I read an article recently about the evolution of our thinking, as it relates to the Internet. It’s theory was that people do less thinking for themselves because they can quickly get answers by searching online. While we would be losing a more patient, thorough way of figuring things out we also gain the ability to multi-task in a much quicker environment.

Assuming that it’s true, to some degree at least, I can’t help but wonder what that means for branding. Companies have traditionally spent gobs of money to plant a seed of branding in someone’s mind because it has likely meant loyal customers. However, a simple search for “computer” will turn up more options than any single person can handle. While branding helps delineate to a certain degree, does the name “Dell” carry the same weight it used to? You can sift through product descriptions, consumer reviews and competitor products in the same amount of time it takes just to drive to a Best Buy. Consumers can be more educated, make quicker decisions, and find the right product much easier than they used to.

Look at marketing in general. I remember when TV commercials dropped to 30 seconds from 60 and people thought it just wasn’t enough time to hook the consumer. With Internet surfing you probably have 3 seconds to grab attention and websites limit messaging to 15 seconds of play time. To make any money off online advertising there has to be an instant hook accompanied by a compelling reason to purchase. Even companies like Ford, which traditionally run TV ads proving that their trucks are “built Ford tough” now target online readers with “$1,500 cash back” incentives instead.

I’m not so convinced that Branding means as much any more, especially with the reduction of an already low attention span by consumers.

attention span · banner · best buy · brand · consumer · dell · internet · marketing

Unless you have the privilege of testing, testing and testing your website you probably don’t know how to present your product information in a way that maximizes efficiency, customer satisfaction and ultimately profit. As with so many things, it comes down to time and money. There are many other factors too but I’ll leave that for another day.

Your product’s cost is directly related to the amount of information you need to provide. For example, buying a book from Amazon.com, doesn’t need an overload of info. Do you care how much the book weighs, the kind of paper used to make it, or a the amount of warranty it has? Less expensive, impulse buys, should focus on making the transaction as easy as possible. Consider a headline and three bullets the most you would include for your product.

Let’s say you want to buy a backup hard drive for your computer, more information is almost a necessity. It’s helpful to know the reputation of the maker of the parts, the company selling it, the warranty, etc. Reading consumer reviews is almost a must and don’t forget to do a thorough research between the different options and price-points needed to make the purchase. Overall, many paragraphs of information will be needed to make the sale. That doesn’t mean you dump it on to one page and call it a day. Nope hire a designer to provide clarity and organization to the content.

I’ve eluded to price being a strong indicator of the amount of information needed without actually putting a number on the value. That’s because discretionary spending for you is totally different for me. That’s where “time” comes in. How long it takes someone to earn the money required for the purchase can be a notable factor for how to categorize the amount of information. Here’s a breakdown of price/time/content:

Time Required to Save  – Amount of Content

• One paycheck or less – Headline & 3 bullets tops
• One month – Headline/3 bullets & one page of additional information minimum
• 3 months – Headline/3 bullets/one page of additional info & provide additional information (like testimonials or reviews)
• 6 months or more – Headline with multiple paragraphs/pages with subheads, provide additional resources for info gathering

There’s lots more to talk about, like including contact information, embracing new web technologies, visual display of information, etc. However, if you’re looking to hire someone to put together a website for your business do a little math. Take the amount of products you carry, determine the Time Required To Save for your demographic and multiply it by the Amount of Content to give you a general idea how your site should end up.

consumer · content · copy · information · money · product · retail · time · website

The ease in which websites are created has led to a number of misconceptions about the design process. With so many nephews or cousins that “do web design” I get a look when telling people what I do that’s similar to “I scoop chicken poop all day.” It’s a short attention span gaze like “I know that needs to be done but it sure doesn’t take much skill to do it.” Like most careers, there are plenty of people doing it but few that do it well. The shear quantity has devalued my ability to make a living, unless I move to India or the Philippines. We have some friends from India that are just AWESOME so I’ve been giving it some thought lately.

In the meantime, I’d like to give my take on something that is totally over looked from non-designers. And yes, Mr. IT dude, that means you too. Being a designer is not a 9-5 kind of job. It takes 24/7 observation and thinking because I never know when I’ll find inspiration for a project. I suppose there are a few times when I’m not finding inspiration for a website, like when I’m changing a diaper at 3am or cleaning chicken poop. Most of the time I am though, like noticing cool fonts (almost any font aside from papyrus or comic sans) and the treatment. Anyone else get excited when they recognize an obscure font being used? I’m even able to tell you where a lot of photos being used are purchased from. Geek alert!

Good, efficient design process

How in the world do you apply that knowledge to your project? Everyone has their own way of doing it but I generally attack a challenge with three solutions. I tend to start with a conservative approach, trying to provide exactly what the client has asked for. Most of the time that’s not good enough though so I go crazy, providing a solution that’s almost wacky and on the border of not showing. Last, I meet somewhere in the middle. Taking the ideas from the client and integrating a touch of flare. Having three versions also allows me great flexibility to meet the client needs, with different fonts, colors, layouts, etc. My assumption is that the client will love one and hate the other two.

Bad, uncertain design process with potentially disasterous results

In contrast, if I had submitted one design it’s a huge gamble on hitting what the clients wants. What if they don’t like it? What direction do you head? Who the hell knows! Would one more design do it? By the third, what state would the trust between you and the client be in? That’s a bad design process and ultimately why I do more work up front.

Back to the front. Depending on the project requirements and timeline I get most of the information from my clients. One of the things I’m still learning is how to ask questions to get what I need. You can’t ask with a straight face what Pantone colors they prefer, or even mention hexidecimal codes. Obviously, that’s ridiculous but my point is that I assume clients don’t know anything about making a website so I need to approach them with a casual discussion, like I would if we met in a grocery store. Questions like “what other websites do you like” and “what do you want to do with your website” are simple but could provide lots of information.

Molding all this information into a direction is the most difficult part of the process for me. I have to surf the web a little, think a little and throw down lots of bad ideas in Photoshop. But it is very much like digital sculpting with the final product being the only one I’m proud of. I was recently asked to provide a draft before a proposal was accepted. That’s actually a great idea for certain things, like finding the architect to redo the twin towers. It’s also a bad idea in some cases, like trying to take a bite out of pie before it’s been cooked. Maybe some designers know exactly where they want to go from the first click of the mouse but for me it’s a journey and obtaining a gig based off of a turn I took a while ago would be a mistake.

Every day I’m humbled by the quality of designs being created in so many places, there are quite a few very talented people creating commissioned art. I work very hard to try and be one of them so that I don’t have to compete with the poor quality, skill and accountability of “nephews” and “cousins” that do web design. So you could pay me to do the work right, from the outset OR pay your low-cost, low-skill alternative to create a bit of chaos for you and THEN pay me to do it right.

clients · creative · design · draft · freelance · process · proposal · web design · website

It seems like every other video a friend sends me is hosted on a new website, so I decided to try and figure out what the top video destinations were. Obviously, we all know that YouTube is the top dog but what about the rest? Here’s what I found, I would love to hear any others you enjoy or know about too.

1, YouTube.com
Everyone knows the name from years of watching funny videos or even sharing your own. Aside from having an Alexa rank of the #3 most visited website on the Internet it’s so popular that the name has started to turn into a verb, sort of like Google. “Did you see that new commercial? YouTube it”.

2. MegaVideo.com
If you’re anything like me you’re wondering why in the heck this would be the second site listed. However, you’ll be amazed to know that it outranks any of the subsequent video sites in Alexa, coming in at a strong #86 of overall traffic rank. Calm down though, you’re not totally losing your mind. In fact, there are 22 countries listed ahead of the US in popularity. Heck, if Algeria thinks it’s a good website why shouldn’t we?

3. Yahoo! Video
This one is tough to gauge based on the traffic rank because it’s bundled into the overall Yahoo! position. However, it’s easy to see why this is such an important site because of who is making it. Yahoo! has developed it’s brand as the leading entertainment news provider. That’s right, no news here folks… just entertainment. Just look at one of today’s top headlines, “Most-played musical artist of the decade” or another “Fate of record-setting hailstone” which leads directly to a video. One could argue that they should be the #2 but don’t forget the power of Algeria.

4. DailyMotion.com
Those Algerians are serious video watchers but their efforts seem like a single rain drop in the Pacific Northwest (because it rains a lot, let me tell you) when compared to France. The 14th most visited website in France has actually dropped a considerable amount of traffic in the last few months. Do them a favor and check out the site, oui oui!

5. Vimeo
Finally back to something I’m familiar with, and apparently other American’s too… Vimeo.com. In the past two years it’s traffic has sky-rocketed and seems to be pretty popular in the US. It’s ranking as the #110 most visited site, here in the states, seems to be a temporary move as it climbs higher and higher. Not bad for a website started less than 6 years ago, huh?

6. Hulu.com
I remember when Hulu.com was just a rumor, and how the media giants were moron’s for trying to compete with YouTube instead of just embracing them. After only three years, NBC is the one laughing now. Although you can’t upload your own video’s, Hulu is a great place to catch up on TV shows you missed or would love to watch again. It’s incredible interface makes it easy to use and variety of shows keeps you coming back. As the #41 most visited site on the Internet, Hulu could have been ranked higher. But dude, you can’t upload you cute doggie videos!

7. MySpace TV
Like the super social network, this site is slowly dying. They were too little, too late. Nevertheless, it’s hard to ignore the fact that they are still one of the most visited sites in the world. Of course, I only go there to delete SPAM that seems to fill my inbox. With MySpace trying to embrace a video platform one should wonder why Facebook doesn’t do more… hmmmm.

8. Veoh.com
If you took the acceleration value for gravity and applied it to Veoh.com you might understand what’s happened to it’s visitors. With an estimated 9.81 dropped visitors/second this one time huge hit in Japan might need to shake things up a little. Seriously, you’re missing a huge demographic in Algeria.

9. Metacafe.com
Like the little engine that could, I keep seeing this site bubble up but not quite able to play with the big boys. According to Alexa, this site is mostly popular in the middle-east and CLEARLY embracing the now renown video hunger of Algeria (OK, last time I’ll mention that). As the #204 most visited site on the Internet it might be worth checking out, it’s not too shabby.

10. Google Video
I’d be a boob if I didn’t mention Google Video. However, I’m still confused why it exists after they bought YouTube. At one point I read that they stopped support for it, yet every now and then I hear some pretty cool things they are doing with the videos. Obviously, it’s search related but that’s probably the EXACT thing we need to help us filter through all those damn doggie videos. Just kidding dad, love your doggie videos!

alexa · dailymotion.com · google · google video · hulu · internet · megavideo.com · metacafe · myspace tv · tv · veoh · video · vimeo · yahoo! video · youtube