Media and Marketing | Toolulu » design

The User Experience On Your Website

deb — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 14:58:03 +0000

A common question when we entertain at our house is “where is your bathroom?”

Because everyone needs to use the bathroom at some point, right?!

And even though it’s just straight down the hall, I find myself pointing in the right direction to make sure they find it okay. Because that’s our job as a host- to make sure our guests feel as comfortable as possible.

So is that how people feel when they visit your site?

Do they feel like they can find what they need when they need it? In other words, are you being a good host in your online home?

Here are a few common attention areas we see when help clients analyze their website usability:

– Are the layout and navigation elements in the same place on every page?

- Is the site’s organization and functionality straight-forward?

- Is the site design consistent with other branding (i.e. collateral materials, etc)

- Is your main message “above the fold”?

- Does the site appear the same in major web browsers? How about on a PC and Mac?

- If you have a product available for purchase is it easy to purchase the item and checkout?

And we wouldn’t want you to me an automatic failure as a host in your online home.

Here are a few that scream fail from the get-go:

– Music automatically playing. Give users the option to turn it on.

- Splash pages.

- Anything that flies.

- “Coming Soon” – don’t put that page live until it’s ready.

- Too much navigation

So what are you doing on your website to be a good host to your visitors?

Web Design for Usability

christy — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 16:02:56 +0000

You may have notice we’ve been moving things around our site. When we started Toolulu last year, we had no idea what kind of response we would receive and our objectives were broad. We want to continue to maintain our web presence through blogging and other social media (that is what we do, after all) but we know that the majority of our clients don’t yet interact online in the same way that we do. The blog is now a secondary component of our site yet will continue to be updated regularly. Our web presence is now focused on the “what” of our business and less on the “why”.

In the process of retooling our site, there were some basic things that we kept in mind that I thought I’d share.

Design and Branding

Keep the overall look and feel consistent.

Keep the text broken up for easy scanning.

Important information should be above the fold.

Use a readable font size.

Keep the content obvious.

The content should be grouped in logical (and consistent) groups.

Have we succeeded? We’ve still got some graphical and organizational work to do on the site but this should give you a good feel for what we’re going for. What would you add to this list?

Professional Wordpress Theme

dummy — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 07:38:47 +0000

This is from the Blog and it’s a test post. You can edit or delete it, then start blogging!

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