So you would have thought with the experience of over 200 web sites behind us,  we could churn out great web designs in our sleep?!

Well – of course it’s not quite that straightforward, and there is one massive variable that often gets overlooked by web designers – even really good ones who are occasionally perhaps blinkered in striving for design purity:

Brand.

On the one hand it gets in the way of everything doesn’t it? Especially if the existing brand isn’t to the web designers taste – ‘I mean how can you possibly design a lovely site with that horrible logo and colour palette?!‘ But on the other – it’s the most important thing! A web site has to reflect a company’s brand 100%, and that’s a surprising tricky thing for a web designer to achieve consistently.

Our approach is that a great web designer should be able to design a fantastic site for any brand  - it’s part of the challenge, and it’s not a case of making compromises either. If it’s a tricky brand to work with, it just takes more skill and effort to create something brilliant, that’s all – it isn’t impossible if the designer is good enough.

You may notice –  we don’t have a house ’style’ for our web designs – they are all individual and very different, and there’s a very good reason for this. All of our clients have their own individual and very different brands. We take the brand, we ask lots of questions about it, we apply our web design knowledge and experience and we try to create something that strengthens the brand, the business, our relationship with our client, and our portfolio!

I say UK, because in the US, Obama got the very most out of social media with a very well thought out strategy (his opponents were just paying lip service), and it paid off. I’m sure this won’t have gone un-noticed by the UK parties and it remains to be seen how well they ‘get’ it.

But what makes it interesting is that, even since Obama’s victory, social media has advanced, and if I were a politician I would be very, very worried. Not for this election maybe, but definitely for the next. Think forward 5 years – how powerful social media will be then. I’d even go as far as to say that the 2015 general election may well be the last one (as we know them). By 2020, the real power of a centralised government could very well be minimal, with every decision being scrutinised and judged by a connected social media generation. Anarchy in it’s purest form may well be on it’s way – Power to the People!

There have already been some gloriously anarchic moments on social media (Rage against the Machine at Christmas Number 1 the most recent), and it’s important to remember that anarchy has the potential to be a good thing – it just has a bad name!

Anarchy at it’s purest is “a theory that regards the absence of all direct or coercive government as a political ideal and that proposes the cooperative and voluntary association of individuals and groups as the principal mode of organized society”.  It’s basic premise is that people are, on the whole, good and most evil things in the world are actually caused by the authorities. Hmmm – sort of strikes a chord doesn’t it?!

The problem is, pure anarchy hasn’t ever been achievable, and anarchy has become to mean choas, disorder and violence. Mainly because, historically, anarchy has either been brought about by a chaotic event (a government collapsing, or a natural disaster) or an organised movement, which has leaders with power (which eventually corrupts) and so by definition isn’t really anarchy.

Social media changes that, because, although behind every ‘rising’ there may well be an individual, or a group who sows the initial seed, if it grows massively, the originators aren’t particularly empowered. The power belongs to the crowd. So – although Tracy and Jon Morter, the couple behind the RATM Face book campaign have gained a little fame (and allegedly have had several job offers – including from Simon Cowell), it is unlikely they’ll be able to repeat the trick, or take any sort of control over the chart music of the future – they just caught the mood of the nation at the right time, with the right tool.

And once this starts happening in politics regularly, it’ll be the same – no leaders, no one source, no one method, just the opinion of the crowd, who can now communicate, congregate, and make themselves heard with unbelievable ease and speed  like never before.

Mankind has a history of inventing things which then go on to completely alter the way we live. We change things which then change us, and the internet, and specifically social media, is possibly going to be one of the biggest.

Dang – I’ve done it again. I meant to write this post about the power of social media in politics, and how it can help you in business too, and I’ve gone and spouted off about anarchy! But whether it’s anarchy or another means of marketing your company, I’m convinced that social media is going to affect many things this decade. The optimist in me is hoping, on balance, this will be a good thing (although there are clearly ways this can be used for evil too), and that society will benefit by becoming fairer and more honest.

Power to the People!

This made me think a) I must be getting quite old now (boo!) and, b) that, in theory anyway, I must have accumulated quite alot of knowledge and experience on the subject. (hooray!)

I did think I’d try and pass on some of this knowledge, but instead, I think I’ll have a bit of a moan…

One of the things that has always slightly bugged me  is that, in the design community, I have always felt web designers are somewhat looked down upon – not ‘real designers’ – just playing really. I can understand I suppose – it’s too easy for anyone who can draw shapes in a computer programme to build a working web site and call themselves a web designer. Which is why there are so many more badly designed web sites than good, (and ergo, on average web designers are crap)

This isn’t really possible in other areas of design. For example, no-one could claim to be a car designer just because they are good at drawing nice cars. It’s much bigger leap from that to actually being involved designing a car that is being built, so few ever achieve that and become legitimate car designers. Same with architects, product designers, boat designers etc.

This means that only the best designers in each of these traditional fields of design ever make it to see their creations come to fruition, and sometimes years of study is also required. This is not true with web designers, hence the profession of ‘web designer’ doesn’t carry the ‘kudos’ associated with other design professions. (Bitter? Moi?).

But – there certainly are some really fantastically good web designers (some not even working for Binamic!) and I reckon it takes a real talent (creative and technical) and several years of experience and learning to really ‘get’ web design.

Really good web design is so much more than mocking up some nice looking pages then coding them up, and this brings me on to one of my other bugbears, and that is the importance that is actually placed on what a site looks like!

It’s may sound odd, but I can’t tell you how many hours we’ve spent fine tuning the design of a site to the minutest detail, yet no thought has been given to content, usability or accessibility. I’m not blaming clients – it’s completely the fault of  web designers, because it’s too easy to wow clients with pretty pictures –  they are universally understood. Yes, the look of the site is extremely important, but it has to to be in context with the purpose and functionality of the site. The usability of a site ultimately has far more influence on the success of a site that the exact shade of blue used on the background, but this is actually quite dull to talk about in comparison!

Let’s go back to the car designer analogy. Imagine a car designer putting some concepts in front of his client – after a few rounds of tweaks, the client excitedly signs off his dream looking car design.

Now the car designer tries to build it, and he realises that he hasn’t actually left enough room for the engine to fit properly, so under the skin, it’s real botch job. Then he realises it is actually a pig to drive – it handles terribly, and the driving position is cramped. Tough luck though – the client has signed off the design, and there is no way the designer can go back and say he’s cocked up.

So the client ends up with a car that looks fantastic from the outside, but is actually deeply flawed. At first the client is delighted, because he can show off his amazing looking car to impress his peers and competitors, but slowly and surely the inadequacies start to nag, the visual appeal wears off, and pretty soon the client realises he’s going to need a new car.

I realise, this isn’t how the car industry works, but you see my point. And of course we’ve also forgotten the most important person of all – the passenger (or the web site user in our case). Unless you are a complete petrol head, I’d wager you often get into a car or taxi for a lift without even knowing what make it is. All you care about is whether it can get you from A to B as comfortably and easily as possible, and that the seat belt is easy to put on, and you can find the door handles, and window buttons etc. Sure, you want it to be smart and clean, but you don’t really care what colour it is, and whether it is trendy or not.

And the same is true with web site users. They just want to feel comfortable and be able to get to their destination with minimal fuss. This is where web site design should start, and the first questions that we should be asking our clients are: “Who are your users”, “Where are they trying to get to” and “How do we make your site the best way to get there?” (not “Do you like these pretty pictures?” – that comes later…).

So we design the cabin, the ergonomics and the controls first, then think about the drive train and how it handles, then once that’s all working beautifully, we put some handsome bodywork over the top, and you end up with a car that looks fab, drives like a dream, and everyone want to go for a ride in it…

This is all very well, but being a keen, yet discerning eco-warrior, it got me thinking – do we know for certain this is the case? I mean on the face of it, an email has to use less of the world’s resources than a delivered paper and ink product – it’s just a few electrons right? But does it – is it really that simple? So, being the inquisitive type, I looked into it, partly because I wanted to know, but also throw-away green claims in marketing messages really get my goat – so part of me wanted to prove them wrong!

What I found out is that, although it is virtually impossible to make a general comparison, it’s becoming increasingly clear that electronic communication is not as ‘green’ as it appears. On a simple level, you need to be running some form of computer to read an email – these not only consume power, but also require power and valuable resourses to build and transport – likewise, an email could pass through dozens of  servers or nodes on the internet en-route, all requiring 24/7 energy to run them and the air conditioned buildings in which they reside. There’s the energy required to power the computer that designed and coded the email. There’s even the resources required to grow, package and transport the food used in the lunch of the web developer if you want to take it to extremes!

So could there be a chance that a posted card printed with eco-friendly ink on recycled paper is more eco efficient then an all singing all dancing email?

One fact is that the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector currently has approximately the same carbon footprint as the paper industry (2% of all energy use), but is set to double every five years. (Document where I got these figures is here).

Which makes one think…

So next time I get a nice e-card claiming to help save the planet, I might just ask them where they got their figures from!

We’ve been working with several of our clients over the last year or so, helping them benefit from ’social media’ and understand how they can influence how their brand is perceived on-line. People power is difficult to harness, but the best way of understanding it is to remember you are one of those people too! So I tried this little experiment the other day:

I’m a fairly easy going consumer – I don’t complain much. But when things do go wrong it drives me absolutely nuts when you hit endless brick walls trying to do something about it.  So when my beardy millionaire-owned cable utilities company (who shall remain nameless) messed up recently, and I got nowhere with their call centre, I was getting pretty hot under the collar. Time for an experiment, I thought, so I posted a message on twitter basically slagging off the customer service (or lack of) I had just experienced. Sure enough, within 10 minutes I had been contacted directly by a representative offering to help me out, giving me a direct email address and telephone number to call – something that three frustrating telephone calls had failed to achieve!

Two things to learn from this: Firstly – next time your bank/utilities company/chain store messes you around, make a stink about it on your social media of choice and see what happens!

Secondly – in this case, this brand has used social media to very effectively turn around a negative customer experience – and I think we are going to see much more of this in 2010, which is a great thing for us ‘people’ – and the companies that do it well.

The reason, if I’m honest, is that we knew we  couldn’t guarantee quality results in the same way we could with our other services. In fact we were never quite sure how companies claiming to guarantee results could – we felt they must be using decidedly dodgy techniques (effectively spamming), which is a highly risky strategy. On top of that, we’d  countless experiences of sites doing really well in search engines and then inexplicably dropping in the rankings overnight, due to the ever secretive Google changing their algorithms on a whim without any documentation or release information.

You can imagine this can cause problems with clients needing instant explanations! Thankfully, almost invariably, with a little investigation, head scratching and tweaking we can restore the site’s position.

But ultimately, why we never felt comfortable claiming to be SEO specialists is that we don’t think SEO is a ’specialist’ service – it is so intertwined with everything we do, and needs to be considered as part of the whole picture. So after years of watching and learning, monitoring and analysing our sites and what effects what, and – at the end of the day some very impressive SEO results for our clients, here is the plain english Binamic guide to SEO:

1. Firstly – you must have a strategy: What are you trying to achieve with your site? Who are your target audience? What do they need, and how can you give it to them in the easiest possible way? How are they searching, and with what keywords? Without these starting blocks, it’s easy to go round in circles…
2. Google tries to recommend sites that it thinks are going to be relevant and useful to the searcher. If your site is genuinely useful and relevant you are probably 70% of the way there already. So this is the first thing we look at: build a great site – we would never attempt SEO on a site that was useless – even if we could, what would be the point?
3. Quality of coding. Search engine crawlers have to be able to read and make sense of the content of your site to be able to add it to their databases in a meaningful way. There are, thankfully, web coding standards (although you’d be surprised how many coders still ignore them) which, if adhered to go along way to helping here. If a site contains content held in database (eg a product catalogue on an e-commerce site) then is is imperative that this can be accessed by the search engines too – again often overlooked.
4. Naming of files and pages. This is probably the single most influential way you can tweak the site to increase your rankings – including the domain name. So, for example: carparts.co.uk/subaru/forester/brake-pads.htm stands a much better chance of being found is someone is searching for a…erm.. ‘brake pad car part for Subaru Forester’ than a URL like, say: robertsandco/132/22/index.htm (by the way – both these URLs are ficticious!).
5. Regularly updated content. This is linked in to point 2, but is very important. If you site contains content that is relevant and useful and current, Search engines will love it. Key words and phrases need to be considered (as do the way they are coded in to the site, but that’s our job), but actually – as long as it’s relevant, it is still powerful – it can pull in useful traffic from unexpected quarters
6. Links IN to you site. The holy grail is to have authoritative sites involved your area of business linking to your site – if lots of people link to your site, then the search engines assume it must be a good site and rank it higher. Now you may be able to achieve this by having good contacts in your network and asking them to link to you – or of course you might achieve this organically by having such a good site that people want to link to it!

Now – what most Search Engine Optimisation companies will do is manufacture and manipulate and cajole the above in to your site, to convince the search engines your site is great and deserves to be ranked highly.

But our approach is slightly different: Actually build great, relevant and useful sites with all of the above, and the rest just falls in to place!

That way – not only do you get the traffic you desire, but when people get there, they are not disappointed – and that is good news for any business.

Unusually, we have both the creative skills required designing and developing highly useable, intuitive interfaces, and the technical know how and ability required to integrate these into complex back-end systems.

For more information, email, or call us on 01494 874794

After months of development and feedback from clients, we’ve finished our very own Content Management System, ‘Binamic Express’, which allows even non-techie people to keep their websites up to date. Having used many different CMS over the years, we’ve been keeping a note of the things we don’t like about them and basically tried to eliminate these in Binamic Express – and I must say we are rather pleased with it! More importantly, we are getting great feedback from our users, especially praising it’s ease of use, which was our aim from the outset. It’s highly versatile, and bolts on to our bespoke front end design and strategy work to create an enticingly priced package. So, If you, or anyone you know needs a really brilliant web site, go to www.binamicexpress.co.uk to find out more.

Launched on the 8th June, and backed by radio ads on LBC and Classic FM, traffic is up around 60% on the same period last month, with far less bounces and people spending longer on the site.