walt design

Should your business be tweeting?

Walter Wimberly — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 20:01:29 +0000

This week another article has come out about Fortune 500 CEOs not tweeting enough. You see this periodically. Generally, the article is something like “I tweet. You don’t. So you’re doing it wrong.” However, it is also from someone who isn’t running a large company.

This is like the guy who watches the pro play a game, and complain about how the pro is blowing the game. If he was playing instead, the team would be winning. And how many people believe the arm chair quarterback? Exactly!

This time, the Fast Company article references a study that says because of this, the collective is missing out on up to $1.3T worth of sales. Now that is a lot of sales, but is the article right?

A lot of studies like the one this article mentions are really “best guesses”. Investors don’t really care. When was the last time you read an article about an investor being upset because a CEO didn’t tweet? What do investors care about?

Market Share,
Sales, and
Profits.

The article says that sales should improve if the CEOs tweet, but its hard to measure that.

As a small business, you can’t say the same. You get to know your customers more intimately. What you need to weigh is your opportunity costs.

If you tweet several times a day/week/etc, what are you not doing instead? Would this activity generate your business revenue? If not, tweet. If so, measure. Do your sales go up after tweeting? Do they go up more than the revenue for the other activity?

Pretty soon, you should be able to see that the best use of your time is for your small business.

Olympic Mashups for Even Better Competitions

Walter Wimberly — Sun, 12 Aug 2012 12:42:35 +0000

OK, this is just for fun, but I’ve been thinking about the Olymics, and not just normal games and ceremonies. Rather, I wondered how to mash up two sports into an even more awesome sport. So with that, I offer you my Olumpic Mashup ideas.

So without further ado, I my proposal on some Olympic mashups. (Not that I think that the IOC will actually heed any of these awesome ideas.)

Discus and Skeet Shooting

So in skeet shooting, you shoot a small clay disc, that looks like a mini Frisbee. In discus, you throw a “Frisbee”. How about two opposing teams where one person throws, and the second tries to shoot the discus. You score based upon how far the discus goes before being shot.

Pole Vaulting and Beach Volleyball

Think about how awesome the spikes would be if they are coming from 15 to 20 feet up! Setting someone up for the spike would be of a challenge.

I was thinking of awarding bonus points for spiking based upon height. 1 point for up to 10 feet, 2 points for for 10 to 15 feet, and 3 points for higher than 15 feet.

Pole Vaulting and Javelin

A team sport where one person throws the javelin, and it becomes pole for vaulting over the high bar for the teammate.

This may also work for a team building exercise to build upon trust.

Table Tennis and Gymnastic High Bar

One hand to hold onto the bar, one to hold the paddle with.

Pistol Speed Shooting and High Dive

For added difficulty to your dive, you have to hit a bulls-eye before you hit the water, with no splash.

Beach Volleyball and Water Polo

That’s right. If you are like me you forgot that Water Polo is still a Olympic sport. So lets make this a little more interesting, by having you be able to score from both the land and water. In fact, points could be “1 if my land, 2 if by ‘sea’”. We’ll call it the Paul Revere scoring system.

Can you trust your business to Facebook?

Walter Wimberly — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 22:03:33 +0000

I hear about businesses wanting to go solely on to Facebook, “because it’s free”, but they don’t realize the risks involved.

What would happen if your entire business went off line? Meaning that the only website you had, went down. Some people would thank that by putting themselves on a large system, like Facebook, you can insulate themselves from those risks.

You may think that every website is going to have some down time. And you may rightly assume that they have a number of well qualified people to help get it back on line when there is a problem.

However, there are risks of it going down because of its size as well.

First, because of it’s complexity, Facebook could go down due to complex programming errors. It may not go completely down, but it can in part. Second, is that hacker and/or activist groups may choose to attack the site.

I think that Facebook should be a part of your online strategy, however, it shouldn’t be your entire strategy either.

http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/31/is-facebook-down/

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/anonymous-is-not-attacking-facebook-today/5032

Building Effective Landing Pages – An Example

Walter Wimberly — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 18:29:54 +0000

Going live today are thousands of landing pages. You know those pages which you click on when you link from an email that you receive, or an “sponsored list”/ad from a website or search engine. Many of these landing pages will be well done, but others will not.

Today we will look at one example of a landing page that is going live today, to give you an idea of what to look for in a good landing page.

This page loads fast! In fact, in our testing it displays under a half a second, and is finished loading in 0.8 to 1.1 seconds. Since people will judge your page in under two seconds, we looked at many tweaks to get the page loaded in a quick time.
It has a Strong leading line. Starting with a question is a good way to get people to recognize it, and continue reading.
Strong photos highlight what the page is about. To load them faster, a Flash image slideshow tool is used.
It reads easy. We made sure that the text was easy to read so that readers would not have to stop and think about what they were reading. This is the same reason why your average newspaper article is written at a 7th grade level.
Good call to action. We make it easy for people to know how to contact the company. We even provide to easy methods (phone and on-line form). Even better, our on-line form will let us know where they came from.
Lack of navigation. We don’t want to make the page easy to leave from, except through our form, so the main navigation was removed so we don’t lose the focus of our other pages.

We tweaked the headline and text on the page, but we will never know how good it does, until the page goes live. The good news is that we have an idea of how well it will preform soon. The better news is we can actually optimize the page by testing different headlines, images, text, and calls to action…and any good landing page will constantly be testing to try to improve its conversion rate.

Dayspring Community Church

Walter Wimberly — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 02:47:18 +0000

I took over this site in 2005 and maintained the site through 2011 to improve the timeliness of the content.

I added several features to make the administration easier, and capable by the church staff. These included:

Adding an on-line gallery.
Converting the layout to CSS to reduce download time, improve search engine ranking, and improve readability for those with visual impairments.
Developing dynamic pages for each of the ministries so that church staff can make updates on their own.
Developing dynamic pages for each of the leaders, incorporating images and web-based e-mail.
Adding an on-line calendar for upcoming church events which church staff can update on their own.
Providing on-line maps to make it easier for people to find the church.
Redesigning the layout of the site to work with new logo and colors.

Overall the site became easier to maintain, and faster to access. Plus, incorporating Google Maps into the site made it easier for first time visitors to find the church.

Privacy vs. Employment – Required Access?

Walter Wimberly — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 17:12:11 +0000

Could you imagine being required to turn over a copy of your house keys as a condition of employment? “Just to make sure you’re the right type of employee…”

Maybe a detailed list of your personal phone log? “To make sure you’re not talking to the ‘wrong people’”…

Probably not, but some companies, and colleges, are asking the equivalent of their employee’s (student’s) facebook account, especially if the privacy is set to private. While I can understand an employer’s desire to make sure the employees are not bad mouthing them, this is not the best way.

Legal Ramifications

Quick Aside: I am not a lawyer, nor do I even play one on TV. These are more common sense questions that should be addressed before implementing required access to social media accounts. I recommend seeking professional legal advice if you have any concerns.

Aside from the obvious privacy issues which many are writing about, consider the following legal issues that might arise against the employer.

First – forcing a “friending” can be a potential legal mess. What if the employee leaves? Does the manager/hr un-friend the employee? Could this be seen as “retaliation” for the employee leaving? What legal ramifications would this have?

Second – if the employee has to provide the login account, their becomes the issue of not only privacy, but also security. Many people use one of only a handful of passwords. Therefore it is like getting a master key to the employees on-line accounts. Now what happens if an account is hacked? Can you prove that no one from your organization improperly accessed the other accounts?

Ways to work around it

While it would be nice that all people always said nice things about their employers, the realistic likelihood of this occurring is next to none. So what can be done:

Have a clear policy which defines what is and isn’t appropriate to discuss in a public forum, and define clearly what the public forums are.
Use alert software which looks for public data listed on-line for public comments. I like to use Google Alerts personally.
Try to keep a good work environment. Happy employees are less likely to write/speak negatively of their company.
Determine if you have the right employees. If you constantly feel like you have to watch over your employees – do you have the right employees?

Lessons from Jose Baez’s Website

Walter Wimberly — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 21:59:00 +0000

Almost everyone has had the TV on, or been to an Internet news site has heard about the Casey Anthony case. Instead of weighing in on the case like everyone else, finding where legal arguments were done right and wrong, I instead want to look at a glaring business error that should be viewed, so that we may learn from Jose Baez’s website.

Right now, Jose Baez’s name is popular. People are searching for him, and in many ways, he could “write is own ticket”. This is the time when you need a well done website, to help people learn more about you, from you. However, if you go to his site, almost all of the links are broken!

You can’t find anything about the Baez, other than what other people are talking about, and not all of that is good. Instead, the links that could tell you more about the types of law he practices, attorney profiles for the other attorneys in his office, etc. all go no where.

There are only two links that will take you some where. First is the link to the “English” version of his site, which is the default language of his site. However, the link goes to a file which does not exist. The second link is to the “Attorney Zone”. Unfortunately, if you click on that link most modern browsers will give you a warning about a bad SSL Certificate, and that the site maybe masquerading as another site. This warning is designed to get you away from the sites to reduce the chances of on-line maliciousness.

So here is a quick check list of things to do if you find yourself getting a lot of web traffic:

Make sure your hosting can handle the increase in traffic. This may mean increasing your bandwidth for a month or two if possible, or paying overage. You may also want to use a CDN to take most of the load off of your servers.
Verify that all of your links work.
Make sure you don’t like to any malicious sites. Older browsers did not check for this, so make sure you check in a more recent version of your web browser.
Make sure your site works in different browsers. Internet Explorer (The Big Blue E) isn’t the only web browser. So make sure your site loads and displays properly in Chrome, and Firefox. Also check for how it looks in mobile browsers as well.
Make sure your site loads fast! Hold the SHIFT key while you reload your page – so you get a fresh copy. Most people will not wait more than 5 to 8 seconds before they leave your site if it isn’t loading.

Follow these simple steps and you will get a better return on your investment from your website.

Any Occasion Photography Blog

Walter Wimberly — Tue, 31 May 2011 17:19:21 +0000

I recently put the finishing touches on another client’s blog. Any Occasion Photography, a wedding photography company in Central Florida, has been a client of mine since 2004 when it opened. Over the years I’ve done a redesign on their website and numerous gallery updates.

However they were wanting something different a few weeks ago. They wanted a quick and easy way to post updates about their clients, the work they do, and tips and hints for brides (and grooms) when choosing a wedding photographer.

Using WordPress, I was able to build a template theme that matched the design on their site, allows them to post when ever they want, and post they way they want.

I worked with the owner to develop a good strategy for internal linking to other areas of the site she wants to highlight, created relevant categories for her to use, and talked about posting timetables. We also worked together to get the first few blog posts out and ready before the “official” launch.

All that was left was to post the actual link on the main menu, and that is now done.

“Why should we change this page?”

Walter Wimberly — Thu, 26 May 2011 17:19:47 +0000

This is a new section I’m adding, called, “Questions from clients”. I hope that in answering some of the pressing questions from my clients, that I might answer some of your questions as well.

“Should we remove this image and it’s link?”

Earlier this week, I had a client ask me about a updating their homepage, and if we should remove a link to another page. The link (a large image) was certainly noticeable, however, it detracted from the look of the page. I started a discussion about removing the image to bring the page into better visual alignment.

However, I also know that the look of the page should be secondary to effectiveness of the page. The client wasn’t sure he wanted to remove the image feeling that this page had to be one of his most popular pages.

Is the page really that popular?

This specific page was a lead generation page. However, based upon my experience, I believed that the client was not getting a good return from that page. This was my belief based upon the design of the page, and my work with other lead generation pages that I’ve been able to track. But that was my “gut feeling”, and I don’t want to pull a page that is leading to revenue generation for a client.

As always, I feel like I should let the client make decisions, but it is my job to properly inform them so they can make good decisions based upon facts that will help their business.

So instead of relying on a gut feeling for how popular a page is (or how popular we hope it is), I decided to look at the Google Analytics report. While on the phone, I found that this page was:

the thirtieth most popular page, out of 60+ pages on the site,
it averaged less than a visitor per day, and
~20% of the users who view the page, left the site immediately after viewing the page.

Making a decision

I was still missing one important piece of information however. “How many leads, which convert to sales, are you getting from this page?” So I showed the client the information, and asked him the question. My two suggestions were to either:

rework the page to focus on better lead generation, or
pull this page, and let the leads come from other pages.

As I said, I like to let the client have the final say, and we discussed this, and came up with some plans for the future of this page. But in the end, we made well informed decisions for updating the site, so that we would have the best result for the website and the client’s business.

designeRodriguez

Walter Wimberly — Wed, 18 May 2011 13:55:57 +0000

As a lost coder and developer, Walter was my go to person. Several times I contacted Walter instead of contacting Google! He always had great answers to all my questions and consulted with me on any issue I had with development. After contacting Walter, on several occasions I had “AHA” moments, “Now I get it!”. I always come back to WaltDesign to learn more. Consulting with Walter is always on my to do list on any project I’m working on. He is definitely a guru. Thank you, WaltDesign, for easing many headaches and answering all those questions.

Amanda Rodriguez – owner designeRodriguez

Improving Website Speed

Walter Wimberly — Mon, 02 May 2011 00:10:30 +0000

No one likes a slow website. Everyone knows this, and I’ve even written about speeding up your website before.

In the past, users would be willing to wait approximately seven seconds for a web page to load before they leave. Now, as users are getting used to faster sites, and higher bandwidth from their cable or DSL provider, they are even less willing to wait. Some recent reports are stating that after two seconds (the holy grail of web speed), users are starting to leave the site to find a faster site. It is so important Google even uses a website’s page speed in their ranking algorithms.

Over the last six months, I’ve been updating a local orthodonists site. When I started it would take nearly 10 seconds to load. However, I as updated the site we got the site to load in under six seconds simply by changing the order which elements on the page load. While this is a huge improvement, it still was not enough.

Since that time, I’ve worked and gotten the load time down two approximately two seconds. There were several techniques used to generate these results:

Optimizing images to make the download size smaller. Some images were reduced to less than half of their original size.
Compressing text downloads. Just like “WinZip” or “Compressed Folders” allow you to save space on your harddrive, you can compress some web files so they don’t take as long to download. Compressing files can reduce some of those files up to 60%, which means faster downloads. The key is to know which ones matter, and to implement it correctly.
Improving the cacheing of files. This affects users who view more than one page. By improving the cache, you can dramtically improve the speed for the follow up pages, as they can keep copies of files on their local machine. There is some built in cache for everyone’s web browser, however a strong web developer can provide further improvements.
Eliminating unnecessary files from being downloaded. Turns out there were some resources that were not being used. By removing the unnecessary files, the site loads faster, the client can have more simultaneous users on their website, and the cost of hosting can potentially go down!
Simplifying the CSS files, removing unnecessary rules. Like the unnecessary files, some of the files had unnecessary parts. Reducing their size makes for faster websites.
Further optimizing the loading order of the files. Testing the site to see what needs to load when can provide a huge bonus to your speed.

It takes time and effort, but as research by Google, Microsoft, and Amazon have all shown, faster websites can affect the (financial) bottom line.

You need to make sure your site goes as fast as you can allow, without sacrificing the functionality that you need.

If you do not have the resources to improve your website’s performance, contact me. I’d love to see what I can do to help.

A Cautionary Tale

Walter Wimberly — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 23:51:23 +0000

In years past there were companies who would contact website owners about the need to renew their domain name. There were generally several “problems” with this.

The accounts were not nearing the renewal period,
The said companies did not register the site, and
The said companies wanted to charge exorbitant fees for the renewal.

The tone of the sales letters (or reminder letters if you wanted to be kind), tended to be forceful in nature, pressuring you to immediately sign up with them. I’m sure some people would go with them because of the scary things they state in their letters. However, the site owner did not need to go with these companies, and should stay with their original company.

While nothing these companies did were “illegal” they definitely fell under the unethical. I had not heard from them in a while, until recently. They contacted me when I was about six months away, and they wanted $100. If you are paying more than $20 for your .com, .org, or .net domain name, you are paying too much. There are plenty of places on line you can get them for about $10.

So don’t be pressured, save your money. You and your wallet will be happier.

“World Backup Day”

Walter Wimberly — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 21:42:45 +0000

A bunch of Reddit users have decided to declare March 31 as World Backup Day, using the clever tagline “Don’t be an April Fool.”

I know if I lost my work, it would be bad. How bad, like I don’t even want to think about it… of course I don’t want to think about it, because I have lost work before. However, I work to not repeat that mistake, and to help others not have to learn like I did.

There are numerous ways to back up data. I do periodic backups over time to external drives, which I keep in my fire and water resistant safe. These include things I would need right away if there was a disaster – things that would give me access to my client, tax, and insurance files.

I also continuously back up data to an external host – using Back Blaze. For $45/year, I can’t beat it, and it is stored far away – so if there was a local disaster, and only my family and I could escape, I could still get to my files.

Think that is too expensive think of it this way. If you lost your computer (think theft, fire, flood, or Godzilla attack) – how long would it take to:

Recreate your list of clients? (with phone numbers, emails, and mailing addresses)
Know who still owes you money, and who has paid?
Recreate that project file which you’ve been working on for the last three months?

Now think of how much money your time is worth – if the hours * the hourly worth is more than $250, you ought to get a complete backup system. (If not – are you really in business, or is it just for fun?)

How did I come to the $250 number. Easy! It is not uncommon for a hard drive to fail within the first 5 years. $45 * 5 is approximately $250 ( I added a bit for inflation – and I like simple numbers) . So if you have a 50% chance of a failure, and can prevent data loss for <$50 a year – then it’s worth the little bit of cost.

Something to think about if you use a computer – especially if you use it for your business.

Challenging Underlying Design Beliefs

Walter Wimberly — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 18:00:21 +0000

Ever had one of those things that you “just know” is better? Ever turn out you were wrong. I hate that! Yet it happens to be periodically.

This is why I like to test things. I’ll come up with a good design for a website, show some people, and sometimes walk away with changes based upon some thoughtful insights (and sometimes I walk away knowing everything was just right). Over the last couple of years, I’ve made a habit of checking out ideas with tools like Google’s Web Optimizer which lets you test small changes, or changes to a whole page even. Usually I’ve improved the results by only 10 or 15% (just shows how good the initial implementation was), other times closer to 75% improvements.

One thing that I’ve been wondering recently is what is the best way to view tabular data on a web page. This is increasing with importance now that many documents are accessed on-line instead of being printed out. People always say that alternating the background is the best method, but tests have shown only a small improvement in use. With more recent faster computers, it got me to thinking, maybe it is better to use a row highlighting, which highlights the entire row you are on.

I would think it would be better, but you can’t tell for sure without a test. So I’ve developed a simple page to test out this hypothesis. Go to: http://access2learn.com/survey1/, and see how you do. Once it is done, send others so they can take the survey. With more people, we will get better results.

Once I get all of the data gathered, I will release my results.

WordPress Wins CMS Awards

Walter Wimberly — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 15:46:28 +0000

People continue to ask why I look to WordPress to build even non blog websites. For various reasons of course, including ease of creating content, ease of changing layouts, and ease of adding modules (plug-ins). All of those factors and more led WordPress to win the “Hall of Fame CMS” from Pakt Publishing.

Pakt Publishing sponsored the Open Source CMS contest, and WordPress won against other strong contenders like Drupal and Joomla.

While it’s nice to use “award winning” software, the more important reason to look to reviews, contests, and the like, is that is shows recognition within the community. And recognition tends to both make it easier to get recognized, increases use, but more importantly decreases the chances of a software project being mothballed.

Updates to WordPress

Walter Wimberly — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 12:23:57 +0000

I use WordPress, and have been using it for a couple of years now. Some clients have been asking, why I recommend using WordPress, even if they are not going to have a blog (i.e. using it as a Content Management System or CMS).

One of the things I like about WordPress is they are very responsive to fixing bugs, but more importantly to fixing security problems. Some wonder how software, which is offered for free, could offer maintenance in a timely fashion.

The answer is in the volunteers who constantly work on it. A perfect example was in one of the most recent updates( 3.0.2) which came out. A sever security problem was found, and a patch was offered in less than four hours to fix the issue. You would be hard pressed to find any other programs, regardless of how much you paid for it, to be able to provide a fix that quickly.

What is even better, is there is a built in tool for updating WordPress. All it takes is a click on a link from an admin user, and WordPress will automatically download the needed files, and auto patch it for you. You could not make it simpler.

So when people ask why I use WordPress, one reason is because of how they make their updates

How to Gain Facebook Fans – Showcases To Go

Walter Wimberly — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 19:21:59 +0000

I started working with Showcases To Go almost 10 years ago, helping develop the second version of their website. The first version didn’t offer any type of on-line purchasing. However, in April of 2001, we released their new website, and I’ve been doing updates and revisions for them ever since, and not more than 70% of their business comes from their website.

Showcases To Go is the second company I want to introduce to you in this two part process of how to gain fans on Facebook.

Earlier this year, they started talking about how to get on Facebook, and what could they do to get likes for their page, as cheaply as possible. Unlike T-Shirt Joe, Showcases To Go doesn’t have a public store front. Instead, almost all of their sales are either through the Internet, by phone, or by mail.

With over 9 years of customer information, they decided to email the customers who had recently purchased from them. So after filtering ou

t the lists, they created a simple e-mail campaign with a discount on their next purchase (if placed within a months time of the initial email) if they came from their Facebook page. Within a couple weeks they had over 300 likes, and soon they toped 600 new likes for the month.

New likes don’t come as quickly as they had in the past, however, they still come in via links from their website to the Facebook page.

Let’s look at why this worked so well for them.

Showcases To Go normally sends out email discounts, so it wasn’t foreign to their customers. But to ensure that they ta

rgeted the right customers, they went back to make sure it was only the most recent customers, not just one-off buyers from years past.

Second, they offered the discount as part of the promotion. This would have normally been offered straight from the email, but by incorporating Facebook into the promotion, they got a chance to view the Facebook page through the email. This encouraged people to “like” the page, even though they didn’t have to.

Now they will continue to have fans who have liked their page, and they will continue to slowly grow the site through reminders in email and on their webpa

ge.

How to Gain Facebook Fans – T-Shirt Joe

Walter Wimberly — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 12:14:16 +0000

I know Joe. Actually, Joe knows a lot of people, and he meets hundreds more each week. You see, Joe is an artist that makes air brushed t-shirts. And hundreds of people walk by his stand each and every day out at a popular theme park near where we live.

Joe is the first person I want to introduce to you in this two part process of how to gain fans on Facebook.

When Joe wanted to start his Facebook Page, he wanted to know how to gain lots of users. Easy I told him. Because of the type of business he has, he can just ask. But he does one better. After getting an Original T-Shirt from T-Shirt Joe, he asks to take your picture, and put it on his Facebook page. Then he hands them a flyer inviting them to see their picture, with his TShirt, or Hat, or any other thing he can air brush (which is just about everything).

I wasn’t sure if people would want their photo taken. But many do. Each night he downloads the photos of people posed for him holding up their new TShirt or Hat, and he posts them to his Facebook page. Takes him only a few minutes to do each day, but it gains him 35 to 40 new “likes” each week. A nice slow gradual, sustainable increase. The total cost, a few minutes each day, and a few bucks for the paper he hands them with his Facebook page on it.

The beauty of it, is that anyone who meets their customers, and creates a great experience for them like Joe does, can replicate this process. You’re limited only by the number of people you come in contact with, and how many you ask.

Currently we are working on developing is web site. When it is done, he will have thousands of fans who will be able to get the link to his site.

Increasing your Facebook Fans

Walter Wimberly — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 14:10:18 +0000

Recently I’ve helped two clients of mine increase traffic to their Facebook pages, and thus increase the number of likes they receive.

The reason for showcasing the two, is that the two companies approached the process in two completely different ways. I will share the two different methods, and why it worked for each of them in the next two posts. I wanted to share both because so many times you will read there is “the” way to make something work, but that is not always the case.

Of course the reasons for increasing your “likes” is that it increases the amount of time you can spend in front of your customers, reminds them of who you are, and helps build both loyalty and repeat business.

How important is a good designer?

Walter Wimberly — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 12:35:09 +0000

I’ve taught at design schools, and it is interesting to see what comes out of young minds. I like looking at design blogs, to get ideas, both good and bad, and to be amazed at what some people create. However, just because someone thinks that putting a flashy design on something makes it better, doesn’t make it better.

Consider the traffic light. We see them every where (and I always seem to catch them red, so drive in front of me if you have some place to be). Some feel that they are boring, and should be updated. Hence this design. It is an interesting idea, a “sands of time” metaphor which lets you know how much time you have left before the light changes.

However, the designer looked only at the design, and not at the functionality. For example, the designer didn’t consider how would someone who is color blind know what color the traffic signal was? An estimated 4% of all people have some form of color blindness. The designer also probably didn’t think about how easy it would be to read the signal as a user approached it at speed, while it was half way through. Could they determine the color fast enough? I don’t know.

Sometimes designers get busy thinking about making something look pretty, and not how it is used. Make sure your designer (for your website, product, or anything else) thinks about more than just glossy covers and buttons, but more about how your product will be used in the real world.

Your Business Email Address

Walter Wimberly — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 20:43:12 +0000

I can’t believe how often I see people using a free email address for their business on-line. Imagine if you would, going to buy a new car, maybe a Jaguar. You meet with the owner of the dealership, and on his business card is “expensive_cars@yahoo.com”. What is your perception?

When people get “my_biz@gmail.com”, or any other similar type account, it will tend to lessen the perceived value of your business. While it may not be a deal breaker, it cannot help you sell yourself, your product, or your business.

Since people cannot see you face to face, you want to put forth a professional image when on-line. Professional emails, are just one way of doing that.

So now that facebook is handing out free email addresses, feel free to use it for your personal account. Just don’t use it for business.

Here’s a hint: Email addresses are cheap (free with many hosting accounts), and you should have one for you, and each of your employees. If you don’t get that for free, contact me. My hosting comes with free email accounts.