Welcome to my Web site…now get lost.

I hate being lost. Being somewhere new and not knowing your way around is a feeling of powerlessness that, at least in me, often leads to panic. My sense of direction is decent, but whenever I get lost, the anxiety that sets in negates whatever natural wayfinding sensibilities I may have. You would think I would have learned by now that I’m never really ‘lost’. Sure, I’ve been confused many times on my travels, but I’ve never been so lost that a full blown search party had to come out to rescue me from my own navigational ineptitude. No, if I just push the panic aside, focus on my surroundings and get my bearings, I can generally get back on track quickly enough. Still, the fact remains that I hate being lost – which is why I love visiting New York City.

As you can imagine, my fears of being lost most often manifest themselves when I travel. Being lost in my home state of Rhode Island is one thing. The entire state takes little more than 45 minutes to cross from end to end, so you’ve never really all that lost in RI. Being outside of my Ocean State comfort zone is another thing. Traveling and feeling lost definitely go hand in hand for me, except for in NYC.

I visited New York City, specifically Manhattan, for the first time this year. I’m not sure if my fear of travel/getting lost kept me away from the city all this time, but whatever the reasoning, I finally made my way to New York a few months ago. Prior to my trip, a friend of mine had loaned me a map of Manhattan so I would be able to find my way around. I studied the map prior to my visit, hoping to squash the anxieties of travel prior to even stepping off the train and into the heart of the city. I only had the map open for a few minutes when I realized that whomever had planned out the city and been responsible for the naming convention of the streets was a genius.

New York is laid out in a giant grid. In that it is similar to other cities, but the naming convention used for these streets makes it incredibly easy to get around, even for someone who is prone to panicking in new places like me. The streets in one direction use names such as 34th street, followed by 35th street, 36th street, 37th street and so on. Cross streets are named 5th ave, 6th ave and so forth. The streets are numbered sequentially, making it a simple matter of counting for me to get from where I am to where I need to go.

So here I was, new to New York City and ready to panic, but I never did because I never felt lost. A quick glance at a street sign and I knew where I was and had an immediate sense of where I needed to go next to reach my destination. As big and daunting as the city was, I always felt in control and aware of my location. If only navigating the Web was so easy!

I returned to New York City this past weekend, this time without the aid of my friend’s map. I didn’t need it. So long as I knew where I needed to go, it was a simple matter to figure out how to get there. As I walked from my hotel on West 32nd street to the Museum of Modern Art on West 53rd street, I compared the ease of navigating the city of New York with the often times nonsensical way of navigating Web sites. How can it be so easy to get around a metropolis as vast as New York City, yet so difficult to find what I am looking for on the average company’s Web site?

I’m sure you’ve had an experience similar to what I am talking about. You visit a Web site looking for something very specific, but finding that kernel of information is like trying to find your way through a labyrinth. It makes you feel as if the site’s designers intentionally made it difficult to use the site! How many times have you visited a site, waited for it to load and thought to yourself, ‘What the heck is this site about?’ or perhaps ‘What does this company even do?’ I know I ask myself that question many times a day as I visit new Web sites. Not only do I not know how to find the information I need, I can’t even figure out what the company does or if I’m on the right site! I find myself digging into pages looking for information, yet not really being sure if I am on the right path at all. Basically, I’m lost in the site and the easy to understand street signs of NYC are nowhere in sight. Help me!

It doesn’t need to be this way. None of us like to feel lost in a Web site, do we? Then why would we subject the visitors of our site to a similar experience? When I’m away on vacation and I get lost, I have no choice but to figure out where I am and how to get where I need to be. On a Web site I don’t have that same limitation. If I am confused, I can just leave that site and look for another one that meets my needs. I can click off your site and so can your users. If your site doesn’t meet their needs, quickly and easily, you risk losing their business to a competitor’s site.

Every Web site has a purpose. When we design a new site or work on a redesign, there is a goal that the client has in mind for the site itself (and if there isn’t, there needs to be). Every decision that we make as part of the design process, from the visuals used on the home page to the way that the navigation buttons are named and laid out to the way that the information is formatted and presented, needs to actively work towards forwarding the goals of the Web site and meeting the needs of those using it. Anything that is added to the site that gets in the way of users finding the information they want or anything that makes it confusing as to what your company is offering needs to be looked at with a critical eye, and in most cases, removed from your site. It sounds extreme, and sometimes it is, but it’s also the best way to ensure that your site is as effective as possible for both you and your users.

The approach of making a site easier to use is sometimes looked at with apprehension. The concept and benefits makes sense, but companies often worry that making things ‘simpler’ means making them not look as attractive or ‘not as cool’. That is not the case. Easy-to-use doesn’t have to mean unattractive. A good Web site design will not only meet the needs of your business and your audience, but it will do so in an attractive and engaging way. New York City is no less rich or exciting because it is easy to navigate and the content and user experience at your Web site does not need to suffer simply by making it more user-friendly. In fact, making a site easier to use for your audience will make the design seem that much better! Have you ever visited a site that looked great, but was nearly impossible to use? What did you think of the site? I bet that your first impression of ‘this looks cool’ was quickly replaced by ‘what the hell is going on here?', which was likely followed by you closing the site, never to return. How cool does that design look now?

Look at your current site and ask yourself a few questions:

1. What is the primary goal of my company’s site?


2. What are most of my site’s visitors looking for when they visit my site?


3. What things on my site get in the way of these two critical functions?

Envision Technology Advisors can help you answers these questions and provide ways to ensure your site meets your company’s goals and the needs of your audience more effectively. A better user experience translates into happier visitors (and more of them) which in turn will help you realize the business goals you set out for your site.

Welcome to my Web site…why don’t you stay awhile.

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Labels: Jeremy G, navigation, New York, usability, Web design, Web sites

posted by Jeremy Girard

Changing the Game in 10 Years

We recently celebrated Envision’s tenth anniversary! This has prompted a lot of reflection on how much has changed since the inception of one of the best Rhode Island-based technology consulting firms. From living in a post-911 world (not to mention a post-Y2K one), to changes in our location, and even changes in our own personal circumstances, little is as it was ten years ago. Technology, of course, has evolved at an ever increasing pace.

As I reflect about how much technology has changed in the past ten years, I ponder on some of my most favorite innovations. The ones that come most readily to mind are some of the simplest. They include flash drives, terminal services, and LCD monitors.

Flash drives are probably my most favorite. How cool is it that you can have gigabytes upon gigabytes of information on a device that’s so small you can put it on your key chain? (Not that you really should) The ease and portability of having this kind of data capacity at your disposal on a device that auto-detects on the system in which you plug it into its USB port is just fantastic. Remember when we thought writable CDs, and then writable DVDs, were cool? Anyone who remembers installing Microsoft Office 95 from 17 floppy disks will echo this sentiment, I’m sure.

Microsoft Terminal Services, or “Remote Desktop”, was certainly a game changer for everyone too. There was a time not so long ago when every time the phone rang, it meant hopping in the car and driving to the client, all to do things that if only we had easy remote access would only take minutes to do. Our reach has been extended in ways that make this a truly enabling technology, allowing us to work more efficiently, effectively, and in a more geographically unlimited manner. Sure, there were always methods of remote access into networks, and enterprise networks usually had the best ones. But from the perspective of being able to access and support almost any node in a Windows-based environment as easily and cheaply as Remote Desktop allows, you just can’t beat what this has done for us.

And then there are LCD monitors. Flat panels. Space saving, energy saving, back saving. Remembering the days of schlepping hardware to clients for network and PC installs in the back of my car invokes memories of awkwardly finding the most optimal way of cramming as many huge 17” CRT monitor boxes into the back seat of my ’94 Acura as possible. It wasn’t many. But despite the obvious enhancements in portability and energy efficiency that LCD monitors provide, my favorite aspect of LCD technology is the simple fact that I no longer have to spend almost my entire day at my desk with cathode rays beaming through my corneas into to the back of my brain. Yay science!

Despite how cool and far reaching these three small changes in technology are, hands down, my most favorite game-changing technological evolution is easily the technology of Virtualization. Server Virtualization, Desktop Virtualization, Appliance Virtualization, you name it: you just can’t beat what Virtualization is doing for businesses that run on x86-based computing architectures (that is, almost ALL of them)! From the ease of administration, to the green computing aspects, the consolidating ability, to the flexibility that it brings, virtualizing your corporate computing environment enables capabilities that we would certainly have marveled at ten years ago. Heck, we marvel at it today! As far as game-changers go, the technology of virtualization is the biggest thing to come along in most of our careers to date. The ability to make running server operating systems dynamically portable, while running, and able to be backed up, cloned, cataloged, and deployed as easily as is allowed by products of the likes from VMware, is nothing short of “miraculous”. When you see virtualization work in a well-implemented environment for the first time, you’re tempted to not believe what you are seeing. How can what just happened truly have happened? And the ramifications for the protection of business continuity, uptime, flexibility, and disaster recovery are extreme. Never before in our practice’s history have we been so excited about the emergence of a technology, and its accessibility to all levels of our clients (not just higher-end enterprise environments) as we are today.

To learn more about virtualization and how Envision can help you reap the benefits of virtualizing your corporate computing infrastructure, go to http://www.envisionsuccess.net/networking/virtualization.aspx

posted by Brent

Do not panic, blogs are not on the way out, although George W. Bush is

Recently (Nov. 2008 edition), Wired writer Paul Boutin states in his recent article "Kill Your Blog," the blog is on its way out. He presents 3 valid points:

1. When blogging was new, in 2004, it was easy to rank high on Google search results for any topic
2. Professional blogs are squashing the amateur blogger in traffic and on SERPs
3. Blog comments attract the lowest forms of life: insult commenters

Blogs are no longer the "new thing." That I agree with. However, it's still important to blog for the following reasons:

1. It keeps content on your site fresh. Our new site now showcases our blog postings on our front page. Google loves constant new content on your site's homepage. This is great for SEO.
2. It takes the power out of biased American media. Your opinionated blog article is probably more fair and balanced than anything you find on FOX News.
3. Makes corporate web sites much more personal.
4. You can get big traffic for blog articles on Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit and Del.icio.us.
   

Paul then concludes that he prefers to use Facebook and Twitter (a blog-like social networking site that simply asks "What are you doing?" and your short response blasts out to all of your Twitter friends).

While, Twitter and Facebook are the new hype, blogs are here to stay. Blogs are for content, Facebook and Twitter are for keeping in touch. We have consulted with many clients on blogs and Facebook, so ask us if they are right for your company!

Labels: Blogs, Facebook, Jeremy S., Traffic Generation, Twitter

posted by Jeremy S.