christian ross

Research proves attractive things work better.

According to a 2002 study, the “appeal of the overall visual design of a site, including layout, typography, font size, and color schemes,” is the number one factor we use to evaluate a website’s credibility.

- In Defense of Eye Candy by Stephen P. Anderson (A List Apart)

Most people I deal with fall into two categories when it comes to design. There’s the “I’m a designer” group and the “Design is the afterthought” group; neither of which I handle all that well. Form and function have to coexist.

If you sell widgets, you know your widgets. I don’t profess to know your widgets better than you. Likewise, I know what I’m doing. My goal is not to make your website be the best website you have ever seen on your computer. My goal is to use design, content and functionality to make it the best possible experience for your clients as a greater whole.

My pitch has never been “my job is to make you look prettier,” nor has it ever been “my job is to give you more functionality.” My job is to make you look better. Fortunately for me, articles like the above and the research it references are slowly making it easier to prove to clients the need for well thought out plan of attack and hopefully refute the responses of “my wife likes brown and purple.”

I wonder how long this will fall on deaf ears…

I’ve mentioned this same statement more than once to those in a position to make some changes at our church. Maybe hearing it from other sources will help the message get through.

a successful Internet ministry does not rely exclusively on volunteers to create or maintain their web site.

(via Church Marketing Sucks)

Help Jonathan Snook adopt (again)

A major player in the world of web (both design and programming) was looking to adopt his third child along with his wife in the near future, the future came a little sooner than expected.

Read all about it (and contribute if you’re inclined) here: http://snook.ca/adoption

Through the use of twitter, in 12 hours he’s almost hit the $2,000 mark (13% of his goal). Pretty good for a campaign slated to go through April 18th.

There’s got to be a business model for twitter somewhere out there…

Good social marketing campaign?

Still wrapping my brain around this: http://skittles.com/

They are using most major forms of social media to show their product and how people interact with it including twitter, facebook, youtube, flickr and wikipedia instead of having a standard website.

Interesting concept, I can imagine that it won’t be long before we start to see this over and over again.

Thoughts?

My former church home is going viral

This is the church that – when I decided to get out of bed in college – I attend on a semi-regular basis. Funny thing is, I consider them one of the most conservative churches in their area. Pretty surprising to see them using social media like Youtube to promote.

Intern

I have an intern. She started today. She doesn’t really have a set schedule, she doesn’t get paid and she’s only around for a couple of weeks but I now have an intern.

It was a little weird sitting down with her today to converse about what she currently knows, what she wants to learn and what she wants to do post-baccalaureate. She will graduate from a major university in 3 year’s time with a 4.0 GPA. She really doesn’t know much about my industry but I hope to at least get her a glimpse over the next couple of weeks. We’ll see.

Since I don’t regularly drink coffee that option is off the table for things to provide her to do. Other than that I’m not really sure.

After explaining to me that she’d like to explore the creative end of what I do I sent her out with a mission. Armed with my camera her goal is to take pictures. I don’t care what she takes pictures of – rocks, people, rain or cars – it doesn’t matter to me. All that matters to me is that she takes pictures. Lots of them. In the hundreds. I am hoping this will help us both to see where her creativity lies. I want to see what she sees when she looks at something.
(more…)

I Am Second

It’s exciting to me to see church media and their creators starting to get it. For far too long, the materials presented to the public were sub-par.

I Am Second, gets it.

A ministry that concerns itself with both substance and style. One of the best presentations in any field I have seen in a long while.

If you’ve got some time, I’d recommend watching a story or two. Wonderfully crafted, beautiful messages.

Brevity is not an excuse for poor spelling.

First off, I am attached to the electronic communication medium more than I probably would like to admit. I am one of those that carries a multi-use phone or PDA. Although I rarely use the calendaring functionality of it, I am shackled by the phone, text, and email capability of the device. I send plenty of emails from it and every email I receive from five of my all-too-many email accounts hit my phone daily.

While sending an email from a portable device is not terribly hard, it doesn’t compare to the speed of all ten of my fingers on a full keyboard. Most emails I send from my phone are limited in my response or question. ‘KIS’ principle.

I even have a post scriptum tag line in my accounts on my phone to let people know that it is from my phone and most likely will be brief. Something along the lines of ‘This email was sent from my Palm OS mobile device.’

I feel it is courteous to the recipient to let them know this information and it helps to inform clients that I may not be at my desk at the time but I have received their request/comment and will react to it as quickly as possible.

Now, why we’re here. Using my handheld in no way allows me to be unprofessional. Growing up in a printing family has forever saddled me with a few things that I will never be able to shake. A big one is my disdain for typos. Can’t stand them. I hate when I see them and even more I hate when I create one. Now I understand that mistakes happen, fat fingers on small buttons make for a greater possibility, but I attempt to scan each one a time or two before sending.

Saying all of this, I was taken aback today when I received an email from a client confirming an appointment for a conference call this week. Enough so that not only did I do a double-take on it, I also took a screen shot, edited it down to remove the contact information, and spent 15 minutes typing about it.

Seriously? Is that professional? Is this the message you are saying to your clients?

“Don’t get mad, I am sending an email from my mobile device and it’ll probably have typos.”

I don’t get it. Again, mistakes happen. But asking for forgiveness for the sin before committing it isn’t really going to get the job done.

/exiting soap box