Most of us spend a great portion of our work day behind a computer, and yet 80% of people don’t know what is a browser. I also recommend to keep in mind the following 12 terms:
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Recent Posts
01. Interesting Projects
02. Friends & Family
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12 terms to remember
Posted in Web Design Tagged business, marketing, re-design, seo, terminology, Web Design, website Leave a comment
AA.com’s turbulent landing
When it’s time to purchase airline tickets online you eventually stumble upon AA.com. To me AA.com is one of the worst user experiences out there and yet one of the most visited. We are talking about one of the largest corporations in the US , ranked as the largest air carrier in the world in 2006. Their website can average 760,000 visits per day and yet it looks like it was designed in 1998.
The big question is why can’t they put together a decent web experience?? Clearly its not they don’t have enough resources or a good web design team. The problem is precisely that.. THEY ARE TOO BIG.
A fellow designer named Dustin Curtis took the time to write a letter to AA inviting them to re-think the way they look online. He actually redesigned their homepage and sent them a mock-up. Sometime after, he received a response letter from an experience architect who works at AA.com. The response was revealing. It appears the guy in charge is actually a pretty good designer with plenty of experience and an extensive portfolio under his belt. Yet, his efforts are overwhelmed by the evil forces of the corporate world: a gigantic group of people that work in different departments, all with their own set of interests on the homepage appearance.
I bring this example to touch on the following point. No matter how big an organization is, and no matter how many professionals put their efforts into a website, in the end its the user who will spend 1, 5 or 10 minutes interacting with the brand and the one who deserves the best seat in the house.
Posted in Graphic Design, Web Design Tagged American Airlines, business, re-design, user experience, Web Design, website Leave a comment
first exist…then tweet
Twitter profiles, Facebook groups, blogs, iPhone apps are valuable marketing tools. Just make sure your website doesn’t suck before you use them.
Every day I see more companies sprinting to join Facebook and Twitter as if the social media trend would leave without them.
If social media is here to stay then there is no need to rush. Id like to take a few steps back and remind you about the single most precious marketing tool that sticks out for your business, the one that gives that first impression to your clients: your website. I am amazed at how much time and effort some companies take at prompting their website when a single visit turns me off for a lifetime. Its no joke! You can build relationships via Twitter or Facebook but remember your website is your main goal conversion mechanism and should not be left behind. Wash your face prior to showing up at the social club.
Here is a checklist of things I believe are important before swimming in the social media pond:
- Have an engaging and correctly coded website.
- Focus in well structured information architecture.
- Create and maintain fresh sticky content that is spidered by search engines.
- Focus on calls to action.
- Implement analytics tools to understand who, when, how and why is traffic being directed to your website.
- Ask yourself WHY should your company be in one or more social media channels.
“I’ve connected with many venture-capital types, and heard their constant refrain about how they had got interested in a particular business – be it from an investment or potential partnership – only to have the bets go off once they went to their website (or discovered there wasn’t one). The simple conclusion: How could these companies make a wise investment if they can’t even get a simple website together?” – Mitch Joel (Author: Six Pixels of Separation)
Posted in Social Marketing Tagged blog, business, community, facebook, marketing, social media, strategy, twitter, website Leave a comment
no I’m not your fan!
I’m starting to get tired of everybody wanting me to become their fan! It’s not only your friends or people you know, big and small businesses are also striving to get as many fans as possible. The power of Facebook has reached CEO’s and Marketing departments all over the world. The big boys are playing with Facebook too.
I feel we are entering an era of “connectivitytis” sindrome… and it’s spreading fast. People and companies are connecting at such a speed that we are forgetting why would we want to connect in the first place. At the end of the day we only have a certain amount of hours to read or post comments in Facebook groups.
Remember when chatting was the latest thing? Doesn’t this feel familiar?
Posted in Social Marketing Tagged business, community, facebook, marketing, social media Leave a comment
The 2010 Web Machine