Welcome to the Escape Blog

Great tool - Picnik.com - for resizing and optimizing an image for the web. Here’s how to do it.

When I am creating meta descriptions and meta titles for new web pages, I often wonder what they will look like in a search engine result page.

I mentioned it a couple of weeks ago to our web team and they built me this neat little tool for checking your meta tags for search engines. So, I thought we’d share it with you too… The Better Meta Checker!

I found this blog post today on alpha blog designs outlining the “101 Heinous Website Sins To Really Freakin’ Annoy Your Visitors” and I have got say I could not agree more. Some of my personal favourites are:

1. Use unnecessary Flash
2. Have “Site best viewed with…” somewhere in the page. Especially IE6.
3. Have a huge header, especially of yourself.
4. Have 40 ’socialize’ icons at the bottom of each post.
5. Ignore optimizing images for the Web.

So anyone out there who wants to know how to make a user experience more pleasurable I highly suggest having a read.

A bit late in now but I needed a snappy title. I thought I’d share my web predictions for 2008.

Feel free to come back in December and rub them in my nose if I am wrong - like that is gonna happen!

Design of a website is user interface design rather than creative pretty-ness and this has recently been highlighted to me (again).

Firstly, in a usability session with a client and a stranger, which allowed the client to subjectively see how someone used their website and also confirmed again today by Jakob Neilsen with his Top 10 Application Design Mistakes article.

The key thing is with people is that they are, if nothing else, creatures of habit and when it comes to displaying ‘rules’ we need constancy. That’s why we can all understand road signs when we go on our summer hols - because they are so similar to the ones in the UK.

It’s the same with a website. People will ‘expect’ navigation to be in a certain place - either across the top or down the left-side. If they see a search button, you can assume they probably know how it works.

There is though still a tendency to apply print design rules onto new media. The problem is, if you don’t stick with the very basic premise that at the end of the computer is a person, you may leave them staring at your site wondering…

I was sent a link to a website yesterday (ASP.NET) and asked to write a report on it - design, usability, etc.

It may just be me but the last few ASP.NET sites I have audited (especially those created in India) seem to be a little heavy on features at the expense of user experience.

There is no doubt that the cleverer the web gets, the easier becomes to create web pages and the more options HTML and CSS offer, there will be the temptation to go over the top but I fail to understand the purpose.

Drop down navigation, Flash for Flashes sake, no obvious structure, unnecessary Javascript and poor content simply doesn’t flick my switch and offer me anything.

When marketing or technical teams are devising these features (that additonally slow down the site) I wonder if they think about the user? I also wonder if they think about the repeat visitors who may just want to get in and get out of the site.

In such a competitive environment online, surely it’s time to go back to basics and ONLY add the features if they add value to the experience - for the user.

Some advice from this E-Consultancy article (two in one day) about getting your navigation right. I think I might start taking this with me into meetings to put people off the dreaded drop down navigation that I so hate:

1. Navigation menus at left or top of the page
2. Short, clear and precise language in menu options
3. Don’t have too many options
4. Consistent navigation
5. Use breadcrumb trails
6. Avoid dropdown menus
7. Make your logo link back to the homepage
8. Clear fonts
9. Have a site map
10. Include a search box

Get more insight: Ten tips for website navigation

I like competition, and if this bunch are anything to go by, I like them even more - The Five Worst Web Designers in the World - my eyes are still hurting from the last one in the list… via Dean.

Last year, I worked on about 20-30 web projects. All of them required an understanding of what the client is trying to achieve, who their market is, what their key selling points are, etc.

By using cross-project intelligence, we notice trends, features and ideas that will work across industries and product service offerings and advised accordingly. We used our expertise and stripped away the subjectivity, aiming for the lowest common point - if you could get one thing from your website, what would it be?

Any ideas which project last year was the hardest to work on?
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It used to be that a client would come in with a brief for a brochure and a flat budget, “I have £5,000 and I need 3000 brochures.”. Easy.

An effective website is different and boy do a lot of people waste a lot of money on the wrong things. Many times  in a pitch for a website I have advised someone not to spend their entire budget building a website, slashing their estimates and crushing their dreams. In fact, a prospect in a pitch meeting last week had to ask me how we make our money, because I wouldn’t sell a quick fix solution.

So how do you budget for your website?
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