Lots of talk about redesigning websites lately. Maybe it’s because summer is ending, and the Holidays are right around the corner (for e-Tailers, that is)?

First, there was Jeff Sexton’s post about asking the right Persuasion Architecture questions before redesigning, which was inspired by a Seth Godin post. Then, Jakob Nielson had some good thoughts from the Usability camp about redesigns and how radical they should be.

Mr. Nielson’s thoughts resonated with me given that our OnTarget product is generally focused on incremental improvement of clients’…

...continue to read "Website Redesign Roundup"

Seth’s blog post on “Things to ask before you redo your website” is a must read for everyone involved in online marketing.   Seriously.  If you haven’t seen it yet, go read it now.

What I love most about this list is the way it segregates into sub-components or elaborations on Future Now’s  three questions that are the basis of Persuasion Architecture:

1) Who is coming to the site?

2) What is it they are trying to accomplish?

3) What…

...continue to read "Redesign? Ask The Right Questions!"

We at FutureNow sometimes wonder why more companies aren’t busy optimizing their websites and online marketing, or why those who are “on board” with the concept don’t always commit the right amount of resources towards the effort.

I’m not a mind-reader, but I think it’s due in part to an all-or-nothing mentality where nothing short of a full optimization ‘project’ is worth putting effort into.  Most companies are more interested in redesigning their websites all at once instead of incrementally, even though…

...continue to read "For Every Optimization, There’s a Pyramid, So Get Started"

You could say I look at homepages for a living.  Not really, but they’re one of the pages I analyze and optimize for a living.  I saw one I enjoyed the other day, so I’ll talk about the design, what I like about it, and make a few suggestions for improvement.

One of the first things I noticed (and liked) was that the homepage was quite tall.  Many designers seem averse to tall homepage designs, thinking that everything simply…

...continue to read "A Strong Homepage Design Dissected"

ESPN.com - 2009 first major redesign

In the first major redesign of the new year, ESPN.com unveils it’s latest redesign today, after two weeks in “private” Beta for it’s Insider subscribers.  Despite the two week focus group, today’s redesign doesn’t appear noticeably different from the version that launched privately 12/15.  Their stated goals were:

1) less clutter, ostensibly to drive higher engagement (more time spent on site, more pageviews, more traffic) 2) more ad space, to drive higher revenue

Do you…

...continue to read "Calling All Sports Fans – ESPN.com gets redesign"

The best marketing to women experts will tell you that marketing to “women” as a generalized category is usually less than ideal. It’s not about marketing to women, it’s about the female customer, and about seeing her real. And that means NOT marketing to a stereotype, which is something that I couldn’t agree with more.

But then where does that leave broad-based gender differences and reality-based demographic information?  For instance, women make or influence 85% of all consumer purchasing decisions and control the…

...continue to read "Is the New Mint.com Marketing to Women Through Design?"

Who would throw away a perfectly good UFO house?

That’s exactly what happened in Taiwan more than 20 years ago, as you can see from these Flickr photos.

Wow. An entire resort filled with UFO-style houses.

Abandoned.

Seeing this made me think of the websites that are abandoned each day, each quarter, by businesses that decide they need to redesign instead of enduring the less glamorous process of website optimization.

According to one blog, there are a several rumors as to why the “UFO house”…

...continue to read "Website Optimization vs. Redesign: The UFO Metaphor"

I’m still settling in from my trip last week to the Internet Retailer Design conference. If you didn’t attend, you missed a great first-time show, so you’ll have to check it out next year.

Over 800 people showed up to hear the speakers and meet with consultants (like me) to evaluate their current websites — and some even discussed mock-ups and prototypes of new versions of their sites. My back-of-the-napkin calculation is that Internet Retailer gave away around $150,000 worth of…

...continue to read "Is Something Wrong With Your Design?"