One thing I am starting to realize with 9rules is the value of social features on a site and how in the future more and more sites will want to adopt the features of social networks. Now I don’t think every site will want to create a full-fledged social network, but certain aspects of social networks are simply to appealing and useful to users to ignore.
Now don’t take any of these features as being new or thought up by social networks. They have been around long before web 2.0, but social networks helped make them famous. If your site involves an audience and discussion in any shape or form, what makes you think that the readers don’t want to know a little about each other or possibly interact without you being involved? So often people talk about forming a community around a site yet they don’t provide the tools to allow a community to grow.
A small minority are skilled enough to help a community grow through a site by actively participating in the discussions and making everyone feel as though they are part of a community. However, what about those large sites where you know nothing but the name online handle of a person? Maybe that’s how many people want to keep it because maintaining a profile on a social site/network can be a tedious task since we have so many. However, not providing the tools to help foster a community because we already have too much isn’t the way to look at things.
All of this starts to bring up the need for a decentralized social network where your central profile actually becomes useful and not just another place to tell friends to go. The web itself is a community and therefore any community you create should not be an isolated one, but a sub-community of the larger one. Of course many people already are thinking along these lines like USA Today, but you see what happens when social features get put in the hands of bad designers.
In the future your site will be more than just an entry and some comments. It will be your community where people socialize. It will truly become your house in the large web community where people stop by for tea (do people do that?) and then move onto the next house.
Monday I brought up the idea of a redesign for this site and my good friend Mike Papageorge just wanted more content, which makes perfect sense. Eventually the design goes to the background and you come to the site to see one thing: content. However, sometimes the design is what inspires the author to continue to write. Seeing the same design every single day can grow tiresome for someone like me. Kind of like visiting the 99 CSS design galleries and seeing the same kind of designs day in and day out.
When I started the CSS Vault I wanted to showcase great designs coded using CSS. Initially it was a great time because there were so many great designs coming out that used CSS, but then the gallery clones started to pop up and we all began to compete with each other over who could post a design first. It grew boring and troublesome so I sold the site and moved on (and has since been sold again for a whopping $100k). We are all pretty good with standards based designs now and know that many beautiful sites are done using CSS, however it is time for a shift.
When looking for design inspiration is your only source CSS sites? Have you ever come across a beautiful site done in tables or Flash? Maybe if you want some ideas you go through a magazine. When you first saw the iPod did it inspire you to design a little bit differently? See design galleries need to back away from finding quality design in one subset and start to incorporate the beautiful designs in everything that we see.
I’m not sure if there is a site like that around and sooner or later 9rules will release one, but I’m surprised one hasn’t come around already. Instead of creating another CSS gallery site why hasn’t anyone taken it to the next level at all? I know this community is better than the generic Web 2.0 copycat community so what prevents someone from taking that step and raising the bar? Maybe if we are lucky history will repeat itself and we will set the tone for the next couple months/years with regards to design galleries, but if someone beats us to it then more power to them.
Here is what I was working on in my free time last year: 9rules Design Gallery. As you can see it never got completed because I had to focus more on getting Ali and all its great features out the door, but I hope some time soon I can revisit it and bring in the social features that Ali has brought to 9rules and make design galleries fun again.
It’s that time of the week again where I figure this site needs a new design update. But this time I am looking to steal of your good ideas that you never decided to implement on your own site. Are there some things you thought would be cool to do on your blog, but you just never got around to doing it or maybe you look at this site and say:
Damn kid, you should put X here and then I might actually care about your site.
Okay, hopefully you don’t go that far, but you get the picture. Overall though do you have any redesign tips for this site? I am looking for something that will get me ladies like my buddy Jeff Croft (sorry we didn’t hangout at SXSW this year my man). Hell, I can’t recall any blog designs jumping out at me lately since I don’t hang around the gallery scene anymore so if you could throw me some favorite links as well that would be awesome.
Last week when I was at SXSW one of the hottest technologies to use was Twitter. It seemed like everyone was updating their current activities through Twitter to let all their “friends” be aware of what is going on with them. It seems like it has become a success, but there were some entries sprinkled around the web talking about the demise of Twitter, which as we know always happens when anything starts to become remotely successful.
Now I don’t use Twitter and to be honest I believed it was the dumbest idea in a while, but that never means it won’t work well. When creating a product for the Web 2.0 world what many people tend to forget is fulfilling human needs. Not practical needs like Basecamp could fulfill, but our deep down ego-filled needs.
Twitter is for the attention economy that we live in today. There are some of us (hell most of us) who love attention. I don’t mean Kevin Rose in your face Digg attention, but we like to know that people want to see what is going on with our lives. We like to know that people read our blogs and comment because talking to ourselves only made sense in 1996. Twitter doesn’t have to be practical, it just has to allow people into our lives enough to satisfy their nosy wishes.
Twitter then becomes our personal paparazzi. Have you ever just called up a person or hit them up on IM and asked what they are up to? Well because of Twitter you already know what they are up to and you can move the conversation to that avoiding that question altogether. But again, we don’t see how Twitter is practical for anyone so we shun it, laugh at it and pretend that we didn’t think of something so simple.
Imagine Twitter in the hands of Paris Hilton (okay maybe not the best example). How many people would subscribe to her Twitter feed vs. a blog feed? Celebrities could control their own gossip. Don’t think you can create something powerful with such a simple tool? Well I actually had an example of something getting blown up out of proportion because of how someone worded their Twitter message. The message was simple, but the effects were amazing:
is amused that Scrivs is wearing my clothing around his head about
This little message caused a large number of people to come up with many, many different scenarios of what happened that night. Quite simply I had a woman’s scarf wrapped around my head, but reading that message and other messages around it you could imagine what kind of stuff people could come up with. A simple tool, with powerful effects and the fact that people feed into it shows me that Twitter does things that most sites could only wish to do.
We love attention and we are nosy people, that is why I think Twitter will work.
The fine folks over at ManagerAssistant.com came to me and asked if I would help them with a critique of their two year old site. They have a strong product, yet conversions from their website seem to be dropping so maybe I can help them out some with my keen designer eyes. While I will cover the whole site in general the main focus will be on the homepage because that is what you are going to see first.
First Impression
Now quick, when you look at the site what is your first impression? While a couple of years ago I could easily see this site as being looked upon as being profressional there are just too many flaws that show how dated it is.
- Scrolling quotes. While I do believe that every products/services site should have quotes from happy customers having it display in a scrolling marquee is just too distracting and takes away from the main purpose of the site which is to push people to the order page. A simple quote with a link to view more would work just as well because I doubt people are waiting every couple of seconds to see what the next quote will be.
- Color scheme. There is nothing wrong with the colors that are being used, I just think they could be used more effectively. Having the main navigation bar contain a black background kind of makes it the dominate color on the screen for me. I would rather see the black background used for the “Introducing ManagerAssistant 3.0″ box and a lighter scheme on the nav to draw attention on the new product.
- Free demo button. Everyone loves a free demo, but that button just doesn’t match the rest of the site and it seems oddly out of place. You already have a link to the free demo in the main box so why not make that more prominent and remove the big orange button.
Site Alignment
While there is nothing wrong with left-aligned sites, I don’t think it works on this site because it leaves you with a feeling of emptiness. Centering the site will give it a little more polish and add more options to what can be done with the background and color scheme.
Logo and Typeface
Not that I am a logo critique but the current logo seems to clipart-like for me and the typeface used doesn’t seem to go with the rest of the site. I would love to hear some suggestions of typefaces you feel would work better with this product (No I’m not designing it or anything).
Substance vs. Style
Overall if you sit back and look at the site there isn’t a clear message or enough content to justify what they are trying to get at. Instead it just seems to be mostly images hoping that people find the buy now / try now links. They are trying to push a product so why not make the site more content-based giving the user the information they need right away. Instead the site feels more like a newspaper ad than an actual site.
I think this would be a great site to create a one-page style design because it is only one product marketed to one demographic. As you can see with the Basecamp site one page design (although not totally one page in this case) can be very effective and include the points I made above:
- Images to give an idea of the interface.
- Quotes.
- A single message.
That’s the biggest problem I see with the site: what’s the message. When I go to the site there should be one message that screams at me loud and clear and I just don’t get that. The problem with that is maybe the software is perfect, but if you can’t get that initial message across then nobody is going to take the time to try it out and that would be a shame.
Next week I will have a look at one of the internal pages to see if the message is presented any better, but for now I would love to hear your thoughts on the site.
Update: Sorry, forgot to mention that money was exchanged to do a design critique of the site. Wasn’t try to mislead the great Wisdump audience I just kept on writing and pressed published and since I’m not selling the site or anything it never crossed my mind again. I am bad, spank me.
At Refresh Miami next Wednesday. I will be talking about 9rules, community journalism and many other exciting topics with that Scrivs flair that you guys hate and I just happen to love. If there are some things you would like for me to discuss just let me know and I hope to see a lot of you there.
It’s Miami…
Think about it…
When all you do is copy others, you copy their mistakes, too.
Feel free to discuss.
I came across this article over at CenterNetworks that discusses 5 great acquisition targets for the first quarter in 2007. While I am not here to agree or disagree with the article I’m not so sure there are any great acquisition targets lying around. I do think there are some great strategic targets that with a little more help can boost the profile of the acquiring company, but is there anyone that is really dominating the web right now?
Maybe I am living under a rock, but don’t things seem to be a bit quiet this year? Last year we couldn’t stop talking about all the fascinating (*cough) startups springing up and what new technologies would take over the web, but this year there hasn’t been much of anything. Joost got its week of glory and when it comes out of beta will probably make some waves, but beyond that what’s happening?
I know some people get worried when they see companies going under or nothing major happening, but this is a good thing. Quiet periods are always good because:
- People stop caring about insignificant copycats and players that just don’t innovate.
- Some people are setting up something big and they can do it without major publicity or pressure.
It is almost as if the web is begging for someone to take it over. Yahoo purchased MyBlogLog in January (wonder if they regret it) and beyond that nobody else has made a move as far as I can remember. Quiet time is good because it helps us get our focus back, which was something we lost during all of 2006. We don’t need fast-paced progress, we just need progress and this is what I am seeing happening now.
Running a popular design firm/blog and the world’s largest non-blog-but-yet-social-content-network is not an easy task and sooner or later one has to be given up and Business Logs loses out on this one. Of course if you are a fan of Business Logs and wish to see Mike continue to write on it for the next 5 years simply deposit $500 million in the 9rules bank account and 9rules is yours. In fact, at that price I will even make sure he writes on it for the next 5 years for free.
In any case, go on over and read the post to see what’s happening and if you wish to make a big splash in the design/web2.0 community here is your chance.
The USAToday relaunched a new version of their website that you either love or hate. It is a geek’s wet dream to dissect all the “cool” things that have been done with the site, but let’s look at it from another perspective. If you read USAToday you should have an idea of who their audience is. They cater to the normal of the norm with regards to the general population (I love the paper by the way) so you would think the website would fit that demographic as well.
The physical newspapers itself has a design that encourages the reader to dive in and read every single section and article. The website? Not so much. There comes a point and time when minimal design is just too minimal for minimal sake and not helpful enough in the presentation of content. It doesn’t get much more confusing or disjointed than on their homepage. Maybe it is how Firefox renders them, but everything looks too spaced out with no clear definition between sections.
While you can applaud the fact that they are taking a step in the “right” direction with more interactive features, how does the design encourage interaction on the site at all? Its as though they are too scared to make anything prominent so they went the next best route and made absolutely nothing prominent.
Give me the design of LJWorld.com and throw in the social features of USAToday and then we are getting somewhere. It seems like the features were thrown in because every other social site does it so it only made sense to add them to their site as well. Once they figured out how to get a Digg-like recommended section working everyone went home happy without thinking that they might actually want to get people to use the system.
And that is what’s really wrong with many social designs today. People seem to consider the social, but don’t realize the design is what makes people want to be social. One of the overlooked reasons why Digg is so successful is that if you look at the design you can simply tell how intuitive it is. If you want people to interact and use your site as a social web tool then you have to make it inviting enough for them to want to do so and I don’t think USAToday succeeded in this.
