Boagworld web design podcast

126. Scaling

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 16:39:32 +0000

In this weeks show we learn lessons from the botched iPhone launch here in the UK. We chat to Jeff Veen about the designer / developer relationship and Marcus talks about adding jingles to your website.

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News and Events

The Mobile Internet has reached critical mass

This week saw the release of a new report by Nielsen Mobile entitled "The Worldwide State of the Mobile Web".

The gist of the report suggests that the mobile web is considerably more popular than many of us would believe. 15.6 percent of mobile subscribers in the US and 12.9 percent in the UK, use the mobile web regularly. In the US this equates to 40 million users. A substantial number.

Interestingly the most common device used for accessing the mobile web is not a smartphone but rather the Motorola RAZR. This reenforces the answer I gave Wayne in last weeks show. I said we cannot design exclusively for devices such as the iPhone.

With people like the VP of Google stating that the future of the internet lies with mobile users, there can now be little doubt as to the direction things are moving. This is especially true now that we are seeing unlimited data plans.

Web Standards Curriculum

A regular complaint I hear from students is that they are concerned about the out of date techniques they are taught at school or college. With many institutions still teaching table based design it is a legitimate concern.

Fortunately they are not alone in this concern. Opera and Yahoo! have teamed up to produce a web standards curriculum. This curriculum teaches best practice in web design and is broken down into modules that can be taught either by themselves or part of existing lesson plans.

If you are a student or educator definitely check this out. Hopefully you can get it adopted at your institution. Even if you cannot, there is nothing to stop you working through the course yourself.

Working with designers

Although our next post reads slightly like a rant (I should know what a rant sounds like!) it nevertheless communicates some excellent advice.

It is a post aimed at clients and provides 12 tips for working with designers. Advice includes leaving preconceived notions at the door, be specific in your requirements and design for your customers and not yourself.

There is no doubt that many clients serious misunderstand the role of the designer. However if I was a client reading this, I might find the tone hard to swallow. Despite that I would encourage those of you who work with designers to read this article. My favourite quote is...

Just as writers are not just people who can type, designers are not just people who can use graphics programs.

Web form design patterns

Our final post this week is a survey Smashing Magazine have done on 100 popular sign up form. The idea of the survey is to give you a better understanding of what makes an effective sign up form.

Of course, just because other sites do things in a certain way, does not make that the best approach. You should never blindly follow the crowd. Nevertheless this is a fascinating read.

The post is split into two parts and contains information such as...

How the link to the sign-up form is titled

The placement of sign-up links

Whether the sign-up form is a single or multiple pages

How labels are aligned

How many fields are mandatory

What help and tooltips are provided

How validation is managed

How error messages are designed

Is it necessary to confirm the email address

Is it necessary to confirm the password

The list goes on.

If you are looking to justify design decisions you have made or need some help designing the perfect signup form, this is a great place to start.

Just a quick reminder that the news we feature on the show is only a fraction of what myself and Paul Stanton post on the website. To get a more comprehensive view on what is happening in the world of web design, make sure you subscribe to our news RSS feed.

Feature: Lessons to be learnt from O2

I am not sure whether you noticed but this last week saw the launch of the iPhone 3G. It would certainly have been hard to miss it.

I don't want to add anymore to the endless discussion surrounding this launch. However, I would like to focus on a side issue. I want to look at how O2s website handled this momentous event and what we can learn from their mistakes.

Interview: Jeff Veen on working with developers

Paul: So I'm very excited to have Jeff Veen joining me today on the show. Good to talk to you Jeff!

Jeff: Oh, it's absolutely my pleasure. Thanks for having me!

Paul: Well it's really good to get you on the show. I've wanted you on for ages, but I haven't had the guts to kind of approach you so I sent Ryan to talk to you instead. I feel vaguely like, you know, you get at school discos where you fancy a girl and you send your best friend over 'cause you don't have the guts to do it yourself. Or is that just me?

Jeff: Well I'll tell you, I'm happy to have this dance Paul. It's great.

Paul: Right, well for those that don't know you Jeff and don't know your background can you just tell us a little bit about yourself and how you ended up in a situation where you ended up working for Google. You know, how did that come about happening? 'Cause that's what we're going to talk about a little bit today is your experiences of being at Google.

Jeff: Well, I tell you I'd been working with developers, as kind of more on the design side for quite a long time. Do you remember hotwired.com from Wired Magazine?

Paul: Oh yes, definitely.

Jeff: Way back when, right? Like we launched that back in 1994 and that's really when I got started on the web, was coming over to Wired, working on their online properties like Hotwired, Webmonkey, and HotBot search engine, you know stuff like that. So I was with them for quite a while, they went through an acquisition and brought us over to Lycos, that big search engine. And then from there I started a company called Adaptive Path. Adaptive Path is a user experience consulting group in San Francisco. It was seven of us, we were all friends from the industry. We really focused on research, design, information architecture, usability, stuff like that. And I did that for a number of years with them and then finally convinced my partners that doing a product would be something interesting for us to try. We had done consulting. We had done some events. So we were kind of looking for the next thing to try. So I put together a small team of developers and some other designers and we made a product called Measure Map. That was a web analytics tool aimed specifically at bloggers. And just as we were about to launch it, we had done a bunch of work on it, Google gave us a call and said, “We love what you're doing. We want you to come over and bring that to Google.” So we went through an acquisition there and that's really how I got to Google.

Paul: Ahh, I see. 'Cause I remember very vividly Measure Map coming along and getting very excited about it and then it kind of disappeared.

Jeff: A little bit, yeah.

Paul: Yeah, 'cause you got swallowed into Google.

Jeff: Well Google was very clear that they had a lot of respect for the work that we had done around designing Measure Map and wanted us to apply that expertise to their big Google Analytics product which had recently, sort of. They had acquired a company called Urchin, which had kind of an enterprise analytics package and they had made it free, and that had brought it to a whole new audience that really, sort of, didn't quite understand how analytics worked. So we brought some of the best practices of design into Google and redesigned Google Analytics to make it sort of, kind of maintain all the power that it had, but make it much more accessible to a broader audience. So that's really what we spent our time doing at Google.

Paul: OK, so we saw Google Analytics and those changes that you made to Google Analytics appear a few months back, and you know, were very impressive. But I'm quite interested in what happened. How did that come about, and how did that process work? So you arrive at Google, you walk through the door of Google. Now, one presumes that there was an existing Analytics team already working. Is that right?

Jeff: Yeah, that's right. There was probably about twenty developers or so that were working on the Analytics application. Almost entirely all, sort of back-end engineers. As you can imagine, something of that size and scope, it's a pretty impressive technical feat. The amount of data that they're tracking every day, really just continues to blow my mind how much scale they have over there. So there was really, really talented engineers that had been working with the product for quite some time. That product had been around for a number of years. I think they were in version six of the product. But, to their credit, the Director of Engineering, a guy named Paul Moret, really knew that he had to change that application for this new audience that he had, sort of had started to grow by being at Google. So he was really behind the idea of completely rethinking. “Like lets,” he said, “Let's start from scratch. Right, we have a lot of users. We have a really powerful product that I want to completely rethink how this happens.” And so, yeah, we really just rolled up our sleeves and sat down with him and his team and really sort of became one team. Got in there and made a lot of change. One of the things I think that really helped us be successful there was that we had a pretty robust methodology for user research that really resonated with a lot of the engineers that we were working with. It was really sort of. It was like I said, pretty mature, had a lot of data behind it so we could really show a lot of the work and helped us really get over a lot of the perceived subjectivity of design. So, you know, you can imagine this team comes in. We are a bunch of relatively technical designers, but still designers. And we sit down with these very, very technical engineers and we kind of showed them a process of how we were going to talk to a lot of the existing audience, a lot of the new segments of the audience, take everything that they told us and kind of boil it down into a lot of actionable next steps. And a way of prioritizing what features and changes we wanted to make. And so rather than us kind of going off, doing a bunch of design work and presenting it to them, we really involved everybody, or as many people as we could, in the process of how to change that application at its very basic level. So I think the results of doing all of that with the technical team was that we built a lot of trust between us. So that we could take some of their fundamental assumptions and really question those, but include them in that process so that there was a lot of give and take.

Paul: I mean yeah, because your initial reaction when you look at a company like Google, that it is a very developer-centric company. So I was kind of half-expecting you to say that you encountered quite a lot of resistance to the kind of design changes that you were introducing, but from the sounds of it, because your methodology is quite scientific, for want of a better word, you know it's very logical, etcetera that it sounds like it went down quite well.

Jeff: Yeah, it did. It feels like we're using the scientific method: doing testing and research and analysis and things like that. Ultimately though, so much of design is really, really hard to measure. Especially when it comes to matters of taste and perception and things like that. I mean, we can measure click-throughs and we can measure conversion rates and things like that, but ultimately the changes had to come from just being good designers. So having this relatively, kind of quantitative analysis that we did just allowed us to sort of speak on the same terms with the engineers. Have them trust us, and then let us make the changes we felt in our gut we should be making. So a lot of times I'll be working with somebody who is very technical and they want to say, “Well if you make that change, can you show us some data that'll prove that that's the right change to make?” And almost never can I do that. Right, like we can do little tests and we can do some A/B testing and multivariate testing and stuff like that. And that's good for little incremental changes but when you're fundamentally changing an application it's almost impossible to measure the accuracy of the decisions that you're making. And that can be hard for somebody who really is a very analytical thinker, very quantitative in the decisions that they make, to sometimes kind of let go and say “No. You've got to trust us. It's just going to be better.”

Paul: So were there other techniques that you used beyond providing data to kind of bridge that gap between the way that maybe designers see the world and that of developers?

Jeff: Well I'll tell you another thing that I really believe in, is prototyping rather than just drawing mockups. One of the benefits I had going into Google is that I had a remarkable team at Measure Map that were quite technical. A very good front-end developer who could do lots of JavaScript, AJAX, CSS markup kind of work. A talented Ruby developer, and then a guy who was great with Flash and ActionScript. So bringing this team together, all of them good designers, but all of them with very technical backgrounds, we could come in and very quickly start to realize what a redesign might look like. Also the thing that really helped us was that Analytics internally had a very well-developed API. So we could say “All right, show us how this API works, then we're going to immediately start experimenting on top of it using real data. We can bring users in for usability tests and they can see their data in our prototype in a matter of weeks, rather than months and months of development.” So having that separation between design, front-end and back-end, through a robust API allowed us to prototype so quickly that they could immediately say, “Wow! Look at all the work this team is doing!” Rather than us standing in front of the projector pointing at Photoshop comps or something and saying “Imagine what it would be like to click here.” We just had a thing working that people could log into anytime.

Paul: Yeah, I can really understand how that would make an enormous difference. So I'm presuming that you talk about your little team of people that went in there and started doing prototyping and stuff like that, but obviously you're going to want to engage more with the developers that are there. I mean, the traditional danger has always been that as a developer and a designer you work independently. The designer does his thing. He hands it over the partition to the developer. The developer goes away and does his thing. Now I presume you wanted to avoid that. So how did you establish that working relationship? How did you end up working closely together?

Jeff: I have almost no interest in that sort of “waterfall method” where somebody goes off and does research, hands it off to designers, designers then do some of their magic, hand it off to developers. I've never been successful at doing that, primarily I think because I learn so much from the process of building things. So again, it was just, really one of the first things we did was invest a lot in getting the teams to trust one another. And that meant really just spending time with each other. So that meant almost every day just scheduling some time in the conference room for us all to kick around ideas, to look at some of the existing work that they were doing, some of their future plans and just spending a tremendous amount of time with them. We also just had our desks right next to the development team. We were embedded, we were just right there. So we felt like part of the team. We'd all go eat lunch together. I mean simple things like that just make the development process so much more, so much easier because there's real people working with each other rather than faceless “other people” handing specs over. So putting a lot of time in: absolutely crucial to success in a process like that.

Paul: So obviously you got to work with a great group of people over at Google. Some of the most talented developers in the world I guess. So I'm really interested to know, what was it you learned from them? You spent all this time with them, what was the kind of thing that you took away as a front-end interface designer what did you learn from this amazing group of developers?

Jeff: Well, a couple of things really. I think the thing that struck us the most when we first got there was just the enormous scale of everything. Like Google, as you can imagine, Google has lots and lots of users, but they have a tremendous diversity of users too, literally from around the world. A statistic that we throw out all the time is that seventy percent of Google's traffic comes from outside the United States. So the audience that we were used to designing for is really the small minority of people, and in fact the rest of the world is where all of the products are being used. So we had to think about that diversity of audience even in the design decisions that we were making every day in that everything that we were designing was going to be translated in up to forty different languages. So that was probably the first thing that really brought our attention. The second thing was the unbelievably high standards that Google had for their products. Like you said, I totally agree, they're some of the best engineers in the world. They have coding standards. They have testing standards, QA standards that were absolutely remarkable. I just learned so much about how every little detail fits into place to make a product that's as robust and as really scalable and useable by a global audience that Google has. It was really like I got a crash course in some of the best computer science education I could possibly ever ask for.

Paul: Very cool indeed. So for the designers that are listening to this now, the front-end people that maybe are working with developers day in and day out and secretly behind their backs are having a bit of moan about those developers, they're finding them quite tricky to work with, what advice would you give them about interacting and working with developers?

Jeff: Well, like I said, you've got to spend time in the trenches with them. That I think is just the most obvious thing that I can recommend doing. For both sides. It was hard for me to trust a lot of developers, like “Oh, you're only concerned about your servers, you don't care about users at all.” Which of course is completely false, but that's an inherent bias that I would have. So again, spending that time: incredibly important. I think one of the things that I try to educate the most while I was there was that the level of detail, the care, everything that goes into the coding standards that engineers have, we have that same standard for the interfaces that we build. So I think sometimes, and I hate to generalize across developers, because I've worked just the entire spectrum of developers. One of the themes that I hear from time to time is that design is something that kind of happens at the end. Like “We do all the hard engineering. We get all of these systems in place and write all of this code and then we need some designers to come on and put the interface on so that we can actually launch this thing.” That I think cheapens a lot of the work that we do, and it's a little bit demeaning for the discipline of design, of user experience. So I think we have biases on both sides and that frankly understanding more about what goes into the process both from a front-end and a back-end point of view is kind of what brings us all together.

Paul: So if you could communicate one thing to the developers, one lesson, the question the other way around I guess. I guess in some ways it's the same answer, isn't it? It's kind of stick with one another.

Jeff: Yeah, a little bit. Also there's some really simple techniques that I've used, for example: even before we started we'd schedule a usability test with the existing product and get the engineers into the room behind that one way mirror and we would just watch. And we would watch people flail around with the interface and struggle and get frustrated and push the keyboard away. I mean that's just golden. People see that and they're just like, “Oh man, we've got some work to do.” So making it as clear as possible, what our users are trying to do, how we can all collaborate together to help them: incredibly, incredibly important. That said, it wasn't, you know when I did consulting at Adaptive Path I was inside lots of companies. I worked with some of the biggest companies in America and saw inside of them and, to be honest, Google is truly a user-centered company. I was just so impressed with that. Broadening that idea of user-centered technology development is something that we worked on. Making it more of a balance between front-end and back-end is more some of the things we worked on. But ultimately I think Google really understands that putting users first is the way to be successful. Just look at the search results page with it's very simple but incredibly effective advertising techniques, and you know, Google never had a front page that was full of the sort of portal design stuff that Yahoo! and other companies have done. So really, it was very fertile ground for the kind of work we wanted to do when we got there.

Paul: Very interesting. I've just thought of one other question that I get asked a lot from people looking to get into web design: they say, “So what am I better off doing, you know, where's the best place to work? Is it in the large company? Or is it doing something in a small company by yourself?” Now you've obviously done both of those and there is no definitive answer, but what would you see as the pros and cons of a large company in comparison to working somewhere smaller like Adaptive Path?

Jeff: You're right, in my career I've got swung back and forth between big and small. There are definitely benefits and drawbacks to both of them. In the bigger companies I think just inherently things move slower. Now, I mean Google is renowned for it's “bottom-up culture” and good ideas are always emerging from people taking their twenty percent time. None of that is a myth. That all really happens. But at the same time, like I said, when millions of users, or hundreds of millions for some of the products. You just have to take a lot more steps, and what that does is it increases the distance between the idea that a designer or developer has, and a user actually seeing that idea. And one of the things that I love about this sort of entrepreneurial startup environment is that you can think of something, you can try it out, you can get it in front of your users. You can do that in an afternoon. And you can't do that with a product like Gmail or Adwords or something like that because there's so much inherent infrastructure and risk, things like that. I think it's incredibly worthwhile for people to have both experiences, and frankly see what they like best. One of the things I really have learned in my career is that there are people that like to start things, and that there are people that like to run things. And there is no inherent judgment between the two, but once you understand “Ooh, I love having a big system and having that system run perfectly, and putting all the things in place to keep that, you know.” And that's fantastic. I've learned, in my career, that I'm kind of on the other side. I love starting with nothing and building up something, and at some point I need to hand it off to somebody who is much better at running and maintaining, right. So those are the kind of things you learn by doing a lot of very different projects and product development and stuff like that as your career kind of goes on, I think.

Paul: So you've left Google now? So what's the next step? What are you up to at the moment? Let's finish on a looking forward note. Where are you going? What are you doing?

Jeff: I was at Google for just over two years and left about six weeks ago, and to be honest I'm spending a lot of time right now cycling and trying to sleep late, and things like that. I tell you it's a tremendous luxury and I'm not taking it for granted at all. The immediate next thing is that I'm organizing a little conference with my colleague Bryan Mason, who I have worked with at Adaptive Path. He and I are doing a conference in San Francisco in August about starting companies. Yeah, as I was leaving Google I was thinking, “Well, what should I do next? What would be interesting?” So I talked to a bunch of my friends who have been entrepreneurs, or who are now investors and I just asked them, “Tell me your story. How did you get to where you are?” And I found those stories so interesting that I thought, “Man, we've got to share this. This is great.” And I thought, “Well, I could do a podcast or something like that.” But then I thought, “I love getting people together and having sort of a community feel.” So we thought: we'll get one day, San Francisco in August. We'll get everybody together and we'll just have these conversations. So I'm really looking forward to it. It's called “The Start Conference” and you can find it at thestartconference.com. That's what we're doing now.

Paul: Excellent stuff. Thank you so much Jeffrey for coming onto the show and talking about that. The issue of designers and developers working together is something that's really important and I think there's a lot of work still to be done, and it's good to see that there are people out there that have got it right and are going in the right direction.

Jeff: I appreciate that Paul.

Paul: Thanks for your time.

Jeff: Thank you.

Thanks to Todd Dietrich for transcribing this interview.

Listeners feedback:

Adding a jingle to your site

Chris writes: A client of mine wants to incorporate 4 second jingles at various points on their website, triggered on page load, to reinforce their servicing brand. My first reaction is that this could get annoying but was curious as to your thoughts on the use of audio on the web.

I don't think that there is any set 'rule' here but basically I would agree 100% that you shouldn't do it because it will annoy the hell out of the site's users.

There is an argument that audio branding can be included if the user only has to hear it once. However, I would dispute this as well for the following reasons:

It may well still annoy (and therefore have a negative effect upon) the site's users
Users aren't expecting it and it could embarrass them in an office environment
Quite a lot of users will have the sound off. Therefore, if you decide that the audio is only an 'add on' for the brand then you may as well conclude that it's not necessary at all.

I have talked about audio on website before and reached the conclusion that, even though technology and bandwidth makes it more doable, it's the wrong medium for audio. I think I likened it to having a soundtrack while you're reading a book - it's just wrong!

Of course, there are no doubt exceptions to this rule - really well thought out and produced audio indicators on a web app for example - but, generally speaking, audio branding on a website will have a negative effect. If your client is insistent, try and persuade him to include a video download on the site where audio will certainly work.

Fixed or bespoke pricing

Jon writes: We are a small web design and development company (4 people) and have tended to concentrate on higher value bespoke work. We are probably about to merge with another slightly larger company in a neighbouring town. This other company have traditionally aimed at a somewhat lower value market.

My question is about pricing. The other company operate to a very structured price list (£x for a 5 page brochure site, £Y for a basic ecommerce site, £Z for an ecommerce site with knobs on etc). We have always priced each project individually using a mixture of time costing, guesswork, and a "how much can we get away with" approach.

Do you think that a merged company approaching a wider market and value range would be better to adopt one approach or the other, or continue to do both? Would the existence of one approach damage the ability to operate effectively at the other end of the scale?

I guess the big question here is - are you going to remain as two different entities with some shared resources, or are you going to merge more fully and share work between the team no matter where it is sourced from (i.e. will one of their designers work on a future project from one of your existing clients)? If it is the former (which I suspect it isn't) then I would keep the two pricing models the same as they are. I wouldn't try and hide the fact that the two companies have 'merged' though, just explain that there are two teams delivering different services.

However, if the two companies are merging more fully, then I think this is actually fairly fundamental stuff. It's almost like you're all starting again and need to write a business plan. I think you would be opening yourself up for much criticism if you tried to operate both pricing plans.

I suppose other questions to you would be:

Which pricing plan is most effective (who is making the most profit)?
What does each company's order book look like? I.e. have you just signed a massive contract at your higher rates?

This is interesting stuff and I'd like to know how it works out. I suppose the biggest unknown for me (that may well answer all of my other questions) is that I don't know the reason for the merger in the first place.

Content is dead, long live context

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 15:37:44 +0000

No, content is not dead. Yes content is important, but there can only be one king and I am beginning to wonder if it is context.

The more I consider context the more I recognise its impact on every aspect of a website. Context affects design, usability, accessibility and content. Its influence is profound, and yet it is largely ignored by many web designers.

But what is context when applied to a website? Its actually hard to define. It is easier to think in terms of the users context while access your website. Understanding this context affects how you design a site.

We put a lot of emphasis on user centric design. We believe that understanding users is important. For example, we believe in carrying out user testing. However, think for a minute about the way we do this. We bring the user into an artificial environment (such as a usability lab). We remove them from their normal context.

Equally when we create personas they focus on demographics (age, sex, job etc) rather than their context. We miss a crucial part of the jigsaw.

So what is the users context? I have identified 5 aspects that form his or her context. These are:

Environment
Device
Comfort
Mood
Time

Let's look at each of these in turn.

Environment

Environment refers to a number of factors including location. The kind of information a user wants to access is dependant on his or her location. For example somebody planning a weekend break using their PC at home, will want information on hotels and attractions. When they are actually on their break and using their mobile phone, they are more likely to want information on the nearest pub or the opening times of a museum they want to visit.

Location does not just affect content. It can also affect design. Viewing web content outside will mean battling with sunlight and so high contrast is required. Alternatively, you do not want to be dealing with fiddly form elements while being jostled at a train station.

However, environment is not just about location it also includes distractions and surroundings. For example a mother of three toddlers may find it hard to concentrate on a complex survey, with the children demanding her attention. Equally a user accessing the web from a library is not going to appreciate audio suddenly playing on your website.

Environment also defines the type of device we use to access the web. This is another aspect of context.

Device

Although location and the device often go hand in hand (you tend to use a PC at home and a mobile while out), this is not the only affect device has on context. The device also determines the input methods available.

Few mobile phones come with QWERTY keyboards. None come with a mouse. You can access the web via games consoles like the wii. These generally rely on gamepads, remotes and on screen keyboards.

Different input devices should radically affect the user interface. Not only do each of these devices alter how you interact with the system, they also alter how you view the information.

Typically PC users are sitting close to their monitor and viewing at relatively high resolutions. Games consoles are normally attached to a TV where you sit much further away and the resolution is lower. Mobile devices have a lower resolution still and the viewing position is different again. This all affect the design of your website.

Talking of viewing position, the other factor that needs considering is the users comfort.

Comfort

How physically comfortable a user is affects the length of time they will interact with your site. Although you cannot know whether your target audience is comfortable or not, sometimes you can make an educated guess. For example, if you know your users will be accessing your site via a kiosk in a shopping mall, they will probably be standing and not stay long.

Comfort is to a large degree dictated by environment but not entirely. It can also be dictated by physical conditions. If you are launching a site aimed at those who suffer from back pain or weak bladders, do not expect them to spend a long time on your site!

In some ways comfort is also closely linked to our next factor, mood.

Mood

There is no way we can predict the emotional whims of our audience, but they do have an affect on attention span. Those who are busy or stressed get irritable with a site quicker. They are likely to give up and walk away. Conversely those who are relaxed muddle through and are more tolerant of bad design.

It is important to consider the likely temperament of your users. For example, business executives are likely to be less patient with a site than a pensioner siting in his villa in the south of France.

Environment, device and comfort can all have an impact on mood. However, the biggest influcening factor is time.

Time

It is obvious that the time available to a user affects how long they spend on a site. However, we often do not take this into account when designing a site. Unnecessary form fields and key content buried deep within your site, are just 2 ways we ignore the time constraints users operate under.

Online banking is a good example. It is so complex to login to my account that it is quicker to pick up the phone. With time being a valuable commodity users will often choose a competitors site because they can get things done faster.

Of course, in reality there is a lot of overlap in these facets of context. However, I have yet to read much about context that isn't directly related to mobile devices. Hopefully I have demonstrated that context applies to all the work we do and not just to mobile websites.

125. Copy

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 11:03:00 +0000

In this weeks show we discuss how to give personality to your site copy and we talk with Elliot Jay Stocks about going freelance.

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News and Events

The clever chaps at Carsonified

If you happen to follow any of the guys at Carsonified on twitter, you cannot help but know they are working on a not-so-secret project called Matt.

It is an interesting idea that they have done once before. They stop all normal work for a week and blitz a small self contained project using an Agile style approach.

The final result is not what counts. It is the exercise itself that I find interesting. By doing this periodically they...

Create a lot of buzz which reflects well on their company
Build a great sense of camaraderie
Get to try out new technologies and techniques
Break the routine of everyday work
Push people's comfort zones and help develop new skills

It's a great plan and one more of us should adopt. It is certainly something I would like to do in Headscape. Of course it is more tricky when you have clients with deadlines however the principle still applies. You may find it hard to do this for a week, but maybe a single day is possible.

Adobe make flash searchable

The big news of the week is an announcement by Adobe that they have been working with both Google and Yahoo! to improve the indexing of flash. This is no real surprises as the SEO of flash has been a major headache for the technology. The surprising bit is that they have succeeded, at least in the case of Google.

Apparently Adobe have created a special flash player for the search engines that acts as a virtual user. This user trawls through each swf converting the content into something search engines can understand.

Apparently Google is in the process of rolling out the technology. Unfortunately Yahoo! apparently have "some work to do." Nevertheless this is a promising step forward.

Of course until Adobe make it easy for the average blogger or website owner to deep link within a flash file, the 73 million flash sites are not likely to be highly ranked.

Colour blindness on the web

My final story for the day is a post on colour blindness by Richard Rutter. To call this news is a huge stretch as the article was published in 2005. However, I have only just found it so it is news to me!

I have to say I love this post. At the very beginning Rich tells us he is colour blind and so I braced myself for feelings of guilt and inadequacy as he tells me my sites are inaccessible. Instead I got this...

The thing is, colour blindness on the Web isnÕt a big deal. You do have to bear it mind (as I will show later on), but there is no need to let it dominate any design decision.

What a breath of fresh air. He then goes on to give some very simple advice that anybody can follow...

Do not rely on colour alone to convey information (such as on Jeff Veen's blog)
Do not write instructions such as "click the green button"

He goes on to dispel some misconceptions and provides good examples of where things can become a problem.

If you worry about the large number of colour blind users out there (and you should do), then give this post a read.

Feature: Copy with Personality

Too much of the copy I read on websites is bland and uninspiring. Its time to add some personality. We look at this in this weeks feature.

Interview: Elliot Jay Stocks on Going Freelance

Paul Boag: So joining me today is Elliot Jay Stocks previously from Cansonified now a freelance web designer, in the depths of Norway I hear earlier.

Elliot Jay Stocks: Yes. That's all the hype depending on how you look at it.

Paul: Well it's really good to have you on the show.

Elliot: Thank you for having me.

Paul: Normally when we get people on the show it's to talk about some specific area of expertise or something like that. Although I know you have many, many areas of expertise I wanted to get you on the show just because of the really interesting thing that you've chosen to do. The fact that you've left a fairly well known company that had a really good reputation. That you've decided to go freelance. And you've decided, at least for a short length of time to work from Norway, as a bit of an adventure. Is that the right way to put it?

Elliot: Yeah I guess so. I don't like to do anything by halves. I like to do everything at once. So we gave up our flat my girlfriend went off travelling to the far east. I moved to Norway and at the same time decided to start up my own business. So quite a few life changing things at once.

Paul: Cool. I mean that's really exciting and I guess that's the power of freelancing, that you've got the freedom to work from wherever you want.

Elliot: Yeah and the power of the web in general. You know whenever anybody says "How can you do that?" I say I've got my laptop and as long as I've got an internet connection then it's all good. Although having said that my internet connection here is really dodgy.

Paul: Which is why I'm calling you on an ordinary phone line.

Elliot: Right. Where I'm staying unfortunately there is something wrong with the router where it doesn't allow ftp or any way to send email out. So there's no upstream traffic. Which isn't that great when you're a web designer. So my new office, as it were, is one of the local coffee shops.

Paul: In order to get 'round the problem. So we've got loads of people listening to this show that either are web designer's in an agency of some description or in house designers somewhere or alternatively people maybe not working in web design at all at the moment but want to. So we get lots of questions about freelancing and I thought okay let's get somebody on the show that's literally just gone through this process. And kind of ask you a few questions about you're experiences and how its gone. I guess the biggest one and the one that we probably should start with is overcoming that kind of fear factor of giving up a regular income. How did you kind of convince yourself that this was a good idea?

Elliot: I'd been thinking about going freelance for a while. Not to swat at Carsonified, but sort of the entire time I've been working at a web designer. I started off doing freelance things in University. So like doing site for things like friends bands and things like that. I mean I carried on doing that as soon as I started working in the industry and have carried on the last 4 years or so doing bits and bobs, evenings and weekends. Although I've only just started doing it fulltime I've got quite a bit of experience doing it on a part-time basis which obviously is a little less scary, when you're making. I think the other thing as well at Carsonified most days of the week I actually worked from home, in London, so that was a really good testing ground to see if I had the self discipline to work by myself all day and stay motivated and stuff like that. So because of that it was slightly less scary making the actual jump.

Paul: So would you recommend that to somebody who is considering going freelance? To kind of build up some work on the side and also if possible to negotiate some home working to see how you get on with it?

Elliot: Yeah definitely. It's something that's not suited to everybody. Obviously there's the appeal, everybody thinks WOW I'd love to work from home, loads of freedom fantastic. But, people I have spoken to have said I find it very very hard to get motivated when I'm at home. It's easy to get distracted. The other thing as well is it can often be quite lonely. Jonathan Snook recently wrote a post about this on his site. He was disussing these ways of battling freelance loneliness. You know going to the local coffee shop for instance. Which is another thing to bear in mind when you're doing it. There's the option of working entirely by yourself. Working in the public, like the coffee shop. Working in a shared working environment. I'm still undecided really. I get on fine working by myself, but when I get back to the UK we're not sure exactly where we're gonna go. Depending on where we do go I may look into some kind of co-working space or whatever. There's a possibility that we might go Oxford way, if so I may shack up with the old Rissington chaps, which would be lovely.

Paul: That would be superb.

Elliot: Yeah.

Paul: Well obviously no it wouldn't because they're nothing but rude and obnoxious to me so I'm in no way supporting that decision.

Elliot: And they're a rival podcast.

Paul: Well it's not so much the rival podcast it's the fact that they're just so jealous and envious of my huge success (Paul laugh maniacally).

Elliot: Well I hear you're the one who gets noticed on the tube anyway.

Paul: Well yes this is true. Okay moving back to the interview and on with the questions. Cashflow is obviously something that always scares people. Not just when making the leap into freelance. How do you actually fund it starting off? You know in those first few weeks. How did you go about that? What was your solution to the problem?

Elliot: I'm not sure that my solution is the best one. People always say to make sure you have some money in the bank. You know enough to see you over for 2 or 3 months so that if it's very slow starting off, if you're not getting a lot of work in or if you are getting work in but clients are slow paying you've got a sort of fall back plan. I made sure I had a bit of money in the bank so that if it all went horrible wrong I'd still be able to survive. Luckily at the same time because we moved out of our flat and I am now living in Norway temporarily. Although Norway is horrendously expensive to anyone but Norwegians it's actually cheaper working out here living here at the moment because of the reduced rent compared to what I was paying in London. So that was one factor that made it a little bit easier. The other thing is that I alread had a lot of work already booked in before going freelance. I think more than anything that's the important thing when people make that jump, is having the work there. So rather than jumping and saying okay I work for myself now I better go get some work. To already have as much lined up as possible. Fortunately I am in a position where I had loads of stuff booked up a couple of months in advance. That was a good safety net. Obviously clients can be slow to pay so I always ask for 25% deposit before I start. That's 25% based on the estimated amount of the project. But it's a nice little safety net to have in there. It means you have a little bit of cash and if they decide that they want to be horrible at the end and not pay you've got a little bit of something to fall back on.

Paul: Sure. I mean it's interesting that you said that you were fortunate enough to get some work lined up before you began. I mean the obvious question is how did you achieve that. You must have been marketing or been selling yourself in some way in order to attract that work.

Elliot: Selling myself. (laughs at Paul's implied dirty joke)

Paul: Selling yourself in the nicest way.

Elliot: Yeah to some degree. I've been very very fortunate and I haven't had to look for any work yet. So far people have got in contact with me so I haven't had to go out there and kind of beg for clients or anything. Obviously Carsonified was quite high profile stuff. Prior to that when I worked in the music industry luckily I got work with some very high profile artists and bands so because of that and because I had those things in my portfolio that was part of the marketing. People see these kind of bigger bands in your portfolio. It definitly makes it easier because regardless of the work I think it kind of impresses people if they see a name that they recognize. In terms of marketing I guess this time last year, or I guess just over a year ago, the recent version of my site and things kind of took off from there really. I've put that on a load of CSS galleries which obviously helps because they get so much traffic. I think still sites like CSS Beauty and Web Designer Wall they're still some of my biggest refers even now. So I think getting you're site on there, getting people to look at it there that often has a snowball effect of having the other galleries picking it up and other sites and things like that. So that obviously helps. In terms of the work for the next few months, I'm actually launching a new version of my site which will probably launch in a month or two's time. And I'm gonna do the same things again. Put it on lots of gallery sites. Tell people about it. I think having a new site with an emphasis more on the work more than just being a blog that will hopefully help as well in the continuing marketing. Luckily enough, doing things like this even lets people hear about you some more and I guess the thing with marketing it's just to get your name out there in which ever way you can. To get people hearing about your stuff.

Paul: So would you recommend, if someone's talking about going freelance, say a new graduate that has just come out of university. Would you actually encourage them to try working for an agency where they can perhaps build up a portfolio of bigger clients before they go freelance? Or is there really no reason why they shouldn't go freelance straight away.

Elliot: No. I would definitely encourage working for an agency or as an in house designer for some kind of company before hand. When I left university my flat mate and I were condsidering starting up a business and I was thinking about this this morning actually. If we'd have done that and we could have done it I guess and maybe done okay out of it but the first thing is. I don't think I would have then got access to the kind of high profile clients that I have got through my previous work experience so in that sense I probably would have still be struggling now to market myself and convince people I can work with big brands. The main thing that I, you know the wealth of experience that working in an agency will give you is definitely something not to be under estimated. Dealing with clients. Dealing with rediculous deadlines. Obviously these are things that your pick up being freelance as well but being inside an agency and working with other people and getting a feel for the industry that you are in, the working environment. The requirements. Things like that. All of that stuff. I am very grateful that I decided not to start my own business that early on and actually went to a real job as it were. So I would definitely recommend that people do it, that graduates do that. As well I thinks it's just you learn a lot about who you are as a designer and where your strengths are. I mean when I was at Young life I was completely Flash. 100%. I barely new HTML at all when I started there because I was so interested in Flash. Obviously now that has completely changed. Now its much more, well completely standards based. That's sort of where I specialize in now. If I hadn't gone through that process I may not have realized that.

Paul: Okay so we've done the kind of exciting stuff of kind of talking about setting up, or deciding to take the leap and go freelance. We talked where the work comes from. What about all the boring stuff? What was your experience of the admin of going freelance? Setting up all the kind of legal requirements. What did you do there? You kind of muddle your way through that yourself? Did you get any help? How did you approach it? What were the big problems?

Elliot: A bit of muddling through. A bit of asking around. There's still some things that I have yet to do. For instance I haven't yet got a business bank account. Which I'm waiting till I get back to the UK. Mainly because I was setting this up at the time of moving, leaving the country. It was very very complicated. As I'm not getting paid immediately for some of the projects I am doing its fine to wait till July and set it all up then. You know what a nightmare UK banks can be anyway. So still waiting about that. One of the first things I did was get an accountant. I was quite nervous about this because one of the things that really dawned on me was how do you...First of all how do you find an accountant and then once you've found one how do you say "Ah they're good.": You know, if you're choosing a designer you can look at there work and it's very easy to see what their like. What their styles like. What they've done. This kind of thing. With an accountant I think it's really hard. You can only seem to go mainly on recommendations from friends and colleagues. Luckily I've had some dealings before with Nick who is Carsonified's accountant and really nice guy and I figured well I'll get a consult with him and if he fancies doing accounting for myself. I had a quick meeting with him. He was very friendly. I got to ask him all sorts of mundane tax questions which he answered for me. That was one of the first things I got sorted. So that was a big weight off my mind. To have someone who could look after all that stuff. Everybody has always said to me, in fact I think you may have said to me yourself, a good accountant will always pay for themselves and then some. In the time they save you. In the expertise. When the taxes come and all this kind of thing. So everybody recommended to me that I get an accountant from the first thigns and I guess that I would even in these early days say the same thing to anyone else thinking about that. In terms of paper work and stuff like that, one of the things I really really underestimated, although luckily I found out the truth in the first week, is how long it would take to manage my calendar. I just thought yeah I'll book things and it will be fine. What I didn't realize was that when projects need to shift round or you had to allocate couple of extra days for this. This had to move. The scheduling was actually, not a nightmare, but something you really have to make time for. The tricky thing is at the end of that you have nothing to show. There's no realy paperwork to go with it. It's an output as such. It's easy to leave it off for, to neglect it. But obviously it's something that needs to happen. In terms of paper work I made sure I designed myself a nice little invoice template so at least doing paper work isn't as mundane as it has to be. Caus I got some nice little pretty pictures on my invoices. Doing that kind of stuff and obviously kind of chasing people to pay the money. Although actually so far everyone's been very good. I haven't got anything to complain about.

Paul: It's interesting isn't it. That when you kind of sit down and think about going freelance and whatever else you do the calculations if I charged this per hour and you know I work 40 hours per week WOW I'm gonna be so rich. But very quickly you realize that well actually half of my time is probably taken up with non-paid work like managing your calendar, project management, invoicing. Dealing with the accountant and all of the that kind of stuff. It's easy to forget that side of things. What about the business plan? Did you put any kind of business plan together or did you just go oh sod it I'm just going to do it?

Elliot: I said oh sod it I'm gonna do it. For the kind of stuff that I'm doing I didn't see the point in doing a business plan. Because I know exactly what I'm doing which is providing a design service to clients on a project by project basis. I don't have any plans to grow the company as it were. This may change over time of course but at the moment I have not interest in turning it into an agency and employing other people. Obviously there are some financial benefits to doing that. A lot of people will tell you it's the best thing to do and you gradually get less involved with the day to day stuff and are just running the company but to be honest at least where I am now I wouldn't be happy doing that. Because I actually love doing the day to day, the hands on design work and if I wasn't doing that I wouldn't be happy and that's the reason I'm doing this anyway. So at the moment there's no, it's not like I'm a start up and I have a product and I need to predict sales and growth in that way. I think just being a designer we've got it a bit easier. So maybe I'm going about it the wrong way. Maybe I'm being unprofessional but this if fine for me.

Paul: No I have to say I would agree. You know it's not like you've got big costs going out. You don't have offices that have to be paid for on a monthly basis. You don't have staff that you have to worry about. And pensions for those staff. You know there's no major complexity to it that kind of demands a business plan. I mean ultimately you just need to know that you are earning enough each month to pay your accountant and feed yourself.

Elliot: That's right yeah exactly. I think as long as you can go into freelance work and aim to earn at least as much as you were earning in your day job then I don't think you're going to run into too much trouble. As you say it's probably safe to assume that half of your week you're not actually going to be getting paid for because technically you wont be doing paid work like you say you'll be doing the invoicing, chasing up things like this. So if you say you're only working 2.5 days a week I think it's a fairly safe bet to go on. If you can say that in those 2.5 days you're going to earn at least as much as you were earning in a week when you were in fulltime employment then you're not going to go too far wrong. Obviously a lot of what we aim to do and what is happening with me luckily at the moment is earning more than what I was earning in fulltime employment. So in that respect it's yeah it's good and I don't think there too much to worry about there. As I said before luckily we as web designers have very very few overheads. Like you say if you're renting an office that's one thing and obviously there's the accountant but actually accountants are very very reasonably priced anyway and I'm paying it all in a lump sum just to get it out there and get it done. Luckily there isn't too much that we have to spend much money on.

Paul: Okay last question and to wrap up with. How far in, sorry when did you set up again? I'm trying to think how long you've been doing this now?

Elliot: Doing it fulltime has been since around the 20th of April.

Paul: So it's still very early days. You're just over a month in. So so far pros and cons of being you're own boss? What things have you liked? What things have you not liked?

Elliot: The main pro and so far they're living up to what I expected the pros and cons to be. Some of the main pros are the freedom of being you're own boss. Obviously to an extent you're clients are your bosses but just having the freedom to decide when you think this deadline should be. Doing the work when you like to where you would like to is a really great thing. When somebody comes to you to estimate a project being able to be generous enough with the hours to know that you can really spend a decent amount of time on the project. Not to a degree where you're kind of taking the mickey as it were. But knowing that you can really give some really good time to a project instead of it being rushed. Also picking and choosing the clients. If you have got a fairly steady amount of work coming in and you can afford to say no to some things then that's great cause it means that you can just work on a project that you personally find interesting. As I said before the financial benefits are working out well so far. That is a game when anyone goes freelance as well as freedom there is the monetary benefite as well. I can't express enough this sense of freedom. Just having a chat with you this morning and then toodling off into town later this morning to go and do some work from a coffee shop and I'll probably work a bit later this evening because we've had this chat this morning but you know having the freedom to do that and not having to worry about needing to stick to normal working hours and things like that. Not that employers aren't flexible to these things but knowing that you're the only person you have to please that does make a massive difference.

Paul: So what about cons? Those were all pros.

Elliot: They are aren't they.

Paul: You're still in the honeymoon period aren't you?

Elliot: Yeah I agree. Give me a year and I'll be all disheveled and angry. The only con I'll say is that it can be a bit lonely sometimes. I mean I guess it's hard to judge cause I'm in a foreign country where I only know a few people anyway. There way a while where I was working from my room here when the connection was a bit more reliable and that was great but I found I'm actually much happier being around more people now. Seeing more people during the day. I think I'm fairly well self disciplined like I said before cause I've had the experience of working from home before for quite a while but even so I found that I sometimes get a little bit distracted when I'm at home. You know go for a little wander. When you're sitting down maybe in a coffee shop in public it's more like this working environment, you can focus a bit more. I think even if you work from home most of the time maybe spend one day a week heading out and working in a public space just to see how it compares. I definitely find my concentration is a little bit better when I'm in somewhere like that.

Paul: That's really interesting because that's something I've never tried doing. You know I work from home the vast majority of my week and I've never kind of gone and sat in a coffee shop. Mainly because I don't drink coffee but also because, I don't know its just never occured to me. I will go and try it today. There we go. We've got a little coffee shop around the corner I really like so I will go and sit in there and do some work for a while.

Elliot: Of course as soon as you get there there will be really loud music and you won't be able to concentrate.

Paul: Probably. So Elliot you've definitely taught me something. I like that idea. What has that never occurred to me? Never even thought about doing that.

Elliot: Of course I have only been doing it for a month so I could be completely and absolutely wrong.

Paul: Yeah it could be a nightmare couldn't it. But that's why I wanted to get you on really. I wanted to get you on at the early outset of you doing this just to kind of give that unique perspective of somebody who's just gone through the process. The stuff that you've covered has been great. I really apreciate the time that you've taken to come on. We'll get you back on again in the future when you're a year down the line and see how you feel then.

Elliot: Yes that would be a good test.

Paul: It would be.

Elliot: Something to aim towards perhaps?

Paul: Yeah. So you've got to stay as a freelancer for at least a year otherwise it would be very inconvenient. Alright good to have you on the show Elliot and we will talk to you again soon.

Thanks to Curtis McHale for transcribing this interview.

Listeners feedback:

Wayne Henderson from Southern California has sent in an audio file for this week's show consisting of two separate but equally good questions.

Hello Paul, Hello Marcus this is Wayne from Wayne Henderson voiceovers and as you can tell from my voice I'm obviously from Bristol, no wait actually Southern California and I have two question I would love to hear your comments and thoughts on. One, with the iPhone really taking off, gaining in popularity and other smart phones basically copying the iPhone, do you think it's still even necessary to have the .mobi and designing for .mobi and my other question that I'd love to hear your thoughts on is kind of on the fringe of web design, I was wondering with Wordpress being so popular, how do you feel about someone maybe being a Wordpress design and installation expert? Taking the themes, customising them tweaking some things, changing some code and then kind of really helping other people to implement Wordpress into their websites? Let me know what you think about that? Thanks guys.

Let me address each in turn.

The .mobi domain name

There are two issues here which I would like to cover separately. First, let me look at this issue of whether we need to be designing for mobile devices at all. My answer is a categoric yes. No matter how great mobile browsers become, it is always going to be a different experience to surfing the web on a computer. Let me give you just three differences...

Size - Mobile devices have smaller screens than a PC. No matter how clever the mobile browser is a considerable amount of zooming and panning will be required to view a conventional website.

Controls - Not all mobile devices come with a QWERTY keyboard and none come with a traditional mouse. This can create problems on some sites, especially those with mouse over effects.

Context - Probably the biggest reason for creating a mobile version of a site is context. Mobile devices are not used sitting at a desk. They are normally used on the go. This affects the type of information being requested as well as the level of concentration being given to the task. When it comes to the mobile web context is king.

It is also worth mentioning that we are a long way from everybody having a smart phone. The majority of phones still provide a terrible web experience.

It is harder to give a definitive answer about the .mobi domain. Unless your website is primarily mobile focused I think it is probably unnecessary. Most sites seem to use a sub domain rather than a seperate extension. For example twitter uses:

http://m.twitter.com rather than http://twitter.mobi.

I have even found myself guessing this format. I certainly never think of typing .mobi. Also on a purely financial note, you have to pay for .mobi while a sub domain is free.

That said, I don't have anything against .mobi. It is certainly a valid choice.

Becoming a Wordpress specialist

Wayne's second question was about becoming a Wordpress specialist. It is good idea for a couple of reasons.

First, as he point out, Wordpress is hugely popular and there is certainly a market out there. It is also a well established product that has been around for a while and isn't about to disappear. Having a clearly defined market is always a good strategy.

Second, I am a great believer in specialising. With so many web designers out there you need to do something in order to stand out from the crowd. Specialising in Wordpress is a good step in the right direction.

However, I would argue that you could specialise further. You may choose to specialise in setting up Wordpress for a particular sector or by using it in a particular way.

Although this approach feels counter intuitive as you are narrowing the number of people who can hire you, it actually makes good business sense. By specialising you become the best in your limited field and so people are more likely to select you over your competitors.

Lessons from the O2 failure

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 16:55:03 +0000

I don't want to start ranting about the debacle that was upgrading via the O2 website, from my iphone to the iphone 3G. However, there are a couple of things we can learn about good site design from their mistakes.

Like most of the British population (or so it seemed) I tried to upgrade my first generation iphone for the new iphone 3G. Following the instructions I received from 02 I went to their website and then spent the next 2 hours battling to place my order. This horrendous experience raises some interesting points.

Load test - If you are expecting shit loads of people to hit your site at the same time then run some loading testing against it!
Don't cause a panic - Announcing there is limited stock and that you are going to sell on a first-come-first-served basis is going to cause a rush.
Provide alternatives - Don't force users into only purchasing through a website. Allow them to purchase via phone or store too.
Keep it simple - The whole process could have been streamlined. Adding a text message as a method of authentication was unnecessarily complicated and caused problems.
Avoid AJAX - On a site that is going to be hit by heavy traffic, avoid using unnecessary AJAX. It was impossible to jump to the appropriate place in the process. Instead I was forced me to start from scratch each time the page hung.
Use cookies - By using cookies they could have saved me considerable time entering my information again and again.
Clear messaging - Despite completing the process I am unsure of whether I have an iphone coming or not. The site needed to make it clear whether an order had been successfully placed.
Error handling - When things went wrong with the site it didn't respond elegantly. Some carefully written messages could have cleared up a lot of confusion.
Better labels - One label asked me if I wanted a bolt on package. It didn't explain what that package was or what answer was required. It just gave me a blank text box. What was I supposed to type into it? Should I leave it blank? Why was it a text box and not a dropdown menu? Was this the reason my submission was failing?
Email confirmation - It would have been nice to receive an email confirming or rejecting my order.
Waiting list - For those who failed to place an order before the product 'sold out' there should be an alternative. Never turn a customer away. Either offer the chance to pre-order with an estimated delivery date or at give the change to register to be informed when new stock arrives.

Update: Alex made some excellent additional points in the comments and I wanted to mention them here too. He added to my already extensive list:

Get a CDN or virtual servers - If you're expecting a lot of traffic in a short time, look to share the load. Think about placing your critical functions (such as an online shop) onto a platform that allows you to deploy additional servers on demand (often called Virtual Private Servers) - such as Amazon S3 or similar. If you can't change onto something like that - you can still help your server by moving images, CSS and javascript onto another server, or even a CDN. A Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a network of servers that contain copy of your key files to help spread the load.
Have a backup plan (or have two!) - If you have something really high-profile, have a backup plan, or two! In this case, O2 DID have a back-up plan... they had a 'failover' site... which was a simple one-page form to take down customers details. The only problem was it didn't work when it needed too... it failed too!
Brief your call centre - Knowing that some customers were likely to experience trouble accessing the site (or even just getting confused placing an order), you should make sure that you brief your call centre staff - put on extra staff and make sure that they can take orders too, and know what to do. When I called O2's customer services, they couldn't offer any help as 'upgrades were online only'. Additionally they couldn't check if my 3 times I put my credit card details in were registered (they weren't as it happens). If all goes wrong... the call centre is your last line of defense, and O2 dropped the ball here too.

Update 2: Well, the iPhone 3G has now launched in the UK and O2s website continues to fail users. This time Apple was forced to turn away customers from their stores because they were unable to register them with the O2 site. The reason why: The O2 website would only work in Internet Explorer. This provides us with yet another lesson to learn...

Build for your audience - Consider who your target audience is and what requirements they have. In particular consider their accessibility need to make sure you never turn away people wanting to give you money.

All in all it was badly handled and I am pissed off. Can you tell!

Copy with personality

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 09:00:04 +0000

Too much of the copy I read on websites is bland and uninspiring. Its time to add some personality.

If your website was a person what type of person would it be? Is it young idealistic and carefree or a portly middle aged business man that likes to play golf on the weekend?

The chances are it is neither. In fact it probably has no personality at all. It may have pretty graphics which set a tone, but it is the copy that should add the character.

Unfortunately most online copy is a mixture of various styles and tone. Website owners simply do not consider what personality their copy is communicating.

However, copy doesn't need to be this way. Let's look at three examples of great writing.

Lynx shower gel

For my shame I buy Lynx shower gel. This is surprising because their product is aimed at teenage men (something I have long since stopped being). The copy on their bottles reflects their audience and definitely communicates a very strong personality; that of an oversexed young guy desperate to get laid...

Want skin she can't wait to get her hands on? Lynx Smoothing Shower Scrub with cactus milk exfoliates and energises your skin to keep her coming back for more.

I particularly like the way they refers to 'cactus milk' rather than Aloe Vera. Aloe Vera is mentioned a lot in women's beauty products and that is not at all appropriate for this image conscious male audience.

I want one of those

I want one of those is a website that sells a variety of gadgets and gizmos. It is trying to project a fun, light-hearted persona full of ideas and great things to do. Its copy reflects that.

Take for example the Waboba Ball that they sell. Basically it is a plastic ball you throw around in the sea. There is very little to say about it but that doesn't put off the copy writers on this site...

Named after the rare and sacred Waboba goat found only in the high Annapurna (not sure there's a low one), this ball, whilst devoid of hooves, hair, horns and questionable eating habits, is just like a goat, and even bounces on water just like a goat does. Hmmm. Perhaps it isn't named after the goat after all, we just looked up goats and it seems that they tend not to bounce on water, or anything else come to that. The Waboba Ball however miraculously does bounce, a lot. This brilliant invention is what larking about in water was invented for. Forget lobbing plastic discs at each other in the pool or at the beach, this hackey-sack sized little monster bounces off the water like you wouldn't believe.

Genius. What it lacks in real selling points it makes up for in character.

Innocent Smoothies

Innocent are masters of good copy. Their packaging is a work of art from the "stop looking at my bottom" message on the bottom of their bottles to the "enjoy by" notice rather than the normal "Use by". Their website too has some gems of good copy that simply oozes personality...

We were wondering if you'd like to join the innocent family. Don't worry - it's not some weird cult. It's just our way of staying in touch with the people who drink our drinks i.e. you. Every week we'll email you our news and give you the chance to win lots of drinks. We'll also invite you to nice events like the innocent village fete and maybe send you the odd present if you're lucky. Finally, we'll very occasionally ask you what you reckon we should do next, as we sometimes get confused.

Its self deprecating, its friendly and most importantly it draws you in, pursuing you to keep reading.

So what about your site? Admittedly the above examples are all fairly light hearted and friendly. Not all websites want to communicate this type of personality. However, all organisations should demonstrate some kind of personality through its copy. Its time to decide what that personality is.