30 Beautiful Examples of Illustrated Information

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Getting the Most Out of Your Web Site Redesign Project: a Guide for Clients

You may be a pro at your job and an expert on your industry, but how much do you know about web site design? For all the busy marketers and business owners out there, here is a quick guide to help you get the most out of your web site project.

  • You are the expert on your company, so it is essential that you provide as much feedback as possible at every stage of the project. If anything is unclear or too abstract, just say something! Your web design team will be happy to help you understand. Read more

Who’s the Idiot? You or the Client?

I just read this great article by Paul Boag. As a designer or specialist in any field it’s easy to blame a break down of communication or project failure on the client.

From Paul’s article and our own experience I have listed the things designers can do to reduce friction and ensure the web design project goes smoothly:

  1. Asking the client for the budget needs to be explained in the context of what dollars can buy. Using comparisons and familiar analogs helps the client figure out why we need those numbers and what the value of those dollars will be. We often say “when shopping for a house you look at comparative homes. Let’s look at some comparison web sites to see what your money will buy”. Read more

RetireLife Launches an Online Resource for Eldercare

A new FTS client, RetireLife, has been working with our UI team to launch a website for their start-up company.  FTS’ user interface web designers are now in the final stages of creating a comprehensive website, designed to fully support Retire Life’s business model to get the company up and running.  The young entrepreneurs behind RetireLife are a group of Babson students whose entrepreneurial objective grew out of their own personal experiences with friends and family members; they recognized the struggle their parents’ generation was experiencing as their grandparents aged.  There were very few resources available to their parents, (the Baby-Boomer Generation,) who have become the caretakers of their aging parents.  These Babson students realized that they, Generation Y, would inherit this same problem fifteen to thirty years from now, when their parents, (from the even bigger Baby Boomer Generation,) grow older and need the same type of care.  RetireLife.com helps assuage the tension and anxiety surrounding the very difficult, sensitive issue of caring for our aging loved ones. Read more

Around the Office

A few weeks ago our brilliant photographer friend Brian Tetrault spent some time just shooting some candid pictures at the Fresh Tilled Soil offices. We thought you might like to see where we spend our days.

The three success factors in creating and growing startups

As a business that sees hundreds of entrepreneurs and startups every year we have started to develop that kind of sixth sense for what works and what doesn’t. Apart from all the prospect and client startups we see every year we have also had several of our own businesses. We currently have a significant stake in five early-stage businesses and are negotiating a sixth. A few weeks ago we discussed how our little web design business has become the ideal startup incubator and listed some of the success factors we’ve experienced. If we turn the spotlight on the people that run those successful businesses for us we see some patterns too.

Here are the key success factors that we look for in both our client’s and our own investments: Read more

Leadership Lesson from Dancing Guy by Derek Sivers

This video was played at TED and followed by a standing ovation. So beautifully simple it doesn’t need any description.

On Judging Site Design – Marketing Committees

A recent situation encountered by by one of our clients has inspired me to pontificate on the topic of “Marketing Committees”. (Read: Why Corporate Web Design is Broken) Recently one of our clients mentioned to me that her marketing committee needed to review our design. Now, while in this particular scenario, I was assured that she has the final say in terms of this type of formality she often encounters with her organization (phew!) which calmed me down about the possibility of revamping our mockups again,  I’ve paraphrased, extrapolated, and derived questions from the our conversation  to represent what can happen when a committee who’s expertise lies just outside of the design world gathers in a room and analyzes site design:

“Does this constitute conventional web design?”

“Can we see research on where the eye lands first?”

“We need a few more mockups to help us decide what we want”

Ok. My suggestion to a marketing board such as this would be to avoid engaging in discussions about things such as “eye path”. While that is important for some applications and marketing material, it’s something “we all” heard about at one point or another in school and is the closest thing to psychological qualifiers most people can connect with in terms of effective design. It’s one of many aesthetic and functional elements that can go into designing a site. Psychologists do exist who study these types of things. But really, this is going too far.

Basically, if a site looks good and is easy to use, it is good. Worrying if evolutionary experts would find the site as perfectly engaging, sustainably and organically designed doesn’t really apply here. The site needs a clear purpose and the goal is to convey what you need to convey as most straightforwardly as possible.

In terms of “conventional” site elements, keep it simple. People travel to web pages because they expect to learn things they think (and hope) that web page holds, not browsing around the page for what they want to find out. That’s where simplicity comes into play and why one text column, one description, and clean functionality often wins out. For example, focus on including more “need to know only if it applies to you” information as you progress throughout the site or down the page. You’ll look if you need to look. Otherwise, no need to worry about it.

While these thoughts may not constitute criteria for a site to win international design awards (we don’t design that way anyways, because they often sacrifice content for aesthetics, which doesn’t really work for many of our clients), the purpose of the site is what drives the design. Don’t overcomplicate things.

Part Two: To Tweet Or Not to Tweet?

How is Twitter becoming more and more relevant to SEO and internet marketing strategies today?

Let’s talk business strategy for a minute…

First off, and most obviously, there has been an overwhelming public interest and participation in online social media networks in the past few years (Twitter, in particular;) microblogging is arguably the newest phenomenon in high tech communication.   Commercial industries must and will cater their marketing strategies accordingly.  Every notable business today has a Twitter account you can follow, right?

Proof’s in the Pudding

Google has altered its indexing algorithms based on real time conversations as a result of Twitter’s growing influence on consumer opinion and product branding.   Since the public has a voice through these social media venues, marketing is becoming more and more tailored according to consumer wants, likes, and dislikes.  Google, too, has noted this gradual shift, and developed its real time and personalized search features as a means of specifying search results.  Services like Yelp, that allow users to give their personal input on a product or service, centrally locate businesses in online search results; public preference plays a key role in how Google optimizes site rank.

Google’s recently released caffeine update will further increase the value of link sharing and traffic building through social media venues like Twitter and Facebook.  Google Caffeine speeds up the search engine indexing process, allowing pages to be indexed more quickly; the caffeine update has essentially made “real time” search results possible.

Real time search results index live Twitter feeds at the top of Google search engine results pages.  Twitter makes “real time” link building possible—this is a quick and easy way to get a site ranked on the first page of Google.

Finally, expert predictions regarding what will be the most effective SEO strategies in the upcoming year all point to the incorporation of social media as a key.  Getting genuine incoming links from quality, relevant sites will get you the most “bang for your buck” in terms of link juice and effective search engine optimization; link building on blogs is becoming less and less worthwhile and effective because so many comment forums now have “nofollow” tags on guest post hyperlinks.

Love it or hate it, it looks like you might want to start embracing Twitter– if only for the sake of your business.

Part One: To Tweet or Not to Tweet?

The useful-ness of Twitter has been a much debated, controversial subject.

Twitter is most common criticized for being a waste of time.  I won’t deny it–there’s definitely some legitimacy to this statement.  Without a set agenda, Twitter probably won’t be a very good use of your time. However, the secret to using Twitter as a very useful business tool is to develop and stick to an agenda.  Decide what you want to achieve, and develop a game plan of how to do it.  Stick to your purpose, and Twitter will prove to be a crucial resource for the success of your business.

There are a lot of very that are tweeting about relevant, useful content every day.  This microblogging site allows users with similar interests to connect with one another.

I discovered an flock of interesting, knowledgeable, and yes, even influential, people in the internet marketing industry via Twitter; this microblogging site connects individuals with similar interests and puts them in direct contact with one another. What better news source is there than the real time conversations of industry professionals, especially in a society where business fundamentals increasingly cater to public opinion? Twitter is an amazing resource for staying tuned-in to the most current public dialogue around the world, even pertaining to niche industries.

For me, Twitter became a tool that helped me build links and traffic to our website—key aspects of search engine optimization.  I opened lines of communication, became a guest blogger on other’s sites, and contributed my own interesting and informative tweets.  Making business contacts, earning viral attention, building your brand, receiving consumer feedback, and accessing cutting edge industry information are all inherent values of Twitter, if used correctly.

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