My wife had several women to the house the other night. Like any smart man I got the hell out of there. I went to the local Barns & Noble.

I looked through the magazines first. One that caught my eye was a 2006 wrap-up of advertising campaigns. I looked through the whole thing, inspecting and absorbing what everyone else is doing. I even took notes.

Then I lost myself among the books for a while. I noticed the barrage of colors and styles. My advertising receptors were at full power. And I paid attention to which books jumped out at me.

Next, I found myself in the business section. I found a great book by Tom Peters on design. What impressed me about the book is that it is about the importance of design. Design, argues Tom, is something everyone does (even if they don’t realize it) and is ultimately the defining factor in purchasing decisions.

Then I found myself in the Web Design section. I was looking at the new titles and noticed a lot of web design books are now about style and tricks.

By style I mean how-to-CSS books mostly but some reviews of what has been done and the aesthetic production of websites. I think just surfing around accomplishes the same thing… but is much less expensive.

By tricks I mean the latest Ruby on Rails, AJAX, Web2.0, delicious mash-ups and similar technologies. This is exciting stuff but I think every bit of code you can find in a book is also available online (free) and probably a bit cliché by now. How many new uses for tag clouds are there?

Then I found Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think!, which is a wonderful book on website usability. Krug talks extensively about the difference in what designers expect versus the reality of what viewers do. And then he points out some common usability errors. Again, most of this info is floating around online but having it all in one place created a few *Ah-Ha* moments for me. One particular moment came from a quote of Krug’s wife where she says that if something is hard to use, she’ll just use it less.

Krug also talked about people having only so much patience and once you’ve burned through it they are gone… with a negative image of your brand. I experienced this today with my new cell phone company. I got transferred so many times and asked the same information over and over again that I just got frustrated. I mean really, did I have to let them know I want English 4 times on the same call? Their operators were aware of the issue and kept apologizing in advance… If you know about the problem - fix it!

My cell phone company has an error in their customer communications. I ran out of patience and told them to cancel the service and that I’d be returning the phone. My view of that company is not favorable. It wasn’t any one thing that drove me to that point… it was a build-up of several small problems. When I caught myself saying “I don’t understand” for the tenth time (not exaggerating) I gave up. Their system is not designed well.

Back to Barns & Noble the other night. I realized something very important: people don’t buy products or services. They buy an expectation of an experience.

I’ve circled around this idea many times over the years but looking at thousands of books it really hit home for me. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular, just a book that was written for me. Whose personality would be like mine. Whose writing style I could digest easily. Whose cover was flashy but professional. That would look good in my collection. That would be within a price range and deliver a certain value - sure! - but it had to fit my style.

So the question I have for you is how much value do you place on that element that defines your market? That thing that shows off your personality and style? How much do you value design?

Bonus follow-up question: Does your current design reflect your values or your customers values? (Guess which one will make you more money?)

I’ve been involved in design for over half my life now. I always knew on an instinctual level that it was important but even I underestimated how powerful design is… and how far-reaching it can be.

Design is how you communicate from the clothes you wear to the colors on your website. Design is how you communicate with everyone in your life from loved ones to employees to customers. A tank is designed to get a very different response than a bouquet of flowers. Your business image is crafted the same way and with the same results.

Posted in Graphic Design, Useability, Marketing, Web Design

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Miriam & Liam got me thinking when they made this point:

“It’s a sad fact of life that a major percentage of web designers out there continue to confuse graphic design skill with web design know-how. Kids fresh out of design school and even more experienced designers who really should know better continue to produce splash/flash/image heavy web pages that read as utter blanks to the search engine spiders.”

The issue of web versus graphic design moves beyond SEO. Most websites are not very usable. Most website viewers have to guess where to go, what to do, or what to expect when they “click here”. Beyond that, graphic-intensive web sites exclude two important segments of the market: dial-up users and the visually impaired.

Dial-up users require more time to load pages because their connection is slower than the broadband most developers have access to. Having lots of graphics or Flash plug-ins (or worse, a whole site designed in Flash) means long load times.

Guess what? Most people don’t wait. Even dial-up users have a threshold for pain and the pain of waiting for an 200K splash page to open is just too much. By time it finishes loading they could have got what they wanted from your competition - and the viewer knows it (how does this experience affect your brand?).

About 8% of internet users have some kind of visual disability. Do you want to pick up 8% of your market that your competitor isn’t reaching? Support the disabled. It isn’t difficult and isn’t that much more expensive but it does require a firm understanding of the W3C guidelines and usability issues that don’t seem to be covered in design class when all the students are trying desperately to “outcool” each other.

By the way, unless you are a design firm “cool” doesn’t sell.

Professional website design is clean, clear and attractive. Professional website design disappears in favor of the message presented. Professional web design enforces your brand without attaching a bad user experience to it.

Web design does use a lot of the principles of graphic design. Having your “look good” in action requires an understanding of composition, color use, typography and more. But web design takes these principles to a much higher level when the screen asks the viewer to do something no piece of paper has ever managed to do.

Interact.

Graphic designers must understand graphic design tools and have a good working knowledge of how the ink will hit the paper. Web designers have to have a good working knowledge of code, browser issues, scripting, resizing issues, speaking multiple languages, plug-ins, bandwidth, presentation, sales and even graphic design!

The best web sites are not fliers or brochures. They engage the viewer. They elicit a response. And they provide a memorable journey that somehow improved the viewer’s life.

Even at 56K.

Posted in Graphic Design, Useability, Web Design

2 Comments »

I don’t like the word “persuasion”. It’s buzzy right now and everyone is talking about it as a substitute for “sales” because it would seem “sales” has a dirty reputation.

I think “persuasion” sounds like the dirty trick people associate with bad sales.

And I think people expect you to sell them your stuff.

And I even give people enough credit to tell the difference between you or me and a used car salesman (unless you happen to be a car salesman).

Persuasion means:

1. the act of persuading or seeking to persuade.
2. the power of persuading; persuasive force.
3. the state or fact of being persuaded or convinced.
4. a deep conviction or belief.
5. a form or system of belief, esp. religious belief: the Quaker persuasion.
6. a sect, group, or faction holding or advocating a particular belief, idea, ideology, etc.: Several of the people present are of the socialist persuasion.
7. Facetious kind or sort.

This basically means you are altering someone’s beliefs or manipulating them. But what if those beliefs are dangerous? Like religious fanaticism? And since we are talking about marketing, who is to say that the persuasion isn’t for stuff that’s, well… crap.

Marketing has a well-deserved big black eye on its reputation for sleazball tactics too.

Sales on the other hand means:

1. The exchange of goods or services for an amount of money or its equivalent; the act of selling.
2. An instance of selling.
3. An opportunity for selling or being sold; demand.
4. Availability for purchase: a store where pets are for sale.
5. A selling of property to the highest bidder; an auction.
6. A special disposal of goods at lowered prices: coats on sale this week.
7. sales
1. Activities involved in selling goods or services.
2. Gross receipts.

Sales is work. Sales drives economy. Sales is a favor for a favor. Persuasion takes some convincing.

And that bugs me.

I’m not saying your product has to “sell itself”. Usually there is some explanation involved in the value proposition.

When I am shopping for a product, just tell me what it is, what it does, how it compares to similar products and how much it is. You may emphasize the unique characteristics and features because I expect that too. But what I need to know is will it fill my void and if the price is right.

I think what bothers me about persuasion is that it isn’t strait-forward and anyone not in marketing doesn’t really know what it is or how it works.

There is a myth that states “you can’t sell people something they don’t want to buy.”

Actually this is complete nonsense — of course you can. But it takes some persuasion.

I want my clients to know I sold them a great product. I want them to enjoy the experience and tell their colleagues about it so I can sell them great products too.

I like to close sales! And I like to tell my wife “I closed another sale dear” so she can look at me admiringly the way she does when I tell her things that lets her know the family is being provided for.

I couldn’t imagine telling her “I persuaded a guy to purchase my stuff”.

Plus when I sell stuff, people ask me about it - “What is it you do?”

I’m not going to tell them I’m a professional persuasionist. I’m a marketer and I sell stuff! Sometimes I sell stuff for me but usually I do it for you.

Marketing is about communication. Persuasion is a last desperate grasp for control (but I think I’ll save that for another post).

So, for a sale to work two parties have to get together and decide that working together is in both of their interests. Here are my interests:

• Providing for my family
• Being an example for my kids (there’s two of them)
• Making money
• Having fun
• Hiring employees
• Learning new things

And I do this by:

• Offering great service. I am easy to reach and my turn-around times are pretty fast.
• Offering a superior product. My web sites are built with the W3C standards in mind so the widest possible audience can be reached. Sites are tested for quality several ways including by multiple browsers and at different resolutions to make sure you don’t lose someone due to bad code.
• Giving knowledgeable experienced advice. I’ve been in some part of the marketing arena for 15 years. When I started the internet wasn’t even around.
• Keeping current on trends and new technology.
• Asking questions and getting help when needed. My ego won’t ruin your project.
• Looking ahead. I build sites so that they are ready for expansion as easily as possible. They are also built with search engines in mind so that they are eligible for the widest online audience.
• Saying “no” sometimes. You hire me because I know what I’m doing. If something is going to cause more harm than good or cost more than it is worth I will let you know.
• Looking for hidden opportunities. An example of this is by asking permission to send a PR out at the end of a project. This promotes both of us and whatever it is we worked on together.
• Respecting confidentiality. If you want to keep 14th Colony as your secret that’s fine - most of our clients are like that when it comes to SEO.
• Honoring your humanity. Whether working with a sole proprietor or a corporation both entities are made of humans and subject to human errors.
• Giving away little extras. I’m not here to nickel and dime you and there are many small things I add on the fly because they seem like good ideas. The devil is in the details.

So if you are:

• A business owner
• manager
• decision maker

Looking for:

• An outside perspective on your marketing.
• Someone to give you direction when it comes to your marketing and promotion.
• Someone to create a professional, polished look and feel for your collateral.
• A new web site or web site update or upgrade.
• Ways to promote your web site.
• Ways to promote your business.
• Ways to increase customer loyalty.
• Ways to convert more leads into customers.

Then 14th Colony is probably the right company for you to contact. But be warned, if you do call we just might sell you something!

Posted in Graphic Design, Promotion, SEO, Marketing, Web Design

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14th Colony has started a program called “Design on Demand” for Sacramento-area print shops. With Design on Demand, Sacramento printers can expand their services without increases in laborr or equipment because we can design where you can’t!

If you have customers asking for design services that you can’t do because you don’t have the time or tallent, why not partner with us?

Details for this program are at dod.14thc.com.

We look forward to working with you! :)

Posted in Graphic Design, Web Design

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