Web 2.0

Design / Internet / Web 2.0 — 3 Comments
13
Oct 10

Common Sense Web Design

Nothing turns away visitors more than a poorly designed website. Let’s face it, most sites on the internet today ARE poorly designed. When I discover new sites they almost always contain basic design flaws.

Most of the clients I’ve worked with in the past think websites are a cheap method for getting a business name out there … in many ways that’s actually true. Unfortunately many business don’t think about their competitors online strategy which, could be to ensure they have the best web design for their market. Customers visiting a site are likely to base a large part of their purchasing decision on the professional perception they have about the website.

So if you want to use the online channel to boost the bottom line then you better invest some time and money into developing a professional, attractive and modern web page that will stand out.

It’s not hard, whether you do this yourself or contract an agency or designer to do it for you. The following points should always be considered when designing a website.

KISS (Keep it Simple Stupid)

Just because you have content doesn’t mean you need to add it to your site. Many businesses stick large amounts of text and look at design as a secondary priority. Go with the “less is more” approach. A basic homepage, with some bold branding. If a site overwhelms a visitor with content they will simply leave, remember the death by power point saying…well the same goes on a site, death by content! Use plenty of whitespace to break out sections, this allows the users to focus on the sub messages you want to portray and marks out the calls to action (explained below) more clearly. Another reason for keeping it simple – mobiles. More users are accessing websites on smartphones and tablets now and your website should appear just as attractive on those devices as it does on a big monitor. Whether it’s on an iPhone, iPad or Android device, you need to take into consideration how it’s all going to appear.

Consistency

Make sure you use consistent fonts and graphics that fit into the overall brand. Your logo and colours should reflect the company that you are. Keep in mind that the styles will be used offline on items such as printed stationary and signage. Select a colour palette and and stick with it. If you use the Antenna font then stay with Antenna, don’t change halfway through a design and decide to implement the rest of the site in Arial.

Calls to Action

Every website should give users an action they can fulfil as soon as they visit. It could be signing up to an email address list, putting in their information or clicking on a poll…these are the calls to action. They should feed into your design – the text should be bold and visible and stand out. A good method used to highlight a call to action is to use an individual graphic as it is more attractive to a user then plain text. Look at the use of bold colours, and then use buttons, messages and links to drive the user into purchasing or doing something else. Always remember to make the text very clear so the user knows what they are about to do. Part of good web design is to ensure these calls to action are all over the website, whether its “Get in Touch” or “Buy Now” or “Signup”, ensure it’s consistent, simple and most importantly clearly visible on the site.

GREAT! Navigation

It’s not good having a site when your users can’t find their way around it! Creating a solid and fool proof navigation system is critical. If your site is small (less then 10 pages) then opt for a horizontal primary navigation approach. It if contains many pages then it might be worthwhile implementing a control which reveals lots of different options that are triggered by hovering over or clicking over a menu option. It should be possible for your users to make their way through to the bottom page of the site in a matter of seconds. Keep sub pages distinct and purposeful – remember not to clutter! You can use different techniques to achieve great navigation but don’t forget to implement some basic principals such as the use of breadcrumbs…if your site is large with more then 10 pages and several layers of navigation then breadcrumbs are great. They are a popular way of allowing users to find exactly where they are.

Creating a great looking website is not difficult if you follow tried and tested principals. There’s no need to be a design guru just remember to keep it simple, clean, consistent and clear.

Internet / Mobile / Software Development / Startups / Web 2.0 — 4 Comments
6
Aug 10

Native Apps v Web Apps

It’s almost like every developer and his donkey are creating new mobile native device applications these days. With the runaway success of the iPhone and the Google Android Smartphone OS its not hard to see why. There are a plethora of start-up companies who base their business modeled around the development of native applications for a specific device…dangerous in my opinion – but possibly successful, I’m just not sure.

Developing for devices is not a hard game to get into. With well documented APIs, downloadable development kits, tools & videos, backed by internet behemoths Apple and Google further coupled with a strong community of existing developers – it’s not hard to see why developers have produced over a 300,000 iPhone and 85,000 Android applications to date.

Other incentives for developers and development houses to create device specific apps are:

Attractive revenue splits: developers keep 70% of revenue from paid applications. The splits are the same across Apple and Google with Apple retaining their 30% whilst Google are currently opting to pass their 30% onto network operators and partners.
Easy billing: Both Apple and Google have established billing relationships or can establish a relationship quite easily should customers want to purchase applications. Apple have had this relationship with it’s customers through the iTunes store whilst Google have introduced Google Checkout. Without the need to integrate complex payment systems into their own applications, developers simple focus on functionality. Another barrier developers need not consider.
Continuing growth: Androids adoption by manufactures, carriers and customers is rampant, a recent US study had Android in second spot with 28% market share compare to Apples 21%. However Apple have not really faltered, with the introduction of the iPad & iPhone 4, even more applications are now being introduced into the Apple app store.
Low cost of inception: got a computer? got internet access? it’s as easy as that with Apple even providing development membership with access to additional resources for a measly $99/year. Expensive tools like Visual Studio are not required for a developer or small development teams to get into the game.
Low total cost of ownership: deployment or hosting overheads are eliminated with the marketplace hosting developer applications, a prohibitive cost for developers on a shoestring budget.

It’s hard to predict when, or even if, native application development will stagnate, prompting developers to seek new models or users to be behaviorally coerced into using alternatives. However, if we look at 4 new offerings in the mobile market we can draw some predictions. By no means do I mean this to be a well researched prediction but more or less what I’d like to think of as an educated guesstimate as to what the next year will bring into the mobile internet landscape. The following are in no particular order:

Sencha: From the creators of ExtJS, these guys have been around for years, most notably having created a robust Javascript framework used by many web applications. It was certainly used to power multiple applications for previous clients of mine and I can vouch for it’s rapid development abilities and expansive library of UI controls. The company behind this original framework have no created what is dubbed “The First HTML5 App Framework”. It there success with ExtJS is anything to go by then get ready for some creativity unleashed as the framework taken up by more and more web developers. The Sencha framework promises developers the ability to develop and deploy essentially a mobile app site with the look and feel of a native iPhone or Android application. Taking a look at their Kitchen Sink examples it’s certainly impressive. Transitions are smooth, there is already a vast array of controls to use, the framework picks up multiple gestures and I’ve found it to work just as well on both my iPhone 4 and my Nexus One. The killer app for me was solitaire allowing users to use gestures and utilize local storage so I could come back and complete my game at a later time.

Jolicloud: from the creators of NetVibes, is a free new netbook operating system which recently came out of beta to v1.0. Jolicloud sounds promising in it’s attempts to mix both native apps and web apps. It preaches “bringing all the benefits of cloud computing” not sure how true it is but having run it on a virtual machine the interface is pretty and it does make discovering content seem like childs play.

hahlo: is a twitter client developed to run as a rich AJAX enabled application right from your mobile browser. Personally I find the user interface fantastic. It comes with options to view your lists, mentions and messages. Clicking on ‘Menu’ displays a great looking modal overlay which will trick you into thinking it belongs in a native app. Clicking tweet is magical…you know where I’m going with this one so best if you check out the web app yourself and make up your own mind.

Chrome Web Store: from Google opens later this year. Google are building an app store directly into their browser offering! not a bad move given they already have so much scale and have been advertising everywhere. On a recent trip to Paris I noticed on the underground, Google Chrome ads which eventually made my travelling partner – a local Parisian state “I’m going to check out Chrome from Google”. Clearly underground advertising works. Given Googles user base a big element then will bring is educating users about the so called web apps. Thanks to Apple people know about the App Store, expecting apps to be made available locally on their handset – and now Google have an opportunity to not only push web apps to browsers but to sync these with the Android operating system.

My personal view on this is as the internet become more pervasive and ubiquitous in the developing world and speeds improve in the developed world we are going to turn to the browser to deliver more of our consumption needs, more so in the mobile space. It will take time – no doubt. Web apps need to be more discoverable, but throw developers new technologies such as Sencha, support it on the mobile, and we might just find gravity moves away from Native Apps towards Web Apps.

Crowdsourcing / Internet / Web 2.0 — No Comments
22
Nov 09

Web 2.0 NYC Expo Wrap

Just back from NYC after a hectic few days attending the Web 2.0 expo held at the famous Javits center.

A summary of some standout keynote sessions which stood out for me include:

Government Crowdsourcing:

Beth Noveck the United States deputy chief technology officer for open government who leads President Obama’s Open Government Initiative on the concept of open.gov was interviewed in a session with Tim O’Reilly.

Government Crowdsourcing is a method whereby politicians, parties and government bodies source change, ideas and methods of improvement via the Internet. I believe this is a great way for government to listen to the people whilst also giving the greater public a view on other peoples thoughts & opinions. What I’d really like to see is a site dedicated to sourcing these ideas on a .gov site and including a ranking mechanism, the ability to post new ideas on spending, bringing to light the biggest issues facing the public to debate in Parliament sessions such as health care, education , taxes, defense. Not a bad project for someone who capable and inclined.

Tummling:

“Stop focusing on the broadcast, start focusing on the conversation circle”

Basically sums up this keynote by Heather gold who hosts the Heather Gold Show featuring bold conversations about politics, relationships and big life questions mingling web innovators with the avant-garde. Tummling is a Yiddish word and Heather described it the process for involving various points into a conversation for the benefit of all.

If you want to known more check out the YouTube Video – How to be a Tummler which was recorded during a previous Google Tech Talk….funnily enough exactly 1 year ago since her session at W2E NYC.

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