although I think it is important to underline links I tend to use border-bottom rather than text-decoration:underline. The problem with the latter is that the line intersects descenders making words hard to read, especially for those with cognitive disabilities. Not using underlines in their traditional sense actually aids readability.

The idea that most designers do not care about usability is incorrect. We care passionately. However, we do not always solve these problems in the way that usability consultants would prefer. Instead we try to balance aesthetic considerations with usability. We care both for how the page looks and how it functions.

So what do you think? Do you believe that designers care more about aesthetics than usability? Post your thoughts in the comments.

Explaining user experience design

Let’s face it, we all dress our jobs up in fancy terminology to justify our existence. That is fine until those paying us no longer understand what we are talking about.

Okay, so I am exaggerating to make a point. Sometimes we use our own terminology because we need short hand to explain complex ideas. However whatever the reason, it can get in the way when communicating with clients.

That is where the latest A List Apart post comes in. Entitled ‘Can you say that in english: Explaining UX research to clients‘ it does exactly what it says on the tin.

I want to recommend you read this article for three reasons:

• If you are a somebody who needs to deal with UX people, this post proves an excellent introduction into what services they provide and the terminology they use.
• If you are a UX person the post provides valuable advice on how to better communicate with clients.
• If you have just started doing UX work this article may introduce you to more techniques. For example: have you previously heard of Contextual Inquires or Diary studies?

If you are looking for a great introduction to user experience design written in plain english, this is not a bad place to start.

The importance of typography

Typography is playing an increasingly important role on the web. Browser manufacturers now almost universally support font-face and there are a number of organisations such as Typekit and Fontdeck who have overcome the legal challenges surrounding the use of type online.

Unfortunately few fully understand the power of typography. Even web designers have become so used to working with a limited number of fonts that they have forgotten how evocative a great font can be.

There are loads of great resources about type on the web. Howeve, if you are looking for a post to get you started and demonstrate the power of type, I would recommend Jennifer Farley’s post on Sitepoint.

This isn’t a post that teaches you how font-face works. It isn’t even a post that explains how to create great typography. Instead it aims to excite you about the potential and power of great typography.

If you are a designer who rarely considers typography in any depth, then I highly recommend this post. If you are a website owner or developer who doesn’t ‘get’ all the fuss surrounding web typography, then I would also recommend you check this post out.

Website maintenance tips

Our final news story for today is an eclectic post from Smashing Magazine looking at website maintenance tips and tools.

It is a useful post because most of us are better at building websites than we are at maintaining them. After all, it is much more exciting to build a new feature than it is to carry out maintenance.

The article includes:

• Advice on keeping content clean
• Tools and advice on repairing your site
• Information on browser compatibility testing
• Help creating clean HTML, CSS, and Javascript
• Guidance on ensuring accessibility
• A look at HTML5 and CSS3
• How to optimise your site for speed
• Advice on commenting code
• An introduction to SEO enhancements
• Information on stats and analytics
• How to incorporate user feedback

As I said – a somewhat eclectic mix. However, it is certainly worth a read if you are responsible for maintaining a large website over time.

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I am amazed at some of the advice I read about building successful ecommerce sites. I seriously wonder who writes this stuff! In this week’s feature I debunk 5 common myths.

Read the biggest ecommerce lies and how to avoid them

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Got the following question from Dave Smith:

Basically I’m interested in whether your Podcast and Blog generate any enquiries that result in paid work/projects for Headscape?

Recently we created FindMeByIP.com and it generated what is – for us anyway – a considerable amount of traffic for the Blog on our website. However, despite the tens-of-thousands of hits generated, we’ve only received 1 enquiry regarding new work. ONE!

What I want to know is whether you’ve devised any strategies for converting Blog/Podcast traffic into paid work projects for Headscape.

If not then how can you justify the obviously considerable amount of time and effort you put into your Podcast and Blog? What provides return on investment?

I’d look forward to any ideas/thoughts/suggestions that you might have.

The simple answer as to whether the podcast and blog generate any enquiries that result in paid work is yes. Blogging and podcasting have become the principle method that we use to market Headscape. We wouldn’t do it to the level that we do if it wasn’t a successful method of winning work.

Patience

I happened to notice recently that the first ever podcast went out in 2005 with Paul creating written articles prior to that. It took at least a couple of years before we started to notice that the majority of new prospects were discovering us through the blog and podcast.

There’s a couple of important points to note here:

• The majority of Headscape’s work comes from existing clients and referrals. It did then and still does now. I don’t think the blogging/podcast model alone would have been able to support us in the early days when our client list was a lot shorter.
• We’re not ‘scientific’ about ROI. In other words, we don’t get hung up about effort spent on marketing versus the amount of revenue coming in from it. It’s either working (or improving) or it’s not. If it’s not then we’ll try something else. Personally, I don’t think it’s a numbers game. For example, what if that one enquiry that Dave mentioned was from a huge client?

Perception

Even though we have always been completely ‘up front’ about the benefits that the podcast brings to Headscape, Paul didn’t start it with commerciality in mind.
Paul is a born blogger. He is a person that needs no encouragement to experiment with stuff and then share his thoughts with all and sundry. The fact that it has benefited our business is great and led the rest of us to encourage him to do more and more.

I’m not suggesting for a minute that Dave (and his colleagues’) blog is in any way forced but, and here’s the clincher, it sits on the company website. There is an instant connection between the blog and the company that may – probably sub-consciously – deter readers because they feel they are being sold at.

We used to write articles for the Headscape site and we’d send out regular email newsletters alerting subscribers to new articles. This was not successful, I believe, for the reasons highlighted above.
Boagworld started as Paul’s personal blog. And, I’m guessing, for the vast majority of readers and listeners it still is very much Paul’s site. They put up with the odd reference to Headscape but basically they’re not interested and never will be.

Influence

Though we have had a few website owners follow the show and hire us directly, the majority of the work that we win via the podcast is through listeners influencing their bosses. It took us a while to realise this.

When Boagworld started we felt it was important to focus the show (and blog) on website owners and not designers and developers. And though this focus remains important and provides a differentiator to other ‘tech’ blogs and podcasts, we now understand that both audiences are important to us.

Entertainment?

Mentioning differentiators, I think the fact that we do a podcast (not just a blog) is significant as well. It gives our audience a chance to get to know us far more than through articles alone. I have mentioned before that I think one of the biggest questions a potential client has before hiring an agency is ‘can I work with these people?’ I think the same applies for an in-house designer or developer who wants to make a recommendation to a boss. They need to feel that they can completely trust the team they are recommending and I think that’s more likely if their connection with you is via a (long running) podcast.

Our ‘style’, though it has its detractors (!), has kept people listening for nearly 200 shows. I guess what I am saying is that though of course high quality, relevant and up to date content is paramount to a successful podcast or blog, making it entertaining is also imperative. There are those that would completely disagree with my previous sentence – they don’t listen to Boagworld…

Conclusion

In conclusion, I think that the most important element to a successful blog or podcast is that it’s not being done simply as a vehicle to try and win work (or sell products etc). It has to be something you would do anyway. Of course, seeing positive results from a blog (as we have) will encourage more time being dedicated to it, but it shouldn’t be the reason to start in the first place.

Paul has talked in the past about one of the keys to blogging being consistency and regular posting. If you see blogging as a chore then chances are you won’t produce consistent or regular work.
In Dave’s case, along with considering moving the blog away from the company site, I think patience is the key as it appears they haven’t been doing it long.

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Image Credit: MarS

Offline inspiration

It has been a while since we have featured a Smashing Magazine post on the show so thought it was about time.

Shocking though this will be, it is not a top 10 list. Instead it is an excellent post on finding inspiration offline.

The post argues that using online sources such as CSS galleries for inspiration is not enough. As designers we need to be taking a walk, visiting a museum or spending time sketching. We need to consider these an essential part of our job description.

The post examines eight areas of inspiration:

• Nature
• Museums
• Sketching
• Hobbies
• Music
• Photography
• Traditional art
• Our own imaginations

It then discusses what can be found in these areas of inspiration. In particular the post looks at:

• Texture
• Color
• Shapes
• Changing our perspective
• Discovering themes

The problem is that we don’t feel like visiting a museum is work and even if we do our bosses certainly do not! However, this is eloquently addressed to:

The trick is to consider alternative inspiration an an essential part of the job. While it feels more like play than work at first, finding true inspiration should mean more than browsing through the same material over and over. And we should know that in a creative industry, having fun is okay; it doesn’t mean we’re being unproductive.

Image source

Some of the best design work I ever did came from offline sources. I just wish I prioritised this kind of research more.

All you need to know about CSS3

Mr Stanton discovered a great new site this week – CSS3.info. With CSS 2.1. becoming increasingly supported and integrated into our work, it is time to look ahead at what CSS 3 has in store.

CSS3 has got some really interesting new features that are already supported in some browsers. From advanced selectors such as attribute selection through to multiple column layouts, there is a host of goodies we can start to play with.

What is more, by using graded browser support we don’t need to worry too much about IE’s lack of support.

CSS3.info is a great starting point if you want to begin using some of these advanced CSS features. It provides examples of each new feature and tells you what browsers support it. It also provides a selector check so you can see what advanced selectors work in different browsers. Finally, it also provides up-to-date information on how the new specification is progressing.

I really would encourage you to take a look at CSS3. Its got some really exciting features that you can start using now.

Preparing and planning for a redesign

Although I am generally against the principle of redesigning sites from the ground up, there is no doubt that every site needs a refresh once in a while.

Knowing when and how to go about redesigning your website can be a tricky process. Fortunately Web Designers Depot has a post that might help. Entitled “Preparing and planning for a redesign” it provides some valuable advice for any website owners thinking of redesigning.

The post starts by looking at how you know it is time to redesign. Contributing factors include:

• Out of date technologies and techniques
• The age of a design
• The lack of a CMS
• Search engine ranking problems
• Under performance
• Your competition

It then goes on to look at what needs to be done in preparation for a redesign. This includes:

• Identifying what works
• Being clear on what doesn’t
• Looking at what can be removed, combined or added
• Knowing what motivates your users
• Whether a complete redesign is even necessary

Finally, the article concludes by looking at some potential dangers in redesigning. These include dealing with repeat users and avoiding broken links.

Although I don’t agree with everything in this post, it is a useful article if you are considering a redesign. Check it out.

Confusing menus and links: the web’s biggest challenge

I want to conclude with a post that might make you rethink your sites navigation. It is by Gerry McGovern and is entitled “Confusing menus and links: the web’s biggest challenge.”

Gerry applies his task focused approach to information architecture. He argues that too many organisations are more concerned with organising their content into an IA, than meeting the needs of users.

He suggests that to make a truly effective information architecture we need to start thinking like our users, who are focused on the task at hand.

To demonstrate his point he refers to the BBC sports site as a good example:

If you visit the BBC homepage and choose “Sport” you are brought to a page about sport. Just sport. The critical first screen is all about sport. No links to news or weather or business. Just sport. If you click on Football you arrive at a page that’s just about Football. Just Football. Not cricket. Not rugby. Not golf. Just football. If you click on “Premier League” you get to a page dedicated to the Premier League.

This is not web design. It’s web management. It’s about eliminating all choices that are not connected with the customer’s current task, which in the above example might be: Find out the latest news about the Premier League.

Too often as website owners we clutter our navigation with other content that users “might want” or which we want them to look at. Although there are times when we want to cross link or promote other content, we need to be careful not to distract users from achieving their primary aim. If they become overwhelmed by links and fail to complete their task easily, they will leave.

He ends with a radical suggestion:

Menus and links need to be designed in the context of the task the customer is trying to complete. That means stripping away higher-level options and creating links that point forward based on the task at hand.

Stripping away top level navigation is not always a good idea, but this post should make us sit up and think.

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Ryan: OK, joining us today is Alex Hunter and we’ve just listened to you do a talk on… what was the talk title, I’ve forgotten?

Stanton: It was kind of “Managing Your Brand”.

Ryan: “Managing Your … Marketing Your Web App and Future Brands Online” – it was really good talk; really fascinating.

Alex: Thank you.

Ryan: So, would you like to tell us a little bit about yourself Alex?

Alex: Yeah. Sure. I’m an independent, kind of, brand ninja if you will. I’ve worked with some of the biggest brands in the world – on both sides of the pond. I live here in the UK but am originally from California.

Ryan: OK. And your talk was focused around making yourself your brand; putting your reputation on the line, in a way. It was really interesting – do you want to tell us a little bit about that?

Alex: Absolutely, yeah. Brand is one of those things that falls by the wayside, especially when it’s a developer-centred organisation. Developers are creating amazing technologies, incredible platforms but while they’ve been doing that they’ve actually been completely changing the game; they’ve been fundamentally changing the way marketing and branding works. It’s amazing, because they’ve create apps and platforms (i.e. social networking) that allow consumers to connect with brands for the very first time. Before, it was just send a letter out, watch a billboard, very mono-directional. But now we have these tools to connect with brands, and the irony is that the people that created that conversation aren’t responding to the fact that they need to have their brands intact.

Ryan: Right, OK.

Stanton: You gave a couple of examples of companies that you respect and that do this kind of thing really well. Can you give us a run through those?

Alex: Sure. I think Digg has put a lot of time and effort into their brand over their, what is, five-year or six-year existence. They’ve done a lot of little things really, really well and it was nice to hear Kevin Rose allude to them yesterday. Things like their blog – I think they’ve got the best corporate blog in the world because it’s not just the Vice-President of PR doing the blogging. It’s not even just Kevin or Jay (the founder and CEO respectively). It’s the developers, the designers, the DB admins, the receptionists, the community managers i.e. the faces and the names of the people that created and curate the community that we as the “Digg Community” have invested so much time and energy into. We can connect with those people now because it’s a name and a face of a real person. And so what they do whenever they roll out a new piece of technology or a new development, they say “Hey, I’m the guy that did this. Here’s why and here’s how (in excrutiating detail). What do you think?”. And that’s kind of revolutionary.

Stanton: So you would encourage people – especially working in small teams – not to be scared of just talking about what they’re doing and just waiting for “Let’s just wrap it up in a press release” or something and just talk about it naturally and be precious and passionate.

Alex: The being “precious” about it, I think, is a very, very big risk. That transparency is really beautiful because it brings people into the journey – especially when you’re creating something brand new – when it’s just an idea. You’re creating a new product and you’re updating people on it. It’s why reality TV is such a painful hit, I mean. It’s because people are looking into this thing and, Lord knows, the dev cycle is dramatic and painful and “4 o’clock in the morning” caffeine-induced frenzies. But also, it’s like when things go wrong, hold your hands up – be transparent, human. Don’t hide behind a brand name or a product name. And people will engage with that.

Ryan: So, how should people be doing this really? How should people be developing their brand and associating themselves towards the brand and then putting it out there. What techniques should they be using?

Alex: It’s a great question. I think that there’s – especially with Twitter, interestingly – there’s this real blurring of the line between personal brand and corporate brand. A lot of the big names that we know in technology embody their brand; Kevin Rose is Digg, Gary Veynerchuk is Wine Library TV, Tony Hsieh is Zappos – they’re all completely interconnected; there’s no separating them. They’ve invested themselves emotionally in what they do and that shows in the brand. And I think they’re defined by what they want to be. Gary has always been very clear about what his values are, Digg is very clear about what their values are. Apple are very clear about what their values are, and I think, trite as it may sound, going through and identifying your values – and it was really refreshing because as I came off the stage some dude came up to me and say “Hey, thank you. We’ve been labouring over this for years and we finally sat down – or I stopped sitting down with myself and brought the whole team in – and we defined our values” and it’s just gone up exponentially through that. And so I think it’s just define the values, creating an identity out of that and then saying “What are we now and what are we going to be, well, indefinitely really”.

Ryan: So do you think that’s got to be one of the first stages when you release it – you’ve got to be thinking about where you’re going to take it and how you’re going to present it to the world.

Alex: Absolutely

Ryan: That’s vitally important.

Stanton: So you talked about brand consistency and not to be scared of it or precious of it again. You should be willing to put it out there and how other people in your company – just use it and get it out there.

Alex: It’s… consistency is a funny one. People always say “The more people you give the message to the more watered down it becomes and the less consistent the message is”. Big brands are really scared of losing the refinement of their message. Realistically, they’ve been doing it for the last 30 years because the person who answers the phone in the call centre is the first point of contact that a user has with your brand. They are representing your brand. The receptionist is representing your brand. So giving someone an account on Twitter to do the same is no different, it’s just a little bit more of a public stage. But, on the flip side, that’s a good thing because people can see you responding to positive comments and negative comments and reacting and helping people in a very public forum. That’s why things like Get Satisfaction and applications like that – and actually in South Africa there’s a really popular one called Hello Peter which businesses are all into trying to respond and react to. So I think it’s a good thing and people shouldn’t be scared of consistency.

Ryan: Some brands, and we’re talking here quite a bit about people being associated to the brand and being kind of interchangeable. You say Steve Jobs, you say Apple, you always think of the two. For brands like, you mentioned, Diet Coke – being that you were invested into that brand – there’s no person that you can think of associated to that but you see that brand and you’re committed to it. McDonalds, things like that. What differences are there between the two? How do you promote? It’s kind of a logo you’re promoting in a way, isn’t it.

Alex: It’s a really good question. Diet Coke – the Coke/Pepsi thing is a fascinating brand battle and one of the few where it’s really only a two-horse race, especially in the consumer arena. I mean you’ve got Boeing and Airbus but they don’t really have to advertise because, well, I don’t have $100 billion lying around. Coke and Pepsi, I think, play off the fact that they are rivals and you are either one or the other. I think the more you consume of it the more passionate you become about it. So, if you are a regular Diet Coke drinker – like my wife won’t go to restaurants that serve Pepsi, she’ll leave because she can’t stand the taste of it. I’m sure it’s psychological because as Dave Chapelle said in that video, “It’s all the same”. It’s sugared water in a tin can! But they’ve managed to kind of feed off each other to an extent that has developed this rivalry and therefore developed this passion within its user base.

Ryan: I suppose then there’s so many different avenues that you can take to compete and get your brand out there. Is there any more that particularly stand out; having a direct competitor is one way of developing your brand or having a figurehead or any other ways you can go about it?

Alex: Absolutely, absolutely – especially for small – or reasonably small – brands. I think there’s a couple of things that are really important. In kind of extending the reach of the brand and the application with content like blogs – like the Digg example is a great one – but also engagement, both in the physical world and in the digital world. There are a lot of web companies that are getting really good at hosting real world events where users meet up and are rewarded both on a macro-like Digg or a Yelp on a micro level like some companies here in Europe like Qype that I mentioned during my talk that are introducing users to each other and to the people that either administrator or are the, kind of, power users within the community. Kevin Rose mentioned that again yesterday as a really good way; launch parties, regular user meetups, get people talking, get people connected. That really breeds loyalty. It’s astounding what that can do in terms of the competitive.

Ryan: I think Digg is an excellent example because they have so many methods of getting their message out there, don’t they. They’ve got the blog and the meetups and everything else.

Stanton: It’s like that with the bigger companies that come out. They can release different products that might not be wildly different but there’s the kind of umbrella brand that’s so strong that you can pick up that product and you know it’s new and you know the quality of it.

Alex: It’s really interesting. The web has actually fundamentally changed the way brand is perceived because we have these, like, loyalty mechanisms built in. Let’s look at, like, re-branding an acquisition. If my local supermarket gets bought by another supermarket, I don’t care. As long as it’s still there and has food in it – whatever! When Yahoo! bought Flickr they kind of didn’t know what to do with the brand. Do you keep it Flickr or do you make it Yahoo! Photos? And they’ve been kind of to-ing and fro-ing. But you can’t because that loyalty that’s in the Flickr community, that has built it up to where it is, would be PISSED OFF. So now, the compromise that just did recently was “Flickr by Yahoo!”.

Ryan: And people don’t seem to like it!

Alex: Exactly! Can you imagine what would happen if they rebranded it to just Yahoo! Photos? I mean, of course you’d get over it eventually but it’d take a lot longer and you’d lose a lot of customers.

Stanton: That kind of touches on one of the key things I took away from your talk. You said “Look after your users best interests, not yours”.

Alex: Absolutely. It’s hard because you gotta pay the bills. But that reputation will put you head and shoulders above anybody else. The Amazing Tunes example that I used. There are other unsigned artists sites out there, but not that give 70% of the profits back to the user and not that have a DAB radio station that you can get featured on. That’s looking after users. That’s the definition of an ethical web company.

Stanton: So for anyone starting out or building a company or a start-up or something, are there any common mistakes or pitfalls that you see all the time, or that you’d encourage people to watch out for or avoid.

Alex: Absolutely. There’s the ever-present “If you build it, they will come” mentality. If a build a solid app, no matter how ugly it is, people will come. They will not because they’ll never hear about it. And there are competitive apps to almost everything, and if there isn’t one today, there will be one tomorrow, and they will have looked at what you’ve done and they will have started an outreach, they will have started a Twitter account, they will have started a blog, they will have networked it physically and they will have networked it digitally, they will have thought about the presence, the UI. And I think that siloing and kind of compartmentalising and just saying “I’m going to iterate my app” is not going to work. There are exceptions to that rule. TweetDeck – he developed it to solve a personal problem, it just happened to be really well solved, and so it’s kind of growing on its own. But that is the exception to the rule. I think that hiding under a bushel, expecting it to develop on its own, it’s just not going to happen.

Ryan: With regards to cost of developing your brand, it can be the chicken and the egg sometimes. You need to develop an app and get it out there to make some return to put some investment into marketing it. What initial steps can be used to build yourself up before you can plough some money into it and doing it properly.

Alex: It’s kind of interesting. I think, yeah – you’ve got to have a concept obviously and some basic stuff done but I think one of the things that I’ve always found that worked, and it was really interesting to hear someone talk about it yesterday – I’m not sure who it was – but this kind of closed beta invite only concept seems to work really well at generating buzz. And if you just get one or two people saying “What the heck is this?”. You get these precious invites – which really aren’t that precious – Spotify’s a great example; actually Spotify’s a great example on two levels: 1) it was invite only for the longest time and 2) our pals in America couldn’t have it and they wanted it so badly that they were spoofing IP addresses and whatever they had to do to actually be able to use it. That kind of sense of exclusivity is a free way of generating that kind of buzz, if you can just get enough people to talk about it and it’s just an occasional whisper in the air, a Moo Card dropped somewhere with an invite code on it – that will just start to get people excited about it. But you have to make sure the product doesn’t suck on the back of it, because that will also spread pretty quickly as well.

Stanton: A lot of the talks I’ve sat in on today are starting to tie in. Yesterday it was “If you’re going to release something, release it early”. Do one or two things but do them really well, don’t try and do everything at once because you won’t be able to. And then see how things get – see how your users react to it and then build. I guess that’s reacting with the branding people that engage with the brand and then you’re building it and they feel invested.

Alex: That focus is really important as well, and I think that’s why APIs are so important in the early stage because you can get people developing iPhone apps and other integrations without taking your eye off the ball and doing those one or two things really well and going “Oh crap we’ve got to go home and develop the iPhone app”. It’s really interesting the way that it’s evolved – product development.

Ryan: Do you have any predictions of how things are going to change in the future. At the minute we’ve got these big companies that are doing it really well, everyone’s kind of imitating and doing similiar things to try and push their brands as well, and inevitably, things will change again. Any predictions about where things might be going?

Alex: I think it will become even more democratic. I think that the users will become even more powerful because the time to reaction is so fast.

Ryan: Yeah

Alex: But I also think loyalty will get even stronger and if you’re going to develop a competing app to an incumbant you’re going to have to work 10 times harder to get people off of what they’re using. As people start to use even more social currency, more points systems, giving more “value” to a user, it’ll be harder and harder to bring them over. I also think it’s going to be harder for people to acquire web brands, especially the big companies – the Yahoo!s the AOLs of the world to acquire small web brands without alienating those kind of fervently loyal people that are already their user base.

Ryan: You did mention people coming up with all this sort of cutesy names and stuff, mispellings and things like that. The market just seems to be saturated with it. How should people be thinking about deciding on a good brand and what fundamental things should they be thinking about when they’re making those decisions

Alex: I think that’s a great question. It’s less about the name – like you said it’s really easy just to misspell something or drop a consonant; that’s really lazy – you’ve got to look at it much more as a value-driven. What are our values? What is our product like? What is our team made of? Where are we in the world? And then use that to feed in the name to something obviously catchy, obviously when you can get the domain for a reasonable price – those are practical things that you need to take into consideration. But it’s got to be catchy; it’s got to be engaging, it’s got to mean something. And I think people have started to catch onto the whole “if you can make it a verb”. Digg and Google have become verbs (by the fact that they’re just ubiquitous), but I think people are now starting to say (at least, I’ve heard people around London say) “I’m going to Qype that” and it means “I’m going to check what this place is like” in terms of reviewing a restaurant before I go into it or whip out their Qype Radar iPhone app and check it out before they walk into it. So I think that that’s a really interesting revolution.

Stanton: You’ve got to work hard to get to that place, don’t you?

Alex: You really do.

Stanton: Then it appears in the dictionary!

Alex: That’s when you know it’s all over. You’ve won!

Ryan: OK, well, thank you very much for your time. I really enjoyed your talk and I think listeners will find that really useful. Thank you so much.

Thanks goes to Sam Kirkpatrick for transcribing this interview

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Normally the listener section of the show focuses on me answering listener questions. However, this week on twitter and the forum it has been the other way around.

You may have noticed that boagworld has been running slow for sometime. Well, I finally decided it was time to fix the problem. However, my knowledge on the subject was fairly limited. That was why I turned to the Boagworld community and boy did they help!

I thought it was only fair that I share the top 5 things I learn from them.

Read 5 Ways To Give Your Site A Speed Boost In Less Than 30 Minutes.

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Web design match making

Finding a web designer can be tough. Equally, if you are a web designer (especially if you are just starting out) finding clients can be hard. Much like in love, finding the perfect partnership is difficult.

37 Signals feel they have the answer. To accompany their already successful jobs board, they have now launched Haystack.

Haystack, allows web designers to upload a brief description of their agency for free or a more detailed portfolio for $99 per month.

Clients can then browse this directory in attempt to find the perfect agency.

And there in lies the problem. Although Haystack is beautifully designed it is actually incredibly limited from a clients perspective. They are only given three choices.

• Search through hundreds of listings manually
• Filter by city
• Filter by budget

These filters are both extremely limited and are not enough for narrowing down such a large number of designers.

Filter by city allows you to select from a handful of US cities, while dumping all other locations into a catch all of ‘other cities.’ This might possibly be acceptable if there was an option to search by country, region or city. Unfortunately there is not.

Filter by budget is equally flawed. As a web designer you have to select a price range that you normally work within. This effectively excludes you from smaller or larger projects. In reality things are rarely that black and white.

Finally I would argue that there are many other characteristics clients look for in an agency. There are no options to filter by technology, skill set or sector experience. The tools available are simply too blunt for making an effective decision.

My guess is that 37 Signals have been caught off guard by the instant popularity of the app. The current application has been built with a small number of agencies in mind. In such circumstances it would be perfectly adequate.

I am sure that they are already working on upgrades to the app which will handle the large number of agencies much more elegantly. These guys do good work and there is no doubt that an app like this is much needed.

Client relations

There seems to be a lot of posts around this week looking at the working relationship between clients and web designers.

There is a sitepoint post that focuses on fine tuning your persuasive techniques, a smashing magazine post on dealing with difficult characters and A List Apart post on when to walk away. There is even an article teaching us how to deal with things like scope creep and unhelpful design feedback.

Although it is good to see posts tackling client management, I do fear they all have a negative tone.

Last friday I ran a workshop on client relationships and although we discussed dealing with problematic relationships, I tried to make the overall theme a positive one.

Too many web designers go into new projects seeing the client as either the enemy or as a hinderance to the projects success. Articles like those I have mentioned are in danger of reinforcing this viewpoint.

It is important to remember that our clients are extremely knowledgeable in their own fields and that both designer and client wants the same thing – a successful website.

I also worry that too many web designers are perceived as negative. Instead we need to be positive and stop saying no to our clients.

Myths of usability testing

Two posts have been published recently that challenge some of our preconceptions about usability testing.

The first is a post by A List Apart entitled “The Myth of Usability Testing” and is a response to some fairly shocking research.

The research monitored a number of usability tests run by different agencies on the same site. The result was that although all of the agencies found many problems, only 30% of those problems were common to more than one agency. In other words the agencies could not agree on where the problems lay.

The article goes on to examine the discrepancy focusing in particular on the questions asked and the people tested. It also explains that context is vital to the interpretation of results.

The second post is one that challenges the role of eye tracking. The post looks at the pros and cons of the approach and in my opinion is a balanced assessment.

The post ends with the following conclusions:

Some have concluded that the benefits of eyetracking are not worth the high cost, effort, and complexity it adds to usability testing. On the other hand, some eyetracking vendors and consultants have promoted the idea that you cannot conduct usability testing effectively without eyetracking.

The truth lies somewhere between these extremes. If you know how to use eyetracking effectively, it can provide additional insights to usability testing that can help you find problems and answer questions about user behavior. Eyetracking is not essential to usability testing, but if you can afford it and have the time to learn how to use it effectively, it is definitely worth it.

Personally, we have never recommended eye tracking to our clients and this post has done nothing to persuade me to start. For the type of clients we work for the expenditure is hard to justify.

jQuery for designers

I am a huge fan of jQuery. I have said this more than once in the past. The thing I love most about jQuery is that it is aimed squarely at designers. If you can understand HTML and CSS, then you can wrap your head around jQuery. What is more, it lets you do some really cool things very easily.

Imagine my delight when this week I discovered jQuery For Designers. Apparently the site has been around for a while but I seem to have missed it entirely. In case you have missed it too I thought I would give it a quick mention.

The site contains dozens of screencasts and examples of various cool functionality that can be built with jQuery. Just some of the tutorials include:

• Tabs
• Slider galleries
• Carousels
• iPhone sliding headings
• Fixing floating elements

Best of all, you can subscribe to these screencasts on itunes enabling you to view them as a podcast.

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Keeping up in the world of web design is tough. Things move fast and its hard to stay informed. In this post I share 10 ways that RSS can come to the rescue.

Read 10 secrets to staying informed about web design

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Webvanta are running a superb contest that I wanted to quickly mention.

There is an opportunity to win a Macbook Pro or one of three iPod Touch.

To be in with a chance of winning, you need to build a great looking, effective website on the Webvanta CMS.

Don’t worry if you are not an existing Webvanta user. They are going to give you a Webvanta premium account for the duration of the contest.

The panel of judges (that includes our own Ryan Taylor) will pick a winner on the 1st February so get designing.

For more details on how to enter visit Webvanta.com/Contest.

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Recording the podcast

I had the following tweet from @david_o_connell:

@marcus67 could you guys do a spot on the tech setup for recording the podcast please (didn’t ask Paul as he muffs the audio :) )

Thinking about this I realised that I have never covered this riveting subject so after nearly 200 shows it was probably about time!

It’s worth noting that we are set up to record and edit things as quickly as possible. We have recorded a weekly show for years so we have to get it down and get it out the door. I’m sure there are other ways of doing things and I expect my history of working in expensive recording studios potentially means that I overcomplicate things… but, this is how I do it.

Hardware

Ok, this is a list of all the stuff we use:

• AKG C 2000B microphone (x3) – these are ‘mid’ quality mics that need phantom powering. ‘Decent’ quality mics are a must otherwise you will end up with a thin and probably noisy result. Built-in laptop mics are a total no-no!
• Angled mic stand (x2) – these are recent addition that mean we can comfortably use our laptops while recording the show.
• Straight mic stand – we use this for any guests we have on the show.
  Pop shield (x3) – again, a recent addition to the setup. Vital in avoiding pops and bangs on words that begin with ‘p’ or ‘b’.
• XLR to XLR (balanced) mic leads (x3)
• Behringer mixing desk – our mixing desk has 4 ‘proper’ mic channels and 4 stereo channels, 2 sub groups and phantom powering to power the mics. On a standard show, I take a feed from sub the group outputs to the input on the Mac. When we’re recording a live show things are little more complex as we need to get the audio to two places at the same time (my Mac recording the show and Paul’s that is broadcasting live). I also need to hear the audio from the intro videos so we’re taking an out from Paul’s Mac for the videos and a feed from the desk master outs to his line input… you need to see it really!
• Technics closed-ear headphones – these are my ‘old faithfuls’ that I have used for years. It is imperative that one person monitors voice levels throughout the recording. I plug them into the headphone input on my Mac. Closed ear are best because they do not ‘spill’ into the mic.

I don’t use any external compressors or limiters. That gets taken care of in the software.

Software

In my current setup I use Logic Pro to record all of the audio. This is a bit over the top for podcast recording but I also use it to record music and it does both jobs beautifully.
For the voice tracks I use the setting Voice > Speech > Male Radio that adds a compressor, de-esser (to stop sibilance) and EQ.

However, if you’ve got a Mac then Garageband will do the job admirably. It even has ‘podcast’ settings that you can assign prior to recording.

Back in my PC days I used to use Sony Soundforge to record the audio tracks which I would then edit together using Propaganda. I still use Soundforge to bounce down to MP3 (Logic is unreliable at this).

Recording tips

Here’s a bunch of tips to :

• As I’ve already mentioned, use headphones while recording the show to avoid anyone going ‘off mic’. Usually, pointing at them, then their mic gets the message home!
• When recording 2 people pan the input channels hard left and hard right. This means that if you have to boost any part of a recording it’s easy to locate the specific part. The absolute ideal here would be to have some sort of multi-input box into the computer thereby allowing multitrack recording i.e. I am recorded onto one track while Paul is recorded on to another simultaneously. Thinking about it, I could probably do this right now (for max 2 channels) by separating the inputs and recording 2 mono channels instead of one stereo. But, to be honest, it’s really not worth doing as, mentioned earlier, time is of the essence.
• Record a quick levels test prior to any recording (because you really don’t want to have to go back in and fiddle with the levels afterwards unless you absolutely have to).
• Record each section of the podcast on a separate track. Don’t do one long recording as this is much harder to edit later and add in music and audio dividers. If you record each section separately then you should only have to top and tail it which takes no time at all.
• Once all the voice recording is done, I will add in the intro and outro music, the section dividers and any interviews or questions that are part of the show.
• Once I’m happy with result, I bounce to Wav format which I then open in Soundforge and save out as 64Kbps 44.1 kHz mono MP3 format which is tagged and FTP’d to our hosts.

Here’s a screenshot of a final ‘mix’ in Logic before the bounce down (v zoomed out).

Building Findable Websites

My name is Nora Brown; I’m a freelance web designer in Boston.

I’d like to give you and Boagworld listeners a recommendation for a book I recently read, called “Building Findable Websites”, by Aarron Walter. Though I finished reading it a month or so ago, I find I’ve been referring back to it constantly ever since.

In this book, Aarron Walter views SEO as just one aspect of, and in some ways almost a side effect of, improving a website’s “findability” — which is defined on page 2 as:

“The quality of being located or navigated, the degree to which an object or piece of data can be located, and the degree to which a system supports navigation and retrieval.”

The goals of findability are listed as:

1. Help people find your website.
2. Help people find what they are looking for once they arrive at your site.
3. Bring your audience back to your website.

Notice there is no mention of Google or any other search engine, because obviously the ultimate goal is to help *people* find and use your website, not search bots.

To that end, Walter provides straightforward advice for improving findability at all levels of site development:

• Front-end markup strategies
• Server-side strategies
• Content generation

Though not every technique will be right for every site, as someone who builds small business and portfolio websites, I found the majority of the recommendations to be practical and implementable. Furthermore, nothing in the book represents SEO for SEO’s sake — all the techniques have other benefits, primarily improving the user experience.

Aarron Walter manages to fit an amazing amount of useful, actionable information into this slim volume, but if it’s not enough, there are even five bonus chapters which you can download for free at buildingfindablewebsites.com.

I hope you and your listeners take a look at this excellent book.

I also think the author Aarron Wlater would make a great candidate for a Boagworld interview.

Thanks and keep up the wonderful podcast.

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