These words came from one of our current clients, during the early wireframe phase of his first website. And although we make the process as easy as possible for our clients, it remains a valid point. Your website is your company’s public face after all, so you really do want to make sure that each and every detail is just right.

The process can be overwhelming for the uninitiated. If this describes you, read on. What follows is a basic, plain-language checklist for getting your organization online.

1. Purpose

Before you do anything else, you need to create a plan… and this plan needs to be centered around the question: What purpose do you want your website to serve?

In essence, you need to develop a proper job description for your website. What do you want it to DO for you? Will it be a simple informational marketing tool and point of contact? Will it serve as an online community, gallery or forum? Do you want an online storefront with e-commerce capabilities? Do you want to position yourself as an authority in your field through the provision of news and resources? The requirements for every website are unique, so you will need to decide which functions best serve your organization’s specific needs.

2. Web Host

A web host is not the same as your Internet Service Provider (ISP). Your ISP simply provides access to the internet. If you want a website of your own, you will need to effectively “rent” the space for it on a hosting company’s server.

A hosting company owns and maintains X number of servers. On each server, X number of websites is stored. With that in mind, there are three common options for hosting:

• • Shared means that you share a server with several other websites, and is the cheapest.
• • Dedicated hosting gets you a server all to yourself, and is the most expensive.
• • Semi-dedicated reserves a server for a very small number of clients.

For most websites, shared hosting with a quality hosting company is more than adequate. If you anticipate high volumes of traffic or bandwidth, however, you will want to look into dedicated or semi-dedicated hosting options. Keep in mind that servers are just like your own computer… if it is overloaded, outdated and neglected, it will perform slowly and inconsistently at best, and crash and fail at worst. Most bargain-basement hosting companies are able to offer cheap rates simply by squeezing as many accounts as possible onto a single, often outdated server. And then there’s the human element… when your email and website are down, quality customer service suddenly becomes very important.

Bad web hosts are a dime a dozen. It is imperative that you do your research, and choose a hosting company based on reliable measures of quality rather than gimmicks, sales or ad campaigns. Widely advertised does NOT equal quality. We both use and heartily recommend the pros at Fused, but always encourage clients to do their own research before deciding on which host best suits their needs.

3. Domain Name

Now that you have a home for your website, you need a relevant, easily identifiable address. The domain name (DNS) is the address that appears in the address bar in your web browser, excluding ‘http://www’ (e.g., our domain name is ‘sagemedia.ca’). Unfortunately, nobody owns a domain name for life. You need to register it (usually through your web host) to start, then renew it every year. If you don’t, someone else can and will buy it up, and your site will be rendered both nameless and inaccessible.

Choosing a domain name is a frustrating, but important process. It is frustrating because of the simple fact that if it is a recognizable word, chances are someone has already registered it… even if they’re not using it. There exists a scourge on legitimate online businesses everywhere known as domain squatters… these people buy up thousands of domain names, and simply sit on them until someone comes along who wants a name so badly that they are willing to pay an exorbitant price to buy it from the squatter. Squatters also buy up versions of existing business names and fill the pages with pay-per-click ads (known as link farms) so they generate ad revenue for themselves by capitalizing on well known companies. Your choice of domain name is nonetheless important – it needs to be relevant to your company (containing your company’s name), easily remembered, and easy to spell. Once you’ve committed to a name, you’ll want to stick with it.

4. Target

Further to your initial plan, it is important to decide exactly who you want to communicate with online. Your target audience should already have been established in your business plan. In planning your website, you need to keep in mind what THEIR needs are. Are they looking for information; Do they need a problem solved (hint: the answer is always yes); Do they want to be entertained, educated, or simply served? Combined with your purpose (and as you’ll see, intertwined as well), a sharp focus on the target audience is central to your website strategy.

5. USP

Following from the previous items, your website will need to emphasize and reinforce your USP, or Unique Selling Point. This is the reason why people will choose to come to your site (and your company) rather than your competitors. Note you can’t get to this point without first developing an understanding of your target audience. The USP is the answer to your customer’s problems.

6. Budget

As the single most important online marketing investment your company will make, you will need to determine a realistic and appropriate budget for the design and development of your company’s website. Plan to invest well into four figures for a properly planned, well designed and expertly executed business website. Rates vary wildly between providers – the web design field is largely unregulated, so be sure that you look for qualifications, reviews and referrals, and know exactly who you’re hiring. This includes confirming precisely who will be doing the actual work, as many ‘design’ companies are simply middlemen outsourcing contracts to unqualified overseas labour farms.

7. Content

Given this article is being written by a designer, it may surprise you to see content weighing in first. The fact is, effective design relies on high quality content to provide context, depth, and relevance. If you think of your design as a restaurant, your content would be the food. Note that content is also not limited to the text within your pages; it also refers to images and brand materials (like your logo, for example). These are things that your designer should be provided with upfront, so they can move forward with context and purpose.

8. Persona

Refer back to the parameters covered in previous checklist items – namely your purpose, USP, and target audience. These items will help guide you in narrowing down a personality for your website. As part of a more thorough consultation, any reputable designer will ask you fairly early in the process to provide them with a mood-board, or a selection of exemplar sites that portray the sort of image you want for your business (in addition to industry relevant examples of what you explicitly do NOT feel represents you). Obviously, the purpose is not to find something to copy, but rather to better define the mood and theme for your online presence.

9. Website Design

This is the fun part, though it doesn’t quite start out that way. Clearly, you’ll need to research and choose a qualified, reputable designer. Find someone you feel comfortable with, review their portfolio, look for customer reviews, learn about their company and philosophies, and enter their name into a search engine. Finally, be sure to review the design company’s terms and conditions. There are many designers whose terms specify that they (not you) retain ownership of all materials in perpetuity, placing restrictions on your usage. Remember, you will be investing a significant amount of time, trust, effort and capital in creating your website, so it is most certainly worth your time to ensure you really are choosing the right professional for the job.

Following your initial consultation and scope development, your designer will generally develop a wireframe for your approval. This serves as the skeleton for your site, establishing general placement/layout and structural presentation of site elements. It’s boring, but it is important. Spending a little time here now will save a lot of time later on.

The wireframe will be followed by a visual concept presentation for your homepage. If all of the preliminary steps have been covered thoroughly and thoughtfully (by both the designer and yourself) and communication has been clear, this will generally serve as the starting point for your site. Of course, you may want to tweak some colours, graphic treatments or images to make the design perfect in your eyes. Remember though, your eyes are not the important ones… it is the eyes of your customers you really need to consider. And it is your designer’s job to communicate your message with your target audience squarely in mind.

The design phase finishes with your visual layouts contained within PSD files. If your designer is also your developer, the transition to the next step will be seamless.

10. Website Development

If your website designer and developer are the same person, they will already have been provided with the required functionality and content for your site. If you are going with a separate developer, you will need to provide them with PSD files for the site (provided by your designer) as well as a detailed outline of exactly what you want each part of the site to do, and an outline of your content. They will then turn your visual design into a fully functional, working piece of communicative art (in code).

Like designers, web developers are not created equal. Not by a long shot. Web development is a rapidly changing and ever-evolving field, with different technologies and techniques being created, updated, and rendered obsolete on a daily basis. Web standards are important to ensure that your website looks and works as it should for the maximum possible number of visitors, though even that is no guarantee. Your developer will also need to test the site for cross-browser and cross-platform compatibility (because not all browsers follow standards). The way your site is coded is incredibly important for usability, accessibility, and will have a strong impact on how your site ranks in search engines. So choose someone who really knows what they’re doing.

11. Launch

While there are certainly other considerations insofar as pre-launch marketing goes, at this point your website is technically ready to deploy. Your developer will want to migrate your site onto your server for you (the one that your domain name points to, provided by your hosting company), and then complete one final set of tests to make sure that everything continues to work the way it should in its new home. This is another reason your choice of hosting companies is important – the software installed on the server needs to be up-to-date so it can support the latest standards in development.

12. Corollaries

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is an entire industry unto itself, with intricacies that extend far beyond the scope of this article. At minimum, if you want anyone to find your website on a search engine, your developer needs to employ best practices in organic, white-hat search engine optimization. Organic simply means that the optimization is contained within the code, content and build of the site itself. White-hat means that the methods employed are not prohibited or frowned-upon by the search engines themselves. Google et al WILL blacklist any website it finds that tries to circumvent the rules through unscrupulous SEO techniques.

There are additional SEO tactics you can (and should) employ yourself to maximize your exposure. Search engines rank sites higher if they have regular updates with new content, and a good number of quality inbound links. This does not mean link exchanges necessarily, as search engines often penalize sites that offer little in the way of actual content. Basically, the more high-ranking websites you can get to link back to your site, the better.

Social Media

These days, everyone and their mother has a profile on Facebook and Twitter. Professionals will also have a profile on LinkedIn. Setting yourself up with a presence on social media can draw visitors to your site, IF handled properly. In order for this to work, you will need to invest time into keeping your profiles up to date, and you will need to make sure your contributions are relevant, appropriate, and suitably engaging for your visitors.

Offline Marketing

The web is an incredibly important medium for marketing your business. However, you should not make the mistake of ignoring classic offline marketing techniques and resources. Be sure to update all of your promotional and corporate materials to include your website address and branded email. This includes just about everything that has your logo on it, including your business cards, stationery, signage, advertising, packaging, etc. If a customer sees an ad on the side of a bus as it rolls by, they will be significantly more likely to retain a website address than any other method of contact advertised.

Your Browser

While your website will have been tested and developed to function in older browsers, it cannot be optimized for them. Current best practices and up-to-date techniques are simply not supported by many obsolete browsers, requiring secondary options and workarounds. So, open whichever browser you prefer to use, and update it to the latest version. It’s free, it’s easy, and it has the potential to improve your online experience exponentially.

Although this article has been fairly lengthy, it really is just a primer on the most important fundamentals of launching a new website. If an effective result is to be expected, the process becomes an involved one that requires considerable investment and effort on the part of the client and the designer/developer. It also requires a high level of expertise. As always, research is important. Hopefully this checklist will have you well on your way.

Even if you have no interest in design theory and fundamentals, for the sake of your business there is one point that should never be forgotten: the purpose of design is communication.

Communication Demands Relevance

Each industry has a unique audience, with unique needs & expectations. What works for a law firm website will not necessarily translate well to the design of a catering company website. In an industry flooded with generic templates and unqualified or (worse) apathetic service providers, this simple fact is often overlooked. For this reason, we present to you the first in a series of Web Design Anatomy articles. Motivated by the short and frustratingly familiar script referenced here, our first article will deal with Restaurant Websites.

Why Does a Restaurant Need a Website?

We’re not talking generalities here – in today’s marketplace just about EVERY type of business needs an online presence if they want to stay competitive. More specifically, we are asking the question: what is the purpose of a restaurant website?

The reductionist answer is twofold:
• To create an attraction between diners and your restaurant
• To provide the information they need to spend their money there

Attraction

This is the point that far too many restaurant owners get caught up in, at least superficially. It’s no secret that we are not supporters of Flash to the detriment of accessibility or functionality. How can you attract when you can’t be seen? It’s best to consider Flash as just one specialized tool in a very well stocked toolbox… it serves a niche function, comes with a ball of strings attached, and with advancements in the capabilities of JavaScript is quickly becoming obsolete.

It is important to present an impressive online image that represents everything great about your restaurant. But in order to make that impression, diners need to be able to actually VIEW your website. If they are out driving around, browsing for a restaurant on their iPhone, they will not be able to view your Flash website. At all. If they are using a search engine to find a restaurant, yours will likely be way down the list, as search engine optimization techniques for Flash sites are crippled, at best. There is also the issue of not being able to copy/paste, or bookmark individual pages. Statistically, Flash sites have an exponentially higher abandon rate than XHTML/CSS based sites.

Information

Following is a short list of requirements that every restaurant website should have in order to provide customers with the information they’re seeking:

• Restaurant Overview
  A basic introduction to your restaurant is a must. Even if you think the name of your restaurant is self-explanatory, people still like to see how you describe yourself. If you have any unique selling points (local-sourced or seasonal ingredients, fair-trade, vegetarian options, etc.) this is a great place to mention them.
• Location
  Diners need to know where you are, and how to get there. You don’t need to provide directions from every corner of town, but an address, basic map, and link to a direction-giving site like Google Maps is very helpful indeed. BONUS: include a photograph of the front of your restaurant, so first-time visitors will recognize it easily from the street.
• Hours
  Basic stuff, here. And this is very near the top of the list of priorities when a diner visits your website. Make them easy to find.
• Menu
  Your food is your business! If ever there were an influential and unique selling point, it would be a mouth-watering menu. Words paint a picture, here. Don’t just scan your paper menu into an annoying PDF file, either – invest in having a digital menu designed to complement your physical one. This is the page people will want to bookmark.
• Photos
  A picture surely does speak a thousand words. Show what you’ve described in your menu, and make the imagery so vivid that it elicits a Pavlovian response in your visitors. Show your food, show your restaurant, your staff, and your dining room. The food is the star, but the experience is the whole package.
• Reviews
  This is not a must-have, but it certainly is nice. Reviews are the first thing many people look at when considering a new restaurant to try. If your restaurant has been reviewed in print, you definitely want to boost the influence that press affords by including it in your website. If you’re not in print, patch in reviews from consumer sites like UrbanSpoon or Restaurantica, or any of the other dozens of options available in any given city. And if you’re brand-spanking-new, include a reviews page with a simple request and link for people to visit a chosen review site, and let the world know what they thought of their experience with you.
• Reservation/Contact Info
  This area can be the deal-closer in many cases. If you make it easy and painless for people to book a table, guess what they’ll be more likely to do? Provide an easy-to-find phone number, of course, but also consider bookings by email, or requests via a form on your website. You can even program in live reservations through services like OpenTable.

How to Annoy Your Customers

Some food for thought, straight from the horses’ mouths:

“I’m always taken aback when music emanates from my speakers when I’m viewing a site”

“Flash required. Biggest irritant of a restaurant website. Even more so if they have an “Intro” graphic/animation. Two of my fav places use flash for their sites and it’s very very annoying. Even more annoying with flash is not being able to copy/paste phone numbers.”

“Can’t stand it when a site starts with music or that stupid talking character/video. I’ve got my own playlist going already, thanks. I don’t want your music. And when I’ve opened a ton of tabs at once, skimming through to find a cool place to eat, it’s always a pain to figure out which ones are making the noise.”

“I have my windows set up so that everything is sized and positioned the way I want it. Nothing bugs me more than when a website takes over your browser and forces it to fill the screen.”

“Flash, flash, flash. I don’t care about your intro. I don’t want to watch a video of leaves unfurling. Atmosphere is nice, but I usually end up closing these sites before they’re even done loading.”

“Where’s the damn menu?! I scour the site for ages, then when finally find it, it’s a crappy PDF.”

Who Does It Right

Here are just a few examples of restaurants with websites that walk the walk in terms of design, attractiveness to their own target customer base, and serving their purpose through the provision of convenient, easy-to-find information.

Each of these sites has a design that appeals the demographics the restaurants are trying to attract. They look great. They work the way they should. And information is very easy to find.

The central lesson in all design, whether it be for print, digital distribution, or the web, is that (the right kind of) communication is king. The goal for any company’s website is to sell a product, service or idea. Obviously you want to look good doing it, but dressing up for a job interview will do you no good if you can’t communicate with your prospective bosses. And let’s face it… the customer is the boss.

What follows is a recounting of one man’s frustration at the restaurant industry’s infatuation with Flash. Enjoy.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

A conversation I have every month or so

Me: (tries to visit a local restaurant’s website via iPhone)
Restaurant website: I require Flash. F**k off.
Me: I just want to know how late you’re open.
Website: Nope.
Me: But I’m on my phone. Don’t you have a little “HTML Version” link up in the corner or something?
Website: I’m ignoring you.
Me: What if I’m on my phone because I’m out, looking for a place to eat? Didn’t that ever occur to you?
Website: F**k entirely off.
Me: (gives up, switches to computer)
Website: Oh! Hi! What can I help you with today?
Me: What are your —
Website: Hang on, I’m loading the music.
Me: Really.
Website: You’ll love it. It’s “Girl from Ipanema” arranged for steel drum and keytar.
Me: No, you don’t have to —
Website: Loading…
Me: All I want is —
Website: I SAID DOT DOT DOT.
Me: (drums fingers on desk)
Website: There we go. Isn’t that nice? It’s… what’s the word. Ethnicky.
Me: What are your hours?
Website: Take a look at our menu! It’s a PDF of a screenshot of a scan of a Word document printed on a dishtowel. With fonts!
Me: I don’t care. What are your hours?
Website: Don’t worry, the menu loads in a new window so the music won’t stop. Can I show you some broken images?
Me: What. Are. Your. Hou. Rs.
Website: I… I don’t know.
Me: (goes to Denny’s)

Visit the Source: Venomous Porridge
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

As much as I might be tempted to rail and ramble on about the detriments of Flash to concepts like website usability and UX (user experience), it somehow seems folly to think I could be quite as succinct or relateable as Mr. Wineman’s script above.

If you’re a restaurant owner, the next time a designer tries to sell you on an overpriced Flash site with all the bells and whistles… take a moment and think about the purpose your website actually serves. And think of Mr. Wineman. He could have been one of your best customers.

A few days ago, my incoming Twitter feed took on a fiery tone. Anger spewed forth with abandon from one of my fellow business owner contacts. He was incensed, having discovered that a particular spammer had gone the extra mile to target his company’s clients as a group.

Over the span of a few hours, this business owner kept himself incredibly busy in the singular task of transforming the man at the other end of the spam campaign into a trembling, whimpering mess. Names were named. I have no doubt that calls were made to lawyers and muscle-for-hire. There was mention of a bulk manure delivery service.

Though one could (at a distant stretch) consider the spammer’s crackerjack box web design company a competitor for my own, by the end of the day I actually began to feel a bit sorry for the man. But only a bit.

Marketing by email is not like marketing by phone or mail. It’s a different game, with different rules. Lawsuits were threatened in the case above, and it wasn’t just hyperbole. The spammer in this case had enough experience to know precisely what he was doing… or at least he should have.

If you want to communicate with prospects by email (and this includes e-newsletters), there are a few mandatory steps you need to take to ensure you’re not breaking any laws.

Specifically, CAN-SPAM compliance requires the following:

• Subject Line must not be misleading.
• Advertisements must be clearly labeled as such.
• Email headers, sending email address and other identifiers in the headers must not have been tampered with in order to conceal your identity.
• The body of the email must contain a valid physical address for the sender.
• The email must contains a functioning opt-out mechanism.
• Opt out requests must be honored within 10 business days.

These are the absolute minimal requirements for email marketing.

Technique, tact, consideration, design and content are an entirely different issue… but even if you take none of them into account – perhaps, especially if you take none of them into account – ignoring the simple rules above will place you squarely in the cross-hairs for litigation and impossibly heavy penalties.

Each individual violation of CAN-SPAM regulations is subject to fines of $16,000. That’s per message. And that’s just for starters. Criminal charges are also probable for spammers engaged in the truly slimy stuff like email harvesting, using malware, or hijacking other people’s computers to send spam without their permission.

Now, the odds are that most ethical businesses who market or send out newsletters by email are already following these regulations, in addition to making sure the people they contact actually want to hear from them. They’re really rather common-sense things to do, and if you’re not already doing them, it doesn’t take much to become complaint.

Regardless of the context, ethics counts for a lot – it always has, and it always will.

The state of social media means that bad news travels fast and far. Public name & shame seems to be the new alternative to the BBB dinosaur – and it’s certainly more effective. The poor decisions made by the spammer above have undoubtedly hurt their business, which, if I’m honest, doesn’t bother me much. Their failure means one less unscrupulous dullard marring the design industry.

Dirty business always ends up in the mud, eventually.

In this article, we are going to take a little tour through the history of information – or more specifically where to focus efforts if you want get in touch with other people. It is really exciting time, because we are currently in the middle of the most drastic change since the invention of the newspaper.

We are seeing an entirely new way for people to interact. One that makes all traditional ways seem silly. It is a fundamental shift, and it will completely change the world as we know it. And the best thing about it is that you get to help make it happen.

So join me on this tour of the last 210 years of information + 10 more years into the future.

But before we start to explore the future, let’s explore how we got here. Let’s go back to 1800 – back when information was nothing like what we have today…

1800 – The face to face period

In the 1800, the only way you could really interact with other people was to go out and meet them. It was all about face-to-face communication. If you wanted to sell a product, you would go to the local marketplace, where you would setup a stand. But this also meant that the only way for you to get information – or to give information back – was to be at the right place at the right time. You didn’t really know what happened in another part of the city, nor could you sell your products to people in another place.

Some people did talk about this new thing called the newspaper. But it wasn’t really the same. You had to meet people in person. That was the only good way to interact.

1900 – Read all about it!

By the year 1900, the newspapers and magazine had revolutionized how we communicated. Now we could get news from places we have never been. We could communicate our ideas to people we had never seen. And we could sell our products to people far away.

You still had to go out to talk other people, but you could stay on top of things, without leaving the city. It was amazing. It was the first real revolution of information. The world was opening up to everyone.
1960 – We will be right back after these messages

During the next 60 years the newspapers dominated our lives. If you wanted to get the latest news, or tell people about your product, you would turn to the newspapers. It seemed like newspapers would surely be the dominant source of information for all time to come.

Except that during the 1920s a new information source started to attract people’s attention – the Radio. Suddenly you could listen to another person’s voice 100 of miles away. But most importantly, you could get the latest information LIVE. It was another tremendous evolution is the history of information. By 1960′s the two dominant sources of information was LIVE news from the Radio and the more detailed news via newspapers and magazines.

It was really great times, although some meant that “The way for newspapers to meet the competition of radio is simply to get out better papers”, an argument that we would hear repeatedly for the next 50 years.

1990 – Tune in Tomorrow

During the next 40 years a new technical revolution, the television, was introduced. It started to real get public interest in the 1950s, and by the year 1990 it was huge. It had surpassed the newspapers and magazines, and it was slowly obliterating the radio. Now people could not only hear information, they could also see it.

The 1970s-1990s was also the time where the newspaper executives were realizing that something was going terrible wrong with their market. They have had many problems with competing with radio, but the TV was in a different league.

1998 – The dawn of the Internet

Only 8 years later, television is ruling the world, radio is almost reduced to ‘a place where you listen to free music’ and newspapers are doing everything they can to stay relevant. But the constant evolution of technology plows ahead with never before seen determination. A new phenomenon is looming in the shadows – the Internet.

1998 was the year when the internet changed from being a geeky place that had little relevance, to ‘every company needs to have a website’. The revolution had started 3 years earlier, but in 1998 it reached critical mass and caught everyone’s attention.

It still wasn’t used much, and most people didn’t have access to it, but everyone agreed that it was the future. It was the dawn of a new era. It was a place where everyone could get information from everywhere – at least in theory.

People also started to realize that the internet was more than just information. You could give something back. You could join the conversation. You could be a part of the experience instead of just a spectator. And most importantly, you could choose what you wanted to do, when you wanted to do it – a concept that hadn’t been possible since the 1800. The possibilities of the internet were just mindboggling.

2004 – I decide what to do!

In 2004, only 6 years later, the internet had revolutionized how we approach information. Televisions and newspapers still dominated our news sources, but the new world was definitely online.

In 2004 everyone was making new websites. People were exploring the world of web applications, and online workflows.

People could do an incredible amount of things, and participate in so many areas, that a new concept appeared – information overload.

For the first time in our lives we were being exposed to more information than we could consume. In the age of newspapers we had to choose what we wanted to see. But in 2004 we had to choose what we didn’t want to see.

This had a devastating effect on the traditional forms of information. In the past, you could get people’s attention simply by making something. People wanted more choices, so you simply had to give them another choice. But in 2004 this changed. People started to have enough, and now you actually had to make something better. It was not enough that it was different.

2004 was also year when a new phenomenon started to take off – Social Networking. The concept had been slowly gaining ground with the concept of blogs. It was an easy, simple and affordable way for everyone to share their ideas. And you could post a comment. For the first time, everyone could create their own sphere of information without doing ‘technical things’.

Information changed from being tools for the professionals, to a tool for everyone to use.

2007 – Me too

3 years later the social element if the internet showed just how powerful the voice of the people really is. The TV was from the first time no longer the primary source of information, and newspapers are struggling to survive.

Everyone wanted to create their own little world, and connect it with their friends. But 2007 was also the turning point for the traditional websites. It was once the most important change, but now people compared the traditional websites to newspapers – a static and passive form of information. We wanted active information. We wanted to be a part of it, not just looking at it.

The blogs also started to get in trouble. Just as TV had eliminated radio (because it was better and richer way to give people LIVE information) so are social networks eliminating blogs. A social profile is a more active way for people to share what they care about. Social networks are simply the best tool for the job, and the blogs could not keep up.

2009 – Everything is Social

2 years later, today, the new internet is completely dominating our world. The newspapers are dead in the water, and people are watching less TV than ever. The new king of information is everyone, using social networking tools to connect and communicate.

Even the traditional website is dying from the relentless force of the constant stream of rich information from the social networks.

In the past 210 years we have seen an amazing evolution of information. We could:

1. Get information from distant places
2. Get it LIVE
3. See it LIVE
4. Get to decide when to see something, and what to see
5. Allow us to take part, and comment.
6. Publish our own information
7. …and in 2009… be the information.

But 2009 is also going to be the start of the next revolution. Because everything we know is about to change.

The Future

The first and most dramatic change is the concept of Social News. Social news is quickly taking over our need for staying up-to-date with what goes on in the world. News is no longer being reported by journalists, now it comes from everyone. And it is being reported directly from the source to you – bypassing the traditional media channels.

But social news is much more than that. It is increasingly about getting news directly from the people who makes it. Instead of having a journalist reporting what some analyst are saying, you hear it from the analyst herself. Social news is about getting news from the source, directly, and unfiltered.

A new wave of entertainment is emerging (the light blue and purple areas), one dominated by the games, video and audio streams. Instead of tuning into a TV channel, you decide what to see and when to see it. We are no longer subscribing to a channel, where someone else decides what you can see. You decide and control everything about the experience.

And a new concept in the form of targeted information is slowly emerging. We are already seeing an increasing number of services on mobile phones, where you can get information for the area that you are in. E.g. instead of showing all the restaurants in the world, you will only get a list of the restaurants in your area.

This is something that is going to explode into in the years to come. In the world where we have access to more information that we can consume, getting only the relevant parts is going to be a very important element. And, this will expand far beyond the simple geo-targeting that we see today.

2020 – Traditional is dead

In the next 5-10 years, the world of information will change quite a bit. All the traditional forms of information are essentially dead. The traditional printed newspapers no longer exists, television in the form of preset channels is replaced by single shows that you can watch whenever you like. Radio shows is replaced podcasts and vodcasts.

The websites have a much lesser role, as their primary function will be to serve as a hub for all the activities that you do elsewhere. It is the place where people get the raw material for use in other places. And the websites and social networks will merge into one. Your website and blog is your social profile.

Social news, as described previously, is going to be the most important way that people communicate. The traditional journalistic reporting is by now completely replaced getting information directly from the source. Everyone is a potential reporter, but new advances in targeting will eliminate most of the noise. The journalists will turn into editors who, instead of reporting the news, bring it together to give us a bigger picture.

The news stream of the future will be personalized to each individual person, and is constantly adjusting what you see – much the same way as Last.fm is doing today with music.

Everything will incorporate some form of targeting. You will be in control over every single bit of information that flows your way.

In 2010, two new concepts will start to emerge. One of them is intelligent information, where information streams can combine bits from many different news sources. Not just by pulling data, but summarizing it, breaking it apart and extracting the valuable parts.

Instead of reading 5 different articles on the same topic, you will be presented with one, highlighting the vital point of interest.

The world information is also going to be available almost everywhere. The concept of having to get the paper, sit in front of your TV, or look at your computer, will be long gone. Information will not be something you have to get. It comes to you, wherever you are, in whatever situation you happen to be in.

In the same way, information will not be something you ‘consume’ a certain times – like you did with prime-time on TVs. The information stream will be a natural part of every second of your life. It is not something you get, it is something you have.

The static and controlled forms of information that we see today will soon be a thing of the past.

Get ready!

Ask yourself. Are you still trying to get journalists to write about your products? Are you still making websites? Is your social networking strategy to ‘get a Facebook Page’?

…or…

Are you making yourself a natural part of people’s stream of information?

© MMVIII the infinitely cool Thomas Baekdal

The issues are alarming, to say the least.

On the one hand, we have the dime-store design trend chipping away at the integrity of the industry, and the amateurs passing themselves off in the marketplace as legitimate professionals, who happen to think that $100 is a fine price to charge for a thoughtless, conceptually barren logo, assembled from clip-art on stolen software. This is all exacerbated by the actual professionals who succumb to pressures to lower what was a fair market price, in order to compete with contenders whose qualifications, process, and quality of work are not nearly in the same league.

And at the other end of the spectrum, we have the monolithic “big boys” who pad their rates so egregiously it would make Donald Trump cry. I’ve heard far too many stories and anecdotes about companies who have paid six figures for a finished product that wouldn’t pass mustard as a first draft coming from a junior designer here. And of course, we’ve all heard about a certain governmental organization paying over a million dollars for a slight logo redesign.

In the middle, we have the rest of us: the quality-driven, honest design companies trying to fight the damaging effects of these two extremes.

Most recently, the website for the State of Wisconsin’s Campaign Finance Information System was brought to my attention.

It was brought to the attention of others too, but not principally due to its outrageous price tag. An article in the Dec/08 Journal Sentinel casually mocked the site for featuring a photo of the wrong city on its homepage. But though the article claimed the site cost the state’s taxpayers “nearly a million dollars” to build, documents obtained by Open Records Request showed the actual price to be more than twice that.

Let’s take a look at this fabulous, two million dollar site…

Really?

Putting aside the student-level design for a moment, I thought, maybe there’s some ground-breaking, reality-defying technology going on under the hood. But no, it’s your run of the mill, standard build.

Thanks to Dan Cody of Wisconsin (who made the ORR), we were able to take a closer look at the actual proposal data. For a rather standard website with an already well-defined plan and set of criteria, the awarded firm quoted such numbers as the following:

• 120 hours to write their own project plan
• 280 hours to code MSWord document upload/download functionality
• 1900 hours for project management

And obviously, this is just one slice of the pie. What I’m left wondering is, who was responsible for making the decision to hire this firm? And where is the oversight?

What’s truly upsetting here is the fact that had the company not used the wrong skyline image, this would likely have never come to light. Honestly, this is only one example of many.

The quoted cost for this specific website should have been a fraction of what it was, but the dishonesty of one vendor combined with what can generously be assumed to be the incredible lack of knowledge on the part of the client has resulted in a situation of which both parties should be ashamed.

In general, you do get what you pay for… but only up to a point. Beyond that, you’re just a chump. Corporate services is very much a buyer-beware arena, in which not many buyers are as aware as they should be.

Luckily, in amongst the world of digital photo frames and web based magazines, the paper industry is taking notice and finally stepping up to the plate. Recycled paper has been around for a while, but as with any buzzword, use of the word ‘recycled’ doesn’t necessarily mean a whole lot. It could be as little as 10% recycled material, added to the fact that the raw materials are such a small part of the whole picture.

The more clever and responsible paper companies are re-examining their manufacturing processes, from the collection of raw materials right through to the mill floor and who provides their electricity. They’re not focusing blindly on steps allowing them to use the word ‘recycled’ alone, but are taking larger scale steps to manage their overall carbon footprint and corporate contributions to (and subsequent limitation of) greenhouse gas emissions. The quantity and type of energy and chemicals used to manufacture the paper are also determining factors, and the end result is a much wider range of ecologically responsible choices for those of us in the business of designing materials for print.

But how do you know which option to choose? The Environmental Defense Fund is a good starting point. Their online paper calculator takes all of these issues into consideration, and compares the overall environmental impacts of a wide range of different papers across their full lifecycle. While they can’t possibly include all of the paper manufacturers at any one person’s disposal, they do paint a clear enough picture of the sort of questions you should be asking when in the position to choose your stock.

Carbon footprint at EDF is calculated by kg equivalent of C02/MT and broken down into four major impact factors:
• Extraction of Wood
• Transportation / Waste / Disposal
• Manufacturing Energy
• Fibre Procurement

They also provide specific paper comparisons to North American averages for both 100% recycled papers, and standard virgin papers.

You can check out the EDF Paper Calculator at www.edf.org/papercalculator

At minimum, you should be looking for paper that is 100% post-consumer fibre, processed chlorine free, and manufactured regionally using responsible energy. In Canada, look for the Environmental Choice and FSC certification badges.

It’s been several years now, and we’ve gone through several different hosting companies. Each one was slightly better than the last, but in the end, they all let us down in one way or another. The last host we used let our site and email go down for a whole week, all the while trying to convince me the problem was on my local machine… I’m not an idiot. Needless to say, we dropped them in a hurry.

The point of this entry isn’t to badmouth any one particular company, or even hosting companies in general. Fact is, there are a lot of good, quality service providers available. No, the reason I’m writing this is to try to educate people who are now where I was all those years ago.

Lesson number one and one hundred: All hosts are not created equal.

Of course, this goes without saying. But how are they different? I’m going to go over a few of the big points, but will skip the really obvious things like number of email accounts, ftp accounts, storage space, bandwidth, setup fees and price. I’m not here to insult your intelligence. So, here we go…

Ownership: who’s really running the show? A lot of hosting companies don’t actually run their own equipment, but are merely reselling marked up services they’re buying from a bigger wholesaler. This leaves a huge potential for issues, particularly when it comes to service should anything go wrong (and it will). You’ll be dealing through (at minimum) one middleman who might or might not have any technical expertise, and playing a frustrating game of telephone tag.

Crowding: too many chickens in a tiny cage. Most hosting packages you’ll come across are on what’s referred to as a shared platform, or shared server. This means that one server holds several different accounts, different websites, and so on. The more accounts a hosting company can squeeze into one server, the bigger their profit margin… and the bigger the likelihood of server overload, slow websites, blocked up transfers, email problems, server failure and a myriad of other issues. You might pay a few bucks more per month for a plan with a company that doesn’t overload its servers, but it’ll be worth it. Room to breathe.

Service: your site goes down at midnight… who do you call? Our previous host didn’t answer their phone, which wouldn’t have been a big deal had they actually had an answering service. It just rung and rung. Email support was lacking at best – it took a few days to get back to us, and even then, their responses indicated they hadn’t even read the original email. By comparison, our current host is available by phone 24/7, and their phone number actually goes to them and not a call center overseas. Even better, the people on the other end not only speak fluent English, but they know their stuff, and they’re onto problems like sticky on rice. Emails are returned usually within five minutes, and actually contain useful responses. We get regular server status updates. Most problems are fixed before we even know they exist. That’s service.

Control: CPanel who? Okay, I would have listed this in the “really obvious” camp, but we’ve had clients whose hosting plans did not include a control panel, of any kind. I didn’t even think plans like this existed, but here we are. So, if the plan you’re looking at does not include a control panel, look elsewhere. You need this. Don’t let them tell you that you don’t.

Linux or Microsoft? Linux. Linux, Linux, Linux. We all know Microsoft. It’s familiar, it’s everywhere, it’s monolithic… and it is the bane of the web developer’s existence. Microsoft is a huge fan of proprietary technologies that blow raspberries at things like web standards and the like. If you want your site to work with all the latest bells and whistles… and without need for a pile of workaround hacks… go with Linux. For that matter, do us all a favour and ditch Internet Explorer in favour of one of the standards compliant browsers like Firefox or Opera.

The Acronyms: SQL, PHP, FTP, POP3, SMTP and SSL. Long story short, you want all of these. SQL means you get at least one database (generally I would recommend having three available). Databases are important if you want to run any dynamic content like news or blogs, or even if you just want to keep track of people who’ve signed up for your newsletter, or filled in your contact form. PHP is pretty much as important as HTML – it’s just another language, but similar to SQL, you need it if you want to do anything dynamically. FTP allows you to get files onto and off of your server with ease. POP3 and SMTP are your incoming and outgoing email acronyms… if you don’t have these, you’ll be limited to webmail, which is no way to do business. Finally, we have SSL. If you want any secure area on your website, particularly if you want to sell anything or process payments online, you need SSL and you’ll want a dedicated IP address. This is what makes your site secure.

Backups: just in case. Your hosting company should, as a matter of routine, provide nightly backups which can be restored should anything go wrong either at their end, or yours. Think of it as insurance.

Redundant Network: one instance where redundancy is a good thing. One connection just isn’t enough. Your hosting networks should be powered by multiple different carriers, which helps to ensure your site stays up.

Transfer Services: Getting from here to there. Switching can be a daunting task. You’ve got all your email accounts set up, your FTP program is sorted with your current settings, your website has a ton of pages and a database and you wouldn’t know how to go about moving all of it without breaking at least a few lamps. Not to worry. A hosting company worth their salt will provide a free site transfer service – in other words, they’ll take all of your stuff, and move it carefully and professionally for you. No fuss, no muss.

Guarantees: what’s too good to be true. This is a multi-part item. Guarantees can be good. If you’re not satisfied within a certain time period, the company should have a policy that allows you to get your money back. If the site has a 99.9% uptime guarantee, they should be able to back it up. Guarantees can be misleading too, unfortunately. The company may guarantee that you get some ludicrous amount of storage like, say, 30 Gigs… but for this example you could see the crowding item above. Everybody’s sharing that space, and don’t be surprised if their protocol cuts you off repeatedly when you’re trying to transfer files, or if you can’t access the files you’ve already uploaded.

So the bottom line… who should you choose? That’s not for me to say. Everyone has different needs, and what’s good for one company may be not enough or too much for another.

As for us, we switched to Fused Network in 2007, and they have really blown us away. They tick every box above, and more… and I recommend them to just about everybody who asks. So long as they stay the course, I’ll never switch again. You’ll see their banner ad in the sidebar, with an affiliate code in the link… we participate in their Fused Together program, whereby you can also choose to contribute affiliate shares to charity.

If you’re in the market for a new hosting company, I’d suggest you start your search there. Check out the tiny link to Hosting Reviews at the bottom of their site, and you’ll see I’m not the only one.

Sage Media is an international corporate design firm based in Ottawa, Ontario.

As a design company director, I see this tendency way too often and frankly, I have a hard time understanding how entrepreneurs can so easily discount the importance of how their product LOOKS on the shelves, when they’ve put so much of themselves into building their company, and their product. They have a hard time paying a few thousand to develop their packaging design, when the numbers at stake can reach millions (or even billions if your company is all that). Every businessperson wants their product to succeed, but they don’t seem to understand that consumers are extremely scritinizing and visually oriented creatures. Your bagels could be the best thing since, well, sliced bread… but if the packaging looks like crap then nobody’s going to buy them.

Your packaging (whether you’re selling bagels, books, goggles or windex) speaks directly to the customer when you can’t – right at the point of sale. Thus, your packaging design should be a carefully tailored conversation, not an afterthought.

SO, here are a few tips to consider when developing your packaging (and obviously I would recommend hiring a design firm to facilitate the process)…

• Use the same development criteria for both the product and the packaging. This not only helps the package to work harmoniously with the product, but provides the connection between your product and your consumer.
• Your target audience should be a key element in formulating the design. Develop the package as if it were the product itself.
• The packaging should be an honest reflection of the enclosed product. If the packaging is too cheap or extravagant to support the products positioning, the consumer may be skeptical of the products quality or price.
• Depending on the product, the use of elements that allow the buyer to see the actual product can instill a level of trust. Being able to see the product’s color and construction is reassuring and will often sway the purchasing decision in your favor.
• Consider your colour palette carefully. Although bright saturated colors can be eye catching, making your packaging too colorful can confuse your message (and the result can often be like a bee sting to the eyes). By using color with purpose, your package design becomes thematic, making for a stronger message.
• Don’t cheap out. Your customers will know when you’ve cut corners, and that message will trickle down to direct judgment and assumptions about your company and your product.

Remember, package design is a critically important aspect of sales (and ultimately company) success. Treat the process with respect, and your product’s success will show the benefit.

Sage Media is an international corporate design firm based in Ottawa, Ontario.

The most common implementation questions we come across are often in regards to printing… what finishes to use, what stock, and most often, should we use digital or offset printing?

In the past decade, digital printing has benefited from a surge in popularity… due to a combination of increased affordability, technical advancements, and the availability of more options than were previously possible in digital print. Literally hundreds of new digital print companies have opened their doors online, making commercial print solutions more readily available to everyone. That said, this growth in popularity has also caused quite a bit of confusion for those not “in the biz”, and a few unscrupulous (or plain inexperienced) companies are taking advantage of this confusion… resulting in a large proportion of print consumers walking away with a product that does not meet their needs.

An understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of digital printing versus those of traditional offset lithography, is crucial in making the right choice in your printing company.

MECHANICAL PROCESS

OFFSET: Offset lithography is the most commonly trusted high volume commercial printing technology. In offset printing, the design image is first burned onto a plate, and is then transferred (or offset) from the plate to a rubber sheet, and finally to the printing surface. The lithographic process is based on the repulsion of oil and water. The image to be printed gets ink from ink rollers, while the non printing area attracts a film of water, keeping the non printing areas ink-free.

DIGITAL: If you have a desktop printer at home, you’re likely already familiar with the mechanical process of digital printing. Many of the mechanical steps required for offset printing are eliminated (namely, making films and color proofs, manually stripping the pieces together, and making plates), which results in a much more affordable print solution.

ADVANTAGES OF DIGITAL & OFFSET METHODS

DIGITAL ADVANTAGES:
In general…
1. Shorter turnaround
2. Lower costs for very small print runs
3. Availability of variable data printing (database driven, e.g. mailing lists)

OFFSET ADVANTAGES:
In general…
1. Higher image quality, higher resolution and no streaks/spots.
2. Works on a wide range of printing surfaces including paper, wood, cloth, metal, leather, rough paper and plastic.
3. The unit cost goes down as the quantity goes up.
4. Quality and cost-effectiveness in high volume jobs.
5. Many modern offset presses use computer-to-plate (as opposed to the older computer-to-film system) further increasing quality.

HOW TO DECIDE?

Use this checklist to help decide:

[ ] Quantity
Offset printing has a front-end cost load, which means short runs (low quantities) may have a high per-unit cost. But as quantities increase, the unit cost goes down with offset printing. Very short runs can be more cost effective with digital printing; while larger quantities are likely to have a lower unit cost with offset printing.

[ ] Printing Medium
Do you need or want a special paper, finish or unusual printing surface, or unique size? The options are getting better for digital, but offset printing still offers the most flexibility.

[ ] Colour
Digital presses use four-colour process (CMYK) printing. If you need only black ink or one or two ink colors, offset printing may offer a more cost-effective solution. If you need four-color printing, digital may offer advantages in lower up-front costs. That said, a few progressive modern offset printing companies are now offering rich full-colour printing, with no added plate/setup fees for additional colours.

[ ] Pantone®
If you’re planning to print using the Pantone® Matching System, offset printing will give you the best match, since it uses actual Pantone® ink. Digital printing simulates the color using a four-color matching process, so some digital printers may offer less accurate color matching on projects.

[ ] Turnaround
If you need it fast, digital usually offers quicker delivery. Again though, a few select offset print houses are now offering print turnaround in as short a timeframe as 24 hours.

[ ] Proofing
Digital offers more accurate proofs, since what you see is an actual sample of the printed piece, printed using the exact process as the intended run. For offset printing, if you need hard proofs, stringently accurate colour proofing can become expensive.

[ ] Customization
With the ease of database driven variable data printing, digital printing offers the most affordable way to customize marketing materials, direct mail pieces, letters, etc. with a different name/address or number/code on each printed piece.

SUMMARY

Digital printing can be the ideal solution for some people, but in our experience, computer-to-plate offset lithography (combined with respectably high quality stock and finishing) always yields the superior result in print quality. The trick then becomes finding the right partner.

Over the years, we have sampled the services of dozens of local and global print houses, and have painstakingly hand-picked a small selection of partners who put out consistently high-quality product, on time and in budget… with whom we have since developed trade agreements. Not everyone is able to invest this sort of research into choosing the right print partner, but to ensure the best results, we would strongly suggest that you follow these minimal steps:

1. Leave Nothing to Chance
Be very specific with your print company when communicating which stock you want used, which colours, which process (digital vs offset) and what sort of finishing or coating you want on your cards.

2. Get Samples
Before initiating your print project, request samples from your prospective print companies. All reputable print houses have a standing offer of free samples expressly for this purpose.

3. Proof
If you are managing your own print project, and are working with a local firm, be sure to request a pre-press proof before authorizing the full run. This will allow you to confirm that the company understood your specific instructions outlined in item 1 above. It will also allow you a hands-on preview of the final product, so you can catch any imperfections ahead of time. If you are working with a remote partner, be sure to request a digital proof… while this requires an element of trust in terms of the stock and finish, a digital proof will allow you to ensure all visuals are to spec.

In the end, a good design cannot fully live up to its potential when run on a shoddy print job. If you are as careful and selective in choosing a print partner as you were in choosing a design firm, you can ensure that the physical product that actually reaches your partners or customers is of the highest possible quality.

Because all things considered, high quality is precisely the message you want to deliver.

Sage Media is an international corporate design firm based in Ottawa, Ontario.