In this article, we’ll explore three things that businesses should consider when assessing how it communicates through its website.

Consider what a website visitor needs from your website prior to other considerations. 

It is important to know what users expect to encounter when they use a website. For instance, business communications like marketing messages and informational readings need to be to the point while also providing users with only the information needed to relay the business message. Due to this, users expect that the most important information in the website uses bold text or is easily identifiable so that the user can quickly identify information that may require that they take action. It also means that the design does not include a continuous scroll feature that does not hinder the user’s ability to scroll to the bottom of the website. The website needs to have a clear, and easily obtainable, endpoint which ensures that the user understands that the communication has ended. Knowing what the user expects and needs from the website will help to create a user experience that functions and provides information in a way the user wants and needs.^[1]

Consider the importance of web design “functionality” and web design “look and feel”.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that you have to decide between a website’s ability to allow a specific action to take place (it’s functional design) or its ability to look attractive to consumers. Both are equally important. For example, a “Call to Action” button on a newsletter opt-in form is an example of web design that needs to be easy to use and functional at the same time.^[2] To encourage users to sign up to receive newsletter email content, a sign-up call to action button text should state “Sign-up” instead of “Submit”. This change in text ensures that the button directly relates to the action that the user is taking. Consider the above example, since a user does not submit to receive newsletter content but does sign up to receive the text “Sign up” feels like the action that the user is taking once the button is pressed. After the button is pressed the users expect a feedback/response from the form that will verify that their request to sign up was successful. For this “functional expectation,” an appropriate feedback/response to the clicking of the button is the appearance of a message that the sign-up request is processing and/or has been completed. This quickly and efficiently notifies the user that the action is now complete.

Consider making the website’s written content easy to read. 

Online written content is judge quickly by a user, thus its look and feel needs to appear easy to read in order to convince users to read it.^[2]  Therefore a web design should include short-form copy over long form copy that allows the user to easily scan content efficiently. Long form copy can be transformed into short form by restructuring the content to use bulleted and numbered lists, separating long paragraphs into multiple smaller paragraphs, using bolds and italics to make important text identifiable, and using descriptive links that give a quick glimpse into the intended link destination. Using these methods to help make content easier to read will help readers determine whether they wish to continue reading and, more importantly, encourage users to continue reading because the content is easier to read.

References. 

1. Clifton, Rhiannon. “1-1.2 Understanding UX Design – the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.” Coursera, the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Oct. 2017.
2. Stokes, Rob. EMarketing: the Essential Guide to Marketing in a Digital World. Quirk EMarketing, 2013.

Get more great content at WylieBlanchard.com... Need a great speaker for your next event, contact us to book Wylie Blanchard now.
Learn what clients are saying about his programs....

COMPLETION DATE: April 29th, 2016

Technology Used

Get more great content at WylieBlanchard.com... Need a great speaker for your next event, contact us to book Wylie Blanchard now.
Learn what clients are saying about his programs....

Working with a new client with 150 employees and limited IT resources. Current IT team consists of just one engineer (knowledgeable engineer but overwhelmed with requests and fixes). Leadership asked if there was something that we can do about improving the management of help desk requests.

Reason: Besides calling and/or emailing the engineer on staff there was no system in place to track help desk requests and IT tasks. Leadership was getting reports that requests were getting forgotten or not attended to at all. Leadership also wanted a way to pull reports detailing the amount of requests managed and time spent working on tickets and ticket completion time.

Of course they wanted this system to be low cost (or no cost).

The engineer and I decided to install SpiceWorks.

After the initial install, I used domain control and IIS to create a unique url subdomain that was masked over the spice works install url and was in compliance with the company’s intranet url domain structure. Created and linked a new email account for email requests and setup a web form for online help desk requests. Later I integrated spice works into SharePoint. After two weeks of testing different scenarios and updating the process we deployed the system to employees.

Overall, I was highly impressed at how far SpiceWorks had come. It is a powerful tool for network monitoring tool and help desk management tool.

In many ways it’s a lot better than most corporate systems that I’ve worked with.

Duration: 1 Month
Users: 100-249
Devices: 100-249

COMPLETION DATE: November 19th, 2014

CATEGORIES: Windows, Databases, Software

Get more great content at WylieBlanchard.com... Need a great speaker for your next event, contact us to book Wylie Blanchard now.
Learn what clients are saying about his programs....

It’s simple data mining.

Acting like it’s an invasion of privacy is foolish. If Google didn’t read our mail then they’d have no way to effectively do their job as an ad company. Thus they wouldn’t invest money in the tech that we desire and use.

To be honest Google’s losing money for not maximizing their data mining efforts.

I’m still shocked that #GoogleVoice has no audio ads telling you to, “press 1 before you call mom to buy that toaster she told you she needed during your last #VOIPcall”.

That’s #DataMining engagement to the next level.

My guess is that prior to ads being placed in G-Voice, we’ll see commercials before a Google #Hangout starts.

Gmail’s ‘Users can’t expect privacy’ furor: Much ado about nothing new

http://ow.ly/nVoAr

www.google.com

www.facebook.com

Get more great content at WylieBlanchard.com... Need a great speaker for your next event, contact us to book Wylie Blanchard now.
Learn what clients are saying about his programs....

It felt like a great birthday surprise… just 4 months early.

Well done Google… Well done.

#GS4 #GooglePlay #Samsung #Galaxy

www.facebook.com

Get more great content at WylieBlanchard.com... Need a great speaker for your next event, contact us to book Wylie Blanchard now.
Learn what clients are saying about his programs....