May 1006
Last night, Matrix Group hosted an Open House to welcome clients, partners, vendors and friends to our new office in Crystal City (okay, new as of August last year). We used the occasion to finish decorating the office and brought in Design Cuisine (Design), a leading catering company in the DC area, to orchestrate the event.
The Open House was wonderful! The office looked great, the food and drink were outstanding (loved the beef satay and blueberry mojitos!), turnout was great, and by all accounts, guests enjoyed themselves thoroughly. The Open House made me realize that hosting an event, much like putting up a Web site, should be a collaboration between client and vendor. When both parties do their part, the result is almost always success. Here’s what I’ve learned:
- Clients should take the lead when it comes to goals and direction. When Matrix Group is designing a Web site, we ask lots of questions and try to find out what their goals are and what a successful project looks like. In the same way, Seana Hale from Design Cuisine wanted to know all about Matrix Group, how we interact with clients, and how the Open House would support our client and partner relationships.
- Clients should define the overall design aesthetic and values. When Matrix Group designers are working on a design project, we don’t try to change the character and image of an organization. Instead, we strive to understand the client’s brand, represent it well via design and multimedia and enhance it through our work. Design Cuisine understood that we wanted a nice event that showed off our creativity and our work, was modestly priced, and played up our brand color of purple without overdoing it.
- Let the experts take the lead but be prepared to give timely feedback. Once we’re armed with good background information, our UX (user experience team) creates navigation, wireframes and designs. It’s great when the client trusts our judgment, takes design direction AND lets us know if we’re on the wrong track by giving us specific and timely feedback. We also love it when clients let us brainstorm and come up with out of the box ideas, knowing that most won’t fly but the creativity that comes out is good for the project.
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Mar 1011
In the last twelve months, Facebook has made some major and minor changes to its interface. Each time they did this, there was hundreds of blog posts decrying or applauding the changes. There’s even a group called “I Automatically Hate The New Facebook Home Page.”
Why do we get so upset when Facebook changes its interface?
In looking at some of the blog posts and news articles, I can understand many of the complaints. For my part, I cannot figure out the difference between News Feed and Live Feed. But I love that it’s easier to get to my Inbox and see which of my friends is currently online. I also think that Facebook generally does a great job of explaining why they have implemented specific changes. I thought this Guide to the new Facebook Home Page was especially good.
Psychologists tell us that most humans are averse to change. With over 350M users, any change then to Facebook, no matter how small, is bound to upset some segment of the user base. And if just 1% is unhappy and vocal, that’s still 3.5M people. If 0.1 were unhappy, that would be 350,000 people!
All of this got me thinking. Matrix Group is in the business of redesigning Web sites. We work with clients who want to redesign their sites for all kinds of reasons: name change, the navigation is not intuitive, the company’s focus has changed, yada, yada. But if Facebook users are any indication of how averse we are to change, no matter how rational, articulated or needed, there is always going to be a segment that is unhappy. This unhappy user base may be vocal about it, which I think is a good thing because then you have an opportunity to respond to the concerns. If the user base is unhappy and silent, then you’re in trouble because you don’t know you have a problem.
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Dec 0904
I’m following over 700 people on Twitter so I’ve looked at a lot of Twitter pages. Yes, I look at pages and tweets closely before making a decision to follow someone. Some profiles are pretty sparse, while others are fairly elaborate. What’s the saying? “You only have a few seconds to make a first impression.” This is especially true on Twitter where people scan your page, then instantly make the decision to follow or not follow.
So how do you customize your Twitter profile page to maximize followers? Here are my top tips:
- Make sure you fill out your name so it’s searchable. This sounds so simple, but consider this: The Humane Society of the United States is @humanesociety, but the profile name is listed as HSUS. If you use the Find People search on Twitter and type Humane Society, the HSUS page does not come up because the Twitter search only searches the Name field, NOT the username. A better name would have been Humane Society of the US.
- Fill out the Bio and Web site fields. This is a perfect opportunity to link your Twitter page to your company Web site or blog AND provide a short elevator speech. The bio and URL add perspective and credibility. You can be formal, you can be clever, or you can be funny in the bio field. Check out other bios for good ideas. I like @pmohara and @neagle. In addition, I hear from many, many people that if someone has not provided a bio or URL, they are much less likely to follow that person. Read the rest of this entry
Nov 0910
There is an ongoing discussion at Matrix Group about content and Web design.
One camp says that clients need to have all of their content prepped and ready to go before design on a Web site even begins. The other camp says this view is not realistic, content is always behind, and clients often need the design to inspire them to update their content.
So which view is right? I actually think that both sides are right. But I think the question is misdirected. The real question is: how do we make content more important, earlier in the Web site design and development process?
Here’s something every Web design and development firm knows: Content is often the responsibility of the client, it’s often delayed, and it’s the most common reason for delayed launches. A List Apart has a whole section on their site devoted to content strategy. I love Bronwyn Jones’ article on how good design is not possible without good writing. And I think Erin Kissane is on to something when she discusses content templates (not design templates) as a way to help subject matter experts put their knowledge down on paper.
Here is what I have learned about content, the importance of content to design, and coaxing good content out of clients: Read the rest of this entry
Oct 0913
When we moved to our new office in Crysta City, it meant reprinting all of our marketing materials. While it was simply a matter of updating and reprinting most of our collateral, we decided to redesign our business cards. Matrix Group Creative Director Alex Pineda wanted to update the design with the refreshed logo and show some more personality.
Here are some sample cards that demonstrate what we were trying to achieve.
Here’s my card. The front is purple so it’s easy to find on a cluttered desk or stack o cards. The corners are curved because Alex says the Matrix Group brand is curvey, node-y. The prominent elements are my name and title and the company Web address. You’ll also notice that my card has all the ways you can contact me: phone, fax, e-mail, blog and Twitter.
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Sep 0925
Matrix Group worked with the Flight 93 Federal Advisory Commission and the Flight 93 Memorial Task Force, to design and launch the Flight 93 National Memorial Web site. The purpose of the site is to raise public awareness, funds, and commemorate the memorial, so that future generations may learn, and remember how the brave actions of few, can make a profound difference.
Matrix work included:
- A Web site that carries over design elements and functionality from the National Parks Web site to the Honor Flight 93 Web site. Including, familiar navigation, imagery style and messaging.
- A “Give Now” form, encouraging public engagement and donations.
- Implementation of a user-friendly Content Management System (CMS)
Visit the Flight 93 National Memorial Web site
Aug 0918
Matrix Group collaborated with Association of Oil Pipelines (AOPL) for a Web site redesign and a MatrixMaxx Implementation.
Our work included:
- A fresh, and engaging Web site design, promoting AOPL as the expert in fuel transportation, and an environmentally aware organization.
- Implementation of a Content Management System (CMS), allowing staff to make Web site updates with no programming background.
- A color-coded, interactive map, where visitors can scroll over each state to see the location and the type of major pipelines in the US.
- Web site integration with MatrixMaxx, Association Management System (AMS). A comprehensive web-based solution, allowing AOPL to seamlessly link their Web site to their membership databases.
- Hosting and Maintenance
Visit the Association of Oil Pipelines
Jul 0909
A client whose Web site we recently implemented asked us to make changes to their Web site. What is normally a routine request turned into a major affair. The problem? The design firm that had created their original designs had gone out of business. The contract specified that the design firm owned the design and the all source files. So when the company went out of business, gone went the files. Ugh.
I attended a wedding recently where the couple had hired a much sought after photographer. I asked him if he gave clients their digital files and he said yes. He said that he believed in charging clients a fair price and then letting them own all the original images. Yes, he makes more money if clients order photos or a photo book, but if they don’t, he’s been fairly compensated and he’s happy. Read the rest of this entry
Jun 0918
In reviewing the usage reports for this blog a couple of weeks ago, I realized something startling: the majority of visitors are NOT using Internet Explorer. Check it out: since January of this year, 46% of all visitors use Firefox, 40% use Internet Explorer, 9% use Safari, and 3% are on Chrome. In the last 30 days, Safari users were 11% of all traffic, while IE users went down to 39%. Yeah, okay, this traffic is probably skewed because of the audience, but I’ve got Google Analytics configured to block traffic from the Matrix Group office where most of us use Firefox as our primary browser.
An analysis of traffic on Matrix Group client sites shows that IE is still the primary browser but Firefox, Safari and Chrome are gaining ground. For nearly all clients, IE commands no more than 75% of the total audience; this is still a dominant number, but it means that 1 in 4 users is not using IE. Sorry Microsoft, but the browser wars are far from over and any giant can be toppled (that means you, too, Firefox!).
All of this makes me thankful that my staff, many years ago, convinced me that Matrix Group should not be an IE-only shop. I still remember the staff retreat when the staff had a heated discussion about Web standards. A few of us argued that writing standards-compliant code was expensive because the dominant browser, Internet Explorer, was mostly not compliant, which meant we had to do double html work to make sure our sites behaved properly in IE, Netscape, Mozilla, etc. But the vast majority of the staff rightly argued that standards compliance was the right thing to do, it would give us a competitive advantage, our sites would stand the test of time better, and someday, Microsoft would come around.
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Apr 0928
If Matrix Group is creating a new Web site for you or updating an existing one, our project plan is almost sure to include development or review of your taxonomy. Taxonomy? Doesn’t that have to do with biology and how we classify organisms? (you know, kingdom –> phylum –> class?) Sort of.
Taxonomy today refers to more than the classification of organisms. Wikipedia calls taxonomy “the practice and science of classification.” A taxonomy can help you organize an unstructured collection of information. On most Web sites, information can be organized by:
- Topic – these tend to be the topics, issues and special interest of your readers, members, customers, visitors. For example, a trade association in the auto industry might have topics related to safety, marketing, supply chain, quality.
- Type – these tend to refer to the content collections on a Web site. For example, a think tank might have news, policy briefs, commentary, testimony and podcasts.
Why do I think every site needs a taxonomy? And how do you use a taxonomy?
- Different people navigate according to their needs and interests. On any given day, a journalist might want to see all of your company’s press releases, regardless of topic; on another day, the same journalist might want to know everything your organization has to offer in the area of food safety. So let same journalist navigate by both content topic and type!
- Tagging content by taxonomy allows you to relate content by topic and type. So, a news item on climate change would have a sidebar containing other news items related to climate change, recent publications and meetings about climate change, and recent news items (regardless of topic).
- A taxonomy allows you to connect people with their interests. Let your visitors sign up for news by their interest areas, let them personalize their Web experience on your site, and compare the interests of your members with the content you have online.
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