Tip 2: Start sketching out your website design

Yup, we are now ready to bring your website to life. This next bit is the easiest of it all. This is where we go with the standard stuff – logo, menu bars, footer, main area and the lot.

And, this is the time to add in those extra bits – a wee bit of news, a link to twitter perhaps and maybe a helpful little search box on top.

Once that is taken care of, it is time for our post-its to make their entry. A few dotted lines, a bit of scissor work…pretty much like ol’ Blue Peter…and we have a rough skeleton of the new concept shaping up.

Now then, don’t you expect to get all the things right in the very first go. You might need to move things around a bit, and maybe even start from scratch again! And then of course, there would be the stake holders all along, itching to add in their two pennies worth.

Anyway to cut a long story short, after a few sketches, and some rework you will find yourself in a position to tidy things up. Adobe’s fireworks is what we use for this. They have a nice set of tools and you can easily export to a PDF file. We usually ping these out to clients to show a tidied up version to confirm meeting notes and ensure that all issues were discussed.

This is where we introduce the concept of a grey box. The image below is the same stuff as the sketches, just tidied up a little.

The grey box process in fact relies on open thinking. We might easily get to the design at this point. You can almost see it, can’t you?  But then this is the stage where feedback is all important. Take the time out, make sure all angles are covered and you have gotten in all that you would want, and the effort will definitely pay off at the end. These are the critical initial stages. People are at their most creative, ideas are flowing and no one is bound by limits of nice looking designs that rail road you into one way of thinking. Above all, costs are low. If you don’t like how things are going, you simply bin them and just start all over again. No hassle there.

Now when you finally have the rough sketch, go home, show the wife, the kids, anyone you like. (And, when it comes to the comment part, remember the wife’s bit is not to be discarded lightly! They might not be the ultimate authority on web site design or eMarketing.  But that is one important source to be relied on for strong opinions of what a site should be like, and what designs are cool. Squeezing out a few minutes in between the baby’s nap and the day’s washing for a quick recipe from Jamie Oliver’s cookery blog, while whisking through eBay and netmums – count on them for some practical opinion on what a quick surfer would want from a site.)

Time for a quick PC disclaimer! The third party opinion does not have to be limited to ‘the wife’ alone. It could be your partner, your mum, your dad or a web savvy neighbour- just about anyone. Basically what we are saying is this – show people. A few extra pairs of eyeballs to spot flaws that you might have missed – a great internet thing called ‘crowdsourcing’. Well, this opinion bit is not based on any solid survey or poll, just anecdotal stuff that was discussed in the office and has been testified as quite an effective tool.

Are you still there with us on this?

• No? Good luck, we wish you well.
• Yes? We really are going to get on! Call us.

P.S. Did you spot the ol’ post-it note in the grey box? It managed to stick on this far. Bet you the designer will get rid of it in the next stage!

Tip 1a: Still banging on about Post-it Notes

Post tip1 and pre tip2

Right, you gave me all that twaddle about post-it notes. Point taken Mr Owner, Director, Marketing manager, IT dude who has just inherited this web thing. But incidentally my competitors are right now shelling out fortunes on their new websites.  Ahem…I hear Jones and Jones diggers are spending nothing short of 50K on their new one! All I know is I want a new website, and it simply has to be the best in the industry.

Well, all of the above have actually been said to me, apart from the word twaddle. Ha, I bet this is yet to figure even in the Enriched Teen’s Vocabulary Edition!

Coming to Scissors, paper, pens and post-its… I know they don’t exactly sound like the newest in technology, and doesn’t really come across as the best piece of professional advice in the age of Twitter and the iPad.

But, surprisingly the entire process is actually quite thorough and looks something like this:

•    Simple tools such as post-it notes to capture, check  requirements and priorities
•    Initial sketches / grey boxing to echo back
•    Click-able prototype to confirm that we are going to deliver something that was wanted in the first place
•    Design
•    Build
•    QA / Test / Training
•    Go Live

The technology and techno babble in fact comes in only later. We can’t possibly “give you” a website at the very outset. We don’t know your business, your clients or your products. Our job at this point is just to get you talking. We could put on a German accent, use a desk lamp and turn a bright shining light on to you.  “You vill talk”. Now, before you get the politically correct police on to us… we don’t do that and we love Germany, especially Heidelberg.

The point we are making is this. A process is needed to capture all the requirements. There will be a lot of sorting, rejecting and change of focus. When the client takes the post-its out of our hands, we know that we are onto a winner. The client is engaging, they are starting to own the process. They are starting to build the site. That is exactly what we want, a partnership approach that will lead to a win-win scenario.

If you think you don’t have to be put through all this hassle for a new website, let’s be honest, we know you could spend 50 quid and get your site done in Mumbai or Jakarta. Heck, you can even go to WordPress.com and get a site for free! (and sometimes that is the right thing to do.)

I hope you are still there with us after all this? Good, in that case we are going to get on quite well and I see a winning website shaping up in the horizon.

Hmmm, this stuff works for Social Media also?

Tip1: You don’t want a website!

What? I don’t want a website? Well, if that’s the best piece of advice you can offer, I might as well not waste my time on this…

Wait! Before you make up your mind, let me explain., There are times when you feel your current website is not quite up to the mark and you might think a brand new one might do the trick, Well, the truth is you are probably better off without a new one right now!

You would not believe the number of times we have seen this typical scenario of a client coming in with the wish list:

• I need to have a new website
• I need to have it done yesterday
• It’s just a few pages
• And do remember to keep it cheap

It would then be followed by a few typical questions from our side, like:

• What is the new website for?
• Do you already have one? What is wrong with it?
• Where is your business heading? New products? New services?

It soon becomes very clear that there is a bit of a muddle going on. There are conflicting requirements, desires, needs and perhaps a vision that is a little on the cloudy side. Usually it is the sales team that are banging on the table. Absolutely normal for they are front line and need to look good with the client. But are they the only ones that need to be satisfied? Do we need a lick of paint, a patch up job and a few pics of happy smiley people? Maybe.

The truth is that if you get it wrong, the website will only reflect the internal lack of vision going on within your company. And the last things you want your potential clients to be thinking when they look at your website would be:

• I can’t find a thing!!!
• This looks like it hasn’t seen an update in ages (Are they on the ropes? Cutting back?)
• Hmmm…“Findmywidgetco and sons” seem to be far better than this crowd; Better get back to their site…

So, do you want a website right now, this second? Probably not.

Where do we go from here? Luckily the answer is not a multimillion dollar decision support system that is going to need McKinsey Co consultants being parachuted in.

The solution is in fact quite simple.  All you need to do is gather some post-it notes, a little common sense and all your stake holders around the table.  And, before you know it, you will see the website begin to take shape right in front of your eyes.

Simple.

Got a round table?

Keep the ideas coming.

Start sorting and grouping, your ideal website is almost there.

What will 2010 bring?

First things first, goodbye 2009, we are not going to miss you. What a year it has been. 2009 was difficult, challenging, testing and requiring one to run faster and faster just to stand still. Good, decent, upstanding and respectable clients went bust and some of the methods used by receivers are truly shocking, even the Times commented on this. All good for experience I suppose.

Last year as I looked forward to 2009 my Google searches did not reveal much to tickle my fancy. This year however there is plenty to digest. As a first observation more people seem to be looking forward, which I fully understand, more are taking guesses and are making interesting predictions.

The Scotsman even compares the previous year’s predictions. Nice. http://bit.ly/8GQ9zo

These are my favourites:

• Fox news: http://bit.ly/797XKz
• Regular geek: http://bit.ly/78W9Op
• Little box of ideas: http://bit.ly/6oYfNO

At Imre we probably need to pay more attention to these predictions.
Marketing Vox:  http://bit.ly/4N7TEo

Then there are all of these:

• http://bit.ly/76pz7R – Good to know where gold and energy prices are headed.
• http://bit.ly/84IPiR – I am always interested in leadership. Those that have vision and can lead their troops into battle are worth their weight in gold. But this Murdoch thing seems foolhardy or is it just big balls?
• http://bit.ly/4ZLZBJ – Looks like HR managers will be busy, a good thing.
• http://bit.ly/7NwljJ - Gobbledygook.
• http://bit.ly/5vya4M -Fraud will be up, up, up and up. Now that is a one way bet.
• http://bit.ly/8hUeNy – Written in 1997 and predicting the 2010 political landscape.
• http://bit.ly/53w4yN Trendwatching.com. I remember them from last year. These people are very insightful and really do a good job. Urbany? Fluxury? All good to test your spell checker.
• http://bit.ly/5jv1M9 – Value is the new black.
• http://bit.ly/4J7WvZ – The future of social change on the web.
• http://bit.ly/6puGXl – 8 news media trends for 2010
• http://bit.ly/79LwzU – An actual blip in the Netcraft hosts curve. Then totally amazed to read about the growth of “nginx” :  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nginx All new to me! (Did I work in hosting?)

So where does that leave us with the thinking for 2010?

Value, radical thinking, relentless change, social media maturity where we can expect the likes of toobla.com to tie up the lose ends to make things more workable. Local seems to come up again and again.

And for our clients?

Most are using smart phones, those that are not, really need to make the jump. Devices such as iPhones will bring home how local services can work, and also where there are a few spare minutes, dipping into social media is entirely possible. Most clients say that they do not have time for social media activities. I think 2010 will be the year that those  who are not taking part in the conversations will find themselves exposed.

Cmon 2010, help us forget 2009! And it is time for an African team to show that 2010 belongs to Africa.

Happy new year from the IMRE Team!!

Late update:
From the Beeb for UK Manufacturing. Good for 2010.

Flexidry is a winning floor screed!

Not often you get to work on a project that has so many positives. A year ago screed was something that we would walk on. Since we have started working with the folks at Flexidry Global we have come to respect this product that everyone takes for granted. In fact how many people even know what screed is?

The amazing thing about this Flexidry floor screed is that when we asked for the USPs and the differentiators we got back a list of 15! Any of which could have formed the main marketing message for the new website.

Just to give you an idea here are just a few of them:

• Speed up drying time  (down from 110 days to 7 – huge implications for trades that need to get on with their work)
• Reduced shrinkage and cracking.  (Try pulling up a huge floor that has gone wrong)
• Works really well with underfloor heating and has a huge part to play in sustainable buildings. (Cement has high CO2 implications)

Massive, massive potential with this product and the Flexidry team really know their stuff.

Needless to say we have an exciting project to work on that will comprise of calculators, mobile devices and ecommerce. Watch this space.

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