Let visitors navigate where they want to go, without confusing them
Very detailed level of information from the start of an experience, is too much for most users, in this example, she may have not have successfully navigated deeper into the museum archives. And the museum would have failed to entice visitors to the various areas of the museum,

It’s all about seeing how far you can get, without being too bombarded by information.

This is the same as website navigation, when you visit your next site, think about the messages you see on the page, is it clear? do you understand what it means? where will you go if you click on the button or text link?

The methods that are used signpost a web-site will affect the number of areas visitors view per visit, and the length of time they spend on each page. If they are frustrated by not knowing what page there are on, or if they cannot find the correct information they will exit the site and may not even come back.

The maps below shows how a museum is organised, the rooms, the levels, can visitors understand this map to have a relaxing, enjoyable experience?

Meeting the mental model of your users

Every visitor who comes to a web site, will have built up a mental model of how the site is organised. If the site structure or ‘information architecture’ does not meet their mental model then this leads to negative, confused feelings which ‘turns off’ the user. By testing web sites early, you can easily measure how successful you have met the needs and requirements of your users.

There has to be something very interesting on a site for someone to read an entire article or story about a subject. Normally you will have lost people by the second or third paragraph, but that’s another subject – copywriting.

Where we discussed a variety of subjects, including ‘user centered design’, and meeting client business goals. As well as showing some examples of effective and clear design process that make it easy for a site user to understand how a web site can help them in their task to achieve their tasks on the web.

Perhaps the most important question for a client is ‘essential pitch questions’ that you should ask any web design company, to help distinguish between an agency that will be good, and one that is going to be great and deliver results.

Read the full interview

Why review? At the most basic level it’s time for you the service provider/supplier and your client to get together and be upfront and honest about what worked and more importantly what didn’t so you can avoid the same mistakes again in the future with them and with you other client relationships.

It’s OK to make mistakes, we’re all human, if you do admit it and be authentic. At the same time embrace negativity, and make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Our surveys usually follow a set pattern of questions (5 being the highest grade):

1. Overall how happy our you with the service given (1 to 5)
2. Quality of information given (1 to 5)
3. Personal service given (1 to 5)
4. People you have dealt with – how much do you think you could rely
on them to do a good job (1 to 5)
5. In terms of how you feel overall about the service provided by
(Company Name) (1 to 5)
6. Would you feel comfortable referring you to a friend or colleague
(1 to 5)

This type of survey can be done face to face during a meeting, or if a number of people are involved build this survey on wufoo or surveymonkey.

Why not even involve your colleagues and co-workers to see how you done. It’s a really valuable chance to find out how you done. And the only way to develop and build your business from a good to a great business that your clients will refer personally to people they deal with on a daily basis.

Feedback from your clients brings value to the products your business is selling. It gives more confidence and trust to the client, making future work always more likely.

Remember, it costs less money to keep existing clients than find new ones. Look after them, and you may just find that they will do marketing for you as well as be open as you should be in your dealings with your customers.

How do you do it? We’d love to know.

A part of our web site promotion services, a lot of our customers get worried when their sites drop PageRank, due to a new algorithm Google is ranking sites by usually.

Hopefully, this post should clear up the aspects of what you need else you need to be aware of in the current search marketplace.

PageRank is scored out of 10, and is measured by the relevancy of incoming links, site content and external links.

PageRank is, at best, a blunt geometric measure of the likely authority of a site, but frankly, it is the furthest thing from a real assessment of whether you have good link reputation. It is a red herring, let’s try to stop worrying about it.

To make real progress in SEO you must attend to:

• Visibility – the technical accessibility and structure of your content to
  Google
• Content – such that it is consistent with how your prospects actually search
• Reputation – do things that makes your site irresistible as a link target
  for relevant sites

People spend lots of money that they are wasting every month on that poor linking building and other SEO old school services like submitting to search engines.

The way to get your site ranked high involved little effort, just plain old relevancy. 3 amazing links are better than 10,000 paid for / irrelevant ones. PageRank is great if used properly, along with word of mouth, when journalists write about the URL, make sure they drop the link in the online article or it’s completely useless to anyone.

Videos of the experts explaining current SEO ideas at PubCon:

Interview with Matt Cutt’s which covers these ideas and changes at Google.

Interview with Bruce Clay’s ideas on the future of SEO

As part of our rebranding and new business aims we think this is a fantastic way for people to ask questions and comment on our services and products.

Get Satisfaction is a place where customers can get the most from the products they use, and where companies are encouraged to get real with their customers.

Check out our profile, why don’t you ask us a question whilst you’re there

There were lots of seminars on search to content management, from hosting to email, some terrible powerpoint slides.

One particular highlight was Andy Hobsbawm’s (Agency.com) Keynote on “How people value brands and brands value people in an interactive world”.

Below are some quote and points from his Keynote:

• Be a verb not a noun
• Go with the flow
• Be a guide not a gateekeeper

“Today ‘the virtualisation of everything’ is possible”

“A brand is not what you say it is, it’s what Google says it is”

“No place for brands to hide, as information flow to the consumer is so great on the internet”

“The internet is one big social network, email being the biggest tool for networking”

“Don’t assume customers don’t know anything nowadays, they now have the information by searching for the answer = information driven”

“Exploding connections on the web means that brands can’t be linear anymore”

That is where our company can help, as well as complete rebranding with a web site redesign we have improved the message we are giving our new and existing clients. Making it easy for you to do business on the web, with our experience in web design and development often utilising new and emerging web technologies.

Our old site and logo was ‘oh so web 1.0′ which was created back in 2004 when the business was first launched. Often is the case with any online business, the content on the web site was too overwhelming to encourage a simple understanding of our services and background. We found this turned prospective customers off.

Today, it is our strategic aim to be transparent, open and clear about what how we can solve your customers tasks online, and create a memorable and satisfying experience at the same time. This is often something we can help you with even before the practical work begins.

The aims for our new web site

1. Clearer Company message
2. Improved branding
3. Increase effectiveness of the web site as a marketing channel
4. Users to spend more time on sites pages
5. Improved usability and signposting

How will we measure success? By consistently reviewing our web analytics data. The launch of any web site is the first step and sometimes the simplest. It’s the continual reviewing of the site content, architecture and ease of use that requires finetuning throughout a websites lifecycle.

In the case of our web site, we have removed much of the old content from the previous site to show our talent as a agency that listens, and then carefully crafts usable online applications that clients and customers love.

Being based here in Brighton, the community aspect with this redesign was encouraged from the start, with critique on logo and web layout. Such as the comments that feature on these flickr images. We found this very helpful giving insight into what our peers, colleagues and friends thought. All very positive I’m pleased to say.

Since going live two weeks ago, our daily traffic has tripled as a result of the redesign and recent coverage over at the following CSS Galleries:

1. csszone
2. cssmoon
3. cssstar
4. css-lounge
5. commandshift3
6. cssdrive
7. cssremix
8. csselite.com
9. webdesign-is-art.com
10. cssflash.com
11. cssclip.com

Please tell us what you think. We look forward to hearing from you.

There is only one web, the principle of making the same information and services to users regardless of the way they access it. No doubt about it, the number of mobile devices we choose to interact with websites and online applications is increasing, comared to just desktop computers. Mobile will revolutionise they way we gather and intereact with information in the next 2 years, and this is using the mobile in your pocket, not just the iPhone.

Compare the number of global mobile owners, more than 3 billion, to the number of computer owners, 850 million. The mobile is something you don’t leave home without, why leave the web at home or at work? It is predicted that the in the next decade the mobile will be the first point of contact with the internet, and the desktop computer the second.

According to a new report from the telecom research firm Berg Insight, more than 100 million mobile subscribers in Europe will use location-based services by 2012. Mapping, navigation and search are believed to become the top applications, followed by social networking and tracking.
GPS is about to become a standard feature in mass-market handsets which are highly advanced and support third party applications. Many will try and a few players will most likely succeed in creating location-enabled mobile applications that will have the same impact on the mobile industry as MySpace and Facebook had on the Internet.

Now we have mobile versions of the BBC (bbc.co.uk/mobile), Facebook (m.facebook.com) and ebay. These are stripped down versions of the main sites. As when on the move you only want to know the headlines, get to pages quickly without having to wait for long downloads, this is possible as image use is limited and page widths are flexible so it will fit to deliver main content and basic navigation to whatever size screen you are using.

Mobile applications have real value for people on the move, for example, in the last few weeks I’ve used the internet on my mobile using Google Maps (google.com/m/products) to direct me to a hotel in Edinburgh from the Railway station, or if i have forgotten to send an important email I just visit webmail on my mobile to forward it to a colleague or client.

To improve your mobile experience I recommend you download OperaMini (operamini.com), it’s free, easy to install, packed with great features.

These are exciting time for how we interact with the internet. it’s early days, the mobile operators have the networks in place, its down to individual web companies and web innovators to create projects that capture the possibilities of the mobile internet. First there must be a critical mass of active users to work with, come and experience what the mobile web can do for you!

This reinforces the values with which we follow in our day to day working lives here. Particularly these two which are on the charter.

1. Be human. Use a respectful, conversational voice, avoid scripts and never use corporate doublespeak.
2. Demonstrate your good intentions by speaking plainly, earnestly and candidly with customers about problems that arise

We think things would be very confusing if we didn’t share our knowledge, issues and foster and long term reputation with the company.

We hope you think so too, voice your support in doing business like all the folks at CCPact, by signing up as well.