The process of user centered design and creating useful websites, should start at an early stage in a web site project. In this post we wanted to share with you our process for visualising and designing the most useful and usable websites.

Before we start any sexy, fancy design, what we want to consider is “is the structure and layout of the web interface easy to understand?”, “does it follow how users think it works in their minds?” This way of working allows us to understand our users “mental models” in their minds, in relation to how the site should be physically structured.

By learning and using this feedback in the web design, we can add to the value of the user experience on a web site, and turn this into an enjoyable experience for our users.

We’ve had an example published on the wireframes website which summarises how we used interactive prototypes worked on a recent project with East Hampshire District Council.

Using interactive prototypes allowed us to confirm the areas of the site that were successful in terms of users being able to achieve the tasks (we were asking them in a user testing interview) successfully and quickly.

More about the way we worked is on the article. We hope you find it interesting.

Image of the interactive prototypes for easthampshire.org

From our recent partnership with Pure360 on email marketing, I was asked to expand on my notes from the class. So here they are.

Whether you like it or not, HTML email marketing campaigns are a core requirement for any successful email marketing program.

An email campaign can boost a companies revenue by millions of pounds, for example over this Christmas period how many do you think you will receive from your favourite brands – electronics, music, etc?

Email marketing is a cheap and successful online marketing method. Cheap in relation to posting out printed flyers to every recipient. And successful by being able to measure the success of every email campaign, tracking every open time and read time for each email. HTML emails done correctly, offer a better conversion rate, and people choose HTML over plain text format more often.

So, here’s a list to help all email marketers and designers create the perfect email, and make sure it appears as you intended on your customers computers. If you feel I’ve missed any important ones, feel free to leave a comment.

Make no mistake, HTML email design and development is a complete minefield. There are very few rules that you can rely upon across all mail clients. Let’s do this:

1. USE INLINE CSS + TABLES
External and internal style sheets are ignored by a number of email clients. Back to the old school with tables too. Yes, it means going back to 1999 coding, and does make the code heavy, but it means you can guarantee locking down the styles to be correct in the ‘majority’ of email clients.

2. EMAIL TEMPLATES
Unless you have extensive personal experience to draw on,
you’re most likely going to want start with a template that gets most of the fundamentals right. Save yourself some time, get some inspiration and free templates here:

• carbon graffiti
• campaign monitor gallery

3. USE ABSOLUTE DIMENSIONS
In pixels for all measurements. For example, give images and tables exact pixel dimensions – so the browser knows exactly how to display it. Email clients are not as forgiving as web browsers.

4. THE DESIGN
The width of the email design to be no more than 600 pixels wide, so the full width of the email can be seen in the view port in email preview mode.

5. ACCESSIBILITY
Make sure it is readable, with images turned off does the email make sense? By default images are not displayed in most email clients (unless you have added the address to your contacts), also not creating the best look for your company.

Image of email in web-mail client (Gmail) – notice that the email doesn’t make much sense with the images turned off? This can be improved by adding copy to the ALT attribute in the html code:

• Use Alt attributes
• Use anchor link as well to take people to important subheadings in your email
• Last resort – have a prominent link to your web version of the same email

6. FANTASTIC COPYWRITING
Attention grabbing headlines that will make users want to read more and click through. The attention grabbing information should be already visible in the viewport area when the email loads, very few people will scroll – like on web pages unless they like the information, drawing them down the page.

Image of email in web-mail client (Thunderbird) – notice that even with the images turned off the email still reads well, with the headline drawing you into the main content of the email. Simple design, yet to the point and easy to read, effective.

7. CSS SUPPORT IN EMAIL CLIENTS
Enter The email standards project.

These guys have taken the email design issue by the scruff of the neck and are actually getting Yahoo, Gmail, Outlook to take notice of the need for Email standards compliance.

Currently we grade the email clients in the following way:

The Angel’s Choir:

Strong and generally reliable HTML rendering capabilities – Thunderbird, AppleMail, and Opera Mail
You can essentially treat these mail clients as if they are normal, modern browsers.

The Muddlers:

This group includes the majority of the remaining mail clients and includes Outlook 2003, Outlook Express, and Yahoo Mail.

While you’ll probably encounter some variability in their renderings — often in text size and margins/padding – the Muddlers will generally honour your page layout.

The Legion of Doom:

Each uses their own unique but evil super-powers to subvert and destroy your HTML
Outlook 2007, Gmail, Lotus notes – rewrite CSS, padding/margins, no positioning support, removes backgrounds.

8. TESTING
Use litmusapp.com which sends back how your email looks on the following email clients:

Web-based email clients

* AOL Web
* Comcast
* Earthlink
* Gmail
* Mail.com
* MSN Hotmail
* Windows Live Hotmail
* Yahoo! Classic
* Yahoo! Mail

Desktop email clients

* AOL 9
* Lotus Notes 6.5.4
* Outlook 2003
* Outlook 2007
* Outlook Express 6
* Outlook XP
* Thunderbird
* Windows Mail (actually, what is that?)

Mobile email clients

* Blackberry
* Windows Mobile 5
* Windows Mobile 6

9 . THE FUTURE
At various sites there are thousands of new subscribers to html newsletters every single month. And those subscribers still always choose HTML over plain text at a rate of 15-20 to 1. In short, while we might not like it, your clients probably prefer HTML email, and so does their audience.

10. STICK WITH IT
Use the templates, HTML formats are here to stay so remember to keep it simple as possible, and test early and often.

Need our help? We offer web design and development services that will take the stress away from your email marketing campaign. Contact us to find out how we can help you.

Our redesign has made it onto Designm.ag titled 101 awesome portfolio sites. Alongside some world renowned web agencies and individuals: Happycog, Jason Santa-Maria, and Dan Cederholm’s Simplebits.

Disclaimer: This is someones individual opinion into current design on a variety of portfolio sites. We have not paid to be included!

However, we hope we have made it on because the copy is as eyecatching as the interface design. We are firm believers that if there is nothing to keep the visitor on your pages, then the site has failed, even though the design may have orginally caught their attention.

To keep the meme rolling, here’s 40 sites you should visit. Inspirational and Beautiful indeed!

With Web trends and technologies moving at a phenomenal rate recently, I feel the customer has a vast and often bewildering array of services offered to them. However, how do they know which one is best for them?

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.
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The latest event from Carsonified is The Future of Web Design, which was held in London this week. These are the notes from some of the speakers presentations.

The theme for the event focused on creative approaches for design:
The main ways for the speakers we by ‘changing your perspectives’ and ‘asking and collaborating with other people for ideas’.

Inspiration vs duplication – Often leads to designs being directly copied as its easier, but leads to abuse. How do we go about doing the right thing? By looking for elements that solve problems in intersting ways.

Inspiration. Takes practice and is never ending process. Lead to wealth of ideas that you can apply to web design

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For those that want to find out about the presentations, and for indeed the people that made it, but couldn’t missed panels that ‘rawked’. Check out the links below to relive some of the panels back in March from SxSw 2008:

http://video.sxsw.com/2008/mov/ Movie – Quicktime

http://video.sxsw.com/2008/swf/ Flash – swf

http://video.sxsw.com/2008/mp4hi/ Audio – MP4

We often use the content in the following post, when explaining designs and layouts to clients who. We make it easy to understand why homepages and doorway pages are so important for new visitors to your site.

Probably the most important one being “You have less than 5 seconds to catch your customers attention.” If the design or interface of the web site or application confuses you will repeatedly lose valuable customers.

A company’s homepage is its face to the world and the starting point for most user visits. Improving your homepage multiplies the entire website’s business value, so following key guidelines for homepage usability is well worth the investment..
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