We've just launched two new sites Our most pared back ever: Taranto Consultancy And our most colourful: James Byrne

Click #15

This Click is about the art of creating enjoyable journeys through websites. Check these examples:

1. BustedTees thank you page

Thank you pages are usually dull. This hip made me smile.

2. PledgeBank email confirmation

It is a hassle being forced to enter a username and password. PledgeBank gives you the opportunity not to bother. What joy!

3. Getting Real sign up

This page has one function: to get you to sign up to a mailing list. The copy is over-sized. I got a silly spark of happiness when I entered my name and it was big too.

4. Gmail threaded conversations

This is a lovely way to display an email conversation. Grouping conversations makes them easier to manage. Colour improves the page's usability.

Why this matters Offline there is a disconnection. Say you see a cracking advert for a mobile phone network and the next day you have a miserable experience with that firm (maybe you get put on hold for 30 minutes then the line goes dead). Your brain separates out the two. The benefit of the lovely advert isn't totally obliterated by the terrible service.

Online it is different - the brand message and the customer service are the same thing. The user's experience becomes a concrete expression of the brand. So creating pleasant interactions will pay dividends.

Great to see that there's a move to start a UK organisation to protect digital rights: http://www.pledgebank.com/rights

The flowering of creativity that results from open source thinking means this organisation could be a valuable counterweight against the lobbying power of old media. Hope they get to 1000 pledges.

My article for Marketing Week has just been published. It was supposed to be about the importance of details in web design (based on Click 12) but after interviewing some top web designers, it got blown off course.

Now it's about how to create interesting interactions - and why that is such an important part of a company's public face. And how commercial web designers are learning from blogs and fan sites. And how that's leading to warmer, more expressive web design.

www.useit.com/alertbox/20021223.html

Does your site make one of these mistakes?

The Click #14

The last few Clicks have been rather serious. I apologise. Websites should be fun. People want to be entertained. Make someone smile and you've made a connection.

Flashing lights My bro-in-law (hi, Tim!) sent this email from Australia:

"I came across this website www.ozcableguy.com, and thought you might like it - it is so crammed full of useful information I feel I just have to buy the otherwise pretty commoditised product (a wireless broadband router) from him. For some inexplicable reason I love the van! Normally I hate stuff like that."

OK, Tim mentions "useful information". But I bet it is the flashing lights that got him enthused.

Corporate hugs Last week I interviewed the creative directors at two of the UK's most on-the-pulse web design companies: Poke and E3.

Both were fascinating guys, coming at web design from different perspectives. A striking similarity was that they were both striving to make sites that are warmer, more communicative and more fun.

Poke's Webby-winning jamieoliver.com aims for the vibrancy and intimacy of a good homemade site. It's punchy, fluffy and loveable.

E3's site is a carnival of colour and action. How different from the minimalism that used to rule web design (and still does, in some corners... erm, like mintdigital.com... new site in the greenhouse).

A hug from a stranger Be careful. It's great to be friendly. But overstep the mark and it feels like a hug from a stranger.

Even neo-bubble darlings get caught out. Anthropolgist Grant McCracken dissects an email from Flickr:

"Here’s the thing that really struck me, the people at Flickr call themselves Flickroobies and they call us Flickreebies. Suddenly, I feel like I am back at a United Church summer camp"

The winning hug For my money you can't beat Skype. A dry product (internet telephony) is bought to life by playful animation and excellent text focusing on the product's stand-out benefit - free global chat. What a loveable site!

For more info or to send your CV, email andy@mintdigital.com.

Excellent Flash work: Don't click - testing assuptions of interactivity Casualities in Iraq - testament by date and location

The Click #13

You're skiing. It's snowing hard. The mist is thick. Sound is muffled. You keep going, gingerly hoping for a tree or a marker, anything to give you your bearings. Then you think "Am I actually moving?"

A bad website can be just as disorientating.

A good website, on the other hand, makes it obvious where you are and where you are going - this is an essential part of the website designer's skill.

FreshDirect is a good example. What do they do right?

1. Conventions are followed The logo is top left. The background is white. The header stays the same from page to page (with the section highlighted in orange - giving you an immediate sense of location).

2. Clear, consistent titles Clear titles make it obvious what page the user is on. In the example, both the section title 'SEAFOOD' and the subsection title 'FISH FILLETS' are prominently displayed.

One gripe. 'Fish Fillets' in the subsection navigation doesn't look selected. Minor inconsistencies like this cause confusion.

3. Seven plus or minus two is the magic number Human short term memory has a limited capacity: 7 items plus or minus 2. Navigation should have no more than nine items (five can be the limit, if the items are particularly abstract or diverse.

Being a big site, FreshDirect has several main navigation bars (listing by product type, by dietary requirement, etc.), but each has 9 items or fewer.

The way the items are split isn't perfect (you might argue that wine should be in the products navigation bar) - but it successfully breaks the information down into human sized chunks.

4. All information is not equal FreshDirect has corporate information and a 'Special note for AOL users' at the bottom of the page. Unless your site is a company brochure, people come to the site to get a job done. Admin can be relegated to the footer.

5. It reads from left to right Jobs that need to be done last (for instance, dealing with the shopping cart) are best placed on the right.

Conclusion Making sites easily navigable takes hard work. If there's one principle, it's 'Don't make me think'. The less you make your visitors think, the more they can concentrate on what they came to do.

Who wants a pair of trainers from Art Force One (without switching to English)?

I do!

The Click #12

When I studied computer science any design was referred to disdainfully as 'pretty printing'. The geek part of my brain worries that website design is superficial and trivial.

I've always felt a bit stumped trying to explain why it matters.

Until I read this:

"All the cues that people rely on are muted online. There is no touch or smell or location. There is very little sound. So we obsess about subtle cues of typeface or colour or photography. It is hard to overestimate how much these things matter" from KnockKnock by Seth Godin.

I asked Noam - my creative partner - to talk me through the magic that goes into web design:

FreshDirect vs ASDA

Check this fabulous site for US online grocers Fresh Direct . Green and yellow don't usually go together, but they've picked just the right tones to make it work. Green communicates freshness, yellow communicates warmth. The consistency of the photos and the neatness of type show an attention to detail that rivals a well-run deli.

By comparison Asda's site looks downmarket. Too many ill-considered colours makes it hard for the eye to navigate. The buttons look home-made. The pictures are irregular and show packages - not food. In short, it seem like they don't really care.

It feels like Interflora churn out bouquets. The main navigation is unnecessarily bulky. The flowers look plastic-y - and the heavy border round them doesn't help. The title above the flowers has been saved at low resolution (see the degraded, mottled purple background to 'Timeless Traditional Bouquets') creating a tired, even wilted, feeling.

We couldn't find an excellent ecommerce site for flowers. But we found a site that shows how attention to detail stimulates desire. They use a dreamy photo of a velvety pink flower. Carefully applying that colour to the rest of the site shows respect and love for their product. The white space make you calm and unrushed - the way you want to feel when considering romance.

(Another interesting example is Paul Thomas). He looks like the florist you'd use if the Queen was coming for tea.)

Geek at heart I'll always be slightly confounded about design. Luckily Noam knows what looks good - and how to make it. That's important because, in business, as Seth Godin says, 'it is hard to overestimate how much these things matter.'

I was at In The City Interactive yesterday. Best quotes:

'It is obvious that the customer is increasingly in control... our big challenge is working out how to include readers in the dialogue.' - hugely impressive Nigel Pocklington, Global Director of Online Publishing, FT.

'Blogging hasn't just moved the needle for us, it has moved the whole damned compass.' - Jonathan Schwartz, CEO, Sun quoted by Alan Moore, CEO, SMLXL and author of Communities Dominate Brands.

'Moral rights are always a problem.' - Alexander Ross, Partner, Wiggin & Co (probably has a less sinister legal meaning than how the audience understood it)

Signs combine images, text and type. Just like websites, but less disposable.

An organisation wouldn't communicate any of these verbal or visual messages today. The past (or Lambeth?) is a different country.

Evelina Mansions (map)

House on John Ruskin road
(map)

Belgrave Hospital for Children - now flats
(map)

Lambeth College - now derelict
(map)

I felt embarrassed reading Knock Knock, Seth Godin's new book. It says everything we've been striving for with Mint Digital but puts it a whole load better.

Two quotes I'll steal for pitch meetings

'Like it or not your website has a tone of voice.'

The Mozilla vs BlogBridge example demonstrates this perfectly. BlogBridge doesn't look like like an successful open source project, it looks like a small business-to-business website.

'All the cues that people rely on are muted online. There is no touch or smell or location. There is very little sound. So we obsess about subtle cues of typeface or colour or photography. It is hard to overestimate how much these things matter.'

I hope this is true, we sure spend enough time obsessing about these things. It's strange, because many of the examples in the book are ugly. (I wonder if this is not chance. Direct marketing is the ugliest form of advertising and the mentality Seth is outlining is heavily direct marketing influenced).

But if I am going to pick bones:

Bone 1: The value of choices Seth says choices are bad, but is it that simple? Choices are empowering. Take them away and users feel out-of-control. Tesco sells good, better, best. Three choices makes the customer feel like she is buying. Not being sold to.

Bone 2: Inverted pyramid structure Seth suggests that the 'inverted pyramid' comes from the engineering mentality of early site designers. I'm not sure it does.

If you meet a prospective client at a networking event, you don't force him to hear about your unique approach then your clients then your history. You let him choose the flow of the conversation. The 'inverted pyramid' is a structure that lets user choose their own path.

Having said that, we are starting on two websites that are going to be much more path-based. (Interestingly both sites are for new businesses. I think we've been able to help them simplify their proposition - by considering how to sell it online.)

Mint's experience We've been advocating small, focused sites, closely tied to AdWords campaigns - the sort of sites Knock Knock advocates. Often, they just don't seem to meet the clients' needs.

Maybe it comes down to the type of client. AdWords isn't half as effective for a capital allowance consultancy or a qualitive research specialist as it is for an online turf seller (our biggest AdWords' success to date). And if you are not using AdWords, you've got much less idea of what your browsers want - so maybe it makes sense to lay out the information on an 'inverted pyramid' platter.

The Click #011

I was wondering: are there online selling techniques that only the large web design firms have mastered?

To help find out, I recruited 4 volunteers, each in an executive-y job, and gave them this brief:

"You work in marketing at a FTSE 100 firm. Your boss wants you to have an initial meeting with a web design firm. Look at the websites of the following 4 big firms... Decide who to call."

Contrasting reactions

Comments on the ‘about us’ section of Hyperlink Interactive included:

"I'd want to do business with these people. I could trust them."

"These guys know nothing, nothing about branding. They look like they work out of unit 9 of an industrial estate. Geeks and nerds - I would not use them."

"These people look like a bunch of [expletive deleted]s."

On the other 3 sites, evaluations also diverged.

The minimal aesthetic of AKQA turned on two users. But the other two were frightened away - 'Too trendy' they shuddered.

Oyster won plaudits from some for getting straight to the point with case studies. But a couple of users were confused. They thought the case study of Orange's new website was actually a description of a joint service the two firms offered.

Personally, I was most impressed by Agency.com. It delivered a clear message. The inside pages combine text and animation persuasively and with technical excellence. However, not one tester put it top.

Lesson learnt

1. None of the big boys has an all-powerful selling secret.

2. Some things drain goodwill. For example, every single tester felt aggrieved by a link on AKQA's front page entitled 'Ideas - Volume One' that led straight to a 'Buy Now' cul-de-sac.

3. You can't please everyone all the time. Fact-loving Economist readers won't be wowed by the same pages as style-loving iD readers. First decide who you want to impress. Then work out how to impress them.

4. One thing united the testers. They wanted to see three things: people, clients and case studies. All four sites included such sections but sometimes they were hidden in a neglected corner.

If my abortive quest shows one thing, it is the value of testing. Web users' reactions are incredibly diverse. Testing early helps you find common ground - and knowing where it is gives you a better chance of hitting it.

Thanks to everyone who made our party special! Thanks for putting up with our play (last one ever, I promise).

The Click #010

3 months ago, I received this email:

Hello, I am a new start landscape supplies company. I require an e-commerce site based around a product catalogue. Do you have any examples of this type of work that you have done? Regards Angus PS I AM IN A HURRY TO GET SOMETHING STARTED

I phoned back and got chatting to a hyper-enthusiastic Dundee man. Angus told me his budget: £5000.

Mint came back with a proposal, utilising off-the-peg ecommerce software. Price: £1500.

A quick, cheap website The Turfandstuff.com site has rough edges. The visual design is rudimentary. The text doesn't give you any feel for Angus, or his company. The checkout is clumsy. Etc, etc. I had to sedate Noam, Mint's designer, before he'd let us launch.

Turf isn't your typical ecommerce product. It is bulky. It perishes. It's a product people might want to inspect before buying. Would turf customers respond to online marketing? Would there be other unforeseen problems?

£3500 in the bank In the 6 weeks since we launched, we've discovered that people will buy Angus's turf online, even if they live far from Dundee. Plus, we've discovered that AdWords is a cost effective way for him to advertise.

This means it makes sense for Angus to distribute nationally - something that had been a longer term plan. We are still figuring out whether it is better to present the business as a turf specialist or as a landscape supplies company.

But Angus has now had contact with over 100 customers nationwide, either through personally delivering the orders, or arranging them. He can look at his web stats. We're in a much better position to consider those sorts of decisions.

Tomorrow I'm writing the website plan - stage 2. And, with all we've learnt, we are in a great position to drive things forward.

----- ENDNOTES

When quick and dirty doesn't work Before you rush off and ask your website designer to slash 70% off the budget, it is worth noting that quick, cheap versions aren't always appropriate.

If your site primarily acts to promote your company, then the site must demonstrate the consideration and attention that you give your customers. This polish takes time and money. (If you want to try something cheap, consider a fantastic one page site)

If your site needs to plug into complex back-end systems, then this will normally involve expensive systems integration work.

Why prototyping is becoming more feasible Quick prototyping was part of the dot-com hype. It died when people got burnt.

What's changed? The rise and rise of cheap or free MySQL/PHP web apps like Wordpress, Mambo, PHP-Nuke and JShop (used for Turfandstuff.com). Apps that let you quickly build rough solutions for many needs.

In pitch meetings this week, I've twice used Skype and Salesforce as examples of great websites. Neither explains their technology on their home page. Both focus on (1) benefits of their product (2) ease of use and (3) user numbers.

I'd always thought these sites highlight user numbers to look busy. As the chippie yelling "keep the queue" knew, if you look busy, people want it.

Talking about Gmail's ever increasing storage, Seth Godin points out another reason. Things that change are more interesting than those that don't.

When did this happen?

The most fabulous of all web applications, Google Maps, has launched for the UK.

Also launched is Google Local. Local search is the hot new thing in search. Disappointingly, in the UK version you have to register via rapacious Yell.

The Click #009

The web is all about words. Design may look nice but it is effective copy that enables you to achieve your goals. (Noam, Mint's creative director, might disagree, but...)

Lots of people who'd never have written for the public 10 years ago now contribute to websites. If you find yourself in such a position, here are seven tips:

1. Make it scannable People often don't read web pages, they scan them. Sub-headings, bolded text and numbered lists work well. On the front page have lots of small bits of copy with links to the full articles.

2. Don't boast Big claims can make readers doubt what you are saying. Often good is good enough - you don't try to hire the world's best babysitter or accountant - and it's much more believable.

3. Be human Firms don't do business with firms. People do business with people. Demonstrate you are human with jokes, stories and by admitting weaknesses. (For big firms this is a tricky job best left to professionals. For small firms, it means just be yourself.)

4. Omit needless words Reading on the web is slow (25% slower) and scrolling is a hassle, so this rule is even more important than it is in print.

The big problem is knowing which words are needless. Two bits of advice have helped me. First (from Steve Krug) is write a draft, wait a week and edit it to a quarter the original length. It's a harsh discipline but it works. Second (from Richard Gabriel) is read poetry. Well... I struggled. I've learnt more from studying tightly written factual books. Two I'd recommend are The War Against Cliche and The Language Instinct.

5. Imagine you are in a pub The web is an intimate medium. Speak to each reader individually, in the second person singular. Imagine how you'd explain your point over a pint. You'll naturally make it interesting. You'll avoid the airy generalisations that are the bane of web writing.

At Mint, twice we've made big improvements to a client's front page by replacing the happy talk with an edited version of what they'd told us in the first 5 minutes we met them.

6. Write great headlines John Caples, a copywriting legend, devoted more than 50% of his time on a project to perfecting the headline. Most readers read the headline and nothing else - so make sure it communicates something valuable.

A cracking example is this classic from David Ogilvy: "At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock".

7. Use testimonials Getting to be believed is a huge problem. Testimonials are often the solution. Also, they are likely to be read - they are tasty bite-sized morsels.

My favourite testimonial of all time is for VOIP application Skype. "I knew it was over when I downloaded Skype," from Michael Powell, chairman of Federal Communications Commission. If you can get the head of the trade body that you're competing against to say something like that, you don't need any advice from me.

In conclusion There aren't any shortcuts. More than anything, effective writing takes practice.

If you've got a tip you've found useful, we'd love to hear it. Email: andy@mintdigital.com