I officially have 3 weeks left at Beacon Technologies. I have learned so much in a short amount of time here at Beacon. I am learning the processes of creating a website. Last week, I finished the requirements document and wireframe of the website. The requirements document is a standard document created by the company to outline the basics of any website. The wireframe is a basic PowerPoint design of the website. It is important to complete both these documents in creating a website. The wireframe gives a bare bone design of the website so the designers have a direction to go when creating the website. I basically used Paint to create different sections of the website and put them into a PowerPoint. Once again, my photoshop skills are not great but the wireframe still created a basic design and feel to the website even if you can see the box lines of where I copied and pasted various items!

I never truly realized how much planning goes into creating just a basic website, and for the most part, this website is basic. It is always important to plan ahead of any event. We have not even started working on the website, but I have already put a lot of time and effort into getting this website up and running. I am looking forward to putting this website together in the near future. We still need to see how Google+ Hangouts will be utilized with the website. There is still a lot to do for the website before I leave this summer internship. I just hope we are able to get everything done before I leave and have a pilot run of the website and event.

The next step for the project is designing the website. I will not have much to do with the design of the website but I can start on the content of the website. The content will include the About Beacon section, Partners sections, Requirements section, and much more. I can utilize my writing skills for this part of the project. Another direction I will take next week is coming up with a slogan for the website. I am thinking about combining the café feel of the website/idea with the technology side of the website/idea. Mostly, I will try to brainstorm as many ideas for the slogan until I get the slogan for the website.

I only have 4 weeks left for my internship at Beacon Technologies. I am still learning a lot about the process of creating a website. We have decided on a template for the Beacon NetCafe. Richard and I are going to start pushing this website through and have the pilot run before the end of my internship. I look forward to completing this project in the near future.

When designing a website, it is important to create a sitemap. I have already learned this fact. You shouldn’t pick or design the website before creating a sitemap. This would be counter-intuitive. Never use a website to create your sitemap. After creating the sitemap and better understanding the needs of the website, we were able to find a template much more effectively. Now that we have the sitemap and the template, our next step is to create a wireframe for the website. A website wireframe is a framework of the website design. I am learning more and more about the process of designing a website. So far, I have been using Paint to complete the wireframe for the Beacon NetCafe website. Using my master Photoshop skills that I don’t really have, I have been copying and pasting images and words to a screenshot of the template. Although anybody can see the boxes from copying and pasting on my wireframe, it will get the job done. I also enjoy messing around with pictures on Paint so this part of the project is turning out to be pretty fun. I will also start to work on a requirement document next week to plan out everything needed for the website. After about 6 weeks of researching and planning, I am actually starting to see how this website is going to turn out. So far, it has been exciting and I can’t wait to have a demo website up and running in the near future. The process has had its ups and downs but I am confident that this website and event will turn out to be great for Beacon Technologies.

I have completed my third week of my internship at Beacon Technologies. So far everything is going great. The Beacon NetCafe is coming along nicely, and I have started to research companies for my competitive analysis. I never realized how many web development companies there are out in the world. Many of these companies only have around 5 employees so it is a little difficult to find companies which align with Beacon Technologies, but I better understand the process of analyzing your competitors. It is more than use picking random companies in the area which do the same things. Of about 50 regional and local companies I have researched, I have found only 2 which align with Beacon Technologies. Most of the companies are just too small compared to Beacon Technologies. The next step for the Beacon NetCafe is website design and functionality. We have decided to use Google+ Hangout with Twitter to make the event interactive for everybody. I’m really interested in playing around with these tools in the upcoming weeks. I know very little about Twitter and don’t have a Twitter account, but like Google+ Hangout which I had little to no knowledge of, I think I will learn a lot about the functions of Twitter and how to effectively use it for a business.

Next week, I will be working on the technical aspects of the Beacon NetCafe. I researched sitemaps and created a rough draft for the Beacon NetCafe website. I never realized the work needed to create a website. It is important to create a layout for the entire website. A website, even a small one, is a web of various links and destinations. The design of the website is also very important. If you click on this where does it take you? Is there a better way to layout the website? This all goes into how the website will function effectively for users. The little things make the biggest differences for a website. When designing the website for Beacon NetCafe, it will be vital to think of little things that might affect the website. I look forward to working with the tech people to come up with ideas for the website. The design of a website is important but the function of a website is just as important. Hopefully, creating Google+ Hangout and Twitter feeds on the website will meet our needs for the Beacon NetCafe event. It is vital for a website to be interactive and this event will try to bridge the gap between partners, clients, and Beacon Technologies by being interactive.

So my first week at Beacon Technologies is coming to a close, and I have not been scared off yet! Everyone is very nice and welcoming at this company. I look forward to working with the Beacon team for the next 9 weeks. So far I have been mostly planning for the implementation of Beacon NetCafe and I have been stuck in my cubicle getting prepared for that, but next week will be the week where the fun starts for me. I will start working with others to get the Beacon NetCafe up and running for the company. I am excited and a little nervous. I have never done anything like this before, but I am more than willing to learn the ropes. I did get to sit in a meeting about web design and development my first week.

A client is getting about 70 visitors a day but absolutely no sales at all. What is the problem? Could it be the product? Could it be the website design? Could it be both? The Beacon team brainstormed to come up with ideas to improve sales. Ultimately, the product and the target customers were lacking but one immediate change that the company could utilize was changing the website. There were various problems with the website. The returns and shipping policy was at the top of the page. Is the company trying to say they expect returns of their products? This should not have been on the top of the page. The Terms and Conditions were also at the top of the page when it would have sufficed to be at the bottom. What a waste of space! The products weren’t even on the page. It was confusing what the website was even selling. The team recommended having a 5 product rotating link in the top middle of the page. The product links would also link straight to the cart to increase the chances of actually making a sale. Branding was also an issue for the company. The company was trying to take a serious life event and make it cheerful and upbeat but the website did not display this effectively. The website could also have funny links or products to at least liven the atmosphere and make a sale. A color change is a must for the website. The top image could also be changed to make the website for appealing to the visitors.

Either way, I learn A LOT on web design and branding of a website. It is the little things about web design and branding that can make a HUGE difference. A company can have the greatest product in the world but not sell one if the website is in bad shape. I am confident that if these changes are made to the website then the chances of making a sale will increase significantly. It seems like common sense when people bring up these things but could easily be looked over by anyone. There were some things at the meeting I didn’t even think about. I was very impressed at the meeting. There are extremely intelligent people working for Beacon Technologies, and I want to learn everything I can from these people during my 10 weeks here!

We have released a redesigned WordPress AND AspDotNetStorefront site in one at www.sternrecovery.com. The “base” public site is administered in WordPress, but when the visitor clicks on “Make a Payment”, they are transferred to a secure AspDotNetStorefront site, where they can submit payments online for their claim. The site design is a huge improvement/modernization over the old design and the AspDotNetStorefront functionality required some careful customization to meet the client’s unique environment.

Stern Recovery Old Site

Stern Recovery New Site 

Great work Team!

It’s often common to put majority of the emphasis on the functionality of a site. While this is important, the value of good design needs to be recognized. It is possible to overlook the design and the value of content above and beyond what is strictly needed. We see that this type of extraneous content can be very important when we look at how human beings engage with the websites they use.

source

In psychology, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a food pyramid of human needs. The base of this pyramid is “physiological” needs. Before any other needs can be met, physiological needs have to be taken care of. The next level is “safety”, then “love/belonging”, and “esteem”. Only when all these more basic needs are met can we being to attend to the highest need, “self-actualization”.

source

A similar hierarchy of needs can be applied to web interface design. The base of the pyramid and most fundamental need is that a site be “functional”. It has to enable a user to complete a specific task. The next element is “reliability”. The site has to be online and working whenever a user attempts to access it. After this we have “usability”. Things have to make sense and the user should be able to figure out the site without to much learning. Up until recently, this was a high as the pyramid went. But now we have learned that the actual “pleasure” that is derived from a site contributes very much to how effective the site is.

Looking at some basic info about how brains process information, we can see how the pleasure factor when viewing a site can be very important. Emotionally charged events last much longer in our memories. They are also recalled with greater accuracy than neutral memories. Part of this is due to the fact that when we experience something that speaks to us more emotionally, the brain releases dopamine. Dopamine actually acts as a type of marker, signifying that what we are experiencing is important and this allows the information to be more robustly processed with more detail and a greater ability for recall. You can see how this would be incredibly useful to engaging your users and enabling the content of your site to be stored in their memories with greater strength and accuracy.

Another aspect of how good emotional design can contribute to the user experience is emotional stimuli is disarming and engaging. It makes us comfortable and signifies that this is something we should be interacting with on a deeper level. Molecular Biologist and author, John Medina states that using emotional stimuli to build positive memory is actually a very effective brain hack and a great way to engage the users ability to learn.

Our perceptions are critical. Usability is absolutely necessary but not everything, and the value of pleasure in a design should not be disregarded.

There are quite a few video players out there to preview your video(s) on your website. This site offers a great video player, www.jqueryvideo-player.com.

It has support for all major browsers such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera, Apple Safari. Also supports mobile browsers such as iPhone 3+, iPad 1 and 2, Android 2.1+, Blackberry 6+ and Windows Phone 7+. It uses the WebM, Theora Ogg and MP4 formats. It takes the supported video format and applies it to the correct browser that supports it.

First trip to IRWD.  Quick recap.  A lot of focus on usability and what I call “mindwork”.  We are at a point now where everyone is finally starting to look at conversion optimization onsite via improving usability and calls to action; offsite via personalization and segmentation.  When I say “mindwork”, I’m referring to the marketing and technical minds formulating actionable insights behind the tools and data.  Certainly, as I’ve said for years, the right tools and technology are essential, but successful websites have one or more creative, analytical minds guiding the operation.  More of these types of people were at IRWD, so it was fantastic seeing how various companies brought business and technology together.  Most of the sessions that I attended focused on unique ideas, usability and decisions being made to improve conversion rates based on data, testing, more data and more testing.

The exhibit hall had more Usability companies that I expected and of course there were a variety of companies promoting web design/development services, ecommerce software, site search software and digital marketing services, along with some firms that offered some interesting tools and services.

Here’s a random set of notes that and thoughts that I jotted down during the various presentation.  I didn’t attend every presentation.

• 13% growth in online retail in 2011.  (Corrected, originally stated 19%)
• 13% of web traffic mobile now.
• Asking visitors to register before checkout is still poor practice.
• Amazon & LL Bean continue to be what everyone compares to (but it is important to remember that each business has its own unique needs and very different budgets)
• Grainger
• gets 9M monthly visits, produces $2.1B in eCommerce sales, receives 2M daily product searches.
• was originally B2B and only dealt with business owners – but now it has opened a B2C channel to go directly to end users.
• uses GPS w/ mobile to help customers find their store and provide directions from wherever they are.
• It’s all about knowing your customers – and designing accordingly.
• Important features: I LIKE ALL OF THESE when financially feasible for our clients.
  • Order History (reduces inbound calls, customer-focused service, helps with re-orders).
  • Custom Catalog in left nav (for clients based on what they normally purchase).
  • Previously Purchased Items in left nav (or as part of site search results).
• Need to spend more time analyzing onsite search logs
• Setup “Click to Call” or “Click to Chat” when a customer has been on a page a long time or if possible, when they move their mouse to the top right (looking for help/support links).  This feature typically increases conversions and decreases cart abandonment.
• Belk – believes in “light and simple” home page, minimizing the number of things that are promoted to limit distractions.  Max of two levels in left nav and 4 horizontal thumbnail images on listing pages.
• Tools:  Clicktail (Video/User Monitoring feature), VisiStat, Adobe SiteCatalyst
• I liked Daryl Logullo’s concept of the “Principle of Continual Gradual Improvement”
• David Goldsholle pointed out that it is critical to get detailed SLAs from vendors (hearing that they have done this for many years isn’t sufficient).  He also mentioned Google Commerce Search for its extended attributes.
• Mike Sidders pointed out that the old school continuum of “Attention, Interest, Desire, Action” still works – just needs to be mechanized via internet technology now.
• Lots of Usability firms in attendance as companies move from worrying about traffic to improving conversion rates via usability improvements, personalization and segmentation.
• The top two things that mobile users do while shopping are search on price and search for reviews.
• Check out Trello.com and KingArthurFlour.com to see responsive web design (re-size the screen and watch what happens)
• Confirmation about the need for SEO specialist involved in Design/Development process.
• One speaker mentioned that when you have a good web development company, recognize it and take care of the relationship because there are a lot of poor web dev companies out there.  (Gotta agree!)
• Checkout Steve Krug’s book, “Rocket Surgery Made Easy”
• Mention of 4Q as a great survey tool.
• Online reviews build trust and help improve conversion rates.  Nathan Decker (Evogear) stated that 4-7 reviews is enough to influence the purchase of an item.
• Check out PowerReviews.com, Monetate.com, PivotLink.
• 1-2 optimization tests per month is not enough.  One company, I believe it was Freshpair.com ran 50-100/month to expedite overall site improvement.  Expedite continual improvement w/ significantly more tests.
• Checkout Book:  “Start With Why”
• Very, very impressed with Halley Silver’s presentation about King Arthur Flour.  Checkout the website, kingarthurflour.com.  Concept of “Responsive Mobile First” is the way to go.  Takes more time, but the design becomes device agnostic.  She estimated 2 months to develop 5 templates.  Build mobile site first; tablet, second; website, third.
• Search “320andup” in Google and read through some of the links.
• Check out Threadless.com.  Very cool concept… have artists submit artwork for t-shirts.  Have the site’s community select a winner each week, print the winning design on t-shirts and sell them online.
• Great presentation/discussion between Seth Freiden (US Toy Co) and Shaun Ryan (SLI Systems) about the value and importance of Site Search (esp. tuning and cross-site searches)
• Exhibit Hall – Chatted with
• Chris Bannister (Nextopia).  They have a great product that is priced right – plus (and this is important) their customer service is incredible – probably the best of any of our partner vendors.
• the folks at Bridgeline Digital (IAPPS Suite).  Beacon is a development partner of theirs.  The IAPPS integrated platform (CMS, eCommerce, Marketing, Analytics) eliminates a lot of the chaos of integrating multiple 3^rd party software solutions.
• Lee Alison Rable at MyBuys.  Really like their product/services.
• Lindsay Rice at Tobii.  They seem to have a great list of products/services with respect to Usability research and testing, particularly eye-tracking (which I saw offered by several other exhibitors).
• Ortery – Cool to see their 360 image product in action.  Seemed to be priced right to expedite the creation of product images for ecommerce websites.

That’s It.

Greensboro (Feb-2012).  Since its early days, Beacon Technologies has had its hands in higher education.  It all began in the late 90’s when Accenture hired Beacon as a subcontractor to build the FAFSA and Campus-Based systems for the U.S. Department of Education.  Shortly thereafter, Bearing Point brought Beacon in to redesign and develop the website for Texas Southern University.  Then, back in 2005, after evaluating many different content management systems, Beacon hooked its wagon to Hannon Hill’s CMS product, Cascade Server, which is used widely by universities.  Now, in the last several weeks, Beacon has added Syracuse University, the University of Wyoming, the University of Scranton and the Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania) to an already impressive list of Higher Education clients.

“Cascade Server is a feature-rich, easy-to-use and well-supported product which is why so many colleges and universities use it,“ says Mark Dirks, Beacon’s CEO.  “The fact that we work with major universities all over the country now is a real testament to the great web technologists and customizable products that we have put together here at Beacon.”

Higher Education calls on Beacon for many different things, primarily custom web development and design, but also for mobile site development, digital web marketing, web hosting, strategic consultation and Google Analytics support.  “Most university websites have multiple stakeholders involved because there are typically several schools contained under the university umbrella,” says Dirks. “I believe Beacon’s experience with large technology projects helps bring efficiency and cost savings by walking all the parties confidently and successfully through the process.”

Last year, Beacon worked with Winston-Salem State University to redesign its entire website with over 3000 web pages.  After the project, Dr. Brenda Allen, the University’s Provost said, “Beacon’s experience with Cascade Server & proven web development methodology were key factors in guiding our Steering Committee and University through the entire process. They delivered a state-of-the-art website with the functionality and administrative capabilities that our students, parents, faculty, alumni and administration need in today’s technology.”

Here’s a sampling of Beacon’s clients within the Higher Education vertical: 

• Syracuse University
• University of Pennsylvania
• University of Hartford
• Framingham State University
• University of North Alabama
• University of NC – Greensboro
• North Carolina A&T University
• St. Mary’s College of Maryland
• Georgia Tech
• University of Wyoming
• Texas A&M University
• American University of Antigua
• University of Scranton
• Randolph Macon College
• University of Houston
• Rollins College
• Wake Forest University
• Florida International University
• Winston-Salem State University
• Texas Southern
• Albright College
• George Brown College
• North Carolina State University
• Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary

“These relationships also lead to other education-related opportunities with clients like The Princeton Review and the Massachusetts Library Information Network (State of MA), which have been with Beacon for 4 years and 10 years respectively,” says Dirks.  “I’m also excited about a few other major colleges that we expect to sign during this quarter.”

Beacon Technologies, headquartered in Greensboro NC, has been a leader in web development, web marketing and managed web hosting since 1998.  The company specializes in delivering web solutions that effectively grow its clients’ business through creative, easy-to-use design, driving more web traffic, improving conversion rates for sales and leads, and providing reliable web infrastructure.  The company distinguishes itself not only due to the mix of custom, integrated web services, but by the deep level of technical expertise it brings to each specific area.  As a result, Beacon’s customers can obtain a complete and effective web presence that automates, grows and connects their business via the web.  Beacon was selected by Google as a Google Analytics Partner, by Hannon Hill as a Cascade Server CMS Development Partner, by AspDotNetStorefront as a Premier Development Partner, by Bridgeline Digital as its IAPPS Product Suite Solutions Partner for the Carolinas.

Using Google Web Fonts is a great way to integrate nice web fonts that aren’t the standard. There are a large variety of fonts with settings to choose from.  Within the Google Font website, you can search, filter font types, preview a word, sentence, paragraph, change scripts, sort options and add or remove from your collection. It’s very easy to apply to your website with a simple CSS style link and CSS font code snippet supplied by Google.

To get started, go to http://www.google.com/webfonts

1. Select the desired font or fonts with settings they offer and click “Add to Collection”.
2. Click “Use” in the bottom right of the website. Note: Once here, you will see the “Page Load” impact it will have on your site. So the less font selections the better, unless necessary.
3. Embed your Collection into your web page, copy the code as the first element in the <head> of your HTML document.

Example from Google:

<html>
   <head>
      <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Tangerine">
      <style>
         body {font-family: 'Tangerine', serif; font-size: 11px;}
      </style>
   </head>
   <body>
      <div>Making the Web Beautiful!</div>
   </body>
</html>

You call also add the font CSS to your external CSS style sheet for a single reference.

h1 { font-family: 'Tangerine', serif; font-size: 11px;}

That’s all there is to it on using Google Web Fonts.