Archive for the ‘web design’ Category

To RFP or to not RFP?

Posted by pj on October 30th, 2009

Over the last year, Small Box has been asked to respond to dozens of RFPs for all kinds of businesses, corporations, and non-profits. Here’s some advice for groups that are looking to solicit work from a company like Small Box via an RFP process… Don’t. Just kidding, sorta.

I suggest instead of sending out RFPs to every company you come across examine the capabilities of the companies you are considering and start conversations with them.

If you like how the conversation is going and the work they have done for others then engage with them on a limited or trial basis. This might mean research and site architecture or just general consulting to help organize the project. If they are the right fit you will know after that limited engagement. If not then walk away with the work they did and keep looking.

This gives you a real chance to find out how they work, and in the long run saves you the time and money associated with an extended RFP process and subsequent “marriage” to the chosen vendor. What if that vendor is really only great at 2 of the 5 things you need? Now you have a vendor that is stretching to do work that it shouldn’t be doing.

Instead find one team to lead and manage the project and work with them to bring in secondary vendors as needed. Rely on the lead team’s knowledge and experience to help pick these secondary vendors.

An RFP can be a useful document and a good starting point for a conversation but most of the time the scope of a Web project will change, often dramatically, once the planning and design phase begins. The Web is both a wonderful and frustrating thing. It is ridiculously flexible as a platform which creates endless possibilities.

A smart company will engage with an agency that is willing to explore the possibilities, make informed choices, put together the right team to get it done and then circle back around to evaluate those choices after they have been implemented. Too often companies, and agencies, get pulled by the “idea of the day” creating endless scope creep and headaches for all involved. The resulting site is usually a messy melting pot of half baked ideas. Explore, make decisions and stay focused. You will have a much more successful project in the end.

- PJ with contributions from Jeb

Posted in smallbox, web design | 4 Comments »

Easy To Find, Easy To Use, Easy To Update

Posted by jeb on September 14th, 2009

When I talk to clients I have found these three things really resonate- A website needs to be easy to find in search engines, easy for visitors to use and easy to update. It would be hard to say one of these items is more or less important than the other.

4 years when I first started building websites all my clients wanted them to “look good”. There was very little awareness of search engine traffic, Content Management Systems and even less awareness of the importance of user testing. Basically they wanted a brochure website. I’ve noticed a big shift in the last year. Businesses and organizations I talk to are more focused on ease of use and discovery.

So let’s break it down:

Easy To Find: what good is a website that no-one can find in search engines? Very little. A modern website needs to be built from the ground up to be search engine friendly. This means site architecture, keyword research and implementation. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is serious stuff. You do it right and the world is knocking on your door. You do it wrong, or more often not at all!, and your business can wither and die.

Easy To Use: now that you’ve got people to your website does it convert? Do they know what to do? Consider this, if your site has a 1% conversion rate you can either work to increase that rate to 2% through user testing and changes or work to double your traffic via search engines, email etc. They both have the same outcome. Guess which one is easier? A “beautiful” website is a fine thing but it is meaningless if it doesn’t convert.

Easy To Update: this is probably the number one complaint that I hear from clients. “I can’t update my %&$* site! I have to pay the Web company to do it, it takes forever, costs too much.” Back in the late 90s and early 2000s many sites were built without a Content Management System (CMS).

Is your website easy to find, easy to use and easy to update? If not then it’s time for a real website that will actively grow your business.

Posted in seo, usability, web design | No Comments »

I Bet You Won’t Read This

Posted by ed on August 27th, 2009

Let me preface this by saying how strange it is to write about not reading. With all the arguments about e-books and the sanctity of the well-bound durability of the traditional page turner, the death of the newspaper and what will become of library; I don’t worry. I like reading books and newspapers at libraries. But you probably didn’t even read this paragraph, because…

People Don’t Read on the Web.

They scan menus, headings, lists, icons, images and labels looking for the juicy little bits of text that will lead them to the few words that communicate the information they want, need and were looking for all along.

Everybody’s writing about it.

Jakob Nielsen , Usability Guru, has done the research.

“79 percent of our test users always scanned…16 percent read word-by-word.”

“The introductory paragraph(s)… is what I call blah-blah text… such as “Welcome to our site, we…”

“On the average Web page, users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average visit; 20% is more likely.”

Carsonified , Experts on Web Design, offer this equation.

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Steve Krug, author of Don’t Make Me Think, suggests a dull knife.

“Get rid of half your text and then get rid of half of what’s left.”

Conclusion: Write for the user, not for yourself.

Posted in usability, web design | 3 Comments »

How Much Should A Website Cost?

Posted by jeb on August 20th, 2009

Determining what to budget for a new website can be difficult. Many times a company has a “brochure” site from 5 or even 10 years ago and is now ready to build a “real” website. In my experience companies choose a number based on their current cash flow or what they paid the first time around. “If we paid X dollars then we should pay 2 times X this time”. I can understand that way of thinking but I think there is a better way of determining the correct budget for a best-in-class website.

First off the Web and media has changed substantially since that “brochure” site was launched. In the late 1990s and early 2000s it didn’t do much harm for a company to have a brochure style website. But now companies need to see their websites more like broadcast platforms. Often times their website’s content will be accessed as much from third party sites and services (Google Local or Maps, Search Engines, RSS feeds, Social Media etc).

Companies need to think of websites as being similar to radio or TV stations that are broadcasting their content 24/7. Websites are no longer just destinations. They are channels that flow out and across the web in various formats. At least that is what a modern website does. So before you think about what to spend think about how this is not the Web of the late 90s or early 2000s. Heck this isn’t even the web c.2006!

So how much should you spend on a modern website that acts as a broadcast platform?

I recommend looking at your media budget and determining a percentage to invest in the Web . I would recommend at least 50% since it’s pretty clear from all the data that the Web has the best and most demonstrable ROI of any marketing effort. The take that amount and extend it to 3-5 years. If you spend $2000 a month on marketing then allocate $1000 a month to the web times 36 to 60 months.

The beautiful thing about the Web is that you can test and see what works, tweak and repeat until you are seeing a phenomenal return. Every investment takes time to bring a return but with the Web you will be able to see it more clearly and usually more quickly.

Posted in marketing, web design | 2 Comments »

Easily Approachable and Quite Deep

Posted by pj on July 10th, 2009

Seth Godin writes

“There are very few products, services or organizations that are simultaneously easily approachable and quite deep. That’s an opportunity for you if you can figure out how to be both, but choosing just one is a more likely scenario. So, which are you?”

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.

Tags: internet marketing, linkbuilding, organic seo, pay per click, pj christie, public relations, seo, small box, web branding, web design, web development
Posted in Everything Else, content management systems, culture, design, indianapolis, marketing, pay per click, search engine optimization, sem, seo, smallbox, technology, usability, web design, web development | 1 Comment »

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