Reading Time: 2 minI find the idea of “survivorship bias” fascinating. If you’ve not heard of it before, this short video from Eddie Woo is an excellent overview of it. I see two places where this comes up in some of the areas where I work. Our non-clients We frequently talk to our clients about why they chose […]
Marketing
Does your website pass “The Grunt Test”?
Reading Time: < 1 minWhile building a proper messaging strategy for your company can take some time, an easy place to start is with “the grunt test”, as popularized by Storybrand. Put simply, can someone look at your content, with no prior experience with your company, and quickly understand what you do? Specifically, they should be able to find […]
Thinking through “A Brighter Web”
Reading Time: < 1 minWe’ve been running various aspect of A Brighter Web, an educational arm of our agency, for quite a while now. We’ve hosted our Meetup every month (sometimes more) for about nine years now, we have a reasonably active Facebook group, and we’ve played with podcasting and other media. So what’s next? To be honest, I’m […]
“Designed by” is a big red flag
Reading Time: 2 minIt’s generally not a good idea for a web designer to put a “designed by” link in the footer of websites that they create, and they usually know it too. The main reason is Google; putting that link down there will hurt the site that it’s on. It’s a tiny amount, but it’ll still hurt. […]
Why do I care if your company is 50 years old?
Reading Time: 2 minWhy do I care if your company is 50 years old? I don’t, really. At least not yet. Yet many websites continue to lead with something like that at the front of their site. When a users visits your site for the first time, they don’t care about you — they just want to know […]
How Slack Builds Trust
Reading Time: < 1 minA few weeks ago, I mentioned a few companies that I tend to trust. In all of those cases, it was the humans at the companies that helped build that trust. However, Slack (the chat app that we use) does something automatic that I think is brilliant. If you add more users, they automatically charge […]
Who do you trust?
Reading Time: < 1 minI was at a business event last year (pre-COVID) and an interesting thing happened. A few of us were chatting, when a woman came up to us with a great idea: “Let’s pass our business cards around, take photos of them, and share them on our social media accounts!“ While I’m happy to recommend businesses […]
The best design is invisible
Reading Time: < 1 minThere’s a running joke with I.T. folks that they’re seen as expendable, because people often only see them one of two ways: All systems are running great, so why do we have I.T.? Things are broken, so why do we have I.T.? Similar are sound techs at a concert. They’re completely invisible, and often underappreciated, […]
Or current resident
Reading Time: < 1 minYou’ve seen it before; probably nearly every day. An important looking envelope in the mail, but with a dead simple giveaway — it’s addressed to you “or current resident”. If it was important, and meant for you, they wouldn’t say “or current resident”. The same goes with any message that you put out to the […]
PDFs are starting to go away
Reading Time: < 1 minThe UK has updated their content design guidelines in major way, and I suspect similar guidelines will find their way to the US before too long. Specifically, they now say: If you publish a PDF or other non-HTML document without an accessible version, you may be breaking the law. The reason for this is pretty […]