Music is a common bond for most Small Box employees. Most of us play at least one instrument and if not have strong opinions about those who do. We have an internal project, MusicalFamilyTree.com, that keeps us connected to our music roots. At one point or another some of us thought, foolishly!, that we might go pro with music. Instead we have funneled that energy into designing, building and marketing websites. I’ve found there are a number of crossover lessons with these two seemingly disparate disciplines.

I grew up recording on cassette 4 Tracks with very limited equipment. A 4 track was just that- 4 audio tracks to fit all of your guitars, bass, drums, vocals, keyboards etc on to. But I learned how to maximize that constraint, make the best of it. I would record to three tracks, bounce down to one, record to two, bounce to one, etc until I had a wonderful wall of lo-fi sound that came pretty close to the thing I heard in my head.

As I got older I had access to real studios and better gear including 8, 16 and even 24 track machines. These things are as big as washing machines. But you were still limited to how many tracks you had and tape was expensive ($100-200 for 30 minutes). You also had to be careful about wearing out the tape during recording and mixing. Each take and mix mattered. This forces you to focus and make choices.

When computer recording came along it offered a world with few constraints- no real limit of tracks, no tape to wear out, etc. But that doesn’t mean the albums are actually better. It used to be a band would record an album, mix, master and press it all within 30-60 days. Now it is usually 1-2 years. This while we live in a world where you can record a song in the morning and have it posted in MP3 format to a website for anyone to hear by the evening. Think of all the albums that were never recorded since the band was spending years tweaking something that was already finished- hello Axl Rose and “Chinese Democracy”.

The limitlessness realm we are approaching with technology is fun and exciting but let’s remember the technology itself is not an end, it’s a tool. As we adopt new devices, interfaces and functionality we have to ask- Does this actually improve the experience? Is it adding or removing value?

To the Web.

Since the Web has so few limits it’s difficult to artificially impose constraints but I am beginning to see that we have no choice. In order to deliver a website/app for a client on time/budget requires discipline from both parties. This is especially challenging when your medium is perhaps the least disciplined in the history of mediums! Anything goes with the Web, for better or worse.

The easiest/laziest thing to do when faced with multiple choices is to not make a choice, leave every door open as long as possible letting in all kinds of distracting ideas. The Web is a world of a million ideas and making decisions hurt, at first you feel like you are stepping on ants for no good reason. It’s easy to start second guessing- “maybe the original logo was better”, “maybe we should have added a blog”, “maybe we should have gone with green?”, “maybe we need to add ‘FAQ’ to the main navigation”, etc. These kinds of decisions, often ones that can be changed later if really needed, can drag a project down. They hurt morale and momentum. They stop the next album from ever getting into production.

So the web is limitless but time and money is not. This is a good thing! Endless resources are the root of all waste. Limited resources create discipline. For a project to be successful all stakeholders must agree on and embrace the existing constraints. This doesn’t have to mean a defined scope of work as much as an understanding of budget, timeline and goals. Scope will change. It’s just a guess anyway until you dig into the project. But just like recording you only have so much tape, so much time and lots of tracks to lay down. So let’s embrace constraints, see them as needed chalk lines and get the job done on time and on budget!

Related reading: “Rework” by 37 Signals (this book and my time in Austin for SXSWi greatly influenced this post).

Seth Godin writes

It’s a good question, here’s how I would answer:

The web seems really complicated but not to me. I just see it as a series of decisions that require particular expertise to do correctly. The best decision is the one that makes the next one seem more apparent. There is never going to be one person who is right about everything all the time. What’s important in doing a web site, or marketing strategy, or making any series of decisions is to make each one as close to right as you can so the next one is clearer.

We do that by first and foremost attracting the top talent in the region. Then we challenge them to do more, to understand the implications of these important decisions. Then we provide what we hope to be the top level of customer service for our clients.

The results are clear to me, some are big and some are small. I take a small amount of pride in knowing that we are growing while other web companies are going out of business or shrinking. But what I take the most pride above all is the relationships that I have built with those in the box with me, and the way we extend it to our clients. Of the huge number of sites we have helped produce, 99% of them are still online exactly as we launched them.

Key to our growth is the way we have extended our services beyond designing and programming websites. It is a complete array of services our clients need, and some they don’t. That’s the real Small Box difference right there, whatever people think they know about us, there is more.

I have become obsessed. All I can think about is usability. I’m not sure if it’s a blessing or a curse but it occupies my mind constantly. All day I dream about….usability.

This has been sparked by a few recent developments. Some conversations with colleagues (shout out to Jon from Tuitive Group again) sparked my interest but some new tools have really changed the way I look at websites.

I am coming to see usability as the other side of the Internet Marketing coin. Getting people to your site with good search engine marketing/optimization (SEM/SEO) is a good start. Getting them to make convert is the other half of the battle. How do you know what problems they are encountering? What are they looking for that they can’t find? Why are they bouncing back to Google? This is where usability comes in.

In my search to be better equipped to provide this service for our clients I have found 3 valuable web-based usability tools.

The first is GetClicky.com.

I’ve been using this service for a while and it has steadily stolen ground from the ol’ Analytics standby Google Analytics. Get Clicky has some real advantages to Google and I won’t go into all of them here. The main thing I like about Get Clicky is that it forces me to see visitors as real people. The Visitor and Spy views are really good at creating a narrative. Where Google Analytics is strong on numbers, Get Clicky is strong on story. You feel like you are getting a snap shot of who the person is more so than other services. Here’s a screenshot of the Spy view for the Small Box site. The Spy view is a real-time feed that shows activity as it happens on the site.

Cost: $100 a year for a premium account (recommended)

Bottom line: Get Clicky forces me to see visitors as people and to see their visits as a narrative.

The second is FeedbackArmy.com

With this service I can get 10 real human beings to answer up to 6 questions about a website for only $10. I have already used this service with a number of clients and my Small Box website. Albeit some of the responses come from outside the US and you have to be a little suspicious of that feedback since I think usability and design is somewhat related to culture. I usually ask, as one of the 6 questions, what country they are coming from to help filter the responses and give more weight to the ones from the US since most of my clients are targeting the US market. Still the outside-US responses are often helpful. I would like to have the option to not publicly display the results but I would hope that option is in the works.

Cost: $10 for 10 responses. $20 for 23. $40 for 50.

Bottom line: FeedbackArmy.com gets you real human feedback for a fraction of the cost of doing “real” user tests.

Related: Check out 10 responses for SmallBoxWeb.com

The Third, and most interesting one, is UserFly.com

UserFly does screen captures of your visitors. You embed some code on your site and it captures real users using your site. Where their mouse goes, what they click on, how long they stay on each page, etc. A little creepy I know but useful, very useful. You can tell when someone is looking for something that they can’t find. Shortly after installing the software on our SmallBoxWeb.com site we noticed that people were clicking on our “Team” images in hopes of getting the contact form but getting, instead, the profile page for that person. So we made a change, now the image of the team member opens the contact form, and started seeing a nice little uptick in contacts from the site.

Cost: $25 for 1000 captures

Bottom line: UserFly.com is quickly becoming an indispensible tool for understanding how users really use a website.

userfly.com from Chris Estreich on Vimeo.

What are your favorite usability tools?

Lately I have been shown time and again how important small, seemingly meaningless changes can have a dramatic impact on a website.

I was on a panel recently discussing e-commerce with several local experts on the topic- Brandon Corbin from Sigma Micro, Jon Arnold from Tuitive Group, Kyle Lacy from Brandswag and Jeremy Dearringer from Slingshot SEO. To be honest I was probably the least knowledgeable of the group on this particular subject so it was a learning experience for me as much as the audience.

One of the most striking take-aways for me was how important small changes to a website can have such dramatic ROI. For instance, increasing the size of the search bar, having multiple value propositions throughout the site (Free Shipping! etc), modest design changes to a product page, using “cart” not “basket”, etc. All these items have been proven by multiple studies to result in a serious impact on sales. Sometimes the difference was millions of dollars per month depending on the site!

I just came across this blog via Twitter, thanks to @donschindler, and it reinforced my growing awareness. It’s also a book that you can buy on Amazon, etc.

Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive

Let me boil down what I’m taking away from all this:

• Don’t assume. That’s the starting point. Stop working from assumptions that have no basis in facts. Stop thinking about how much work you put into your website to get where you are now. Be willing and open to completely re-thinking your project or website. Chances are you won’t have to scrap everything but come into the review process with an open mind.
• User tests. Find out what people are really doing, what walls they are hitting and why they aren’t filling out the form, making the purchase, etc. Determine where the issues are before you start trying to fix them. This requires user surveys/tests, watching analytics closely, reviewing what the competition is doing, etc.
• Herd mentality. We, meaning humans, are still very much interested in being part of the herd. For instance use “Other users also liked these items” instead of “We recommend these other items”. The first sounds like the cool thing to do the second sounds like a sales pitch.
• Fewer choices, more answers. People think they want choices but they don’t. They want answers. Focus on answering questions that you know your users have based on testing and analytics. Anticipate what the user wants and they will be more likely to convert.
• Tweak and repeat. Once you find something that works, tweak it, improve on it and then repeat that methodology to other weak areas.

One of the things Small Box has always prided itself on is our web design services, however one of my goals is to take it to the next level. Done well, design:

• reinforces brand identity
• integrates online and offline content visually
• creates a usable and informative display
• attracts the right audience to your business

All that is to say that a high level design execution is important to the brand of your business. But the process of branding is about much more than your logo and tagline. For many small businesses they only get a chance to focus on this smallest part of their visual identity because of budget constraints.

But Small Box is looking for clients who want to do a complete integration of their online and offline identity with a true brand exploration process. If your website has outclassed your print materials, we want to talk to you. If your catalog or brochure is first rate but your website is not, we can fix your problem.

And if your online and offline marketing materials are not matching up to your competition, not reaching your target audience, or not promoting your products and services the way they need to – well let’s just say we can do it all.

Let the powerful minds of Small Box put our high level designs to work for you, to build your business identity as a leader among your audiences.

Why would you settle for anything less?

“It’s right at the top of the page.”

How many times have I had this exchange when I am trying to tell someone how to find our newest service? It’s a Free SEO Scorecard that tells you exactly how your site performs on a wide array of benchmarks.

“It’s on this page! Go back to the top.”

If you provide the web addresses of your competitors and a few of the keywords you are trying to rank well for this document is an essential road map for your Internet Marketing plan, which for many begins with Search Engine Optimization.

As a side note I am thinking about calling it GEO since Google is the one that matters the most, yet we continue to act like the much smaller players are as important.

But my main point is one of usability. In the half dozen or so usability exercises I have done, I notice over and over that when someone goes to a new site they have never seen before, they automatically scroll down a little bit, assuming that the only thing at the top of the page is some kind of unessential banner ad or something.

And we always talk about designing so that all the most important information is “above the fold” (which in itself is pleasantly anachronistic). Watch for yourself sometime how it happens.

But what are the implications of this innocent gesture on the most artfully executed web designs? Should I tell my clients and designers not to put important information at the top of the page?

Clearly the most important element of design when it comes to usability has to be the focus on the middle of the page not the upper periphery.