Establishing online business credibility with ‘About Us’ page
On April 21st, 2011 Jan wrote on the subject of Design Ideas,Inspiration.
Having a good ‘About Us’ page allows you to show off who you are, what you do and it allows to make people more comfortable doing a business with your company. Unfortunately, this page is being sometimes overlooked, as the perception is that it’s not that important.
However, according to a Stanford Web Credibility Research, they derived 10 guidelines/factors which effects websites credibility, 3 of them relating to your ‘about us’ page (based on a 3 year, 5500 person study):
- Show that there is a real organization behind your site
- Highlight the expertise in your organization
- Show that honest and trustworthy people stand behind your site
Naturally, testing a different version of your ‘About us’ page should be on your to-do test list. Unfortunately, in most cases ‘About us’ pages get at most several hundred visitors per month, which is not enough to come with statistically valid results within your 6 weeks test period. In this case, here is the list of 3 must have things an ‘About us’ page for small and medium businesses should definitely have if you want to get more sales:
3 Must Haves
- Pictures of your office and your team
- A passionate story behind your company showing your values
- Peoples bio (credentials, certificates, training)
Here is the list of some ‘About us’ pages for your inspiration.
Creative examples:
www.technologywithpassion.com (nice animation)
www.tribal.nl (nice animation)
Business (ecommerce + service + corporate) examples:
Time delay video of the Taylor Herring website build
On February 17th, 2011 Rob wrote on the subject of Datadial Designs,Design,Design Ideas,Development.
We’re delighted to announce the launch of a new site for Taylor Herring PR consultancy.
We rebranded the company with a new logo and new identity. We redesigned the website and developed it using Datadial’s content management system
If you have never had the pleasure of watching how a website is put together then now’s your chance. Watch the video below.
Optimising Social Media Landing Pages
On October 28th, 2010 Matt wrote on the subject of Design Ideas,Social Media.
Maximising the benefit of social and viral traffic is frequently a concept that is misunderstood by site owners looking at huge traffic spikes in their analytics accounts.
Great, 50k visits, how many sales?
None? What a waste of time!
Many years ago when I used to work in sales a key to a successful appointment was sticking to the habit of asking yourself,
What is the minimum I’m going to expect from this call or meeting?
For many salespeople its the sale, which in most cases just isn’t realistic. The minimum an intelligent salesperson expects from a contact is an invite to get in-touch again. Its building on this relationship that creates long-lasting rewarding partnerships.
I have always approached social media with the same kind of mindset. For the vast majority of people that land on your pages, particularly on viral and linkbait type content its the first time that they have had any contact with your brand. – What is the minimum you’ll expect? A sale, or an invite to get in contact again?
I have mocked-up below a before and after of a typical blog landing page.
Before (click for a larger version)
After (click for a larger version)
The key changes to the page include,
- Adding easily visible subscribe options to a prominent area of the page, including the ability to subscribe by RSS or email.
- Prominent social media voting buttons at both the top and bottom of a post. Many social media users are members of multiple sites. Many may arrive from Twitter for example and then wish to Digg a story. Make it as easy as possible for them to do this.
- Twitter followers and Facebook fan pages can be as effective as email newsletter sign ups – make the most out of these if you use them and encourage people to sign up.
- Experiment with adding related posts to the bottom of your articles, this can help with how ‘sticky’ your site is.
- Encourage people to comment on your posts. Moderate spam and try to reply to people asking for help or advice.
Remember, its not always about converting a visitor into a sale, converting them into a user, reader, commenter, voter, advocate or sharer can be far more effective in the long-run.
Best & Worst of FOWD Day 2
On May 19th, 2010 Rachel wrote on the subject of Design,Design Ideas,Industry News,Inspiration.
Following on from my post after Day One…
The Best
John Hicks giving his talk (image from m-king)
My favourite today definitely has to be Aral Balkan‘s session. He really knows how to present and make learning fun! It was very inspiring and encouraging on how to make your designs that little bit better by adding an emotional element to your apps/sites. He got the longest applause I have heard at a conference!
But then the loveliest thing was when he acknowledged my tweet of thanks on twitter and his blog. What an awesome guy!
The Worst
umm…
ermmm….
ahhh…
Nope… I really can’t think of anything for The Worst… did I miss something?
Honestly, the whole thing was amazing. I’m really shattered now, but it’s a good tired because I’m also really excited to start doing so many of the things that were presented.
If you couldn’t make it to FOWD this year, I would definitely recommend buying the video pass. It would be really worth it. I’m looking forward to the videos myself because I wanted to go to both tracks so many times today… shame we can’t clone ourselves when the need arises!
In summary…
(I’ll add links to slideshows and downloads as I get them)
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Progressive CSS3 Design (Molly Holzschlag)
Molly presented the plans and workings of the W3C and asked for any web designers who are keen to be voices to the W3C. What I found most exciting was her mention of IE9′s capabilities – it sounds like my optimism about CSS3 in IE9 may be closer to reality than I first hoped!
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What will Web Design Look Like in Two Years? (Simon Collison)
According to Colly it’s going to evolve quite a bit, growing up and getting comfortable with the medium of being online. For example, no longer will we mimic tables with paper and coffee stains; but instead embrace the pixel, the grid and typography. Of course this does require a more mature understanding of grid systems and design fundamentals, but this will make the professionally designed sites stand out from the sea of online content.
View Slides & Examples -
The Art of Emotional Design: A story of pleasure, joy, and delight. (Aral Balkan)
As I mentioned above, the whole presentation was a pleasure, joy and delight. Aral showed us examaples of how he has made his apps come to life by adding in little emotional attachments, like his famous bird turning red and singing in Feathers.
Read Keir Whitaker’s write up on Think Vitamin -
How to Build a HTML5 Website – Live Demo (Bruce Lawson)
Up until today I haven’t dabbled too much into HTML5, but Bruce did a live demo which helped to demystify it all. HTML5 is definitely going to be mainstream, and soon. The capabilities of it are awesome, and it is so easy to still support older systems that don’t understand it. In particular I’m looking forward to the day where we can use the <video> tag without having to provide a Flash alternative for IE.
http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/
Another good introduction from Smashing Magazine -
Rethink Your Job (and Earn More Money). (Brett Welch)
Everyone knows Web stuff is becoming increasingly commodised, but where the value remains is in expert knowledge, advice and helping your client’s goals. Brett also emphasised starting small, growing in iterations, and the importance of having a marketing plan in place following the site’s launch. We all really admired him for not actually plugging his product in the talk.
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Icon Design (Jon Hicks)
I don’t do icon design very often, so it was really valuable to hear these tips and guides for when I do need to. It’s also very exciting to hear about future abilities like using SVG for icons.
http://www.hicksdesign.co.uk/ -
Blending Usability Testing with Interface Design, Prototyping and Rapid Iteration (Dan Rubin)
I always want to do more and more usability testing, and Dan’s excellent talk really got me excited about it even more. He talked us through a case study of how they had assessed a current site, found the good things and bad things about it, and came up with some suggested changes. He then detailed their technique for testing the changes and how they were able to accurately test them while keeping it in a format that was easy to change and adapt as they went (basically using image maps with an exported Photoshop comp). Definitely a great technique for getting the most value from a test.
Best & Worst of FOWD London Day 1
On May 18th, 2010 Rachel wrote on the subject of Design,Design Ideas,Industry News,Inspiration.
The Future of Web Design conference is amazing this year – here’s a quick update after Day One.
The Best
jQuery for Designers session
The format of this year’s conference is tons better than last year. The atmosphere of the Brewery is great, and the food (which is also outstanding) at the break times gives people a chance to talk to each other and network. It has been much easier this year to meet people and talk to other designers.
It’s really hard to choose a favourite speaker because they’re all so great! I think jQuery for Designers is probably going to have the most impact on my day to day work because it has encouraged me to take a new step into jQuery.
The design clinic time was great, and it was a wonderful opportunity to talk to designers you really respect. I got some great feedback from Mike Kus, who has to be one of my all time favourite web designers because of his original work.
The Worst
Definitely had to be font.com’s sponsor slot. Not only were they the ugliest slides of the day, the introduction was dated (we know about using @font-face already) and then followed by a whole sales pitch on why we should all buy their service. It was very amusing to see the tweets coming in during the talk!
Don’t get me wrong, their service is great and no doubt I’ll be using it soon, but the talk and presentation definitely gets labelled the worst, after everything else was so amazing.
More to come tomorrow, but in summary…
(I’ll add links to slideshows and downloads as I get them)
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Play. Destroy. Create. from Brendan Dawes
I loved his reference to maths and nature, and seeing how he had turned that into something new. It’s about observing things like the trend of technical stuff to non techy people. Some of the things he was showing was simply play to explore and provoke reactions. He encouraged us to play, have passion and love what we do!
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How to Get Started with CSS3 from Dan Cederholm
After doing a lot of CSS3 work already, I wasn’t expecting to get much from this session, but was very pleasantly surprised. I now have a list of things I want to try, tools to use, and new ideas generated from this session. Definitely ideal for people new to CSS3, but still lots of great stuff in there for those of us who have already been using it.
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jQuery for Designers: All You Need to Code (Remy Sharp)
Very inspiring stuff, and I’m now eager to take the plunge into jQuery!
Download slideshow
http://jqueryfordesigners.com -
Accessibility in Web Design Robin Christopherson
I’ve seen Robin speak a few times, and each time he has something new and very informative. This time he encouraged mobile versions of websites, as the format of them is also much more accessible. He also encouraged the use of Text Captcha because it’s accessible, free and offers a comprehensive API. You Tube are now also providing automatic captioning on their videos!
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Learning to Love Humans: Emotional Interface Design (Aarron Walter)
Making things usable is not enough – we should also make them enjoyable. Don’t compromise on the base needs for t»he user, but look for ways you can add that extra layer of emotive enjoyment – like the Mailchimp quotes!
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UX Masterclass with Web Standardistas Web Standardistas
This flowed on really well from the Emotional Interface Design and looked at the secret for making something that is usable really great. The secret is YOU!
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Smart Tips for Wireframing Brad Haynes
Wireframes help communication, focus and workflow. This session was a good practical reminder of why we should be using them and looked at which techniques to use where, including some good tools.
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