Matrix Group International

Category: Design and Information Architecture

  • It’s Time To Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly… Really

    It’s Time To Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly… Really

    responsive_design_smallI was in a meeting with a client this week about their plans to redesign their website. He wondered if the organization should invest in responsive design. Wha?
    “Hold on,” I said. “I don’t think going mobile-friendly is optional these days.” But, he argued, responsive design adds to the project budget and his site doesn’t currently get much mobile traffic.
    It’s true. Responsive design can increase the total cost of a redesign by 5-20% of the total cost. BUT:
    • Last week, Google rolled out its mobile-friendly update, which significantly boosts the ranking of mobile-friendly pages on mobile search. And as I blogged last month, every organization should care about search, which means caring how Google ranks your website.
    • You can be losing customers. 27% of consumers will leave a site if it is not mobile-optimized (ExactTarget, 2014 Mobile Behavior Report).
    • Your mobile traffic will increase. Across ALL of our clients, mobile traffic increased dramatically within six months after a website goes mobile. Basically, if you build it, they will come… promise.
    • Our clients that have made their email templates responsive have seen an increase in their open rates. This doesn’t surprise us since mobile accounts for more than half of email opens (Litmus).

    So, what are you waiting for? If your website isn’t responsive, it’s time and it’s not optional.

  • The Promise of Universal Analytics: Custom Dimensions Can Show Who Is Visiting and What They Are Doing

    The Promise of Universal Analytics: Custom Dimensions Can Show Who Is Visiting and What They Are Doing

    AnalyticsMuch has been written about about Google Analytics (GA), which is now Universal Analytics. When you upgrade your account to Universal Analytics, a whole new world of reporting becomes available, including enhanced e-commerce reports, a more flexible tracking code that lets you track visitors across their devices (e.g., when people visit your website on a laptop, tablet and phone, as long as they are logged in, you can see session info), and a greater ability to filter and exclude criteria.

    But what I’m most excited about are Custom Dimensions. Custom Dimensions let you send custom data to GA. For example, some of my association clients are now sending the following to Google Analytics: member type, member status, special access levels, size of company, and special interests. Why is this valuable?

    Previously, GA was great mainly for analyzing WHAT people were doing on your website. We created endless reports about what search terms are referring traffic, the flows through the site, top pages being visited, top downloads, top abandons, etc. But with Custom Dimensions, you can now see, for example, what percentage of overall traffic is coming from members, traffic to meetings pages by meeting type, downloads by member type, whether or not Board and committee members are visiting your website, etc. While Google’s custom variables feature allowed similar functionality, Universal Analytics will allow businesses to leverage this data across devices, making it more meaningful and accurate.

    With Custom Dimensions, we now have more insight into WHO is visiting a website. Before you get too excited, remember that Google’s terms of service specifically disallows tracking that is personally identifiable. Which means an organization *could* set a tracking ID that is user-specific but that would violate Google’s terms of service. Instead, Google is giving us better tools to see which categories of people are visiting which pages and completing transactions.

    If you have some type of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system or Association Managment System (AMS), you’d probably benefit from sending custom dimensions to Google. You’ll need help from your web developer since this data is in your membership database and must be sent to Google via a custom cookie. One last tip: this coding must be very precise and very clean. Extra spaces will cause the reporting to fail. Once in place, however, this code works flawlessly.

    Good luck finding new insights from your Google Analytics data!

  • Just Say No! to Stock Photography

    Just Say No! to Stock Photography

    Sample stock image of people meeting
    Here’s an example of an image that is clearly a stock image. Do these people look real to you?

    Whenever I meet with clients about their websites, the conversation inevitably turns to the topic of stock photos. Most companies are photo challenged, so they ask us to help them find good stock imagery. My answer? Just say NO! to stock photography, especially of people!

    I feel hypocritical even writing this blog post because this blog is full of stock images. Heck, I’ve even blogged about Matrix Group’s favorite stock image websites.

    So when and why do I encourage my team and my clients to say NO! to stock photos?

    • When the web page is about a place or an idea, then I think it’s okay to use stock images. You can use a stock image of New Orleans, or use a stock image to convey an idea, like food safety or computer security. Of course it’s preferable to use your own images, but you almost need to be a pro to develop photos of concepts or ideas.
    • But when the page or website is about your organization and what you do for your customers and members, it’s best to use images of your own staff and customers. Otherwise, it’s like bringing a fake boyfriend to a wedding; the relationship isn’t real! (I know I’m going to get in trouble for this analogy.)
    • When you are talking about what you and your employees do and stand for, the pages just ring false when you use stock images.
    • When talking about your customers, who they are, and why they matter, the pages lack credibility because you are using other people’s customers! And God forbid the image you chose winds up on a competitor site!

    “But Joanna,” you say, “it’s hard to get good images of real people, my staff, my customers, my partners.” Yes, I totally agree, but I absolutely believe the effort is worth it. Here are some tips for developing a stock-free mindset.

    • When you can, hire a professional. We recently hired a pro to take photos of the staff and office. We wanted a collection of photos to use on our website, our proposals, and social media. We compiled a list of the shots we wanted (head shots of senior staff, meetings, lunch, etc.) and we made sure we owned the images outright so that we can use multiple times on different platforms.
    • For the times you can’t hire a pro, invest in a good DSLR camera. There are really great DSLR cameras for under $1,000. I absolutely love my Lumix camera, which I purchased about three years ago for $899. This camera made our Creative Director wonder if I had recently taken a photography class because my photos looked worlds better once I started taking photos with  my Lumix.
    • Have your camera with you at all times and take lots of pictures. I believe that if you take enough photos, you’ll take at least a few good ones. Moreover, a good designer can take an okay photo and make it better through cropping and touching up.
    • Learn the principles of taking good photos by taking a class, reading the manual and reading blogs. Even a few tips can help you take much better photos. For example, I learned a long time ago to get close and to frame my photos so that people aren’t smack in the center of the image. Here’s a great list of photography blogs.

    Matrix Group is in the midst of a website redesign. (It’s amazing how painful it is to design a website for your own company.) Creative Director Alex Pineda said, “there will be NO stock images on this site.” So the team has gone about making it so. The images will not be perfect, but in a sense, that’s the beauty of using real people: you can tell they’re real precisely because they are not perfectly dressed, made up and staged.

    I hope I’ve inspired you to take the NO stock photos pledge, at least on company pages where you should really be showcasing your staff, customers and partners.

  • Want More Views and Clicks In Your Emails? Make Your E-Newsletters Responsive!

    Want More Views and Clicks In Your Emails? Make Your E-Newsletters Responsive!

    As marketers, we’re obsessed with metrics. And since email is a primary means of Responsive Emailcommunicating with our members, customers, prospects and partners, it only makes sense that we track open rates (the number of people who actually open and read our emails) and click rates (the number of people who click on a link). Here at Matrix Group, we’ve been working with lots of clients to make their emails responsive because in most industries, more email is read on a mobile device than on a desktop email client.

    Responsive design refers to the practice of designing and implementing a website so that it “responds” to the user’s device. Looking at a website on a wide screen over broadband? You might get a full screen, 4-column layout with high resolution images. Surfing a website on your phone? You should get a slimmed down version of the site with a single column of content, text that is large enough to read without pinching, and lower resolution images.

    But what about emails? Responsive email pretty much works the same way as responsive websites. Reading an email through Outlook on your desktop? You might see a nice layout, with 2 columns, images aligned to the right and left of content, a nice header, yada, yada. Browsing the mail on your phone? That same email gets simplified. It goes to 1 column, images are center aligned, content is shorter.

    Why bother making your emails responsive?

    • Users are more likely to delete an email they cannot read easily on their phones. Source: ExactTarget
    • There is a growing segment of the population that is mobile only, that is, they access the Web and email only through mobile devices.
    • Responsive emails are more readable on a phone. Period. End of story.

    We’re tracking the results of responsive e-newsletters for our clients and so far, the statistics are promising. Clients are increasing open rates in absolute terms by 1-4%, and clickthroughs an average of 2%. A few percentage points doesn’t sound like much but when you consider that most organizations get a 20% open rate and a 2 or 3% click rate, these numbers are significant. Consider this: one Matrix Group client saw an increase of 4% overall; since they have an email list of 100,000, an extra 4,000 people are now reading their emails!

    I think it comes down to this. Your emails are getting looked at on a phone. Your customer’s decision to open and click is influenced by many factors, including subject line, who the email is from, and whether or not the email is mobile-friendly. It only makes sense to make your emails mobile-friendly. And if in doubt, do some testing and learn more about your customers’ email preferences.

     

  • Are You Legal with the Images On Your Website?

    Are You Legal with the Images On Your Website?

    Chained CameraA couple of months ago, we got a call from a client. Getty Images notified them to say that one of Getty’s images was being used on the website and they didn’t have record of the purchase. The website in question was built about 13 years ago and we had little documentation about the images used on the site. Neither my team nor the client knew where the image came from. We ended up paying the bill, which was close to $1,000 because the image was a rights managed image.

    Rights Managed (RM) refers to a licensing system usually used in photography where the customer must pay for each use or for each year. In the case of the client website above, the invoice was for multiple years of RM, which is why the bill was so high for a tiny, fairly generic image. Ouch.

    In the last decade of managing websites, Matrix Group has developed policies and procedures for using, purchasing and documenting images. Here are some of our rules:

    • Unless absolutely necessary, we don’t use Rights Managed images. It’s just too hard to keep track of the licensing and we can almost always find a non-Rights Managed equivalent.
    • All purchases of images for clients are documented in our project management system. We list the image ID, a description, the source and the price. This serves as documentation for when we invoice the client, but it’s also useful should the client ever need proof of the purchase or need to know where to purchase a version at a higher resolution (e.g., if the client wants to use an image in a printed piece).
    • We have a policy against grabbing random images from the Web, especially images.google.com. It’s too risky to grab an image and use it in a comp; if that comp gets approved and then inadvertently implemented to a live site, we’re just asking for trouble.
    • If we ever contract work to a photographer, we ask to own the images and this is explicitly laid out in our agreement. Many times, photographers will give you the right to use a photo once, e.g., in your monthly magazine or brochure. But these days, magazines get put online, brochures get put online, or companies want to use the same image across a variety of marketing materials. If you don’t have the rights to continue using an image, you will need to pay multiple times for the image. It’s not always possible to negotiate this with photographers, but we will only do business with photographers that give us ownership of images outright.
    • We ask clients if they have the rights to use or re-use the images they give us. Sometimes, client will forget that they have one-time use agreement with a photographer and simply asking the question helps set the record straight.

    Since we design websites, email newsletter and apps all day long, we need access to high quality images. I asked my team for their favorites and this is what I got:

    For paid images, we like:

    For free photos, we like:

    Of course, nothing beats images you take yourselves and that you have full rights to use everywhere. Matrix Group is in the midst of a redesign of our own website and Creative Director Alex Pineda has banned the use of stock photos.

    Anyway, don’t get caught with an invoice the way we did. Have a policy for image use, purchase and documentation. And always ask staff where they got the images for the website, brochure, presentation or email.

  • When Is It Time to Implement Responsive Design?

    When Is It Time to Implement Responsive Design?

    Responsive design illustrated on multiple devicesA few weeks ago, I conduced a webinar on implementing a “Mobile First” strategy. By mobile first, my co-host Alex Pineda and I mean a strategy where you consider the needs of mobile users first. Why? Because mobile usage is growing faster than desktop usage, because mobile usage is greater than desktop in some countries (like India), and because designing for mobile (especially smartphones) is harder than designing for tablet and desktop. During the webinar, a big topic of discussion was, “When is it time to implement responsive design?”

    My answer to this question is: NOW. Here’s what I usually hear from prospects and clients.

    Objection #1: “My mobile traffic is tiny.” This might be true today but mobile usage is growing really fast. More importantly, every single one of our client sites that went responsive is now seeing huge increases in mobile usage, with mobile now representing double digits. This tells us that visitors keep coming back when you reward them with a great mobile experience.

    Objection #2: “Responsive is expensive to implement.” It’s true that responsive can add up to 20% more to the overall design and implementation budget. Whenever we can, we use wireframes and designs to explore ways in which websites should look and behave differently on different devices, based on the tasks we believe users need to accomplish on said devices. These discussions, the development work and the testing are often labor-intensive. The good news is that most CMS platforms (we like Sitefinity and WordPress) make it much easier to implement responsive design. In fact, if budget is limited, we can implement default responsive templates. So please don’t let budget stop you from going responsive with your website.

    Objection #3: I’ll wait until our next redesign.” While it’s tempting and certainly easier to embark on responsive when you’re in the thick of a redesign, unless your redesign is happening right now, I don’t think you should wait. Can you really ignore the needs of the 25% mobile-only audience and the 22% market share of mobile devices for overall traffic?

    Objection #4: Search isn’t that important to my online strategy. Even if you think your target audiences won’t look for your products and services via search, you can’t ignore this statistic from Search Engine Journal: 93% of all Internet traffic starts with search. Further, Google is demoting sites that aren’t mobile-friendly because 25% of search clicks are from mobile devices, and climbing.

    If you’re still not convinced, just look at your own mobile device usage and think about how wonderful it is when your favorite news or retailer site has a great mobile site and you can do what you need on a phone or tablet.

    It’s time to go mobile. It’s time to go responsive.

  • What Happened to My Button? How iOS 7 Will Influence Web Design

    What Happened to My Button? How iOS 7 Will Influence Web Design

    I upgraded my iPhone to iOS 7 over the weekend and immediately realized why the Internet is buzzing about this OS upgrade. I did a webinar last week on mobile strategy and one of the attendees asked, “how will iOS 7 affect web design?” Once again, it seems Apple is leading the way and creating a new aesthetic for good mobile design.

    After playing with iOS 7 for a few days, here’s what I’m realizing the following:

    iOS 7 celebrates flat design. In a recent SnackOClock post, Matrix Group Creative Director Alex Pineda pronounced the death of skeumorphism. Wikipedia defines skeumorphism as “an element of design or structure that serves little or no purpose in the artifact fashioned from the new material but was essential to the object made from the original material.” Check out the new iMessage interface below. The buttons are all gone! The only things distinguishing Messages from Richard and Contact are color and position. Even Send at the bottom of the screen is just simple text! Apple is basically saying, “you know what this navigation means, we’re not going to use beveling and gradients and such to tell you that something can be clicked.”

    screenshot of iMessage in iOS 7

    iOS 7 is encouraging the device and the OS to get out of the way and let the content shine. For example, when I browse a website in the new Safari, back and forward buttons are gone as well. I can swipe to the left and right to visit previously accessed pages.

    Mobile design trends will influence web design overall. It used to be that mobile design came after desktop and now mobile and desktop are on equal footing when it comes to designing a user experience. In some cases, I’m even recommending that clients design for mobile first so mobile will set the tone for the overall experience. However, desktop and mobile can’t be the same because think about it: on a small screen, you’ve got to be very focused with your design. On a large screen, there’s usually a lot going on so we will probably always need skeumorphic elements to create focus and paths through our websites.

    The Apple Developer website says iOS 7 embodies the following principles:

    Deference. The UI helps users understand and interact with the content, but never competes with it.
    Clarity. Text is legible at every size, icons are precise and lucid, adornments are subtle and appropriate, and a sharpened focus on functionality motivates the design.
    Depth. Visual layers and realistic motion impart vitality and heighten users’ delight and understanding.

    Pretty fancy language and if I just read the above, I’m not sure I would understand it. But after playing with my iPhone for a few days, I think I get it. Next stop, upgrade the family iPads (we have 3!).

     

  • It’s Not About Search, It’s About Wayfinding

    It’s Not About Search, It’s About Wayfinding

    Man looking laptopOver the past year, I’ve had many, many clients call and meet with Matrix Group about site search issues. Clients complain that their search isn’t pulling up enough results, or it’s pulling too many, the formatting isn’t great, it doesn’t include protected content, yada, yada.

    I sat down with a client recently to discuss site search and quickly realized that it’s not really about search, it’s about wayfinding and all of our user interviews and user testing are bearing this out. Here’s what we have learned:

    Site Search is a Twin to Good Navigation.  Whenever we interview users or watch them during user testing sessions, we find that there are people who use navigation to find information and there are those who skip the navigation and quickly turn to search. We’re not sure why this is, but it points to the importance of having BOTH good navigation and site search on your website.

    Google Has Shaped Our Expectations About Search.  To be honest, most clients love Google and want their site search to be Google or work like Google. Trouble is, the Google Search Appliance is pricey and Google stopped selling the Google Mini last July 2012. So today we implement SearchBlox, the Google custom search, Zoom, Solr and MaxxCAT. If a client wants the ability to search by specific fields (e.g., date range, title, category) and allow filtering of the search results, Google doesn’t seem to be the right fit. We have found that there is no, one single search solution that works for all sites.

    Visitors Don’t Often Know What They Need. More and more, we find that visitors come to a website with a problem on a specific topic. For example, a VP of Government Affairs needs to know everything possible on an issue before Congress. She goes to her trade association website. She might use the site search but she gets 500 results and she’s overwhelmed. Or she goes to the Government Affairs website and learns what the organization is doing on the topic but she needs more background. What this VP really wants to know is: background info on the topic, the organization’s position on the topic, recent news, upcoming meetings and conference calls, some publications for sale, a committee on the topic, etc. A possible solution is to create dynamic topic pages that bring together everything that an organization has to offer on a topic. This can be done with a common taxonomy, web services and RSS feeds.

    Bottom line is this: good wayfinding on your site is a multi-faceted journey. It’s not just about site search,  so please explore the different ways that your visitors can find the information and services they seek.

    How about you? What have you done on your site to promote good wayfinding?

  • Who Should Be In Charge Of Your Redesign Project?

    Who Should Be In Charge Of Your Redesign Project?

    So your organization has decided to redesign its website. Who should be involved? Who should be in charge? And who should make the decisions? I get these questions a lot from senior executives who want to know how to structure their web team, who should be ultimately responsible for the success of the project, and how much staff time should be allocated to the effort.

    Who Should Be Involved?

    Figure looking at org chartSince websites represent your organization online and visitors expect to interact with all departments, it makes sense that there be involvement from throughout the company. But how to achieve this without creating committee gridlock? My recommendations are:

    • Invite as many people as you can to the kickoff meeting. The kickoff tells the whole company that the project is happening, what you want to achieve, and that you need their help. If possible, the CEO or someone suitably senior should be in attendance; this will let everyone know that the project is important and they should pay attention.
    • Arrange to interview at least one person from every department, functional group or constituency. These interviews will give you valuable insight AND build support for the project.
    • Don’t involve a large group in the day to day workings of the project; this will only slow you down. Do, however, arrange for periodic reports to your larger web team. You don’t want someone, somewhere, bringing the project to a screeching halt because you “didn’t talk to them” or you didn’t keep them in the loop as you made decisions.
    • Ask for volunteer beta testers. You will likely not get a lot of volunteers but the ones who do volunteer will be motivated and proactive, so get their help!

    Who Should Be In Charge?

    This is a tricky issue. Some organization put IT in charge, while others put  Communications, Marketing, Customer Service or Membership in charge. I think it’s a mistake to put IT in charge. Yes, IT will have the most facility with the technologies, but putting IT in charge of a redesign is like putting IT in charge of your membership marketing or print materials because they involve databases and computers.

    At Matrix Group, our most successful projects have been ones where:

    • There was a trio in charge, each representing an important constituency: subject matter experts, IT and senior leadership.
    • or IT was in charge of the process but subject matter experts were heavily involved and made the final decisions.
    • and the project manager on the client side was well connected in the organization, well liked, ran a great meeting, and able to help groups achieve consensus.
    • and there was high level senior sponsorship of the project. These senior staff members kept the senior leadership team informed and paved the way for resources from throughout the organization to be made available to develop content, test the website, etc.

    Who Should Make the Decisions?

    Another tricky issue. The answer is usually “it depends on the decision to be made.” In our experience:

    • It works well to get buy-in from a larger group when discussing navigation and content elements.
    • It works well to have the larger web team review and approve the overall design direction, copy writing style and content strategy. It’s really, really important that the *entire* organization be on the same page here.
    • The CEO or Chief Marketing Officer (or equivalent) should make the decision on the design and copy writing direction. And it’s always a good idea to brief the CEO and senior leadership team at regular intervals during the project.
    • The smaller web team should make the hundreds of decisions about layout, content placement, search, etc. Getting a committee to agree on these minute details will make the site build process torture.
    • Give each department the final say on their portion of the website, as long as their changes fall within the overall design parameters of the project. Which  means GR or Convention can’t decide to use a different font or color palette.

    How about you? Who do YOU think should be in charge? What has worked for your organization?

     

  • How Long Does It Take to Design a Website?

    How Long Does It Take to Design a Website?

    Dollar signWhen I’m presenting to prospects and clients, I almost always get the question “How long will it take to design my website?” As you can imagine, the answer is usually “It depends.” Depends on what?

    In my experience, a design timeline will depend on the scale of the project, the amount of content to migrate, the complexity of the navigation and design, the turnaround time needed to provide feedback, the number of integrations with third party systems, and testing resources and availability.

    When pressed, however, here are the guidelines I usually share with clients:

    Blogs are usually the fastest to get online. Why? Because blogs usually have a simple structure, they usually follow the style of the main organization website, and they have predictable elements: recent posts, blog archive, about the blogger, RSS feed, tag cloud, and social media feeds. Using a blog platform like Blogger, you can get a blog up in about an hour. But if you’re looking to create a blog with a custom theme, it usually takes 2-4 weeks. If it’s urgent, we can get a blog up in a matter of days, assuming the content is ready, the client provides quick feedback, and there is agreement about the blog strategy.

    Website facelifts can be fast or they can take time. At Matrix Group, a website facelift involves updating the site’s design elements, but you’re making minimal changes to the navigation and structure and you’re not changing the content management system (CMS). Facelifts can take week or two, or they can take a couple of months. Facelifts get derailed when the decision is made to drastically change the navigation, change CMS platforms, add significant new functionality, and update a lot of the content. Since clients generally need facelifts done fast, we try to never let the timeline go past two or three months.

    A standard redesign for us is one that involves updating the navigation based on user feedback, giving the site a new look and feel, migrating to a new CMS, migrating content from the old site to the new site, and adding new functionality. Since most of our clients also have or want to have member or customer portals, we usually integrate with some type of CRM system. These redesigns tend to take between 6-9 months. The most time-consuming tasks are often: creating an inventory of the entire site, migrating content, updating content, and ironing out all of the details of the integrations. Not having all the content ready is the number one reason these design projects get delayed.

    Design projects with lots of integrations and/or custom programming take the most time. Matrix Group recently completed a redesign project that involved a rebranding effort, migration of close to 10,000 pages, a move to a new CMS, and integrations with several vendors. This project took about a year. In general, I recommend to clients that projects never have a timeline of longer than 12 months. After 12 months, project staff get burned out, they start doubting that the project will ever launch, and they get sick of the design. If your project will legitimately take more than 12 months because of the scope of the work, I recommend breaking up the project into phases and launching functionality over time.

    Are there things vendors and clients can do to speed up timelines? Absolutely! My top tips:

    • Establish a deadline and give the project a sense of urgency.
    • Start working on your content from day one.
    • Start integration discussions early in the project.
    • Schedule design presentations and check-ins with senior staff ahead of time so that you don’t waste time on scheduling meetings and to keep the project moving.
    • Have a clear decision-making process.
    • Line up testing resources close to the time of launch.

    How long did your last redesign project take and what lessons did you learn?