Every week I have conversations with folks needing a shiny new website. While some know exactly what questions to ask, many clearly have no idea. If you’ve never had to hire a web design firm, here’s what you need to know:

Visual design

Look at portfolios and find a firm that shares your design aesthetic preferences. Make sure enough of your budget is allocated to achieving the level of visual design that you’re seeking.

BONUS: Avoid asking for a “design that pops” or to “make the logo bigger.” If you do, you’ll be feeding the collective angst and eye-rolling of the design community. (I’ll probably get whacked for divulging those inside jokes, but I had to warn you.)

Branding

If your corporate brand is stale or ill-defined, so will your website be. Get your logo and image in shape by working with a branding expert first if necessary. A good brand provides the essential foundation needed to create the right website.

Size

A 100-page site based on the exact same template could cost less than a 10-page site where each page has a unique layout. It all depends, but size does matter.

Search engine optimization (SEO)

Fact: People are searching online right now for what you have to offer. Will they find you? That depends on how optimized your site is for certain keywords and phrases.

Photography

No amount of brilliant design can compensate for lousy photography. Decent “microstock” photos can be found for cheap, but when quality is critical you should consider higher-end stock photography or custom photography from an actual photographer.

Content creation

Many clients who say they’ll create all of the website content underestimate the effort this truly takes. For quality’s sake – and sanity’s – a professional copy writer can be indispensible.

Content management

You’re going to want to keep your website fresh, right? I hope so, and for that you’ll want a robust content management system that allows you to update the site as needed.

eCommerce

There are lots of ecommerce platforms available that span the entire cost and features spectrum. Make sure the one you pick gives you the features you need at the price that makes sense for your sales volume.

Other bells and whistles

Does your site need to tie into a third-party application? Need a highly refined mobile or print version? These are usually extras, so make sure you discuss any special requirements with your web design firm so they can plan and price accordingly.

Speaking of price, what’s your budget?

Have the financial discussion first because the rest of the discussion needs to be had in that context. There is just no sense is talking with a firm that focuses on $75,000 sites if you only have $5,000 to spend (or vice-versa).

Your budget is like a milkshake, and each of the items noted above wants to put its straw in your milkshake and slurp away your budget. The good news is that you get to choose how big of a straw each items gets, and which get straws at all (try our Website Guesstimator to see what I mean). Also, each web design firm has different levels of expertise and experience working with these different straws (none of us are awesome at EVERYthing). The web design firm that can best work with your size milkshake and has the right experience with the straws you need will be the best web design firm for you.

Here's a little tool we're working on to help get the budget discussion started.  Is it accurate?  No, but it's not NOT accurate either.

There’s no doubt that being at the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference is intimidating – surrounded by experts, standing in endless lines, trying to find seats – but it’s also by far one of the most exciting events I’ve been a part of in my career. I went to loads of wonderful seminars, and learned a lot, but the thing I found most amazing about the whole experience was the level of diversity among session topics. All the major experts were there to speak on what they were most passionate about, which made for a very inspiring 6 days!

One of my favorite session was The History of the Button, presented by Bill DeRouchey. He explained how the evolution of human–machine interaction started with the lever and progressed through to the button, which introduced a concept of interaction here and reaction there. This complex interaction between the action and the result is commonplace to us these days, but its invention was extremely revolutionary and is often overlooked as one of the technological turning points for the human race. It was truly fascinating to see how the human brain has caused the button to evolve from a flashlight switch to a icon on a computer.

Another impressive session was AI 2010: Wall–e or Rise of the Machines, which covered the evolution of artificial intelligence and the role it is able to fill or fall short of in our lives. For example, search engines, as far as they have come, still lack the ability to answer questions such as "Is the space needle taller than the Eiffel tower?" or "Who was president when Obama was born?" Google and Yahoo will return articles about the Space needle or President Obama but are unable to understand the question and return a concise answer. While technology has not yet reached a point where search engines can fully understand us, it has achieved a soccer–playing humanoid robot that can make action decisions based on the position of its teammates and the ball. According to this SXSW session, in our quest to achieve Artificial Intelligence, the gap between humans and computers will blur.

The final lesson I took away from SXSW this year was geo–location. Prior to this conference geo–location was just a buzzword to me; I had encountered it before in the office but never had a real need for it. But in Austin, TX – an extremely diverse city with a rich selection of places to eat, clubs and bars to visit, knick knack shops, and tourism attractions – finding things to do or places to eat can be overwhelming without a personal tour guide and using a yellow pages or travel book to help you … Pphhhssstt! Whatever, that is so 4 years ago. Enter from stage left: AroundMe and Google Places. Both of these programs can zero in on a location, then gives an approximate distance to a point of interest (POI) selected by the user from a list of categories (ie: ATM, Food, Hotel, Bar, Bus stops, Banks). They even offer the choice of travel method (bicycle, bus, car, or foot) as well as providing contact information. Thanks to geo–location, I was able to find places to eat and get back to the conference without missing any seminars…as well as just looking cool by joining the crowds spending hours starting at our phones.

Some parting words of advice for all those who attend conferences such as SXSW, the early bird gets the worm, or in this case a seat, and bring a pedometer because you will be doing a lot of walking. There may be a half hour between each session, but in that time, you will need all that time to walk from Ballroom F to Exhibition Hall B while fighting the masses (all looking at their phones) to arrive early enough to get seated. In addition, the location where you stay during the conference will greatly impact your overall experience of the conference. While you may get to chat with a few people between sessions, the real networking and "interactive" part of the conference comes after the convention center is closed for the day, and the after–parties and social gatherings get started.

Looking ahead to next year, I can’t wait to see what tidbits of technology will bring us closer to the city, the conference, and the experience that makes SXSW so much fun to attend. I am looking forward to next year and the whole new round of topics and new ideas presented to us, hope to see everyone there!

Last week Opera Mini was released for the iPhone, and evidently it is going pretty well. For the uninitiated Opera is the grandfather of geeky web browsers. If you have an uber-geek in your life, they have used Opera, and they probably have a definitive opinion of it. This post is not actually about Opera, however, but if you would like to learn more I encourage you to check out their website.

So what is this post about then?
It is about the fact that mobile web browsing is terrible. The screen is too small to effectively use a fully functioning website. Browsing fully functioning websites with your mobile phone browser is one of a handful of desktop computing artifacts still hanging on in the move to the mobile web. Using an Internet-connected mobile device is a completely different experience than sitting at your desk with a 24" monitor (or 2), full keyboard, headphones, mouse, ergonomic desk chair, phone and beverage of your choice.

So why do we continue to try to simply port things that work well on the desktop into the mobile world? There is no clear answer to this question, but I suspect it has to do with companies being comfortable with the normal and familiar as well as with the lack of feedback opportunities mobile users have to tell their favorite website that they would like a mobile version. Through the use of individual applications designed specifically for a mobile device, users can have richer, more satisfying experiences with the mobile Internet without having to squint, pan, zoom, double-tap, and mis-click their way around massive websites.

Users are not looking to see an entire site from their mobile device. They are on-the-go out in the world, and they usually are looking for quick contact and location information. As more users move to mobile devices, companies will be forced to begin creating experiences specifically targeted at this growing market. Creating a version of website that is formatted for mobile devices is a small investment that will allow users to get what they need from a site, when they need it, and continue on with their busy lives.

Until next time, keep it usable Internets

Working here has made me infinitely more aware of usability in everyday things.  Some days I think my hubby’s ready to throw his shoe at me if I say “that’s just not usable” one more time.  We had one such encounter over the weekend when we stopped to get a soda from a conveniently located machine.  (I apologize for the bad resolution – there’s only so much you can do with an iPhone in a shadowy hallway.)

Take a close look … if you put your coins in that machine, where would you instinctively want to push to deploy your soda?  The big shiny button picturing the actual bottle of soda, right? 

But no!  There are still old-style buttons on the side that have to be selected for purchase.

It’s a small detail, but considering that soda companies are now using both functionalities, it made me pause before I actually made my purchase – it wasn’t automatic. If I had put my money in, pushed the button and gotten my soda, I would have thought nothing of this interaction. I wouldn’t have growled and said “this is bad usability.”  My husband wouldn’t have rolled his eyes.  And so on.

But the fact that the machine didn’t do what I thought it should at first glance made me feel like maybe I was doing something wrong, or maybe I was too old to understand these new-fangled machines, or maybe even the machine was broken.  But none of those were true.  And in the end, it just made feel like I should have bought a Coke.

First I would like to say that I loved SXSW. I learned a lot, met some interesting people, and had a great time with the Tuitive team!

Humans are visual beings. We need to know what is going to try and eat us, we also need to know what food is safe to eat. These are pretty basic problems with very serious consequences. As the world gets more complicated, the problems we all have to try and solve are getting more complicated too. The consequences of these problems might not be as dire, but successfully solving these problems is important for our immediate well-being.

Humans are extremely proficient at processing tangible things. You know something is a chair instantly if it has a place for your back and your butt. Now I want you to try and describe to someone what a chair is. 

Go ahead...I'll wait. 

Would it have been easier to show an example of a chair, or draw a picture?

For years and years I have tried to collect evidence and present solutions to a problem in typed words. Rarely was this solution easy to understand without reading every word, and sometimes even then the solutions was not immediately obvious to anyone else but me. 

So, Dan Roam basically changed my life. I am now trying to be a sketcher first, and writer last. I am trying to outline my ideas visually before firing up my word processor and attempting to write what I mean.

(I know it is all words, I am trying...sheesh!)

There is my blog post. I could muddle it up with more words, and I have, but that is every insightful thing I have to say in this post.

So to summarize... look at this picture!

Keep it usable Internets!

This blog post was inspired by Dan Roam's South By South West session - "Blah, Blah, Blah - When Words Won't Work." You can learn more about Dan on his website - http://www.thebackofthenapkin.com/ or his blog http://www.digitalroam.typepad.com/

My SXSW Highlights - coffee, Amy's, @leolaporte, Surface, Macs everywhere, BBQ, Crawfish Boil, The Library, Live Diggnation, So.Many.Lines., Usability jumps the shark, The Train, Monorail!

The team at Tuitive was fortunate enough to attend the 2010 South by Southwest (SXSW) Conference in Austin, Texas. This was the first time going for each of us, and we learned a lot, had a ton of fun and met with some great people. Here’s a smattering of insights and recommendations from my time there…

Watch Passionate Presenters

One tip I can pass along from attending panels is to seek out people with personality and passion. It almost doesn’t matter what they are talking about but if they are passionate and knowledgeable you are guaranteed to take home something useful. I saw a number of great speakers, my faves from the week being Ze Frank, Gary Vaynerchuk, Mark Cuban, David Heinemeier Hansson and Jason Fried from 37signals, and designer Daniel Burka.

Geolocation is the Next Big Thing

The most noticeable technology trend that people at SXSW were excited about was geolocation, or using a mobile device to announce where you’re at, be it a store, landmark, etc. Think of it as a Twitter or Facebook status update containing information about where you’re at physically.

There are a couple of foreseeable use cases for this, for example to tell your friends what bar you’re at on a Friday night, or to “check in” to a store and receive a discount or free gift.

Two companies have emerged in this space, Foursquare and Gowalla, and both seemed to be used heavily at SXSW. The latest reports show both running neck-and-neck in terms of usage. Expect to hear a lot more from this field in the coming months.

Prototypes vs Wireframes

A noticeable theme from the design panels was the emphasis on building interactive prototypes for web applications rather than spending time building traditional annotated wireframes. A prototype allows you to see a feature “in action” and close to its finished environment. Using HTML and in-browser prototypes is one of my favorite design techniques, so I was pleased to see its usage spreading. Every designer I saw did heartily recommend sketching before anything else, and I believe for a lot of designers this has become their “wireframing” phase.

Usability Has Been Swallowed By UX

Usability wasn’t brought up very often and not once did I hear the term “user-centered design”. I think at this point usability and user research are a foregone conclusion, and people on the forefront of design and technology are assuming that this is an integral part of the process. Now I think designers are concentrating more on how to improve the overall user experience, including motivations users have for wanting to engage with products.

Random Highlights

Live Diggnation, sake bombs, crushins, free t-shirts, long lines, big escalators, varying degrees of comfortable seating, those things that destroy your tires when you drive over them, musical note pillows, trying to sound like Stevie Ray Vaughan, pocket guides, and crawfish. See you next year!

I accidentally deleted my Twitter account last week.  Yes, yes, I know—that’s like accidentally driving one’s car off the road or misplacing one’s pants.  So how did I do it?  Glad you asked.

Like many folks, I manage more than one Twitter account.  For example, I have my personal Twitter account, a business account for Tuitive, and then a couple extra accounts related to some side projects.  I mistakenly thought I was logged in as one of these extra accounts when I made my way to Twitter’s account deactivation screen, as shown here:

Notice anything telling in the above screenshot?  I didn’t either, and that’s the problem!  While this screen does a great job of describing the dire, irreversible nature of deactivating a Twitter account, there is no indication anywhere as to which account I am logged into and about to deactivate.  I assumed incorrectly and pushed the button.

I was pretty shocked when I realized I had deactivated my personal Twitter account.  To add insult to injury, Twitter would not let me create a new account using my previous username or email address, meaning it wasn’t really deleted.  It was just caught in some sort of Twitter purgatory, stuck between the world of the active account and that of the deleted damned.

Fortunately after a few days of pleading-via-email, Twitter support had mercy on me and restored my account. (It came with a polite admonition, however, that this was a one-time favor.)

So, happy ending.  Crisis averted.  Problem solved.  But what a waste of time and energy, both on my part and that of Charles at Twitter support. Here’s a super simple usability tweak to the HTML on the Twitter account deactivation screen that I’m sure would have prevented this issue from happening in the first place:

The best part is, in the time it has taken for you to read this, a Twitter developer could have implemented this and perhaps prevented another careless fool like me from making a similar mistake.

Like many usability tweaks, simple changes have huge impacts that can prevent a lot of heartache.  And we all know that an ounce of prevention is worth pounds of tech support.

I recently ran across this video again, and there is no clearer example of who you should really be thinking about when you are building a website or web-based software. Watch the video and we will catch-up after.

I know, right! Granted this is a Google Chrome advertisement, but it is a very real look at very real users. These people are not web designers, or developers. However, they are everyday people who use computers all the time and still have a hard time understanding the concept of a browser. When designing a product that is easy to use, you must make design decisions base on more of these types of users than any other kind. So keep these users in your mind, your heart, and keep this video around for inspiration in the future.

Now I need to find that big E to post this to the Internets through my AOL broadband…