Jul
26th

OneUpWeb : Grow Your Own Online Presence

Posted by yoffy on July 26, 2010 at 8:28 am

Having recently moved from the crowded streets of Los Angeles to Northern Michigan, I can now breathe easier. There is no smog here, and I pass ample amounts of farmland and orchards on my drive to work. It’s so inspiring to be close to the food that ends up on our table, both my wife and I started our own garden. When we first arrived to town, we plowed out a nice area of our property. And, even though we had never had a garden before, we were excited about growing our own food.

We proudly stepped back from our plowed land to realize that we had not created a garden at all—it was more like a small farm. We probably should have had the sense to make a garden that was smaller and more manageable, but the excitement of growing our own food got the best of us and we are now taking care of a 15′ x 60′ garden. We’ll have a nice harvest at the end of the summer, and we’re looking forward to being self sufficient with our produce for a short while.

I imagine someday having a larger farm so we can be more self sufficient with our food. And then there are the dreams of having a real farm and not relying on other people at all for our food source. I would then know that the food sustaining me is organic, free range, hormone-free and pesticide-free. I would have total control of the results and know what I am putting on the plate in front of me.

I sometimes wonder if being self sufficient is a common dream. It seems to me like it’s an evolutionary trait inherent in our blood. You want to walk on your own as a baby. You want to drive to freedom in high school. You want a job after college and to cut the financial ties with your parents. You may want to work for yourself after school and start your own business. What happens after that? Your business grows and grows and your self sufficiency dwindles because it’s not easy to run a business.

There are so many parts and pieces to manage that you start to rely on other people with specific expertise that can do it better and faster than you. You probably have employees to do the daily work, an accountant, an attorney, a printing company, a PR firm and a marketing agency. You’ll probably never want to take on these jobs yourself, especially the attorney job. And you’re probably spending a large portion of your budget on marketing, and most likely, having other people market for you.

What if I told you that you could be self sufficient with part of your marketing efforts? More specifically, what if I told you that you could run and manage your own website? Here at Oneupweb, our web design service does more than create a pretty site for your consumers. By utilizing and customizing content management systems, we make it easy for you to update your business’s website, track your leads, manage your inventory and analyze your numbers. We make it intuitive and painless to run your own self sufficient online presence.

If you’re dreaming of breaking free from your marketing agency running your website, contact us and we’ll get you on your way.

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If you’ve been hanging out at StraightUpSearch lately, then you’ve probably noticed a trending topic with this week’s blog posts.

Revolutionizing Website Design: The New Rules of Usability is Oneupweb’s latest must-have study for anyone running a website. So we’re doing our part to share a smattering of the study’s vast findings with you, our receptive readers.

Today’s topic: Higher Education

College and university websites need to achieve a careful balance. First of all, the website must appeal to the university’s commercial interests, which are primarily the parents helping their high schoolers with researching college choices. In addition to parents, universities must also target prospective students and scholars.

But of equal importance, a university website should serve the non-commercial information needs of its current students and faculty. Information like the complexities of curriculum choices and the conundrums of daily events and procedures that exist within a busy college campus.

Therefore, design and usability are considered the key credentials of effective higher education site design.

university study screenshot

In our study we selected three business schools offering full-time MBA programs:

  1. McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University
  2. Daniels College of Business at University of Denver
  3. Krannert School of Management at Purdue University

Each school’s website was graded on four main disciplines:

  1. Appearance
  2. Ease of Finding Information
  3. Functions & Features
  4. Overall Usability

And keep in mind, the internet-influenced minds of the Oneupweb staff are not the ones picking apart these fine university websites. We analyzed and digested data from a 2008 study conducted for the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC). Participants in this study included university students and staff, in addition to working professionals. Plus, we recruited and brought in our own guinea pigs for a Oneupweb eye tracking study.

So did these pacesetters of higher business education make the grade? There’s no cheating here—you have to read the study to acquire that slice of knowledge.

And if you haven’t already, check out these other blog posts about our Revolutionizing Website Design study:

You won’t get a credit hour for reading our blog posts, but you will get credit for sharing this information with your peers.

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Jul
1st

Oneupweb : A B2B Business Plan for Web Design

Posted by Kathryn on July 1, 2010 at 8:33 am

Is your company’s website doing its job? Most professionals are aware of the tangible value a website provides for netting prospects, but do they know how to develop a site capable of this? A business’s website is an information hub for potential leads and current clients. They go to your site to learn about your industry and the services you provide—they expect to find the answers easily and quickly on your company’s website. But when it comes to maximizing the tangible value of a website for users, many businesses, as usability expert Jakob Nielsen puts it, “emphasize internally focused design [and] fail to answer customers’ main questions or concerns.”

Oneupweb’s new study, Revolutionizing Website Design: The New Rules of Usability, put B2B websites to the test. The study compared principles of design with user behavior. Some simple differences made all the difference in the amount of time it took users to complete tasks.

Time is precious and people don’t like to think they are wasting time looking for something on your website. And that held true for the websites tested—the site that took the most time, averaging an extra sixty seconds more, received the lowest user rating. How well would your company’s website stand up to the test?

Appearances matter in the business world. And so does performance. Wondering how well your website functions? The report also provides an easy method for assessing website usability, and it’s not just for B2B. Revolutionizing Website Design: The New Rules of Usability also focuses on web design for  e-Commerce, Higher Education, and Travel & Hospitality. Check out the study to see if you’re website is making the grade.

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Jun
30th

Oneupweb: Users’ Expectations for Travel & Hospitality Websites

Posted by Jeremiah on June 30, 2010 at 9:33 am

When beginning the pre-production of any website, one of the key steps that needs to be done before any design or development takes place is addressing what the users’ expectations will be when using a site. One market in which this is truly important is the Travel & Hospitality industry.

Over 40% of all leisure travel bookings take place online, which makes it essential to deliver a solid user experience for a Travel & Hospitality website. Creating a user-friendly website will drive success for a hotel, resort or travel destination in today’s highly competitive travel market.

When creating a Travel & Hospitality website, you should avoid dwelling on establishing an “online presence” for the business, but rather focus on the principle of driving a substantial portion of revenue. A site can look great, but is it going to properly function and allow users to easily navigate, and most importantly, make purchases?

With that in mind, I’d like to take the opportunity to review three key expectations users have when interacting with a website in this market:

1. Leisure is Luxury - Your website’s flow and overall user experience delivers an almost subconscious message about the kind of experience your customer can expect. Information should be easily available and effortless to find. People vacation to relax and unwind, and a website that is frustrating to interact with will not appeal to someone who wants to “just get away”.

2. Picture This - When trying to engage a customer, the visual aspect is a key component of converting a potential customer to a paying guest. Moving imagery of the destination as well as an elegant and cleanly laid out user interface is a must. Don’t forget to provide clearly understood and accessible information regarding rates and amenities, which communicates a feel of “accessibility”—allowing your customers to feel comfortable with their experience.

3. 1, 2, 3… Book - Once a potential customer is ready to make the jump to being a paying guest, the transition needs to have few steps and be as seamless as possible. Having too many “action paths” throughout your site prevents you from getting the single opportunity to get that conversion of turning a visitor into a paying customer. Also, as in the e-Commerce world, completing transactions safely and securely will keep your customers’ minds at ease and potentially drive word-of-mouth promotion about your own site.

Please note that you can use these techniques for your own website (even if it isn’t related to the Travel & Hospitality industry) or for a client’s website as well.

For more information about web design for the Travel & Hospitality, Business-to-Business, Higher Education and e-Commerce industries,  check out our new study, Revolutionizing Website Design: The New Rules of Usability. This blog post only scratches the surface of the wealth of information contained within our report, so download your copy today!

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Jun
29th

Oneupweb: 3 Guides to a Great e-Commerce Website

Posted by Quillen on June 29, 2010 at 8:37 am

Designing a user-friendly e-Commerce site can be a real headache because of all the design and functionality angles you have to achieve. Not only do all of your products need to be on display, but the website needs to act as an inventory management system, and most importantly, attract sales! Not to mention you have to accomplish all of this within the various restrictions and limitations of the internet.

You have to design an e-Commerce site with consumer behavior in mind. Here’s exactly what the consumer expects:

  1. Familiarity breeds trust. A website that looks like an e-Commerce site is going to be  immediately perceived as trustworthy when it comes time to pull out the credit card. When customers feel accustomed with a site, the more comfortable they are with making purchases.
  2. Obvious is good. The homepage is like a store’s window display, minus the mannequins. Let visitors clearly see what you have to offer upfront. Don’t overwhelm customers with making them click through a bunch of pages just to view products. In the same time it takes  a consumer to click through to see  your product, they could (and would) have easily clicked over to a competitor’s site if yours isn’t user-friendly. Consumers have no problem seeking a product elsewhere if they are frustrated with a site that doesn’t easily show detailed information. It’s important to have price and product specs that are accessible within a single click.
  3. Bottom-line: Functionality. Keep it simple—that goes for both back-end management as well as front-end usability. In other words, avoid feature creep. Extra functions, like search features and online customer service (live chat) are only a competitive advantage if they deliver quality results to the consumer 100 percent of the time. Otherwise, broken applications, form failures or irrelevant search results (basically tricks that don’t work), will maim the site’s credibility and ultimately send the consumer packing.

For more information about e-Commerce web design, check out our new study, Revolutionizing Website Design: The New Rules of Usability.  Yes, we tackle website design for e-Commerce in this report, but we also take on  B2B, Travel & Hospitality and Higher Education. Our web developers and graphic designers know what it takes to create websites that are both aesthetically pleasing and functional! Don’t delay… contact us today.

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