Key elements to successful design
 

does your designer know them? Does your designer know how to employ them? Do YOU know them, so that you know what to look for?

I'm not talking about fancy effects and filters in PS.... those are tactics. I'm talking about strategy. Do you know what strategy and tactics are, and the difference between them?

Used to be the term "professional" actually meant something. Now it seems like it's been reduced to a catch phrase for every hack kid out there with PS v.Kazaa. But very few actually know anything remotely resembling professional production.

it saddens me. No one has any damn pride in the work anymore.


anyway... just some random thoughts... I'm going nowhere with this. Feel free to contribute or ignore.

All I know is this - A site does not have to be fancy to convert. It also helps if you have a clue as to what you are selling and who you are selling to.

As long as the product attracts and sells... that's what it's about, right?


Now, does it have to have to be professional in order to sell?

yeah... correct on both accounts.

no...

and no.

why is that?


You just nodded to tneck's remark that a design doesn't have to be fancy. I mean the same thing. It doesn't have to have bells and whistles in order to attract the target and sell.

you oversimplified both of your questions. This is partly what I'm talking about... you use the word "professional" to mean "fancy".... that is not at all what "professional" means. This is the dumbing down of a good term. You've reduced it to some derogatory catch phrase.

I don't know much about paysite designs as I haven't spent a whole lot of time doing them...but as far as gallery designs one of the most important things I've tried to incorporate is flow.

I try to make sure that the surfers eyes follow the entire page working it from left to right.

I try to make sure that I keep them on that page for as long as possible clicking..how? By cropping the thumbs..using a bit of seduction...the longer they stay on a page the more often their eyes see the ad the better chance of them clicking through.

I do my best to make sure that the next outgoing link is always visible above the bottom of the browser...if not I try to make sure that there's something that teases them to scroll down to see what else is there.

Just a few basic things I do...don't know if that means I understand what the key elements of design are or not...oh well just my 2 pesos ;)

it must look smooooth

Interesting.

This does raise possibilities.

What if Behavioral modeling and buying psychological clinical statistics were applied to website design (not just paysites) perhaps this would EXPLODE conversion rates.

There's statistical tools and software available. The only problem is design is very manually intensive. It does raise possibilities.....

all good and well, but those are specifics... tactics.

Key elements come before tactics. In the world of production, you start with a plan... a concept... a blueprint.... a strategy. And there are very base level key elements that go into every piece. Inherent and part of the foundation of your strategy. They may fluctuate slightly depending on the end goal, but not much.

And none of this has anything to do with being "fancy" or not. Fancy only comes into play with your tactics. This is where alot of people get confused.

ahh fuck it. I'm only going to end up disappointed with the outcome of this.

I'm abandoning my thread.

Good thread, AMP.

This does illustrate the fact that Successful design online is STILL more of an art than a science. Even with our ability to count hits, project hits, create user behavioral profiles, most sites seem unwilling or unable to take the next step. Maybe it's cost. Maybe it's just habit. But, maybe, with the Internet enabling such venture, we may be headed to reduce much (not all) of design to a science of hit forecasting/site assessment and dynamically reconfiguring campaigns to match the behavior of the surfer.

Broadvision had a hamfisted version of this.

Digital Impact tried to do this with email.

I think there's something here.... its the Holy Grail. Will take a lot of mockups and studies... but with enough cheap human labor along with precision tracking, I think this can be blown wide open!

:2 cents:

This is the best thread you've started in months. I think most people just don't get it - you need to put some heart into your sites. My 10 minute sites don't sell for shit, my profesionally made sites don't sell for shit but the ones that I did myself and really, really like to work on kick ass.

You can do everything perfect and never make a dime for the simple reason that you don't care about what you are doing and the surfers pick up on that. There are exceptions on either side of this discussion of course, I'm just speaking in general terms.

Well Amp, to be honest I like your designs a lot. But when I look at some of them I think the surfer will be overwhelmed a bit and don't know where to look and click. How do you handle this, like with the party sites you made. They look great but very very busy and lots of eyecandy. Do you just hope the surfer will click on the join?

Let me into the head of Amp lol :winkwink:

Well after reading your initial post I honestly don't see what you're getting at.

you say to put text in a certain spot or a pic in a certain spot are just "tactics," when I see it as part of the strategy.

A tactic in my opinion would be flashing text..but where you place that flashing text is strategy...not a tactic.

And let me restate what I have stated before...I do not consider myself a "designer."

I'm a gallery maker...that's it. I try to be the best gallery maker I can be...I aspire to be a "designer," but have a lot to learn and I know that.

alright....

I wanna say I am not trying to come off as condescending, and I fear that is how it's gonna be taken. That said...


your strategy is your overall plan. In a nutshell. Your tactics are the techniques you use to execute that plan.

Breaking it down, too many people focus only on the tactics, and forge ahead with no strategy. Relying on the tactics to carry them through to some sort of miraculous success. It doesn't work. And if it does, on rare occasion, it's almost always very short term.

Now... your strategy. What is it? What are you trying to do? "I wanna make buttloads of green!" is not a strategy.

to be continued...

All you need to do is intriuge your visitor..

Don't correct my spelling, it's early

wrong.

not entirely wrong, but I would hardly say that's ALL you need to do.

:thumbsup

My strategy then is to try to convince the surfer that I have the best site in my niche in the world.

back to your strategy... (and this applies to more than just porn sites, but that's another discussion)

Your strategy is multi-leveled.

Level 1: You need to define what your base goal is. This takes thinking and decisions on your part. Set your goal. Is your goal to retain loyal customers for as long as possible? Is your goal to suck 'em in en masse and be done with them? There are many different avenues to go... the first decision is which one. (for a particular job of course... one can have many different strategies in place simultaneously as well)

Level 2: what type of environment are you trying to create? A familiar, secure, personal one? A warehouse? A revolving door? Subdued, private, & one on one or loud, public, & busy? Will it be a stand alone or supporting part of a network (family)?

which brings you to Level 3: (notice you're gradually getting more detailed as you go. Start with nothing, and build on the base)
Depending on the choices you've made so far, you need to decide if (and how) it needs to be branded. Branding (or not branding) is a key element. And it needs to be very well thought out. It can make or break you. If you chose stand alone, branding can be done certain ways. If you chose network element, branding takes a different approach. However you go, it needs to be a top concern.


to be continued...

this is all very condensed of course... it's alot of damn typing.


a little more about branding...
you may or may not need it. And anywhere in between. An example would be if you choose a quick buck/revolving door type plan, with a domain like www.she'sgothugefreakytitsandilovetoslidemycockbetweenthe m.com obviously your branding is going to be minimal if any. If you got something like Playboy or Hustler, it will be heavily branded. You want people to remember it and associate it with all the elements of your marketing approach. Branding is part of your strategy and affects your tactics.

It's kind of hard to think of everything in bits and pieces.... it needs to really be envisioned as a whole. Everything in some way impacts on the other.

the key is not just knowing the elements it's balancing them.

most, if not all the designers that could do this properly are long gone.

none of the new breed of low rent jock riders even come close.

most of the brilliant designers graphically speaking, whether it's one guy or 20 monkeys locked in a room whipping out a thousand variations of the same tour, couldn't sell water in the desert. Thus, they churn out pretty sites that convert for shit.

then there's the salesman who thinks he's also a designer, with fancy spreadsheets, guarantees, and statistics, which are all quite humerous, who churn out some of the most hideous designs you'll ever lay eyes on, and still manage to convert like shit.

learn the keys, balance them, make your money quickly, cause in no time at all, someone is going to take your ideas, strip them down and sell the parts, and do it for half what you do.

all good points, even for not-designers.

these are things to think about when you're building your site, but hiring out the creative work. if you do bring your own vision to the designer, this stuff needs to be thought out. especially when you're looking to network and tie things together in one big happy family.

a designer needs to bring in their own experience, skills, strategies and style and tie it in with the client's vision.

but a lot of that has to do with the communication between the designer and client in the initial stages of a project (well, all stages, but it really helps if it's set clearly in the beginning).

Next you start getting into deeper specifics.... name selection, options for expansion (or not), etc. And these things all hinge on the choices you've already made. The idea is to build your strategy into a well refined plan before you ever crack open the PS. You gotta know what you're doing before you do it.

Without naming names, I know a certain "designer" that's no longer around that employed the approach of "opening up Photoshop, throwing a bunch of shit out there, and see what sticks" method. I don't know if he was serious... odds are he was.... but it sounds pretty scary to me.

These things are your key elements (and some others I've glossed over). How can anyone build a site without having a solid plan of attack? Mystifies me daily.

Once you got your plan, you can go to work building. Your plan may change during development, but at least you always have blueprints with which to work from. The rest is just putting it into action. The tactics. And that's more detailed than I have time to get into tonight.

http://smiley.onegreatguy.net/waleed.gif

and obviously for designers for hire, alot of these choices are made for you already...

sometimes the client has no vision, no direction, and no input to offer whatsoever, saying things like "I need a pimp ass design for this dope ass idea", and the idea turns out to be so lame that you'd just assume bash yourself in the head with a brick.

undoubtedly the most important part of anything, definitely not porn specific. doesn't matter if it's a gfy smiley or a porn site, knowing what you're building is step 1.

pretty amazing how many build whole sites with no plan though. I see it here all the time. And they are always wondering why they aren't making any money.

this is completely true. the designer needs to be able to do these things as well. this is where experience with traffic, designs, etc comes into play.

it's a lot more difficult tho when you don't know how the site is going to be marketed, who it's going to be marketed to, etc, and i do think the client needs to think about these types of things.

and this brings me back to my original post....

too many people have the impression that you can just slap together a bunch of "fancy" graphics, put it on the Net, and they will come. And it's being dubbed "professional" design. Makes me sick to see the word bastardized like that. Too many scam artists and teenagers running around proclaiming to be "professional" has destoyed the integrity of the word.

The vast majority of them haven't got the slightest damn idea what goes into successful production.

then again, overthinking things can basically kill a designers career.

I like eye candy , it shows me someone has time and money :)

When i was on 14.4 it was a piss off :) :)

that's quite unfotunate. there's several things that i think need to be decided before a design begins, wether a client or designer decides these things.

for myself, my #1 tool that i use is not photoshop. it's legal pads, and i go through them like crazy. everything goes there first, no questions asked, with the exception of using my past work for visual reference.

everything from layouts to notes to bookmarks, that's where they're at.

same here.... I have one of those jumbo size post it pads. I scribble everything on there.

But I should say that most of the strategic decisions are made by the program/site owner, not the designer in most cases unless he is also the owner. When the client has no clue, that's when trouble starts.

Note to self * get some jumbo note pads.

I always run out , i resort to having to remember things , my head is so full off passwords and number combo's everytime i create a new one , one of them gets pushed back out. :(