How the Design Feedback Funnel Actually Worked
It's often hard for clients to respond to design, where the considerations can feel fuzzy compared to more straightforward questions like "Well, what pages do we need?" Because it's hard to know what to say, feedback can easily get too specific—prescribing changes that may not fit in with the design as a whole—or too vague—registering a general sense of satisfaction or dissatisfaction without being able to specify what is or isn't working.
One of our recent sites was a great example of how the design process works when this doesn't happen—when client feedback both conveys a clear reaction and leaves latitude for the designer to do his thing. The aim is for the feedback to explain the problem, but let the designer figure out the solution. Here's a round-by-round look at the Quebrada Baking Co. design process as an example of feedback leading toward a final result that clearly expresses the brand.
The “Mad Scientist” Blogger
Many of our agency friends have been blogging for a few years now, but it's been about as effective a strategy as attending a networking mixer; most companies know instinctively that they need to be there, but they just don't know exactly why, what they will bring to the conversation, or what they'll do with the experience. As a result, many agency blogs are pretty unfocused. Some are mostly "neat stuff" aggregators, while others are "innovationspeak" engines running on the Taco Bell model
How to Improve Your Bounce Rate
Bounce rate is one of the most important analytics metrics for your website. When you're looking at specific pages on your site, especially in
terms of the search keywords that bring visitors to those pages, bounce
rate indicates the number of people who come to one landing page on
your website and then leave without viewing any additional pages.
You should constantly strive to lower your bounce rate. The lower your bounce rate, the more people are digging deeper into your site's content
Screencast: How to Measure Keyword Performance with Google Analytics
This is the second in a three-part series about search keywords and how they
relate to your website. Today we will discuss how to measure keyword performance on your site.
Brian Chiou and Jillian Kuhn will be hosting these collaborative screencasts once every two weeks, focusing on topics that are important to you and your website.
Information Architecture Planning: The Most Important Step in the Web Development Process
Perhaps because they are so excited to start the
Week 745
This week was a special one at Newfangled as we welcomed the guys from our Rhode Island office, who visited for a few days around our annual winter retreat (Jim arrived on Monday morning and worked with us for the entire week; Steve and Justin arrived on Wednesday). Aside from the retreat, we marked Jillian's 1-year anniversary at Newfangled, Bettina's birthday, and Katie's promotion to Director of Client Services...
Hyperity
Yesterday, the entire Newfangled team gathered for a one-day mini-retreat. This is something we do each winter as a sort of state-of-the-company event, where we go over company news, talk about various topics related to what we do as a group and individually, and think about where we're headed.
As part of that event, I gave a brief presentation on the notion of hyperity--that we're in a state of being connected all the time, and everywhere--and how that affects and will affect our company. Below are some of the key slides and an explanation beneath...
Agencies: Don’t Lead with Design!
Many of the agencies I speak with have a hard time figuring out how to build client sites without losing some combination of their reputation, bankroll, and sanity. It doesn't have to be this way. The main problem we all encounter when approaching a web development project is that a commonsense approach to web development doesn’t work. You are capable putting together a great web project--you just need to have the right process...
Tracking Downloads in Google Analytics
One of our Total Managed Support clients,
showcases its expertise through a variety of downloadable assets: white papers, brochures, data sheets, etc. These downloads are organized in a global Knowledge Center and featured site-wide in marquees and call-to-action widgets.
However, because these assets are downloadable files (as opposed to, say, on-page content), they are much more difficult to track. Our basic Google Analytics setup does not automatically monitor download links, so our client was missing out on a wealth of data about the site's visitors and the performance of their downloads.
Newsletter Signup Callouts
Newsletters are a key content tool, and the style and placement of the signup callout requires some strategy to encourage subscriptions. In this blog I will look at these callouts from a few of our sites, to suggest possibilities and encourage short, visible, and strategically placed newsletter signups.