The unpredictable human factor

As internet professionals, we can easily become so immersed in our web world (with its XHTML, CSS, AJAX, UI, UX, U2 etc.) that we forget to stand back and consider the real world. I heard a story recently that, although a little sobering for web designers, helped to put things in a healthy perspective.

A company in Australia had a lousy website - it lacked clear information, and had poor navigation and visual design. Despite the poor website, the company was thriving at its core business. This company decided to engage the services of a professional web design and marketing firm to completely re-design their web presence. The web design firm did extensive research and duly produced a very slick, informative and well-designed website. The result: sales began to plummet.

It turned out that the company's original lousy website was key to its success. People who visited the site couldn't find the information they were looking for, so they ended up calling the company. The person who answered the phones was great at making sales, and was able to turn a high proportion of callers into buyers. In one case a $5,000 sale was made from somebody who just called for information. Because the new site answered all the potential customers' questions, the company received 80% fewer calls, so an enormous amount of potential business was lost.

The lesson for web designers/developers is that having a slick website may not always be in the best interests of the client. For web technology to be relevant, it needs to do so in the context of how a business operates. The human factor, unpredictable as it may be, is never irrelevant.

-Jeremy

Time to get my feet wet

"Let us make a special effort to stop communicating with each other, so we can have some conversation."
Judith Martin, (Miss Manners)


This might seem a strange quote to begin my first Ovurlunch blog entry, but it sounds good! The rise of the Internet, the world wide web, the proliferation of blogs, MySpace pages and so on means that everybody in the world now has a platform from which to hold forth. But let us not do so merely because technology allows us. Rather, let our words be meaningful and useful to others; let our criticism be constructive, our sentiments noble, our praise generous, so that the end of the day, when all is said and done, we will know that that is the moment when the talking has to stop.

Ok, my feet are in the water. This could be fun.

- Jeremy

BuzzShout Beta Review

There's been a lot of hype of Web 2.0. It's been hard for me to find a collection of the latest or greatest. I came across BussShout.com (beta), a website that actually does the tracking of web technology companies through listings, social reviews and editorials. I have several reasons for why this BuzzShout is good.

• It's a collection of Web 2.0 related technology companies that companies or people submit.


• It can be used as a creative resource for ideas. Including logos.


• You write your own review and they are rated (star rating).


• Exposure and PR


• You can find useful technologies.

The website is clean and easy to navigate. I really like the layout of search results. There's also a brief description of it. You can find just about any Web 2.0 technology company from startups to Google.

Check it out, www.buzzshout.com

-Ponchai Reainthong

Editable Web 2.0 Text Shadow w/Gradient

This is a useful, simple and time-saving Photoshop trick if you need to create a editable text shadow for any of your layouts. The advantage to this is you don't have to convert your text into an image like this technique from http://www.photoshoplab.com/web20-design-kit.html demonstrates. Although that approach works great but what if you have a design and your content isn't finalized by the client? This would take a lot of time re-creating the same gradient for each text and the gradient might not match the original.

In a fast-paced organization scenario I'll demonstrate the time-saving approach. The benefits to this approach are: text can be resized with the gradient, you can edit the gradient text anytime and you can apply a transparency to the gradient. Overall you maintain a consistent design effect.


1. Create your text and duplicate it.




2. Preparing text for transformation


Select the bottom text layer and press "Ctrl" + "T" to do a free transform. Right click within the transform area and select "Flip Vertical" and press enter.


3. Masking


You will need to add a mask to the new layer that was transformed.


4. Apply the gradient


Select the Gradient tool and apply the gradient to the mask layer that was created. As an added benefit you can hold down the SHIFT key apply the gradient in a straight form.


5. The final product


Now you have the text with a gradient that can be edited by selecting the gradient layer with the TEXT tool.

-Ponchai Reainthong