Our move reminds me of every single website launch at Matrix Group. When a Project Manager reports that he or she will be done with a project when it launches, I warn that there could be weeks of tweaks and that we should just expect it. Here’s why:

Sometime, you just don’t don’t know where to put something until you’ve lived with it a while. I wish I could say that our information architecture process is perfect and we account for every piece of content, but it’s not and we don’t. Clients often have to live with a site for a few days or weeks before they figure out where everything should go. In the meantime, content doesn’t go up or it gets stored under some generic navigation called Resources. I feel like Resources is like our garage; there’s a lot of great stuff in there but it’s hard to find what you’re looking for and you know you need a better organization system.

The little tweaks can make all the difference in the world. The new master bathroom in our house is wonderful but it had a few problems. You had to walk inside to reach the light switch and the towel bar was several feet away from the shower. We were unhappy from the beginning but we didn’t know what we wanted or how to fix the problem. Then one day, my husband came home with a wireless outlet that he attached to the wall. Voila! We can now turn on the light before entering the bathroom! And a hook added to the wall just outside the shower solved the towel problem. Same with a website. We often need a few days or weeks of real users road testing the site before we can make the slight improvements to the flows and paths that make the site really great. For one client, we added a Google map link to a calendar application; it was amazing how much happiness 2 lines of code created.

You can’t finish decorating right away. Our new house is laid out in a very similar manner to the old house but nearly everything had to be re-arranged. Bookshelves got moved around the house, we re-arranged the closets, and the living room is completely different, even though the dimensions are the same and we didn’t buy new furniture. With website redesigns, small changes to the navigation sometimes means a total rework of the content and CMS. And clients often can’t conceive of how to “dress up” pages with images and formatting until they are live.

You’ll get more done if you throw a party. My mom always says that if you want your house to look good, throw a party. You’ll get the boxes unpacked, the pictures hung and the furniture arranged – just in time. When a client picks the launch date for their website, we ask if they will be unveiling the site at a conference or event. I love having a deadline tied to a conference because conferences don’t move, which means everyone hustle to get things done and it’s amazing how much content gets written right before the event and launch.

Anticipate the tweaks. At Matrix Group, we know that it takes time for clients to get comfortable with the new site, use its new functions and figure out what’s working and not working. Leslie Blum from Carolinas AGC calls them “iron outs” and she’s right on. It generally takes between 2-4 weeks to get the help text just right, all the new content loaded, and the integration use cases all worked out. So rather than fight the tweaks, we anticipate them and plan for them in our schedule. I will caution, however, that tweaking past 30 days can get counter-productive. You run the risk of the team losing steam and experiencing launch fatigue.

In the last 30 days, we’ve launched new sites for the Ironworkers, the American Society of Addiction Medicine and the Washington Building Congress. Although the sites look great, we’re still tweaking. :-)

IMPACT wanted to use its website to better promote its resources, events and other services on its website, and encourage members to take advantage of these benefits. It also wanted to enhance its brand and position itself as a leading industry voice.

Matrix Group:

• Designed a navigation structure with a strong understanding of members’ needs. The new navigation makes it easy to access information about meetings, publications, grants, marketing and certification.
• Developed a design that is beautiful, elegant and showcases IMPACT’s values of openness and collaboration.
• Implemented MatrixMaxx, Matrix Group’s Association Management Software (AMS) to tie IMPACT’s public website to its member database. Now, IMPACT staff can easily manage information about their members, create and manage and meeting registrations and develop targeted mailing lists. Members can now manage their profiles, register for meetings and sign-up for mailing lists.
• Created an online membership directory that is powered directly by the member database. Visitors can search for contractors, local unions and district councils.
• Implemented the Expression Engine content management system to make it easy for staff to manage all aspects of the website without having any knowledge of html. 

Visit the Ironworker Management Progressive Action Cooperative Trust Website.

The website offers materials, programs and alerts on everything from thyroid disease to diabetes and cardiovascular and metabolic disorders. So when an opportunity arose to make information online more accessible to all audiences, The Hormone Foundation reached out to web partner, Matrix Group, to make its vision a reality.

Matrix Group:

• Re-organized the home page to include a branding area to educate visitors about the mission and activities of The Foundation, and a section that features the most popular resources on the website.
• Refreshed the site’s current look and feel by softening the organization’s color palette to include warmer colors and updating the font.
• Implemented the new design in the Foundation’s content management system (CommonSpot).

Visit The Hormone Foundation Website.

SIGIS serves as the industry’s voice to the IRS and as a valuable resource for both members and consumers. Thus, they needed their website to showcase their overall goals and communicate the organization’s current position and address the needs of both members and consumers.

Matrix Group:

• Created a warm, friendly site design that communicates SIGIS’s position as an organization that makes it easier for consumers to use their FSA and HSA cards at local pharmacies, supermarkets and other locations.
•  Implemented the Sitefinity content management system to allow staff to update the website without the knowledge of HTML, keeping the site’s information fresh and up to date.
• Created a user-friendly navigation based on the motivations, behaviors and needs of SIGIS’s target audiences.

Visit the SIGIS Website.

Matrix Group included:

• Warm colors and images geared toward the public and that demonstrate empowerment. Less text and increased imagery were used to communicate the Foundation’s core messages.
• A user-friendly navigation that is simple, straightforward and based on the site’s three main areas: who the organization is; what they do; and how to get involved.
• Brand consistency between the Foundation’s website and its affiliate organization, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO.org).

Visit the Conquer Cancer Foundation Website.

Matrix Group recently had the pleasure of helping the Outdoor Foundation launch a new website for one of its initiatives — Outdoor Nation (ON)

Here’s what I absolutely love about the ON website: it’s got a ton of attitude.

The design of the site is bold, almost brash. But the attitude really shines through in the copy. The about page starts off with:

Before the recent youth-led revolutions that are now happening around the world—there was Outdoor Nation. Okay, we probably didn’t influence those uprisings but we do share a belief in the power and passion of young people and our ability to start a revolution.

ON says they “host awesome summits” and “when the ancient Greeks invented social networking, this is what they had in mind!”

In the branding area on the home page, there’s a big pitch to GTFO (get the f*** outside) because “there’s no excuse not to get the fun outside.”

How fun to see a website just brimming with enthusiasm and passion! It’s obvious that ON is targeting a specific demographic and not every organization can get away with this type of attitude and language. But I bet more of us could and should inject our marketing campaigns with fresh design and copy that signals a certain lifestyle and brand.

How about you? What attitude does your website project? Can you name other websites that have a lot of attitude?

Matrix Group:

• Developed a user-friendly navigation with a clear understanding of user motivations and behaviors.  Matrix Group considered all types of users for this website, from individuals looking for consulting services based on their functionality within their company to more industry focused.
• Created a clean, updated design that positions DecisionPath as the “agency that can help its clients build its customers’ business by making their businesses’ smarter.  The new website now provides visitors with information on how business intelligence, analytics, and performance management, can be used to help solve companies’ challenges. The website also offers case studies, demonstrating the company’s expertise in utilizing business intelligence into helping clients’ find solutions to their business problems.
• Implemented a content management system (WordPress) making it easier for DecisionPath’s marketing staff to maintain the website and ensure the information remains up to date (Previously, the entire site was entirely static HTML and required more technical knowledge to update).

Visit the DecisionPath Consulting Website.

 Matrix Group: 

• Developed a user-friendly navigation with a clear understanding of the users’ motivations and behaviors.  Matrix Group considered all types of users for this website, from beginners to more experienced users. The topic-based navigation directs visitors clearly to specific areas of the website based on their needs.
• Created and integrated an online directory of law enforcement agencies that use social media, including the URLs of agencies’ social media pages and blogs.  This directory not only showcases the work that the various agencies are doing, but it also helps members develop their own social networking strategies, policies, etc. Members can now browse or search the directory, and view other agencies Facebook pages, Twitter profiles, blogs, etc.
• Created a catalog of resources, templates, case studies related to law enforcement use of social media. The new website is a “one stop shop” where chiefs and officers can find examples of social networking policies and strategies, download guides and fact sheets on how to create profiles on social networking sites, and read case studies about how other agencies are including social networking in their work.

View the International Association of Chiefs of Police – Social Media Website.

• Why I should give
• What my money supports
• An easy way to make a donation, preferably without having to create a login
• If using a third party payment gateway or network, make it really clear to me what I’m going to see on my credit card statement
• A statement that you won’t rent or sell my information to other charities

Instead, what I usually find is a simple e-commerce form that simply asks me for my credit card information! What a waste of an opportunity to make the case for giving!

So I scoured the Web and looked for effective donation pages. Here are some I love:

Johns Hopkins Giving – This is a microsite devoted entirely to giving. I like the navigation: Why Give, Where to Give, How to Give, Calendar. I also like the branding area, which has great stories about Hopkins students and professors and doesn’t rotate too quickly.

United Way – I like the chart on the left that shows the percentage of a donation that goes to administrative costs vs. program costs. I like this label: Our work in education, income and health.

Red Cross – Instead of one big form, the first page of the Red Cross donation form lets me designate where my donation will go, e.g., disaster relief, military families, local chapter, unrestricted funds.

Humane Society – I like how the donation process starts on the home page through a simple form, then continues to a larger form. I think it’s effective to call donors heroes who stand up for animal rights.

How about you? What are your favorite donation pages? Got any examples of donation page disasters?

Most organizations go years between redesigns. It’s a big deal to redesign a website; it takes a boatload of time, effort and money. But in between redesigns, most organizations become unhappy with their sites. We have clients come to us because they’re unhappy with everything on their site, which was last redesigned 3, 4, or 5 years ago. Does it have to be this way? I think not.

There are many, many reasons to redesign your website, including:

• Your organization’s mission, name, logo and/or brand have changed dramatically.
• Visitors complain about not being able to find what they’re looking for.
• Your products and services have changed or you’ve added new offerings and you don’t know where to put all the information.
• You are rethinking how your website fits into your company’s overall marketing strategy and want to redo all or nearly all of the content.

BUT, if you’re largely happy with the design and navigation of your site, visitors are able to find what they’re looking for, and your company branding and messaging remain the same, perhaps all you need is a website refresh. Here are some ways in which clients have refreshed their sites:

• One client changed the headers graphics throughout the site and added social media widgets.
• Another client made the entire website wider (the site had been designed for 800 x 600 pixels) and added another column on the home page for events and a featured publication.
• Yet another client revamped important landing pages and improved pages by editing the text and adding images and formatting.

If you don’t have the budget for a full redesign this year, opt for a refresh and focus on content and making calls to action more prominent.

BTW, here’s a photo of the new Matrix group home page and reasons for the refresh. I’d love to know what you think.

How about you? What’s in store for your site in 2011? Full site redesign or refresh?

Sometimes, you need a professional to do the work or help you out. Of course I could have tackled the job of organizing my house myself, but I had been trying to get my house in shape on my own without much success.  C. Lee didn’t just get the project jump started, she gave me a framework to work with.  Organizing a website is no different.  You can do the work yourself, but a good website Information Architect (IA) will help you understand user flows, and get you fired up when the task or re-organizing your website has stalled.

A good organizer gets to you know YOU. Before making recommendations, C. Lee walked the entire house with me, asked a ton of questions, and got to know me, my family, the rhythm of our life, and our priorities.  For example, C. Lee came to respect and understand that my photos, my son’s artwork, and art from our travels are some of the  most important things in my house. So she made recommendations for storing and showcasing them, rather than trying to convince me that I don’t need to keep CJ’s masterpieces from preschool.  A good IA figures out what makes each client unique, who their audiences are, their most valuable services, and their goals for a redesign.  He or she will geek out on your site’s usage reports, interview staff and outside stakeholders, create a content inventory, get a handle on all content, and strive to understand how visitors should navigate your site, for maximum impact, traffic and conversions.

Who is going to use this? C. Lee and I came up with a plan for organizing the house that worked for me, my husband and my son. For example, we created an area in the coat closet for my son that has low hooks so he can put away his backpack and coat himself. On your website, be sure to take into account your target audiences, their demographics and psychographics, what they are looking for, what they call things, and the transactions they want to make. For example, avoid insider terminology if you have a general audience and add a prominent way to resize text if you are targeting a senior audience.

A good organizer has a repertoire of tools. When it came time to find a home for all the “stuff” in my life, C. Lee gave me a multitude of options so I could select solutions that fit my budget and design aesthetic. She suggested different ways to store all of my shoes (Hey, I’m Filipino, after all!) and CJ’s trains and Legos. A good IA will explore different ways to organize your content (by topic, function or audience, for example), and present options for navigation and featured content.

Everything needs a home. C. Lee says that clutter happens when you don’t have a permanent home for everything. So mail piles up on your dining room table, kids’ games get stacked in a corner, and small electronics end up everywhere. But if everything has a home and you make a commitment to putting it back after use, clutter is less likely to happen. So too with a website. We can take the latest news item, recent publications, and the membership application form and feature them on the home page , the footer or the right rail, but we need to know where they live permanently so they can be found from anywhere in the site, not just specific pages.

Do you really need all that stuff? When I finally went through the mounds of toys in my living room, I found toys that my son never played with or hated, broken items, and games he had outgrown. Good grief! Why was  I holding on to this stuff? The short answer is I hadn’t taken the time to review, weed, edit.  When you create a content inventory of your entire site, you might be surprised at what you find. Ask yourself which content is old and dusty and needs to be archived, which content should be updated, and which content is compelling and necessary. And you should schedule a time (I recommend twice a year) to go through content on the site and determine what stays and what goes.

How about you? What have you organized lately and did anyone help you along the way?

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.

• With the Open House, I trusted Seana and her team to come up with good displays and menus based on our discussions and my experiences with past events I’ve attended.  We provided feedback on the menu, decided where to put the different food and drink stations, requested a signature purple drink, and then let Design’s team take over.  I did NOT want to be in the business of choosing linen colors and deciding how many tables we needed.  I figured Seana is the expert, she knows events and it’s her job to make sure the event flows smoothly and the food and drink are divine.

• The User Experience should always be top of mind. Matrix Group Creative Director Alex Pineda is fond of asking about user flows and actions.   No matter what the occasion, he asks, “What’s the User Experience?”  On Web site projects, we identify the target audiences, learn what they want to do, and figure out how they should navigate to their goals.  With the Open House, staff served as tour guides so guests could learn more about our culture and work, we placed food and drinks stations around the office, and we placed signs all over the office to identify functional groups (e.g., Designers, New Biz).

• If it’s important, it should have support from the top. In my experience, if a Web project has support from the top, it will get the staff and budget support it needs, and it will get done in a timely manner.  Decisions also get made faster.  With the Open House, I knew that I had to be involved enough so that Design’s team could get fast approvals on what to serve and where to serve it.

Here are a few photos from the Open House to give you a sense of the displays and user flows.  BTW, if you’re interested, check out the Matrix Group photos from the Open House on Flickr.

Jen enjoying the amazing satay bar

The Matrix Group admins ordered an assortment of purple candy for the candy bar.
Design made everything look pretty.

This cupcake tower sure went fast!

The signature drink of the evening was a blueberry mojito. Yum!

Cat and Janna gave guests from NPRA and ASF a grand tour of the office
and introduced them to team members.

How about you?  How are Web site development and event planning the same? How are they different?  In your experience, what works?

Here’s an example of an all Flash site that is annoying and borderline useless. I was scheduling lunch with a friend, who asked me to recommend a restaurant and send him the physical and Web addresses. No problem, right? Wrong.

Check out the Web site for Kora in Crystal City - http://www.korarestaurant.com/ The Web site is pretty, but if you’re trying to get an address and send it to a friend, it’s not user-friendly at all!

• It took me 5 minutes to find the address.  It’s not on the home page, nor under Hours and Directions.  It’s under Contact Us and Reservations.
• Because the site is entirely in Flash, I couldn’t copy the address and paste into the e-mail I was sending my friend.
• I also could not copy and paste the address into Google maps so that I could send my friend directions from Reston.
• Forget being able to bookmark specific pages because the URL never changes in the single Flash file for the entire site. So I couldn’t send my friend the URL of a menu page.  Aaaargh.
• Oh yeah, you can’t print Flash pages either unless print-friendly pages have been specifically created; most designers don’t bother.  So if you want to print Kora’s Hours and Directions page, you’re out of luck.

Since I’m lazy and did not want to re-type the address, I simply went to Google, typed “Kora Arlington, VA” and got a link to a map and directions from Google maps.  God bless Google.

I’m sure Kora paid good money for its beautiful, all Flash site, but I bet it’s a pain to update and it’s not very accommodating for visitors who just want to copy and paste an address.  Good grief!

How about you?  Got your own rants against an all Flash site?  Post links and comments!

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.

If you know you need a redesign, here are my thoughts for managing the change:

• Let your user base know that change is coming and explain why.
• When the new site is live, announce the change multiple times and keep explaining it.
• Provide narratives and videos that explain how to get around the new site.
• Provide a way for your customers and members to provide feedback and suggestions for tweaking the new site to make it better.
• Log search results so you’ll get an early warning that visitors can’t find specific content and services.

How about you?  What kind of reaction did you get to your last site redesign?  What did youdo to prep your audience?

I got to wondering if the home page, the single that we, as Web designers, spend soooooo much time wire framing and designing, has lost its luster. So I started checking our usage reports.  Sure enough, the home page of this blog gets represents between 7-10% % of the total traffic in any given month and 6-9% of total entry pages.  It makes sense given that most of the traffic comes from the blog’s RSS feed, e-mail updates, social media pages and search engines, all of which direct visitors to specific pages,  NOT the home page. The Matrix Group Web site home page gets 28% of total traffic, and that number makes sense, given that many people come to the site to learn more about the company as a result of our direct marketing efforts.

I started checking clients’ usage reports and I found that of all the sites I checked, the results were similar.  The home page gets between 17-40% of total traffic, and 15-30% of entry pages.

It turns out that lots of other people are thinking about this phenomenon and some are even declaring that the home page is dead.  Rick Stratton from Feed.us says, “(y)our homepage’s homepage is dying” because search engines, social media, RSS are linking directly to content pages.

While I don’t agree that the home page is dead, here’s what I do believe:

• As Web designers, marketers and communicators, we need to give a lot more thought to the user experience on sub-pages.
• We need clear calls to action on sub-pages, not just the home page.
• We need to have a banner ad and sponsorship strategy that incorporates the entire site, not just the home page.
• We need to look at our usage reports regularly to see which pages, topics and headlines are generating traffic

How about you? What are your usage reports telling you? What do you think of the importance of your home page vs. your content pages?

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:

• It is NOT realistic to expect that all content will be ready and done before design begins. It’s never going to happen, period, end of story.
• Putting lorem ipsum text on designs may be easy, but it doesn’t give the client a feel for how their content will fit into the design.  It’s better to use real content, no matter how dry, in the design comps. Just as some homebuyers can see beyond the blank walls and rooms, others need a home to be staged before they consider buying it.
• Even if the client doesn’t have budget for a copywriter or editor, include a few hours of copywriting in your design budget so that the text used on the designs is punchy and has clear calls to action.  Good copy will inspire clients when they work on the content themselves and will encourage them to bring in assistance.  (And outside help almost always moves the process along.)
• Designers must design all content elements that will be used throughout the site and include them in the designs.  This inspires clients to make their content interesting because they’ll aspire to the designs we present.
• We must include content discussions and reviews during the entire user experience (UX) process (content inventory, navigation development, wireframes, design).  Just as we get together to review designs, we must look at pages of content and get internal staff and client feedback.

How about you?  What content strategies have worked for your organization?  How do you get good content out of your subject matter experts?  And how do you blend your content development and design processes?

Our work included:

• A new blog where Campbell addresses financial issues, and offers insightful tips on how to prepare for retirement and sustain financial security beyond one’s working years.
• The incorporation of other social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter to help establish a fan and follower base.
• The implementation of Expression Engine as the CMS.
• A fresh look and feel that serves  that highlights Campbell’s expertise and perspectives on the nation’s brokerage industry.

Visit Fire Your Broker

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

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

• Including favorite Matrix stories from the last ten years in the Share Your Memory section
• Scrolling through an interactive 10-Year Timeline, filled with important dates, facts and photos from Matrix Group’s very first purple wall, to our new office in Crystal City
• Learning Fun Facts about Matrix, by scrolling through what Joanna refers to as our “tribute to information design.”  Did you know Matrix has collectively accumulated 381 toys and speaks over 10 different languages?
• Participate in the Twitter visualization we created, which dynamically pulls tweets from the company, Matrix staff, people we’re following, and our favorite topics
• The site also includes a “Where We’re Going” letter written by Joanna that reminds us where the company has been, and Joanna’s vision for Matrix for the future.

10 years feels like a real milestone to us, especially to me. Like I say in my “Where We’re Going” letter, when I started the company, I wasn’t thinking about balance sheets or Web standards. I just wanted to help companies with their Web sites. And when my Advisory Board Chair asked me about my five-year plan (during year one), I just laughed; I was so focused on surviving the first year, five years felt like a lifetime.  So it felt right to create a microsite that lets all of us at the company see where we’ve been and think about the future.

We also wanted to create a showcase piece for the company, one that invited a lot of clicking to learn more and let us create some far out designs we don’t normally get to do.  I love, love,  love timelines, so we scoured our project notes and intranet and created an interactive timeline with important dates, factoids and photos.  We also adore information design, so the Fun Facts portion of the site is a tribute to information design. Finally, I was dying to launch a Twitter visualization project, so ours shows off tweets from the company, the staff, and people we’re following, as well as tweets about topics we follow (Web standards, social media, yada, yada.)

Finally, we want to use the microsite to let clients, partners, staff and alumni share their favorite Matrix Group stories.   Share Your Memory is letting us capture some great stories from the past ten years!

If you’ve got an anniversary or important milestone coming up, think about a microsite!  Let us know how we can help or send us a link!

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.

Like the wedding photographer, I fundamentally disagree that design firms should own their clients’ designs.  When we at Matrix Group create a design, our contract specifies that the client owns the design and that we will deliver all source files at the completion of a project once the final invoice has been paid. This only makes sense to us because each design is unique, is created just for the specific client, and will never be re-used.

I’ve had more than one designer complain that turning over a design to a client means they can screw it up.  Yes, it’s true, clients sometimes modify designs and we don’t like the results, but clients also deserve the ability to manage their sites without having to depend on us.  Like the wedding photographer, we charge a fair price, and then deliver a CD containing all files.  And contrary to what you might think, clients don’t retain us for a design and then bolt.  On the contrary, they stick around and give us more work.

Yes, there are always going to be cases where designers and artists should retain ownership of their work.  But I suggest looking carefully at all of your design contracts to make sure ownership is clearly delineated and you don’t get nasty surprises down the road.

So, what the heck is a Twitter visualization?  If you’re on Twitter, you know that there are millions of individual posts, replies, and discussions every day.  Figuring that people out there would want to do things with this flowing data, Twitter publishes an API (application programming interface) that lets developers have real-time access to tweets and some user information.  The result is hundreds (thousands?) of sites that let you search, map and analyze tweets, relationships between users, and topics.  Here are some of my favorite Twitter visualization sites.

• Twistori is my favorite.    Click on the words love, hate, think, believe, feel, wish and see a real-time stream of posts that contain these words in the tweet.
• WeFeelFine is a visualization of not just tweets, but blog posts and images as well.  Explore Murmurs and see a flood of tweets with the words “I feel” in them.
• Twittervision shows tweets from around the world, overlaid on a world map so you know where the tweet are coming from.  Twittervision is even available in 3D.
• Having an event?  PepsicoZeitgeist shows real-time tweets about Internet Week in New York City.  I especially love the top words from IWNY tweets.
• TweetStats lets you enter your Twitter username and see a bunch of statistics about your tweets, including when you tweet, average daily tweets, who you tend to retweet, etc..  Did you know all this about yourself?
• Twitter Friends Network Browser lets you see your Twitter network and click and drag to do fun things.
• Hashtags shows you the top hash tags on Twitter right now.
• MyTweetMap lets you see tweets from the people you are following, overlaid on a map.
• Dipity lets you explore tweets in a timeline format.

What’s fascinating to me is how Web designers and developers have found countless ways to transform the universe of Twitter data in new and different ways.  Each site introduces me to new people to follow and gives me insight on new topics.

How about you?  What are your favorite Twitter visualization sites?

In Blasting the Myth of the Fold, Milissa Tarquini argues that the myth that users “won’t scroll to see anything below the fold – is doing everyone a great disservice, most of all our users.” Moreover, the fold doesn’t even exist anymore because monitor sizes and  screen resolutions are all over the map these days.  When we refer to the fold, are we referring to the top portion of the page on my little Sony VAIO, or the 21-inch monitor on a programmer’s desk?  And btw, what about people who work on multiple monitors and never maximize their browsers?

I resisted the notion that the fold is gone, but I am finally a convert. That’s it.  The fold is gone.  This does not mean that Information Architects and Web Designers should go nuts and create sites that scroll forever, but I believe we can reasonably expect that users will experience our sites differently and that all of them are okay with scrolling.

Another myth that I believe we should abandon is the idea that we should keep users on our sites and not link to third party content. The beauty of the Web is that we can link to a world of resources.  Peppering our content with links is a great service to our visitors because it means we have sifted through Web pages and linked up relevant content.  Who are we kidding?  Our visitors can leave our sites with one click and they will leave if they don’t find rich, compelling content and resources. Yes, they may leave, but they will come back because you have become a trusted source with your own valuable content and valuable links.

Take this blog.  Whenever I can, I link to outside sites.  I don’t even bother having the links open in a new window.  If the content is good, visitors will read what I have to say, and then click to an outside site.  In fact, I believe my blog posts are enhanced by links to third party sites that validate and reinforce my observations.

So, what do you think?  Are you ready to abandon the fold and the ban on links to third party sites? What other conventions can we do away with?

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.

Here are some great examples of taxonomy in action:

• The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) tags all content by topic and type.  You can navigate reports by date, by areas of research and experts. You can also create a personal profile and personalize your experience by checking your areas of interest, indicating if and when you want to receive e-mail updates, and saving your favorite pages.
• Electrical Contractor Magazine shows related articles, based on the topics associated with an article.
• The National Association of Episcopal Schools created a library that lists Q&A’s, documents and Web resources by topics of greatest interest to members.

Want to learn more?  Here are some good articles from Tech Republic, Digital Web Magazine, and Boxes and Arrows.

Wikipedia says that a tag cloud is a visual depiction of the tags (topics) on a Web site. The tags are usually listed alphabetically and font size or color is used to show the relative importance of a tag.

But first, let’s talk about tags.  The choice is tags is incredibly important on a Web site or blog.  Your tags should represent what’s important to you and your target audiences.  Personally, I think you should limit your tag universe to a couple of dozen topics so that you can focus your content and visitors can easily grasp what your site is about.

So once you’ve got your tags, you’ve got to tag every piece of content.  Yes, it’s extra work but it will pay off.  With tagging, you can display related content and of course, you can have a tag cloud!

Take this blog.  You’ll see from the tag cloud on the right that the tags with the most number of posts are: marketing, social networking, blog, leadership, Google and Twitter.  It’s great for me to see the topics I post about most frequently and I can easily see if I need to post on other topics so as not to bore my readers.

Here are some interesting tag clouds:

• Flickr has a tag cloud and I love how you can see hot tags from the last 24 hours, as well as the most popular tags of all time.
• TagsPage has a tag cloud that uses color and size; this one is a little too crazy for my taste.
• Delicious has so many tags so you can only see a list of top tags for all users.  Individuals, however, have their own tag clouds. I was fascinated to learn that the top tags in my jmpineda Delicious account are: management, statistics, twitter, things to do, social networking.
• Web Designer Wall has a small tag cloud that uses size to indicate important and frequency

But the most interesting thing about tags is how they connect people. Here’s how:  on a social bookmarking site like Delicious, I can see how many other people have bookmarked the same pages.  On my list, for example, I can see that 421 have saved The Cult of Done Manifesto in their bookmarks; I can also see their comments, and their tags for the same site.  I can click on the Delicious profile for any of the users or click on any of their tags to see what they’ve saved under a specific topic.  I am fascinated to learn that most poeple tagged this site under Manifesto, productivity and inspiration, while I tagged it under management, leadership and culture.

Bonus: I found cwmurphy’s bookmarks on productivity really terrific, so I added him/her to my network.  Yep, I don’t know this person but I hope to find out about more cool sites through my expanded bookmarking network.

Last note: there are now sites that you let you make tag cloud from any site or text, like Wordle.  Here’s a word cloud of this blog, created a couple of weeks ago.  A little chaotic, but super fun.