Transition Points

This morning our little part of the world was recovering from a brief snowstorm. As I left the building for a client meeting and again as I returned to my office, there were people (different folks each time) standing at the door talking. I noticed it because the atrium was getting cold as they stood […]

Mobile Goes Wild

As we monitor our customer’s sites we are seeing, understandably, a huge increase in traffic from mobile devices. What does that mean for your web site? What does that mean from a design perspective? First it is important to understand that tablets (iPad, Kindle, Surface, and a variety of Android tablets) are considered mobile devices. […]

Is Your Site Performing?

Have you looked at the stats for your web site lately? If you haven’t you should. There are two sets of statistics I recommend looking at. One is the stats from your web logs – we like to use AWSTATS as they provide a nice overview of stats but also allows you to drill down […]

The Importance of Being Heard

How do you get your message out? More importantly, how do you get your message out so that it is heard above the cacophony of others struggling to get their message out? That is the trial of the age in which we live. People are constantly exposed to messaging whether it be via TV, radio, […]

Change Your Perspective

I just took a look at my schedule. Next week I have lunch with Brian DeLaet twice. The problem you see is that I am Brian DeLaet.  Two different colleagues have sent me calendar invitations to have lunch with them. The problem is they didn’t think about it from my perspective. So my calendar now […]

Test Your Way to Success

Are you doing any testing on your web site? You ought to be. The testing, in fact, can be outside of your side whether through email marketing, social media or a variety of other options. I subscribe to Which Test Won (www.whichtestwon.com) and I learn something new each week.  This week I was sure I […]

Design for Usability

икониWe spend a lot of time talking about web site usability with our customers. But the first question we have to answer is “What is web site usability?” So let’s figure out what it is. As a web design firm we work hard to make our sites visually pleasing but a good web site is […]

Good Design Can Get in the Way of a Great Web Site

One of the most common mistakes in web site design today is the design itself. The most common “abuser” of this is the firm that comes out of the graphic design world and decides to start doing web sites (but there are other perpetrators as well). How does this happen? It’s simple actually. A stunningly […]

Measuring Up

What do you measure on your web site? Do you measure the number of hits? The number of unique visitors? The number of visits from search engines? All of those might be useful to you. The key is to take in the big picture. It would be a shame to be ranked number 1 in […]

Are You Paying Attention?

Everybody is so busy. We have to – or at least we feel like we have to – multi-task throughout the day. But does it really work? This morning I realized that my fruit shake wasn’t going to keep me going until lunch time so while I was out and about I swung through McDonald’s […]