What is Google Places?

Google Places is a service offered by Google to help businesses take ownership of their locations and improve their search identity. It enables businesses to come up in Google Maps searches, or as location results in standard Google searches. Google Places is especially important if you have a physical location that is relevant to users. An e-commerce site may not be concerned with a local client base, but a restaurant will.

Businesses can verify and claim their listing and then add information on that page. The more thorough and specific the content, the better your company will do in relevant search results. Google allows you to specify business categories, add pictures and add video. The service is free, easy to set up, and will allow users to quickly access relevant, local information about your business.

Why is Google Places important?

97 percent of consumers search for local businesses online. One of the goals of an online presence should be to create and share the most relevant, useful information possible for potential customers. According to data released by Google, 82% of online activity is related to local content. Businesses should vigilantly monitor search results to ensure that their contact and services information is up to date and accurate. Given that Google Places verifies all claimed locations, you easily keep reliable information at the top of search results.

As an added bonus, a good Places listing can actually help your website SEO by giving users an external source that offers them relevant information related to your website. If your SEO is set up well, the top search results should be your company page followed by a list of the top 3 relevant and nearby locations, so they know exactly where to go and who to call for more information.

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In the last part of our three-part series, Claire explains the role of the client as a project nears completion.

Once you’re through design and development, the finish line for your site, app or video can be tantalizingly close. But before the project goes live, it’s time to look at it one time – very thoroughly.

It’s vital to go through and test your project with a fine-toothed comb. For most people, this part of the process is less fun than looking at designs. It’s the steamed vegetables you have to eat before you get dessert. The length of the testing stage varies depending on the scope of the project. But like every other point of feedback we’ve discussed in this blog series, proper communication can keep things moving forward. I find the best way to pick apart and address issues is to compile them into a clear, easy-to-read list.

1. Everything has bugs at some point. Our goal now is to find those bugs before we make anything live. We’d much rather find errors during this phase than during launch.
2. Ask your development team how they would like bugs delivered. We’ve created a template for clients so they can compile bugs in one location and in an organized way. It saves them time writing and saves us time putting those fixes into action. Plus, the template reduces the amount of follow-up questions we have to ask afterwards (What browser were you using? Can you reproduce it? etc.)
3. Test your site thoroughly: every page, every link, every interaction that someone may potentially have. We’re doing it too! We’re all trying to make sure nothing falls through the cracks. Keep in mind that there are a host of things that we could never spot without help from you – a mixed up headshot, for example, or an out-of-date address.
4. A feature is not a bug. If you think of something new that you want on the site, talk to the project manager to see if it’s in scope or if it’s something that will require additional resources. However, if you see something that contradicts a comp or has a different functionality than was previously discussed, that should be fixed during this phase.
5. Send organized lists, the fewer the better. If we’re working off a single list it’s easier to get everything done quickly and to ensure we don’t miss one critical thing that got lost in 30 different emails.
6. We want the site to be the highest quality work we can possibly put out. However, if there are requests that are out of scope, infeasible or impossible to replicate, they may be held for a later update while we make sure we have everything else working at its full capacity. This is especially true if a project has a tight deadline.

Final testing and feedback is a tricky step, but it’s also, happily, the last one. Once you’re through, your project can be finalized and put forth for all the world to appreciate. And if a project has a strong foundation of communication, it’s sure to be a success for everyone involved.

In Part 2 of our three-part series, Natalie explains how to give effective design comp feedback (even if you’re not a designer!).

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Last week Laura delved a little bit into how we hash out the proposal and IA stage of a new project, and why it is important to treat the website-to-be like you would a sculpture: define broad directions first, details second. In the beginning, we constantly return to the information architecture (IA) and an outline of your website’s goals as the foundation for the feedback process. But once we move past that into the design stage, you are now tasked with responding to the first visual manifestation you’ve seen of what so far has been only phone calls and words on paper. From the outside, all of this can seem like a little magic black box – the design specifications went in, and a JPG popped out. Now respond to it!

This is hard. If you’ve ever tried to critique or respond to a design, you may be very well familiar with the feeling of mental static your brain can emit when you try to pinpoint why the design just isn’t what you envisioned or wanted. (I know because I get that static too. If you have art friends that tell you horror stories about their class critiques, love them and pity them! We all know your pain!)

The static is there because you are trying to respond to the product of that magic black box, and have no way of pointing to any specific switches and gears on the inside. That’s okay, you shouldn’t have to (if you could, you wouldn’t need a designer!) It is the designer’s job to translate non-technical terms and plain English into design magics – their brain is that black box. Your job is to articulate the things that go into that box, which is hard because it involves verbalizing what only exists as feelings.

“Talking” and “feeling” don’t get along sometimes, and in design critiques easily-made mutual communication blunders can lead teams in the wrong design direction – or even worse, produce a revision that you have even vaguer feelings toward. One reason it’s difficult is because the same kind of feelings could either point to objective problems or subjective preferences. The former is the one we want, and we don’t want to confuse one for the other.

So how do we avoid the pitfalls, and articulate feedback that gives the designer an accurate understanding of where we are and where to go next? Continue Reading →

Good feedback comes at just the right time and steers the project to a successful finish line. But how does a non-designer give effective notes on a comp? How can a computer novice report bugs? In this three-part series, we discuss how to give helpful feedback at each stage of the process. Part 1 details the broad strokes planning stages, Part 2 tackles design comp feedback, and Part 3 delves into bug reporting/QA.

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Feedback is tough when your digital identity is on the line. Each project represents a big investment for our clients, and we want to make sure their voice stays strong throughout the process. Manning’s ongoing demystification series aims to peel back the curtain and to help both sides communicate more effectively. Unexplained jargon has no place here. Discussing work in plain English makes it easier for us – and our clients – to get the best results.

When looking for client feedback, we often ask our partners to weigh in on complex specialized documents. What exactly are we looking for?

At the beginning of the process, we want to hear the big picture… the biggest picture possible. What is the core of this business? Who are we trying to reach? What are our client’s goals? Perhaps most importantly: how should we measure success? Answering that question alone sets the stage for an effective partnership.

In the planning stages, we want to make sure the product is built on a strong strategic foundation. The best feedback focuses on the brand identity, audience, and business needs.

Think of the work as a sculpture. When we’re chiseling out the basic shape, the most helpful feedback concentrates on the concept. Broad strokes feedback helps us define the project’s scope and solidifies its goals. During the early stages, it’s easy to get distracted by details. Since these plans dictate the overall direction of the project, both sides need to aim at the same target. Continue Reading →

When we tell people that we work for a “full-service digital creative agency,” we’re often met with looks of confusion.  Admittedly, our industry has not been around very long and most people have no idea what we do, but it can be a tough question to answer concisely. So in the interest of preempting the puzzled looks and lengthy explanations, we’re presenting a series of posts detailing the day-to-day lives of each member of our staff.

Monday

AM

Senior Staff Meeting

We start each Monday with meetings designed to help us all get on the same page. The first of these is a senior staff meeting where myself, our senior developer and our owner discuss things like business objectives, client relations, and workload. We’ll plan strategy, use our task management and time tracking software to evaluate performance and generally try to forecast our upcoming week. The goal is to provide a weekly analysis of how the company is running at the most basic levels.

Traffic Meeting

We then move on to a traffic meeting with the full staff to discuss the status of client work, review timelines and set goals for the week. Project managers typically lead this discussion and my role is to be aware of the status of all of our creative work. This allows me to create my own to-do list as well as work with developers and designers to keep their workflow on target. Continue Reading →

In the age of web 2.0, life for the web designer has never been better. The once-curious “web log” (remember that word?) is now a robust CMS concept powering the architecture of entire communities. Web-savvy individuals previously kept together by guestbook comments and handmade forums can now seal the relationship with a mutual follow on Twitter. An explanation for that neat CSS fading trick can be found only a few clicks away on a StackOverflow thread, where someone miraculously asked your exact question. All in all, wheel-reinventing has been all but eliminated from the developer’s to-do lis­­t.

Since so little from-scratch work is needed anymore, the way we execute websites has changed, in many ways for the better. But the changing execution also changed the design process that comes before it – the phase responsible for answering questions such as “What is this website supposed to do?” “What do we most want the visitor to click on once they’re on the main page?” “How will our brand be embodied in the website, outside the About page?”

Think of it like a chef. A chef must first know the menu, the occasion, the size of the group, what tastes to satisfy and food allergies to consider, and so on. Only then can she go on the hunt for the needed meats, vegetables, spices, and utensils needed to create the dish.

This decision-making process demands a significant time investment, sometimes even more so than the execution. But, especially with the race towards resources-minimizing and compatibility that agencies must strive to win, the question “What does the design need? can easily be stunted to “What do I have to work with?” Continue Reading →

SEO is hard.

It’s hard because it seems easy, like yoga or being a racecar driver. Companies can spend a lot of time and money carefully crafting keyword copy only for Google to change its algorithm and boom: you’re on page 18 of search results with an unreadable site.

The positive news is there’s a straightforward way to improve your SEO. It’s not easy, but it’s clear:

Be good at what you do. [Bonus: be REALLY good at what you do.]

The first step to SEO success is defining what exactly it is that your site is supposed to “do.” It can generate revenue, it can improve your brand, it can spread information, it can do anything, really. But before anything else, its purpose must be defined.

Let’s say you want to spread information. For some sites, getting the most people to view the page is the ultimate goal (think sites like about.com). For other sites, you may only want 50 people in the world to visit.

When we created the Navistar Defense website, we didn’t try to target the content to every single user; we targeted it toward the handful of people who have the authority to invest in military vehicles. If we had gotten thousands of hits on that site but missed those key people, we would have missed our goal entirely.

After you’ve defined what you want your site to do, figure out ways to make what you do specific. It’s hard to be number one for the search term “cars.” It’s much easier to be number one for the term “rental cars at O’Hare.” Specificity is your friend. Google’s keyword tool will help you find what people are searching for and how well your site relates to those words.

You should also be paying attention to Google Analytics, which will show you exactly which keywords are bringing in the most traffic and the best traffic.

Sites meant to generate revenue have a built-in indicator for what traffic is the best: revenue. If your website traffic is way down but your revenue is way up, you’re winning. Don’t worry about a low page view count as long as the visits are generating enough revenue to keep the company growing.

In the end, companies should care about only one thing: are we better off than we were before? Are your revenues higher, is your brand image better, and yes, maybe your site has had more visitors. Define “better” and then set off to achieve that goal.

Build your field, know who you want to be there. They’ll come. Sometimes it’s a whole town, and sometimes it’s just Kevin Costner’s dad. But if you build it well and pay attention, they will come.

I recently read an article from UX Magazine about some of the most common mistakes made on the web, and one jumped out at me in particular: usability. The mistake wasn’t ignoring usability—although there are plenty of sites on the web that have poor usability—but rather the pitfalls of focusing on being  usable without first figuring out how to be useful. In other words, the best user interface in the world can’t save a site with a poorly defined purpose.

I’d never seen this particular point articulated so bluntly, but it reinforced a philosophy that we’ve always worked hard to embody in our client work. We partner closely with our clients to help them understand that the “why” of a project is just as (if not more) important than the “how.” To that end, our approach includes a few steps that, while not necessarily difficult to execute, are often overlooked and can lead to underwhelming results.

In order to better understand the distinction between usefulness and usability, let’s explore a hypothetical website project for Lassie’s Dog Walking Company. Continue Reading →

Allow me to take off my robe and wizard hat for a moment and make one thing clear: what we do is not magic.

I can understand why  it can seem that way – the web is a bubbling morass not unlike a witch’s cauldron in which just the right combination of technical know-how, design savvy, cooperative browsers, connection speed and evolving technology have to be mixed together just right to create an über site that does exactly what you want, how you want it.

In the face of this crazy and often-times confusing jumble, I can understand why, at the start, clients are inclined to say things like “Do what you think is best” or “I don’t need the details, I just need it done.” IT blogging sensation Harwell Thrasher refers to this as “IT Magic” in his post, “Why IT Magics is Never Good.” In it, he attacks the idea that it’s a win-win scenario for IT folk to let their work appear as magic, saying:

“Often the business forgets how much inherent complexity has been passed from the business user to IT.  And if the IT organization isn’t careful, that forgotten complexity turns into the perception of magic, including the feeling that the business user is getting something for nothing.  The ongoing effort required in IT to support the hidden complexity is forgotten and taken for granted, and business people begin to wonder why the Information Technology organization is spending so much.”

For us, that often means that conversations that started with “Do what you think is best” end with a “You want to do WHAT?!” Continue Reading →