Adapted from Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox for June 15, 1997: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9706b.html

Web design involves three levels:

• Web design management
• interaction design (navigation support, homepage layout, templates, search, etc.)
• content design (the actual writing on the pages, as well as the design of any other media types used to communicate content as opposed to site interaction)

Just as in a hamburger, the middle layer is the most tasty and attracts the most attention, including much of my own work on Web usability. I have come to realize that the outer two layers are more important in many ways: users only care about content (in other words, no, the medium is not the message; the message is the message) and the usability of a website is more a function of how it is managed than of how good its designers are.

1. 1. Not Knowing Why This is the number one problem. You can be surprised how many websites are built simply because some executive told somebody to do it without telling them what the site should achieve. And no, it is not an acceptable reason that "everybody else is doing it."

Granted, these days, you need a website simply to be considered a professionally run organization (not being on the Web is like not having a fax machine: people think you are a fly-by-night). Thus, it is OK to make a "business-card site" with a small amount of corporate image building, directions to your various facilities, and the annual report and other investor information. However, doing so is not the most effective use of the Web, and a site along these lines should only be built as a result of an explicit decision not to invest in active use of the Web for business.

2. Designing for Your Own VPs

Internally-focused sites cause companies to end up with home pages full of mission statements, photos of the CEO, and corporate history (all of which do fit on an "about this company" page; just not on the home page). Remember that your company is not the center of the universe for your customers. The site should be designed with customers' needs in mind. Do not build a site that your top executives will love: they are not the target audience.

3. Site Structure

The site structure should be determined by the tasks users want to perform on your site, even if that means having a single page for information from two very different departments. It is often necessary to distribute information from a single department across two or more parts of the site, and many sub-sites have to be managed in collaboration between multiple departments.

4. Outsourcing to Multiple Agencies The problem with using multiple agencies is that each of them want to put their own stamp on the site: both because they have different design philosophies and because they will want to use you as a reference account. It is no fun to say "we designed such-and-such pages" if all the pages on the site look the same.

Consistency is the key to usable interaction design: when all interface elements look and function the same, users feel more confident using the site because they can transfer their learning from one sub-site to the next rather than having to learn everything over again for each new page.

The best way to ensure consistency is to have a single department that is responsible for the design of the entire site. If this cannot be done, at least have a central group that oversees all design work and that is chartered to enforce a single style guide. Even if the central group does not actually design any pages themselves, considerable consistency can be achieved if the various departments can turn to a single source of design advice. Even better: have the central design group maintain the templates and deliver updated and revised graphics as needed.

5. Budget for Maintenance

As a rule of thumb, the annual maintenance budget for a website should be about the same as the initial cost of building the site, with 50 percent as an absolute minimum. Obviously, ongoing costs are even higher for news sites and other projects that depend on daily or real-time updates. If you simply spend the money to build a glamorous site but do not keep it up to date, your investment will very rapidly turn out to be wasted.

6. Web Content

The only way to get great Web content is to have your staff develop the content for the Web first. If you want great Web content and great brochures, you will have to have two teams develop two sets of content.

Content creators have been trained to develop linear content for traditional media: they have spent their entire careers doing so. They have to consciously push themselves to work differently than their natural approach to content, so unless you force your content developers to produce their material specifically for the Web, you will end up with substandard Web content .

7. User Interface

A Web design is an interactive product, and therefore usability engineering methods are necessary to study what happens during the user's interaction with the site.

Users are not designers: no matter how many focus groups you run, they cannot tell you how to design your navigation. Focus groups are great for getting information about users' current concerns and areas where they would like help, but they will rarely teach you how to reinvent the fundamental way you do business. Listening carefully to customers will often reveal frustrations that can turn into opportunities for improvement, but once you have an idea for an improvement, you must create a prototype design and try it out with users in a usability test to see whether it really works for them.

There are endless stories of customers who say in focus groups that they would love a certain feature, but who never use it once it is launched because it is too cumbersome, too expensive, or doesn't really meet their needs in real use. The point is that market research forms the starting point but has to be supplemented with usability engineering if you want a design that works when people try to use it.

Specific insights into the detailed design of your site and the parts that must change because they are confusing, slow users down, or do not match the way users want to work can be derived from watching four or five users as they actually use your site to perform real tasks. A day or two in the usability lab and you will have a long list of changes that will improve your design.

10. Underestimating the Strategic Impact of the Web

The two classic errors in predicting the future of a technology shift are to over-estimate its short-term impact and under-estimate its long-term impact. The Web has been hyped to such an extent that people overestimate what it can do the next year or two: most websites are not going to turn a profit any time soon. But please don't underestimate what will happen once we reach the goal of everyone, everywhere; connected.

Source form http://www.marketingmo.com/how-to-articles/project-management/how-to-manage-a-design-project/

If you’re working on a creative project for your business – new sales literature, a website, campaign materials, etc. – how do you know when your concept and design is “good enough?”

The creative process can be challenging for non-designers and designers alike. But the key to success is to follow a clear design process with specific criteria you’ll use to evaluate the work.

There are two major stages in every design project:

• Concept: Creating the overarching idea/theme for an ad, campaign, or creative piece. In the concept stage you’ll choose the general message, the rough copy, the general layout and “look and feel” of the piece.
• Execution: Working through the details that bring the concept to life. In this stage you’ll finalize the images, layout, colors, fonts, headline, paper, copy, etc.

To improve your design process, focus on the right elements at the right time. It’s easy to look at initial concepts and get stuck on execution elements rather than concept itself. First decide which concept works best, then apply color to it.

Establish specific goals for your piece, whatever it is. Try to make the process as objective as possible. It’s challenging, but when you lean toward objectivity, you can avoid a great deal of re-work and headache that adds time and cost to design projects with (frequently) little measurable improvement to the end product.

The process

1. Define your goals in a creative brief.

The brief is a document that you and your creative team (writers, designers) will reference throughout the project. Use it to list your deadlines, background and creative requirements for the project. For example, you’ll explain your offer/call-to-action, key messages, rough copy and content, mechanical requirements, and your branding requirements (colors, tone, personality, etc.).

2. Identify concepts. If you have a design team or vendor, they’ll use your creative brief to generate a number of rough concepts, storyboards, drawings etc. for you to review. If you’re creating the piece on your own, get your team together and brainstorm if appropriate. You’re looking for overarching ideas that you can flesh out and finalize in later stages.

Need help finding inspiration? I keep a sample library of great ads, literature, presentations, email offers, paper samples, premiums, etc. – they can really inspire a great idea. If I’m doing a printed piece, I also like to walk through my favorite art supply store.

3. Hone in on one or two concepts. Your goal is to narrow down to one or two that best meet your criteria for the project. Ask whether the concept inspires the necessary action from your target audience. Be as objective as possible and concentrate on what the creative is suppose to achieve, not the gritty details of the design itself.

It’s easy to get stuck and waste valuable resources at this step, especially if someone wants to see 5 of the concepts with 4 different color palettes, 2 photos and 3 layouts. Instead, choose the best one or two concepts, then let your designers focus on the details of each.

4. Refine the execution. Here’s where you can focus on the final details – photography, final copy, graphics, colors, etc. If you’ve done a great job with your creative brief, it will be much easier for your design team to produce a piece that meets your criteria.

Always give direct and honest feedback, but it’s not always best to tell a designer or vendor exactly what to do. After all, they’re the designer, and they may have much more creative ideas for solving your dilemmas. Instead, tell them why you’d like a particular change made. And you should be able to tie everything back to your creative brief and requirements.

5. Produce the piece. Hopefully you’ve stayed on schedule and on budget. If not, look back at what went wrong … you can learn something for the next project.

Books

Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy The Non-Designer’s Design Book by Robin Williams Logo Design Workbook by Noreen Morioka & Terry Stone Sean Adams

Never use a book when managing creatives. I think if I were to give any advice it would be do NOT micromanage. I know that applies no matter what, but given how spaced out creatives can behave the temptation is quite strong.

I usually try to ensure they know exactly what the limits of the job is before it starts. You need really clear creative briefs. For example, if you know the client hates the color brown, make sure they know it. If you know that certain graphic standards must be adhered to, they need to know that. Right from the start.

Delegation can be tough at the start, it takes time to decipher who has the best skill set for a job. Creative teams are best until you begin to see who does what well, and how you can combine skills to allow for growth.

As far as ego and personality clashes go - I don't put up with it. Ever. You're working with creative people in a business environment, not giving them their own private art studio. A happy creative team is one where they all feel respected, not worrying about having the main designer go off on a rant because the client wants their logo 10% bigger.

I don't care if the creative team wants to go to the pub/restaurant/coffee shop/park to get out and brainstorm. Fine with me. The thing about creatives is that it needs to be about the work, not whether or not they're at their desks right at 9am. But if they're working to tight deadlines then they'll need those cell phones.

Another great way to motivate is to ensure resources are available. Creative magazine subscriptions, pay for them to go to design conferences, whatever you can find to keep them inspired. Don't make it so that they have to buy their own design annuals. If they find a book or magazine or conference that they are interested in they should feel like you're open to letting them have access to it.

Allow for play. It's a great tool not just for the creatives but any coders or production staff they work with. Make sure the creative teams integrate into the rest of the business. In some places they end up kind of isolated from everyone else, which isn't good.

And, and, and.....um. I'm sure there's more. You don't say if you're working with juniors or seniors, or how it's structured so I'm not sure how far to take it. I've never bothered with books on how to manage the creative development, because it should be a fluid environment. A process imposed from the top down just doesn't work on creative development. It'll develop organically.

I have no idea if any of that is helpful. If you have more specific questions you can ask via email. I've worked as a project and studio manager in design firms and agencies for over 10 years and I've run into every kind of creative personality there is. 90% of them are fun, the other 10%....well. You can't like everyone you work with, right?

The advantage of raising money from friends and family is that they're easy to find. You already know them. There are three main disadvantages: you mix together your business and personal life; they will probably not be as well connected as angels or venture firms; and they may not be accredited investors, which could complicate your life later.

Venture funding works like gears. A typical startup goes through several rounds of funding, and at each round you want to take just enough money to reach the speed where you can shift into the next gear.

Few startups get it quite right. Many are underfunded. A few are overfunded, which is like trying to start driving in third gear.

I think it would help founders to understand funding better—not just the mechanics of it, but what investors are thinking. I was surprised recently when I realized that all the worst problems we faced in our startup were due not to competitors, but investors. Dealing with competitors was easy by comparison.

I don't mean to suggest that our investors were nothing but a drag on us. They were helpful in negotiating deals, for example. I mean more that conflicts with investors are particularly nasty. Competitors punch you in the jaw, but investors have you by the balls.

Apparently our situation was not unusual. And if trouble with investors is one of the biggest threats to a startup, managing them is one of the most important skills founders need to learn.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is an excellent model for understanding human motivation

His Hierarchy of Needs offers a blue print for understanding people around you. Understanding motivation can enable you to strengthen your relations, work more effectively with business associates, become more capable parent, and facilitate possible change in any group.

Maslow's work and ideas extend far beyond the Hierarchy of Needs.

Maslow's concept of self-actualization relates directly to the present day challenges and opportunities for employers and organizations - to provide real meaning, purpose and true personal development for their employees. For life - not just for work.

Maslow saw these issues fifty years ago: the fact that employees have a basic human need and a right to strive for self-actualization, just as much as the corporate directors and owners do.

Increasingly, the successful organizations and employers will be those who genuinely care about, understand, encourage and enable their people's personal growth towards self-actualization - way beyond traditional work-related training and development, and of course way beyond old-style X-Theory management autocracy, which still forms the basis of much organized employment today.

The best modern employers and organizations are beginning to learn at last: that sustainable success is built on a serious and compassionate commitment to helping people identify, pursue and reach their own personal unique potential.

When people grow as people, they automatically become more effective and valuable as employees.

In fact virtually all personal growth, whether in a hobby, a special talent or interest, or a new experience, produces new skills, attributes, behaviors and wisdom that is directly transferable to any sort of job role.

Most web analytics practitioners define Conversion Rate as the percent of site visitors who do something the company who owns the website wants them to do.

Measuring Conversion Rate is not good enough.

You should stop obsessing about conversion rate, put Overall Site Conversion Rate in some appendix of your weekly / monthly presentations but that is about it.

Overall site conversion rate (non-segmented) for your site is a nice to know metric but it is quite meaningless in terms of its ability to truly communicate actionable insights. You got 100 visitors, 2.2 of those converted, where do you start to look for what the heck happened?

A minority of visitors that come to any website come to buy (less than 50% of site traffic). So if a minority of people come to your website to buy why should we obsess about Conversion Rate?

So what might you be missing if you only focus on conversion rate?

Customers who will come to your website to “research” product. They might never buy from your website, maybe if you do a awesomely kick butt job on the website maybe you will convert them but it is highly unlikely.

Customers who will come to your website to “learn” about you, the company. They are looking for jobs, they are looking for press releases, they are looking for your company founders bio, they are looking for why you exist, they want your blog, they want to unsubscribe from your emails etc.

Customers who come to our websites for “help”. This is people looking for support or looking for driving directions to your office or they want to send you a nasty email or register their product etc.

Customers who come for reasons that we don’t know simply because we simply never bothered to ask (this is huge by the way).

Obsessing about conversion rate means a focus on the 20 – 40% of the traffic on your website that is “in the game” and solving for just that minority.

Powerful metric is -- Task Completion Rate by Primary Purpose.

Why are you visiting the website today? Where you able to complete your task today?

The answer to Primary Purpose question will look something like this: Research Products/Services, Purchase Products/Services, Look for Company Information, Register the Products I have already Purchased, Looking for Support

The answer to the Task Completion Rate question will be Yes or No.

If you can do this you suddenly are 1) massively aware of why people come to your website 2) just a few of them are there to buy, and how many 3) where is your website failing you.

Now you know what you need to do to improve your website experience for your major segments of customers to increase their task completion rate.

Stated simply the overall approach is: Understand customers really well and create personas for customer segments

One of the Google Analytics goals for our site can be to get RSS subscriptions.

When someone clicks on one of the subscription links there is a way to record page hit in Google Analytics. Each subscription link generates a different page hit. Here’s what the page hits look like:

/blog/lisaconsulting/rss/rss /blog/lisaconsulting/rss/google /blog/lisaconsulting/rss/yahoo /blog/lisaconsulting/rss/bloglines /blog/lisaconsulting/rss/newsgator

So the goal is to get someone to reach one of those ‘pages’. Rather than create a goal for each of the above, use a regular expression to match then all. Then I only need to create a single goal. The regular expression that I use for the goal looks like this:

/blog/lisaconsulting/rss/

Here is the neat part. Google Analytics has a special report that will explain which of the links were hit. Remember, I’m using a regular expression that can match all of the subscription links (5 different links). While it is valuable to see the overall number of times the goal is reached, it is even more useful to understand which of the 5 links actually contributed to the goal.

The report is called the ‘Goal Verification‘ report and it is located in the Content Optimization > Goals & Funnel Process reports.

Goal Tracking Report shows the total Number of goals achieved

This is fun, let’s keep digging into this data! In our example, a visitor can reach my goal from any page on the site. It would be interesting to see which page they were on prior to hitting the goal.

Google Analytics has a ‘Revers Goal Path‘ report. This report, found in the Content Optimization > Goals & Funnel Process section, shows the path that the user took to reach a goal.

Looking at the report we can see that two people landed on my homepage and subscribed to the Google RSS feed. This report is great because it can show the ‘high value’ pages that people need to see on the way to your goal page.

Need to enhance your career? Add items that represent water to the front, center area of your home, such as:

• Snowmen
• Snowflakes

Want to bring your family closer together? Add items that represent wood to the left, center area of your home, such as:

• Christmas tree

Want people to think highly of you? Add items that represent fire to the back, center area of your home, such as:

• Reindeer
• Candles
• Stars
• Lights
• Poinsettias

Want to improve your health? Add items that represent earth to the center area of your home, such as:

• A fresh centerpiece with real earth
• Poinsettias
• Fresh bowl of fruit or fruit basket

Want to increase your wealth? Add items that represent money to the back, left area of your home, such as:

• Gifts (especially the ones you receive)
• Chocolate gelt (money)

The bathroom is definitely the room that you think of when you think of water. But the water in the bathroom isn't the same as the water element. You will still need the water element, such as a water fountain or aquarium, in other areas of the house to be balanced. The following Feng Shui information can be applied to existing bathrooms or to homes that are being designed.

Where to Begin?

You can use the bagua (a map of feng shui) in your bathroom just as you would use it on the entire house.

Sketch the bathroom, including any fixtures (bath tub, toilet, etc.) closets, doors and windows. Place a copy of the bagua over the sketch to determine placement of various elements and color.

Everything Has To Do With Placement

The entry to the home is where career and opportunities come into the home. If the bathroom is located directly in front of the entry, your opportunities could flow out immediately.

You can help prevent a loss of opportunity by always closing the bathroom door and toilet lid (when not in use) to prevent the unnecessary escape of chi.

Lots of lighting, good ventilation and cleanliness are essential to a proper Feng Shui bathroom. As with other rooms, a lot of mirrors are important to reflect chi and keep it moving around the room and throughout the house.

Don't allow dripping faucets or dirty fixtures to be a part of your bathroom. A dripping faucet is a sign of wasting money.

Another way to counteract opportunity and prosperity from being flushed away is to keep a bowl of pebbles or fresh flower arrangement on the toilet tank or on a shelf above the toilet. By adding this element of earth, you will help control the water.

A black or red rug at the base of the toilet will also provide protection against wealth loss.

Good color schemes for a properly located bathroom are light grays, cream colors and pale blues. If your bathroom is located in the center of the house, paint it red. The fire element will increase income and therefore counteract the drain on wealth