If you are looking for a Web Design Company in Austin, look no further than Small Box Web Design. We know that you have choices when it comes to building your web identity, why trust your web marketing to anyone else.

Does your web designer work under contract to a separate agency?

At Small Box we do all our work with full time employees. We have a great staff of professionals who have built sites in any industry imaginable.

Are you being sold a cookie cutter site?

Word Press, Joomla, and Drupal are all fine content management systems, but let’s be honest. There are good and bad programmers. There are template designs and custom designs. There are sites that fail to meet business needs, and then there are Small Box sites.

The Small Box CMS a collection of powerful SEO controls and intuitive site management tools that are exactly what you need.

Is working with your site difficult?

Then make a change. Call Small Box Austin at 512-850-4819. PJ Christie will be glad to provide you with the information you need.

The following is a press release for our new partnership with WDD Inc. Our two companies are not merging but looking to join forces to pursue larger, mutual opportunities.

Small Box, WDDinc Form Partnership to Offer

Fully Integrated, Complex Web Solutions

Indianapolis, IN (May 10, 2010) — Indianapolis-based Small Box Web Design and WDD, Inc. announce their partnership to pursue larger engagements, offering clients more advanced Web based solutions.

Both Small Box and WDDinc are highly successful Web businesses specializing in their respective areas of expertise; Small Box in Web site design, Internet marketing and the user experience, and WDDinc in complex programming, Web development and systems integration. The businesses will now partner and offer their top core competencies to larger clients as one team.

Jeb Banner, Small Box CEO explains, “Because our businesses are highly focused on separate aspects of the Web, our services perfectly compliment one another. By joining forces on larger projects, we’ll be able to offer better-integrated solutions for clients. It’s a win-win situation for everyone involved.”

The partnership between Small Box and WDDinc will allow the companies to provide full-service, more elaborate Web capabilities.

“We’re very excited about our partnership with Small Box. By adding the best of breed interactive media offerings from Small Box to our best of breed back-end software development and testing capabilities, we become a much more robust company with an offering unsurpassed in the Midwest,” states Alan Wlasuk, a Principal at WDDinc.

About WWD, Inc.

Founded in 1993, WDDinc., is an Indianapolis-based custom software development, testing and engineering company providing software expertise to a large variety of clients. WDDinc focuses on high-quality software for clients with unique needs ranging from data center infrastructures to multi-national call centers. WDDinc client base spans the United States and their software is used throughout the globe. www.WDDinc.com

About Small Box Web

Small Box is an Indianapolis, Indiana based Web design and Web development company that provides professionally designed Web sites as well as Internet marketing, social media marketing, search engine optimization (SEO) and new media consulting services for organizations and agencies throughout Indiana and the Midwest. www.SmallBoxWeb.com

Small Box is pleased to announce that our new office in Austin Texas is now open for business. Since 2006 Small Box has been providing custom web solutions for businesses and non profit organizations in Indianapolis.

Now Small Box is taking the same great design and technology to a new level. Austin Texas is different from anywhere else. There is a big focus on Social Networking. There are many entrepreneurs and business startups looking for venture capital.

Our goal is to be a one stop shop for anyone looking to have a great looking site on the first page of the search engines. Call PJ Christie at 512-850-4819.

Follow our special Twitter feed @smallboxaustin for local insights including SXSW.

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).

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

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.

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.”

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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.

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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.

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?