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.