Up until a couple of days ago, I felt that this was wrong on me. No. It’s not. It’s not wrong on my client either. Just because I spent a good deal of time working on a couple dozen concepts to show him doesn’t mean that I’m any less of a designer. I realized that since there was such freedom in the project that the brand needed to be further defined so the logo could take shape.

If we develop the brand now, the logo will come later.

Michael Masci

As a designer I’ve often found myself being asked to design logos. I don’t contend to be a logo designer by any means as what I always end up developing is a very distinct brand and style to my clients’ websites. I develop the brand, and the logo comes later. That doesn’t mean that I don’t design a logo-ish element in my design to represent the company, but by no means is that the final logo. It is after developing this brand and style that I know what direction the logo needs to go in.

So am I telling everyone to stop designing logos forever? Yes and no. Hear me out:

• A logo is a part of the brand. If a brand isn’t defined and organized in terms of how it will be carried about in style and business strategy then the logo is useless.
• I’ll ask you as I did in my previous article on DesignInformer to think about Apple. If we didn’t know Apple as a brand and only looked at their logo, we would say they were apple farmers in the U.S. It’s because we know their brand that we know what Apple is as a technology-related company. Similarly, all of Apple’s products have a distinct style to them that are known to be “Apple.” For example, if you were to dissect an iPod (prior to the touch) and show someone only the turnwheel who had been influenced at some point by Apple, they would know “that’s the controls on the iPod.” An effective brand is one that has many elements and that, even when separated, distinctly represents the company.
• A logo is a very important first impression of a business. Much like us designers judge books by their covers, a logo is the first glimpse at the company through a client’s eyes. While I’m not saying we necessarily design logos that (like Apple’s) are completely off-track from what the company is all about, we need to ensure as well that the brand defines the company. Not just the logo.

What Do You Think?

What do you think of this idea? Do you think it’s more effective to design a logo than a brand? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

You’ve got that awesome client. You decided that since they’re not properly set up on their hoster (or they don’t have any of that set up yet) that you would give them a hand and be the nice guy. After all, you want them to be happy, right? You spend that extra time (or maybe you cleverly billed it under another item on the invoice you sent them), and they’re happy with what they got out of it. Now that they’re all set up and stoked about that wicked design you’re going to be making, they want to get ahead of themselves and start promoting it.

So at this point you’ve set them up with hosting and a domain name and they feel all professional with their snazzy custom e-mails (who needs Hotmail anymore?). Next, they look at their site say those classic last words: “Can you throw something up for us?”

It’s not that big of a deal, right? That’s what I said. The first… few times? If design is a language of it’s own (and women are from venus men are from mars), clients speak their own language too. Your client figures you do this all the time anyways, and it’s not that big of a deal. In fact, they’ll say that it’s not that big of a deal. Just something to put up so they can start promoting it. So you run into Photoshop and quickly design/develop something. No biggie. Two hours spent on top of the time you already spent on putting together their domain name and hosting? It’ll pay off.

It won’t.

I haven’t had a client yet (sorry guys, but lets be honest with ourselves) that has asked for a quick temporary page that hasen’t ended up wanting changes made to it, things added, etc. Either that, or they don’t like what you made and they ask you to do it after. Meanwhile, they still expect the milestones you set for the actual site to be met when you’re basically making that final site for them. But once you get to that point that you’ve made their “perfect” temporary site, you don’t know what you’re going to do for their actual website.

Now What?

As a freelancer you have a few options (I mean, you wrote up a contract, right?).

• Throw something up. Just don’t put your name on it, because it likely won’t be something you’ll be proud of anyways.
• Create a generic temporary page. I’m surprised I haven’t done this already. Having a custom temporary page and putting in the investment for making it look pretty can be worth your time and can promote your site while letting them get the hype up behind theirs.
• Offer extra features. Turn this temporary page into a money-maker. Offer them features like setting up a newsletter, plugging in their social media, for a contact form, et cetera (especially if you’re not charging per hour).
• Kindly tell them it isn’t within scope. If the client understands what your time is worth, they’ll completely understand. Tell them that you’ll do it for them, but you’ll need to open it as a separate project if they want a custom temporary page. Quote them for the project, however I would much prefer charging an hourly rate as if they buy into this then it likely won’t be that large.
• Fire your client. This is for the rash and over-worked. If your client is giving you this many problems already with something you’re going out of your way to do, then it might extend throughout the project. Is it worth it? That’s your call, not mine.

But Why Isn’t It Worth It?

Really, this is up to your self-value. I know that I can’t half-ass a design. I can’t give you 50% off a design package and still give you the 100%. Nor can I give you 50% of a design. All my designs I put 100% in to. I wouldn’t put my company’s name on something that I am not proud of.

While, you’re right, your client will be happy with their new page, you’ll have wasted your time and your patience with something that shouldn’t even matter. If it mattered, they would have brought it up when you were quoting them, and you would have charged them for it. While two hours may not mean much to you, think about what that’s telling the client you’re working with: you’re free labour.

Who are they going to call the next time they need tech support? Who do you think they’re going to call in the middle of the night when their site crashed – their hoster? No. You.

What Do You Do?

What do you do when a client asks you to “throw something up”? Do you have a system in place? Share in the comments, below!

Okay. Enough patting each other on the back. Let’s get down to the nitty-gritty.

Analytics is a pretty straightforward tool. You implement it, check up on it (every 5 minutes), and get in a really bad mood when your stats are flatlined. Most of us use analytics for finding out how many pageviews we have to brag to others, but most standard analytics tools (unless you’re using an old hit counter) come with widgets to find out pertinent information about your readers.

But many of you would probably wonder, “why usability testing”? I mean, I already made my design user-friendly, it encourages community, and looks pretty darn sweet. But that side of the work is for designers. For this article we’re bloggers. We don’t have any affect on the design. Or do we? And on top of this, how can we use usability testing as bloggers to effectively write for blogs?

How to Use Analytics to Affect Our Choices

Analytics should help us with the choices we make. Every blog should have some sort of analytics tool, albeit Mint or Google Analytics. If you you’re on a cPanel-based website, then you may even have Awstats automatically enabled on your host to show you some pretty good analytics as well (although a ton uglier than Mint, ask your hoster for more details). Here are some important parts of analytics tools we should pay attention to that will help us create a predisposition of if an article will trend in our community (which is our goal for every article, isn’t it?):

• Visits – The obvious first is visits. This counts for both unique and total pageviews. Generally speaking having high stats from either of these would generally tell you that you’re doing well, however looking at them separately is important. They tell us two things:
  • Unique pageviews tell us whether or not we are getting new readers or not. We should analyze this in weekly/monthly trend graphs since checking daily will likely show our same loyal readers. The more uniques in a month, the larger our readership is growing. This is far more important than it’s brother…
  • Total pageviews can help us determine some other useful analytics, however in this case it can tell us if we have been proving quality content to the community (based on the community’s response), and how many people have been checking into the website. Generally speaking if your unique pageviews at any given time is high, your total pageviews will be as well (otherwise you’re going to have some pretty high bounce rates).

  So here’s what we can determine from these two hefty stats as bloggers: putting statistics side by side with their articles can show us which type of articles trend. Most analytic suites will allow you to see Internal Trends that should help you determine what your readers like (and what your readers love).

• Locations - As if this wasn’t obvious already, you should be paying very close attention to where your users are coming from. For example, I know 32% of my readership is in the U.S. right now. Therefore, if I wrote an article on Canadian law or politics (hypothetically, of course), my U.S. readers would likely cringe and I wouldn’t have many people reading that article. As well, I know that in my articles instead of focusing on topics that are trending on the other side of the world, I should be focusing on trends in the U.S.
• Referrers - Referrers are very important. This will tell us where users are coming from (albeit a Google search, a link posted by someone on Twitter, etc). While it’s very important to follow up with these referrers and notice where a lot of referrals are coming from, referrals can also tell us what other things our readers like and can help us in promotion. For example, if you have a ton of people coming from someone posting a tweet online, you know that Twitter might be right for your business.
• External Trends – External Trends are just as important as Internal Trends – and, if you haven’t gathered already, external trends have to do with where your users go from your website. For example, I saw a lot of my readers followed a link I’d posted a while back about FontCase and using it as a tool. Therefore, I knew that writing an article on typography was a good choice at the time, and providing FontCase as a prize was an even better idea.
• Searches - Okay, so SEO isn’t your job as a blogger. Still, this is an important part of analytics. Finding out where your writers are coming from can really help you find out what your readers are looking for, and will ensure that you’re providing them with that content.
• Durations – While this will surely be a part of the usability section as well, analyzing how long your users are spending on the website can easily tell you their attention span and how much time they spend reading an article. This will greatly help you decide whether your readers will read 1,000 word articles as opposed to 2,000  word articles (like this one).

(Here’s a little side note to all my readers: We’ll be throwing out a new article purely on analytics in the next little while and it might include a giveaway or three. Stay tuned via feed and Twitter if you’re unfaithful and want to see the light!)

How to Use Usability Testing On Our Writing

Usability testing is fun. We have tons of wicked inexpensive remote usability testing tools that can help us find out how our readers read our articles. That’s right – we already know how to make article decisions based on analytics,  now we need to find out how to write articles that our users will want to read.

But I’m a Blogger – I Don’t Have Any Say About Design Changes!

I beg to differ. You have a pretty big job to do for design changes. For example, you’re working with a nice little arsenal of font styles that you can use. For example, we know that bolding text will catch ones attention, and italicizing text will further emphasize a point. We know that users like hierarchy, and you know you have the ability to work with headers (1, 2, 3, 4, 5!). If you’re writing within an application like Wordpress, you also have the ability (in a good theme) to work with photos and align them so that users have pictures to catch their attention.

Great. Now you believe me. We have the flexibility of formatting on our side. How can we work within these limits to create a better user experience in our articles?

Would You Like Fries With That?

So now we have all this amazing content we’ve been hacking at. We’ve got the burger (writers who have been through any sort of writing course will remember the symbolism of a hamburger in regards to writing), now we need the fries and pop. We need to make a combo. I think you get what I mean, and I think that joke/metaphor is getting a little dry at this point.

Here are a few key concepts of usability we should be paying attention to, and some suggestions on how this data can help us find out how to improve those little aesthetics of the content:

• Eye Tracking – Alright, so I don’t expect anyone reading this to be doing this, but eye tracking can be very useful. Find out of your users are so predictable as to be following an F-pattern of reading. What are they looking at? What’s catching their attention? How fast are they reading and do they slow down after some time because they’re getting bored?
• Scroll Rate – How far down the page do your users scroll? When you’re not doing eye tracking, this can help to find out (roughly) where your users stop reading.
• Get Users Opinions – I’m seeing more and more sites having GetSatisfaction toolbars to get real users commenting on improvements to the site. Having similar ideas to this to find out what your users think of everything can be important. You can use this sort of research in the form of a contest as well to get people to give you suggestions for content and improvements. I personally don’t think getting users to go through and read articles will help us as bloggers (e.g. local usability testing) – forcing anyone to read anything. I’d be interested in seeing studies on this if you’ve seen any, though.
• Heat Maps – Heat maps can be useful to find if users are clicking on links you provide, and if users like particular parts of an article. As well, heat maps showing where the user’s cursor was can be useful as studies show that cursor movement heat maps can tell us where users are looking (a good 80-90% of the time).

A Call To Action

I’d like to call all bloggers to band together right now, and hopefully I won’t be alone on this one. We need to demand more information about the readers we write for from our editors. Editors need to open up their analytics to us so we can do our investigating and provide the best article for the community. Because, just like usability testing, we are not our readers, but we need to ensure what we’re writing for them is something that will keep them coming back.

What do you think? What else can we learn from these two tools to effectuate awesomeness in our writing?

Oh, and that new gig? You’ll be hearing about it soon. Trust me.

Yes. The winners of The Taxonomy of Type are being announced in this article… But you need to read it to the end to find out (evil people scroll down)!

So now you’ve put together a proposal for them, calculated how much extra time and money would be involved, and handed it off to then. Now that excitement turned into a confused glare. “You mean all that usability stuff is going to cost me more money?” It seems obvious to you. You’ve got to put in tons of extra hours setting up interviews, meetings – not to mention if you choose a remote hosting platform like ClickTale or UserZoom that will cost a ton of extra money.

It’s tough to get a client on board with the added costs of working with users to create a usable and experience-driven website, especially if you’re just starting out and the majority of your clients are start-ups or family members. While you’d love to grab a copy of Don’t Make Me Think and quiz them on every chapter, you know it’s rude.

Sure, that’s a great follow-up for clients – suggest them some reading, that is – but it’s your job as a usability professional to convince them they need it (you are a usability professional, aren’t you?). Anything that involves extra money is a turn-off to clients, so you need to make it worthwhile in their minds. Here are a few thoughts on how you might be able to convince your clients that usability is important (note the italics – those are your key words):

Know What You’re Selling

We’re the salespeople, in most cases. Therefore, we need to know what we’re selling. Do your reading, understand the terminology (although you probably shouldn’t use it as to not confuse your clients), and figure out a game plan for when you get in there.

Educate Them

I find one of the greatest things you can do with a client is educate them. Especially if the majority of your clients are small businesses, educating them and showing them your passion about topics can help them find that extra few hundred to do some simple usability testing. What I like to do when a client asks me for help in some sort of marketing campaign is show them blog entries online that they can read about the topic, and suggest some simple reading.

While it’s the client’s decision whether or not they want to go through all the reading, I find it always helps to provide them with actionable information to get them excited about their plans. You’ll find clients talking more in your language, and you’ll have the advantage of really showing them what you know.

Once they’re excited, they’ll surely want to spend that extra money on something that they know in their heads is worth the extra coin.

We’re Not The Users!

Explain to them that while you have your clients’ best interests in mind, that no one working on the site is a client, and that you need to involve them in the process. Explain to them that they may know the demographic they’re looking to please, but without having them along the process to get in their minds, the project may not be useful to them.

Tell Them It’ll Increase Loyalty/Sales/Traffic

There are only a few reasons websites exist. For the owner(s), or for others. Let’s face it: most of our clients come to us thinking they’re amazing because they know what SEO means, and they really, really want it. We offer it to them and they pay a good amount extra because they want more traffic.

Well, what if you were to tell your client that usability testing not only would improve traffic and could create a more SEO-friendly website, but it could also create readership and customer loyalty, as well as increase sales through simplifying processes?

Be Sneaky About It

If a client doesn’t like you charging more for usability – try charging a little extra for design and development to balance things out. That way, when you throw in all that usability work, they’ll get on board with it and want to spend that extra money (especially since you threw them a “huge” deal and gave it to them for “free”).

T.E.T.O.

You’ve heard it before. Test Early. Test Often. Figure out a plan to test before launch, and a plan to keep testing to ensure that testing is continued. Your client needs to know that in doing this, you can ensure the website is working for their clients. It could be working for you and the client both using the latest version of FireFox, but if 75% of your users are using Internet Explorer, you need to make sure it’s working.

Sadly, unless you go to a psychic, you’ll never know until launch what your users are using, so make sure you have analytics tools set up to find out for you when you launch!

Some Things to Remember

Some clients may have the impression that as designers we do usability testing by default. While we always have to do a certain amount of usability research on our clients, we have to express to them that it involves a lot of extra work and may require a some extra budgeting for external applications. Be patient with your clients as, for some of us, it may be our clients first time with a professional designer/developer (or, a good one).

Hey – good luck! If you have any suggestions for others, why not share them in the comments below?

P.S: My friends over at UX Booth have been working on a couple of articles on how to sell usability to small and large businesses – so keep your ears to the ground for that in the next few weeks! I also posted something up there last week – have you checked it out?

Did I Win?!

Yes. I need to go through formalities first. I’d quickly like to thank our three donors of prizes:

• Bohemian Coding for donating a copy of Fontcase. Bohemian also has some other great mac apps (SlipCover and DrawIt), and they all look beautiful and are pleasures to use. Do yourself the favour of getting trials and buying their apps – they’re worth their weight in gold!
• Hex for donating a subscription to Subernova. Hex also runs an awesome blog called Suberapps for all you Mac (and Adobe Air!) enthusiasts. Hex constantly creates beautiful looking interfaces, and this is definitely shown in Subernova!
• Mark Batty Publisher for donating a copy of Type, Trends and Fashion! Mark Batty has a long list of other excellent books that not only look stunning, but cover some important topics!

I’d also like to thank the Typophile community for their thoughts and my team for helping me put together the awesome content and the beautiful design! Since I have your attention, please don’t forget to follow @thephuse on Twitter. We post our favourite articles 8 times a day, 5 days a week. If you have any questions or anything, you can always get in touch with us there, or via our contact form. We’re in the habit of posting something on the blog once a week, and we would love it if you followed our RSS feed as well!

I know that’s a lot to ask – but (we like to think) our articles are amazing, and this won’t be the last time we’ll be giving out prizes!

Okay, I’ve teased you enough… Drum roll please!

And the Winners Are…

• Type, Trends and Fashion: Colleen M Cole (@TalkingColleen)
• Subernova: Brian Gallagher (@minddesign)
• Fontcase: Brendan (@br62)

Congratulations to all the winners! You will be DM’d by the end of the day with further instructions on how to get your free stuff!

But with more “inexpensive” tools popping up that provide us with quantitative analysis, some designers are taking the lazy route and testing only after their website goes live. So the question stands, can we test usability before our project goes live? Why is it important? And, most importantly: how can we test before launch?

Note: For all intents and purposes in this article when referring to usability and user experience, we will call it “usability” (although they are both very different things).

P.S: We have an awesome contest launching on Tuesday of next week that we want you to get in on. So if you aren’t already, follow us on Twitter or grab a copy of our feed. We’ve also worked on an epic contest and giveaway for the folks at UX Booth, so if you want more on usability, you should give those guys a look-through!

Can We Test Before Launch?

Most of us have likely heard of the acronym TETO – that is, Test Early, Test Often. This term applies not only until after launch, but pre launch. What I find with freelancers today is that we end up designing the initial website for the client, and that is wrong. We must design for the user, and therefore bring the user into the process.

We can also test without having a website already launched (e.g. for clients wanting to create their first web presence), and we’ve outlined those methods below!

Oftentimes we overlook certain aspects of design in our websites, print pieces, and other forms of media. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in our creativity that we don’t take a step back and analyze the piece from another point of view– We get to the end of the design to realize that it doesn’t emphasize the purpose of the website properly, and find ourselves having to go back to the drawing board. Really, these words should turn into questions for yourself after your design process as a reflection, more than anything.

So here they are, the 4 eff- words of design!

Efficiency

efficiency |iˈfi sh ənsē|
noun ( pl. -cies)
the state or quality of being efficient : greater energy efficiency.

• an action designed to achieve this : to increase efficiencies and improve earnings.

I find myself talking a lot about being efficient in your life through being productive. We as designers can be more efficient in our work by using actions in Photoshop and organizing our files so that they’re easy to come back to later. It is important for us to be efficient in our processes, as it will save us many a hour later.

How well your design answers the question or reason that the user is interested in is the core of efficiency in design.

Aza Raskin said in an article about design efficiency that “Efficiency lets you know when you can stop looking for a better design.” As I spoke about in my article with SixRevisions, we need to take a look at analytic facts like bounce rates, and figure out (through testing) what you can be doing better to bring that rate down.

New Years is coming up, and it’s time to take a step back from our work, analyze, and improve ourselves. What are you going to change? As professionals, let’s take a look at our marketing plans, processes, and (of course) designs to ensure that they’re giving us and our clients a good return on investment.

Effectiveness

effective |iˈfektiv|
adjective
1 successful in producing a desired or intended result : effective solutions to environmental problems.

• (esp. of a law or policy) operative : the agreements will be effective from November.
• impressive; striking : an effective finale.

After creating a design, sit back and take a good look at it. Does it reflect the website’s purpose? After staring at the piece for little more than ten seconds, do you know its purpose? Is it effective in getting the client’s clients from point A to point B in a quick and easy way?

Effectiveness in design can be done through simplifying elements and processes, designing with the demographics in mind, utilizing different styles of typography (e.g. bold, italics) to create visually-appealing content, or even (during development) by slimming down your code and optimizing your images for the web.

Effort

effort |ˈefərt|
noun
a vigorous or determined attempt : hammer birdhouses to country fenceposts in an effort to bring back the eastern bluebird.

• [with adj. ] the activities of a group of people with a common purpose : the war effort.

Designing takes a certain amount of effort. We need to research and collect data on our clients’ competitors and figure out how they are doing things properly, and how we can take those things to the next level with our designs. As well, we need to look at how our clients’ sites are failing and how we can improve on those elements (if not by eliminating them completely).

As well, as designers we (usually) work with a team. We have project managers, developers, and of course the client to interact with. All in all, the project is a team effort beyond anything and should be respected as such. You yourself need to put effort into the product through your work, but it is also a team effort to pull everything together.

Effect

effect |iˈfekt|
noun

• the extent to which something succeeds or is operative : wind power can be used to great effect.
• an impression produced in the mind of a person : gentle music can have a soothing effect.

Ah, the effect. That’s what it really is about for us designers, isn’t it? I mean, we design for users to feel a certain way when they come across our pieces. For some projects it’s excitement, for some it’s the “wow” factor. Regardless, we use effects to leave an effect on our visitors.

Oh, and yeah, you can make some cool effects in Photoshop and Illustrator and stuff too. But really, it’s all about the emotions we conjure in others through our effects.

Pardon My French

To conclude, I do apologize if this article was too vulgar and offended any. Do you have anything to add?

(Definitions from the New Oxford American Dictionary.)

Only thorough testing can determine whether a website has maximized its potential as a usable design. The remote testing services that are cropping up streamline the process so that it is more affordable to do the testing. To bring users in for a local test can cost thousands of dollars, depending how many testers you include.

But how do you know when a design is usable without testing? Is a good looking design automatically a usable design?

There is no simple answer to that question, but many sites that are eye-catching are not usable. There are, however, some guidelines you can follow that will go a long way to prevent confusion. They should be implemented in the planning stages:

• Grid systems like 960.gs to help structure your website with proper spacing.
• Map out the elements on your site using ‘wireframe’ or ‘graybox’ layouts.
• Draw up flow charts documenting the user processes (i.e. registration, login, upload a new video).

These techniques have been around for longer than websites. They stuck because they are proven techniques. Not to mention, planning ahead generally improves your design aesthetically.

Have you taken every preventative measure? Followed all the guidelines to ensure that your site is usable? There still may be room for improvement. Despite widespread belief, usability should be included in the planning and pre-design process that ensues. This will save money, time, and severe headaches.

As we’ve already discussed, there are two types of usability testing: local and remote. In some cases we still conduct local user testing, but it is becoming less common. Local testing is like what the computer companies were first doing back in the 80s. Test and adjust one user at a time. If you are on a budget and looking for a simple yet effective usability test, get your friends and relatives to do the testing for you.

Remote testing, on the other hand, is a new innovation that allows web designers to analyze their designs with regard to usability for large groups at a fraction of the cost of local testing. Some sites have feedback buttons that allow users to volunteer their take on the website, and there are other sites that let us post a project and have selected testers analyze it. They give us qualitative feedback, which can be very useful because the suggestions are more actionable when they are written down with specifics.

The most valuable feedback that I believe you can get from remote testing is the information that you can read from what I like to call “fly on the wall” overlays. These are the heat maps and click maps that I mentioned before. While all forms of usability testing have benefits, only the click maps record how users actually use the website. Little does the user know that the motions of their mouse are being tracked invisibly (I mean, who really reads the privacy policy on websites?). You can see the user’s gestures and analyze data such as how long it takes to complete a specific action, load a page, or where users get stuck. Again, the user does this in the comfort of his own home without any knowledge of the testing and so they provide real-time data.

Should we, as designers, be paying more attention to usability trends? The answer is a resounding Yes. Analyzing the user experience allows us to create sites that are more effective and that create a better (and quicker) return on a user’s visit. No matter how much reading we do, we will never fully comprehend our users, but with proper testing we are able to take a little peek into their complex minds and habits of our users. Therefore the User Experience can not be overrated, as we will always find new innovations in handling it and getting into those minds.