zeldman.com re-design.

We must also consider that not everyone will read the content by the same means. Some may be reading from a large desktop screen, others from a laptop, some from a tablet, and still others via smart phone. Print type is set at 12pt, however if you are looking at 12px on a desktop screen you typically sit farther away than when holding a book or tablet. Also, consider screen resolution differences. Wilson Miner shows an excellent example of comparing the reading distance of a book with a screen. Web browsers default to 16 pixels, most likely because it closely matches the size of printed 12pt type.

image by Wilson Miner

Increasing font size may not be correct for all situations; where there is a need to keep as much content “above the fold” as possible, you might choose to go with a smaller font. The New York Times website offers a great example of mixing the two methodologies. On their home page, they employ smaller fonts to increase the amount of visible content, but when you dive deeper into the site to read an article in long form, the font size is larger to increase readability. There is an ongoing debate, however, about whether “above the fold” even applies anymore. Users are less averse to scrolling these days, especially with the increased use of tablets and smart phones. While the issue continues to be studied, there is no definitive answer.

If we are mindful of the copy we write and focus on eliminating anything unnecessary, increasing font size can provide greater focus on content as well as increased legibility. With the current multitude of screen sizes and resolutions that web design is catering to, we must also be aware of the context in which it will be read as well as viewing distance from the screen. Content is king, and while websites aren’t required to be and shouldn’t have one default font size, we must carefully weigh the benefits of increasing font size, carefully measure them with client goals, and act accordingly.

Some useful links and examples of larger type:

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/10/07/16-pixels-body-copy-anything-less-costly-mistake/
http://get.wunderkit.com/
http://www.apple.com/ipad/features/
http://happycog.com/
http://wm4.wilsonminer.com/posts/2008/oct/20/relative-readability/
http://nicewebtype.com/
http://ilovetypography.com/
http://informationarchitects.net/blog/100e2r

You may be thinking “This is all very interesting, but what does it have to do with web design?” When you create a website, presumably you have a goal for the site, for what you want your users to do, right? That could be anything from reading your material to buying a product to hiring your firm. Building emotion into the site can help drive your users’ behavior. If your site really speaks to your users, the more readily they will use your site. Great design goes beyond just having a functional site; it should be pleasurable and reliable as well.

In Sabina Idler’s recent blog post “Not Just Pretty: Building Emotion Into Your Websites,” she covers the importance and the methodology of emotionally connecting with users through good design. She points to works by user experience experts Don Norman and Aarron Walter, such as Norman’s Three Levels of Visual Design (from his book Emotional Design):

1. Visceral: How the website looks, and how it makes you feel on a gut level.
2. Behavioral: How the website functions (or doesn’t) for you.
3. Reflective: How you understand the website and whether it forms a lasting impression.

If you can positively connect with users on all three levels, you are much more likely to affect their behavior – to get them to keep reading, to buy your product or to hire your firm. Personally, I’m a fan of humor in web design, and making me laugh keeps me engaged. Of course, your site has to work too, but sometimes a chuckle can make me a little more forgiving when a site lets me down in functionality. Take these hilarious 404 error messages, for example. Obviously humor isn’t appropriate for all sites, but if you take the time to understand who your audience is, what they need, how they feel about that need, and how best to appeal to those emotions through your design, then you’re on your way to forging lasting relationships.

My standard reply is that there are 100 websites for 100 budgets.  And even that doesn’t touch on the complexities of the right level of custom design, photography, videography, copywriting, SEO, functionality and all the other pieces that make up a website.  That’s why my next comment is “Let’s talk about your business.”

Not “Let’s talk about your website,” it’s “Let’s talk about your business.  And your marketing.”  Because if your website is going to exist in a vacuum without the appropriate relationship to your business and marketing plans, you don’t really want to hire Cold Spring.  And – I have to say it – we quite likely don’t want you as a client.  Nothing personal – it’s just that we love to help businesses succeed, and we can’t really do that without tying it all together.t

Next step, especially for the smaller businesses: “Oh, you don’t have a business or marketing plan?”  Hmmm.  I don’t mean a fancy, neatly bound document.  It doesn’t even need a professional clear plastic binder!  It really does just mean a plan.  Tell me what differentiates your business from your competitors.  Tell me who your clients are, where your revenue comes from, and what your plans are for growth.  That’s all we need – just a plan.  If you don’t have that, let me know and I’ll hook you up with a professional or two who’ll guide you down the right path.

OK, so now we know what makes you special, who you want to appeal to, and where your money comes from.  Good.  Now, what will your website cost?

Ummm.

• Do you want to be found by people who don’t already know who you are?  If so, you’re going to have to think about search engine optimization and all the associated costs.  Pretty solid return on your investment.
• Would you like to establish a brand that’s going to help your business gain recognition and aid growth in the coming years?  Do you have a good logo?  That’s a good first step.  How about establishing value for your customers and creating an emotional connection with them?  I bet your website can help with that.
• Do you want to be seen as a professional?  Establish trust through photos and/or videos that allow your potential clients to connect with you prior to making that first phone call or sending that email?  Sounds like an important step.
• Will your website be accessed on mobile devices?  If you say “not much,” I’d recommend you think again.  You’re right that mobile browsing was approximately only 1% of site access in early 2010.  But it’s almost 10% now.  And it’ll be around 20% by the end of 2013.  Are you willing to tell 1/5 of your potential clients that they’re not important to you?  I didn’t think so.
• Will you maintain your own website?  Will you have a blog?  Will you manage the SEO of your site to any extent?  If so, we’d better integrate a content management system (CMS) for you, as we do for almost all our clients.
• Functionality?  As simple as contact forms & quote requests.  Project management?  File transfer?  What do you need to run your business efficiently?
• Copywriting is a fun one.  We all can write – some better than others.  Writing concise marketing copy, however, isn’t quite as simple as you might think.  Five or ten years ago websites were full of boring long-body text that not many people read.  Now there’s an expectation that the copy on your website will be witty, catchy, short & sweet.  Will it help build your brand?  Or will it help bounce your intended customers before they have any interest in contacting you?

And then there’s that little thing called custom website design.  It’s what we do.  Yes, I know custom website design means asking all the above questions and ferreting out the answers that will help your business.  I know it means working with your timeline and budget.  And, as with almost every project in the design world, it also means working with personalities, preferences, preconceptions, egos, and helping manage the project so that it’ll reach a successful completion.  But custom design also means building a website that will be uniquely yours.  It will give you a positive return on your investment and help grow your company now and for a few years to come.  We’d like to help build your brand and become a trusted resource for your company.

So, what’s your website going to cost?

Call me at 508.865.5191.  My name’s Jeff.  Let’s talk about your business…

Want a quick overview of the other factors Google uses in their Search ranking? It’s by no means complete, but the technology overview page of Google’s site summarizes it in a single page, so at least it’s a quick read!

For the record, I think Em was laughing because I was laughing, but maybe it was the other way around – I can’t quite remember.

So, does your domain name matter?

• Is it professional?
• Does it fit onto your printed materials?
• It doesn’t spell anything inappropriate does it?

Okay, then you’re off to a good start.

Lots of companies are concerned about having really short domain names. They’re nice. These days, they also tend to be really expensive since you have to buy them from someone who’s squatting on them. It’s not worth it unless your marketing budget is big enough to easily bury an expense like that. Ask your customers – how often have they typed your domain name into a browser? Heck, did you know most people don’t even see the domain name when it comes up in a search? It’s not the biggest font, it’s not the boldest font, and unless you’re in technology, it doesn’t make as much sense as the title and description listed in the results. If you paid a lot of money for a domain name, you could put that money into a nicer website!

How about search engine optimization? Maybe you get a little SEO boost by having your keywords echoed in your domain name. Right now, at least. Tough to buy that ‘best-massachusetts-website-designer.com’ domain name and then have the search engines change their algorithms, forcing you to find some way to deal or switch.

Branding? Sure. There’s a lot of merit to this one. And it ties right into what I see as the biggest point:

Will someone who sees your email address know what you do and might they go check out your website?

That’s the key to me. If they already have your business card in front of them, you’re set. If they have your brochure, you’re set. If you came up well-ranked in a search, you’re all set. But what if they happen to see your email address? Can you pick up some additional traffic? I bet you can.

And with that said, it’s a minor deal. Get the best domain name you can. Make it fit your business. And then get back to work on your business while we build your website.

We’re in a pretty tough business here. It involves business and marketing skill, artistic sense and graphic abilities, current technical coding skills, and to boot, we have to deal with people! (Seriously, if you met some of our competitors, you’d understand). Web design companies are often like fireflies or wildfires. They either blink on and off briefly as cited in the comic, or they’re huge concerns that involve significant investments to work with. We’ve survived thus far by relying on generous clients, strong partners and beloved spouses. And we’re hiring so that we can better deal with the current boom.

Who do you know who’s looking for a change of pace? We demand strong technical skills here, but offer a flexible and challenging job. We take pride in strong design and clean code and make both browsing for current trends and education part of the job description. We’re looking for a both a web designer and a web developer focused on CMS implementation and customization. If you’re interested or know anyone who’s looking for those jobs, please get in touch with us!

There are a couple basic rules that should be observed. Not because a marketing expert says they should, but because they work.

1. Establish a a strong and unique visual identity.
1. Logo – ideally insignia and logotype
2. Color Scheme
3. Overall style
2. Stick to that style until that style is officially replaced. Use it in all web and print media in as strict a manner as possible.

It’s not a visual identity rule, but let’s lump it in there: spell check. Always. I know this one is going to come back to bite me because I’m guilty of it at times like everyone else, but make every effort not to screw this up. It doesn’t matter how recognizable your brand is if people think you’re not very good at what you do.

At Cold Spring, we recommend MailChimp over Constant Contact as an email marketing tool because MailChimp allows us to more easily match HTML emails to the style of a website we’ve designed. I can’t count how many email newsletters I receive where I open them up, see that they’re another basic, boring rectangle of stuff, and click delete without taking the time to read them. Am I a design snob? Yep. Not as much as a lot of other people I know, however. Regardless, it’s not my job to fight through your boring appearance to find the content that’s of value. My job is to keep my eyes open. Your job is to interest me enough to keep me engaged at least until I see what you want me to see.

You don’t have to observe all the rules with your own brand. You don’t have to establish a Pantone color palette so everything prints the same way every time. Pretty cool if you do, however – Coca Cola is PMS 484- what are you? You don’t have to create a set of rules dictating how close any objects can be placed to your logo in web or print media. You don’t have to select (or create!) a font so that your logotype will be unique. Nice though, eh?

Your business is your business. There are some really good rules to follow and some good reasons to do it. What have I missed? What are the keys to your visual identity?

We’re about to launch a new website for our friends Scott & Donna over at Erb Photography. It’s not a site I’d ever sell to a large corporation – but hopefully it’s just right for our clients. Check it out at www.erbphoto.com Even more importantly, we hope it’s right for their clients. It shows their character and creativity as well as their skill. It’s a cool design – we can’t wait to show it to you.

At Cold Spring, we’ve traditionally worked hard not to design websites that fall into the corporate/white background template feel. It doesn’t mean we can’t design sites like that well – just that we try to build identity and custom feel through shapes and colors that aren’t square and white. Right now, Cold Spring is trying to make a push into larger corporate clients. And our recent track record has become a hurdle instead of a starting block. Let’s see if we can shake off the non-corporate mantle and turn out some websites that will appeal to our new market. Check back in a few months and see if we’ve succeeded.

For those of you who know the ins and outs of web design, you might want to jump to the next paragraph, since this isn’t rocket science. Designing a good website involves knowing something about what the site will be about. There’s both knowledge about the company or service in general and specific detail about products or services. There’s the people involved, who they are, what they do and how to contact them. There’s results, case studies and various forms of proof that things can get done, and done well. There are existing logos and color palettes, photos, graphical themes and already established visual identities. There’s more – it’s all content. It, combined with the website design, makes your site special.

While in college I took a couple courses in operations research as part of my engineering degree. It was pretty cool stuff, too, since it was immediately obvious how applicable it would be to real life. Problems of bottlenecks, throughput, routing, scheduling and optimization are part of all our personal and professional lives. Now, I hope most of you don’t break out mathematical formulas when trying to figure the best way through the grocery store. Or which errands to run in which order. Or even how to most efficiently manage the development of a website. I don’t know that a calculator is really necessary. But an understanding of how to efficiently run a process is certainly useful.

A simplified website involves content and design. Two separate paths. At the end of the two paths, they combine as the website is built and populated with content. So for years I tried to run projects efficiently and worked with my clients in gathering and developing content while we designed the website. The problem is that this method yields less than ideal websites! I won’t say they were all crappy sites since we’ve put together some pretty good ones over the years without having content in hand, but they weren’t anything like they could be, that’s for sure.

Why? Lots of reasons

• Design space can’t be well allocated without knowing what the content will be.
• Marketing copy can’t be used as relied on for critical impact if you haven’t seen the copy.
• Photos? Who’s supplying them and what will they be about. Good luck with that.

There are many more reasons as well, but that short list will do to prove the point. If the content isn’t ready before the design of the site starts, the resulting website will be less than optimal. I was right about operations research being a cool subject, but I demonstrated my lack of knowledge about design in how I arranged things. Thanks to Chris’s persistence, Cold Spring operates under a different system now and our results speak for themselves.

Grandpa Lenny, my maternal grandfather, was a New Yorker. He was a charmer. A schmoozer. A funny guy. He was also really, really good at his job. I know that ’cause I spent a lot of time polishing his Jaguar and learning what a ‘foot wedge’ was on the golf course. On the other hand, I don’t have a clue what his clients thought about him. Don’t get me wrong – I loved him – but I never even saw eye to kneecap with him.

Grandpa Sidney, my dad’s father, was a Mainer. He lived in a simple house with an basement amazingly full of stuff. His garage had more dog treats in it than the neighbor’s dogs could ever eat. He smiled and projected love & caring. And when we walked through the streets of Portland, it seemed like every person in the town (it was a town back then) knew his name. I wanted to grow up to be like Grandpa Syd, with that sense of caring all around me.

The insurance business is full of stories like this. There are big players and small players. Geico has spent $800 million on annual advertising and we know they have plenty of competition in those deep waters. I’m nurturing a deep and growing dislike for Flo, the main character in the Progressive ads. It may be her lipstick, but I think it’s just how she always seems fake. Either way, I’m not analyzing it too far, ’cause I’m just fine with disliking the company running the ads. It’s all fake. “You can save 15% on car insurance” or “they saved $869!” Truth in advertising should force companies like this to disclose that these are teaser rates and, once they balloon in 6 months, you’re going to either deal with it or find yourself another plan. Yuck.

Then there’s Pete. It’s hard to tell thus far, but this blog post is about Pete Lombardo. Pete runs PJ Lombardo Insurance Agency in Worcester. Pete’s one of the little guys. He’s been in business for over 25 years. He runs a tight ship with an administrative assistant and another agent working out of his office. His advertising budget might top $1K some years. But he’s doing it right.

How do I know? Because everyone loves Pete. He’s always got a kind word and a smile for you. He’s volunteered a lot of personal time to good causes and always has time to help out professionally as well. I’m not going to save $869 when I have Pete handle my property and casualty insurance, but I’m also not going to have to deal with the consequences 6 months after I hire him. Same thing for my business – Pete just tells me the best way to handle my insurance and then takes care of it. No worries, no fuss, no issues. Got a new car? Pete talks to the dealer, handles the registry and hands you the plate. Talk about peace of mind! And the charge for that service? Nope. Just part of dealing with Pete.

It’s not surprising, but Pete gives good business advice as well. Pete comes up with lines like “If your clients won’t pay your price, they don’t care enough for your company to survive.” He wasn’t telling me how to get rich quick when he said that. He was telling me how life and business should run, and run in a way that is sustainable and feels good.

And when the poop hits the fan, what happens? When the ice storm hit Massachusetts in 2008, Pete individually followed up on every claim for each of his clients. He managed it all, followed up with the companies holding the policies, and got the money his clients needed to rebuild & repair. What do you think the odds are that the big companies did that kind of follow-up?

Heck, do you even know who your agent is? Who are you going to talk to when the next emergency hits? I’m going to talk to Pete. And I feel good.

What do you care? Why’s this ramble in Cold Spring’s blog? Because Cold Spring provides real value in design services to small and medium businesses. I want Cold Spring to run like Pete’s business and like my Grandpa Syd’s business – doing good and feeling good. We’ll keep working on that attitude and that value. And if you want to have Pete quote your business or P&C insurance, give him a call at 508.751.6722. He’ll take care of you.