10 considerations to create a better overall website experience for the growing tablet market.

Apple just announced the iPad mini. So what, you ask? To create a great experience for people using these devices to view your website you need to consider their expectations, the screen size of their device and the context that people are using their new devices in. Each has an impact on your web design and how you craft a great web experience.

“As of two weeks ago we’ve sold 100 million iPads.” Tim Cook, Apple CEO at October 23, 2012 Apple iPad mini event

It’s more than Adaptive or Responsive Web Design

You may be expecting me to tell you to use a responsive or adaptive design for your next website so it will look great on an iPad mini. And you’d be partly right since responsive website design means your website will look equally beautiful on a smartphone, or the just announced iPad mini or iPad 4th generation with retina display.

But there’s something more central to consider before we talk about solutions like adaptive web design. Experience.

Experience can be very specific and contextual, like making sure your website looks great on the 7.9″ display of an iPad mini, or how prominent your phone and address are when viewed from a smartphone. We won’t really understand all the ways we need to optimize our websites for the iPad mini until we see how usage compares to that of a smartphone or regular iPad. But we can make some educated guesses and focus on the overall experience we create so that iPad mini users love your website just as much as regular iPad or web users do.

To get clear on designing for the iPad mini you have to first consider the person using your website and where and how they’re experiencing your website.

• Given Apple’s market success, entry price of $329 and pent up demand for a smaller size iPad, sales are expected to be ‘amazing.’ That means a flood of new tablet users adding to the already impressive installed base of iPad’s that reached 100MM units as of two weeks ago. This will quickly be a very important market to design for.
• iPad users are spoiled by high quality experiences (that’s a good thing). But, it also raises the bar for us in terms of making websites that will be viewed by spoiled Apple users. We can expect iPad mini users to expect your website to ‘just work’ while also looking beautiful.
• We know the iPad mini has a 7.9″ screen with a resolution of 1024 x 768, the same resolution as the original iPad 2 (vs. the higher res iPad 3 with Retina display).
• The screen size means that iPad mini users can use all existing iPad apps in their original native size. In other words, iPad mini users have zero expectation of a transition timeline like we saw with the iPad retina display where at launch very few iOS apps were optimized for the higher resolution display. Expect higher expectations.
• The more portable size of the smaller iPad mini could mean that it’s more likely to be used in mobile contexts, more like a smartphone.
• The speed of the iPad mini will be the same as an older iPhone 4S or iPad 2 so it won’t be as ‘snappy’ from a performance perspective of the iPad 3 or iPhone 5.
• On the other hand the availability of LTE in the wireless versions means faster download speeds and less sensitivity to larger media files.

This is a pretty interesting combination from a design perspective. Should we become obsessed with making every little thing perfect with the new 7.9″ screen size and resolution of the iPad mini? Yup. But that one thing won’t be how iPad mini users are likely to judge your overall website experience. Instead they’ll come away with an overall impression of your company based on the collective elements of your website such as how it works, looks and meets your needs.

Think like IBM, Mercedes Benz, L.L. Bean and Nordstrom, all companies that deliver very good products packaged with very good experiences.

Applying this thinking to the digital experience created by your website

The real work begins by identifying weak links in the experience you are creating for your web visitors. Our design and website function should serve the user by being easy-to-use, specific to our needs and beautiful. We want to adapt our website to the people we want to attract and the scenarios of how they’ll use our website. With that in mind let’s look at some specifics.

Here are 10 elements where we often let users down and create a lackluster overall experience (even if some elements are great). The more of them you get right, the better the overall experience  you’ll create. Some of these aren’t web design centric but they are user experience centric. 

1. Great text and video content are frequently upended by a design that’s gimmicky, breaks or doesn’t work for a given context (e.g. mobile). It is easy to succumb to creating designs that get in the way of our content.
2. Unclear site navigation and organization or usability problems like slow site speed or browser compatibility issues.
3. Failing to offer a mobile design or responsive web design.
4. Text that is too small, has too little line spacing or too many words per line (this greatly effects how inviting the text on your site is to read).
5. Stock photos or graphics that look like stock photos or graphics.
6. Relevant, useful content.
7. Poor writing: copy or jargon filled writing containing lots of $50 words and unintelligible BS. Write for clarity like you would design for clarity.
8. Valid and optimized markup and css
9. Complex forms that are too long or ask for too much information
10. Integrated, real-time ways to interact with you like live chat, click-to-call or online appointment scheduling

Exceeding the overall experience you create for your users isn’t just for Apple. It’s for anyone who wants to push themselves to be better than the other guy, make more sales or create an environment on their website that keeps people coming back for more.

Getting started can be the hardest part and it’s important to not get stuck by the size of your task. Take the worst part of your website experience and make it awesome. By starting with the weakest link in your design you’ll immediately improve your overall experience. Then take the next weakest link on your website and obliterate it! It may take six months or even a year but you’ll get there. Apple took some thirty years before they really became the company we think of today. Producing great quality requires thoughtful work. It doesn’t hurt if you find reward in the journey along the way. Some guy named Steve often liked to make that point.

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Is there a no gimmicks way to write one blog post per week when you have no time?

The challenge. As a business owner I struggle mightily to find time to write for my business. And it’s one of the first things I feel that I can jettison when I’m too busy to even help all my current clients. But that kind of thinking will kill my business. And it will kill yours too. There’s no telling when a key client will pick up the phone to say they’re not going to buy from you anymore. It happens to the best providers, even in the best of times.

The Google call-to-arms. Today, the impact of regular business blogging and social media updates is rising exponentially. Google has made the  most sweeping and important changes to their search algorithm of anytime since the beginning of their existence. Every change they’ve made has punished websites that lacked quality content and links (and maintained their emphasis on regular updates). And quality visitors and links only come from creating good content that draws people and links like ants to a picnic.

Writing is difficult. But it’s no more difficult than a dozen other business disciplines like accounting that you have to master to run a company. But few business owners would sit down and attempt to manage their accounting books like it was something you could do by simply concentrating more. Yet, we ask that of ourselves with our business writing all the time.

There’s a cure for what ails you with almost any business problem. There are quick fixes, temporary solutions and long term strategies. I’m game to use any and all of these if I’m solving a problem for my business. But at some point you have to find long term strategies that produce results. Long term solutions must be thought out and repeatable. There’s no sense in sprinting if you need to run a marathon. And writing useful content for your business prospects is a marathon and exactly the kind of discipline you must follow to grow your business.

Ask a professional writer how they get a writing project done and they’ll tell you that the trick is to write each day. That goes for simple blog posts to books. And writing a little each day is more efficient so it’s the time-starved business owner’s best friend.

Many business owners or managers can write a quality blog post in 10-15 minutes of daily writing if they write over a five day business week. If you follow this formula you’ll likely have written for between 50 and 95 minutes over five business days, produced on the order of 2,000 words and performed at least three edits. This culminates in a finished blog post that’s between 500 and 1,000 words that’s easy to ready, makes sense and provides your reader with useful, relevant content.

Working in small bite sized quantities is a method I bet you’ve used plenty of times before. It’s well known that working important actions in to your daily habits is a key to producing better quality with sustainable results.

Is this kind of time investment worth your time?

Yes. If you have any ability to write it’s time to get better so you see a bigger return on the time you invest. If you’d asked me this question before Google made sweeping changes to their search algorithm this year with their Panda and Penguin updates I’d advise caution about doing your own writing and content marketing.

Not anymore. Today, your website will no longer rank competitively unless you’re producing quality content for your website and producing similar quality social media updates. If you don’t value your organic search engine leads then be prepared to increase your ad budget by 5X to 10X to replace the lost traffic you’ve received in the past from google. Finding an effective form of advertising that doesn’t break the bank remains an allusive target that typically burns a lot of money.

Can I hire a ghost writer if I hate writing or suck at it?

If you hate writing and just want great search results then you’re still going to need to spend a significant amount of time working with a ghost writer to dial-in a writing style that works for your business. And the content that you’ll produce together will need to be of high enough quality to be appreciated by your target audience. Once you develop a writing voice and flow for working with each other you’ll still need to meet regularly to go over topics, have the writer ask questions to get strong quotes and details that only a subject matter expert could know about your business. This isn’t a hands-off process but it does take less time in the long run than writing from scratch (at the expense of having to pay a ghost writer).

Writing drives clearer thinking

Writing has important fringe benefits for your business. Writing requires you to research and think about your prospects and your business. It’s hard to write like this and not stumble upon an insight that helps your business. And because your business and the world around you is constantly changing it’s common for this kind of writing to lead to new products or services that help you grow. Writing requires that you find clarity and it is this clarity that will give you long lasting value from investing in regular writing.

Here’s how

The key to writing when you have no time, is to write like a professional. Like it was your job. And blogging for business is a part-time professional writer’s job.

Writers follow a pattern of writing before they do anything else, sort of a Do Not Pass Go! until you’ve written today creed. And in the professional’s habits we find the actions that we can mimmick to create our own habit.

• Always be on the lookout for new content as you work through your week
• Bookmark or store interesting source material in your memory system to reference later for quotes and links (I use Evernote)
• Write when you first get up, before you do anything else
• Don’t check your email
• Do not start getting ready for your day
• Do not pass go until you’ve written for 15 minutes
• Be OK with not finishing a complete post, but don’t be surprised if you manage a rough draft or outline
• Use tools to automate any part of your writing work to speed it up or reduce drudgery (Text Expander is great for text snippets and I use Byword for writing in markdown with Brett Terpstra’s Apple Services to automate reference links).
• Relax, you’ve got all week to finish your post!

Budget 10-15 minutes of writing time over 5 business days. By writing for 10 to 15 minutes five days a week you’ve got between 50 minutes and one hour and fifteen minutes of writing time to write your article. And that gives you enough time to write and edit a post that will surpass more than 90% of the drivel you’ll find on business blogs.

Because your content quality will be higher you’ll increase the chances of receiving more natural backlinks and Google will come to see your site as “the real deal.” That’s if you follow this method.

But what if you don’t know what to write about?

That won’t last. As long as you remember that your job is to write about something relevant for your customers or prospects, it’s hard to run out of material. The more you write and set your mind to the process of daily writing the more you’ll spot opportunities to write about. Writing more will also lead to getting burned out, especially if you’re revisiting the same topic over and over again. At that point I suggest you research more ways to develop interesting content. But don’t judge this this as a major problem. All the practice you’ll have done in writing every day will make this a challenge you’ll be better able to meet. And the reality is that you’ll need to take time off occasionally to recharge your writing batteries. Taking breaks is key to recharging, just don’t let them become extended vacations as I have done…

Grist for the mill – the business writing mill

Customer interactions are grist for your blogging mill. Sales and customer service calls, complaints, inquiries, these are all opportunities to see what prospects see as useful information. If you listen to your customers you can write a strong FAQ document. These client questions are a gold mine of writing material. Your jobs is simple – pick out relevant questions that people ask over and over again and write your solution to them. Add anecdotes and customer stories. Your blog post will provide your typical customer prospect with exactly the kind of answers that they’re looking for.

Writing one blog post per week can be as easy as falling off a horse in a steeplechase

We’ve established that the questions your prospects and customers ask are the same topics you should be blogging about for your business. Today, you answer many of these questions by email. And these emails are often a whole section of what could be a blog post, OR even an entire blog post. There are usually a few tweaks that you can make to an email (like removing some specific language or situation) that will transform an email in to the core of a useful blog post.

These kinds of emails can typically be turned in to posts in less time then writing a new post from scratch. Think about it. How many emails do you write a week that are about common client needs, questions concerns? A lot. And when you sit through and look at 5 days worth of these emails there’s often a blog post in them.

Your workflow is to notice these emails as they go by and either copy/paste them to your writing tool (or memory system) or even just cc them to your writing tool or to-do app so you know you’ve got a topic to write about. Sometimes I’ll be writing a response to a client and get part way through it and realize I could be writing a blog post. In those situations I keep in mind that my email doesn’t need the same level of editing as a blog post would but still needs a proper beginning, middle and end. With that in mind, write your email and call it a first draft.

Get inspired

It can be hard to get up on a horse the first time and even harder to get back on one that you’ve fallen off of. A little knowledge and inspiration or a new process can help you get going. The email process I’ve outlined above is a unique way to look at content generation in the context of leveraging existing workflows and time expenditures in your business. But there are other ways. Here are just a few that may get you moving.

• Pick up some books on creative writing – they tend to be more interesting and motivational than business writing books. A well regarded example is If you want to write by Brenda Ueland.
• Read about ways to unlock your creativity and productivity like the book Do the work from author Steven Pressfield.
• Hang out online with other writers. Find writing websites, subscribe to their email list, follow their channels on social media. A favorite of mine is Brain Pickings from writer Maria Popova, a writer for Wired and The Atlantic. where you can get a weekly email of amazing writing content that is both instructive and inspirational.
• Take part in a regular writing exercise to get  in the flow of writing. An example would be WritingFromTheSoul.net who sends out a list of items every Saturday and asks you to do some free writing based on her topics.

Everyone is busy and time time starved

Some of us don’t practice our writing so it either seems impossible or takes forever. Both of these things can be remedied with a bit of practice, just like accounting and other business disciplines. It’s not always easy and it does require planning, organization and effort. But that’s business. You don’t just show up and have money rain down on you despite what all those Internet marketing scams say.

Here are some other great sources for writing relevant blog posts

• One of the best kinds of content is something that teaches your prospects about the dangers of your industry. For example, how to avoid getting ripped off when you buy
• Explaining complex parts of your service or product. Such as a lawyer or mortgage broker who can simplify mind-numbing tax code or the latest mortgage relief program with an anecdote or example.
• How-to articles. If you can explain how to do something that solves a prospect’s problem you’ll get traffic and links. If you share specific examples that you use in your own business (your “secrets”, you’ll likely make a more memorable and link worthy post)
• Tell stories about your customers and their experiences. This often requires leaving out some names and other info but these customer stories can be compelling.

Is business writing or blogging really for me?

No one can determine if business blogging is ultimately worth it to you. But you have to try an organized or semi-professional workflow before you can really judge that. You’ll learn about your own strengths and weaknesses in your writing and realize that you’re not always following your own advice (shocking!) which in turn typically leads you to live your advice more often. It’s the same kind of sobering experience that parenting can be when you realize that you can’t tell your kids what to do without demonstrating the skill or habit you’re shouting at them like a drill sargaent.

No gimmicks doesn’t mean you can’t trick your brain to your own benefit

Have you noticed how breaking down tasks to their smallest action can help you get off your procrastinating derrière? No, it’s just me that  wanders the halls of Amazon.com searching for the latest bluetooth headset or begins a new counterproductive research project into productivity  for the 800th time? Scott H. Young, who recently hacked a four-year MIT Computer Science degree in one year through self-study, cited Stanford researcher B.J. Fogg’s work on making tiny changes to your routine to effect larger, permanent habits.

“Want to start flossing? Stanford researcher, B.J. Fogg found the best way is to commit only to flossing one tooth.

At first, this might sound ridiculous. After all, what good is flossing one tooth? But the idea is that flossing one tooth is really easy, and almost nobody will stop flossing after only finishing the first tooth.

It turns out many behaviors are like this, which have a trigger which is relatively easy to perform, but cascades effort to the rest of the behavior. If you can establish the trigger as a habit, the rest will follow.”

 

Don’t beat the daily blogging horse – hop on it and ride it, ahem, write it like the wind

I wrote this post because I fell off the daily blogging horse after getting burned out and partly because I got too busy writing for other people as their ghost writer. Writing for other people led me to approach writing as a professional discipline and that’s what led me back to writing for my own business today. The moral of this story is to use professional tools, methods and mimic a professional writer’s habits to find the most learning and biggest result in improving your business blog writing.

~julian

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Do you ask yourself on a daily basis how long you can maintain your frenetic pace? My wife and I both do. We work way too much and see too little of each other and our kids. Sound familiar? I have to make the work I do count. And that includes taking time out to build and market my own business. I’ve made the mistake of not updating my website. Shoemakers are famous for neglecting their children’s shoes. We all experience this in our lives.

“The cobbler’s children have no shoes” refers to the phenomena where people who are successful at doing something but don’t demonstrate that in their own personal lives.

Web designers who have a ugly looking personal homepage, personal organizers whose own house is a mess, engineers who have personal projects that are a bundle of hacked together spaghetti code, PR firms which nobody has ever heard of, etc.” from a Quora post

Since I started exceler8 in 2005 I’ve been obsessively building my knowledge and learning an endless array of new skills. And I’m having a delightful time torturing my clients with this experience for the purpose of growing their business and solving their toughest business problems. Although I’ve been in marketing and advertising for 24 years and engaged in professional Internet roles since 1997, the last five years have been eye openers for me. I’ve just started the process of articulating the story of what I’ve learned, putting pieces of it down on my website and moving forward.

The story is what matters. That’s partly why the web design you see in front of you is so much in the background. It’s a clean slate to tell a story with. Along the way I’ll do my best to drop hints and secrets about what I think are the most important things I’ve learned in design, marketing and web tools and how you can save a lot more than just your ass for coming along for the ride.

Right now I’m endeavoring to take a little time out of each week to do this work. It’s what I counsel my clients to do and have found it successful myself in my past. It’s a big job for anyone to tackle this kind of effort and still keep a business and family running. If you happen on my website during these times you could get the wrong idea about the quality that I produce. I care deeply about both how I work and what result I create. I fail as often as the next guy. But my desire to learn about life and the work I do never dims.

So be warned, at least in the case of my own website, you’ll find mistakes whether you’re a web developer pouring over my code or a potential client noticing a glaring typo. I’ll catch all those. For me and my business, it’s better to live through a few mistakes, and even lose some sales, rather than suffer the much larger pain of never launching the next important phase of my business and life. How about you?«

~ julian

President and Creative Director, exceler8 web design and marketing

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