1. The most essential quality of an effective website is one that is graphically pleasing and engaging.  The 3 Magic Beans will build in free tools from Google’s Webmaster Suite including site Analytics.  Here you will find a most critical measurement in the quality of your web graphics and that is Bounce Rate.  Bounce Rate is defined as the number of people who click to your site and immediately leave.  If your Bounce Rate is below 50% on a given page, you are doing something right with that page.  If your Bounce Rate is above 50%, you have some problems to fix.  Engaging graphics are not the only factor in bounce rate, but they are the most critical component of presenting a clear and engaging message to potential customers.
2. The next most important quality for an effective website is that it should be extremely easy for a business owner to create new content!  The reason simple content creation is so important to your website is because search engines are continually looking for new and interesting content.  Those sites that create new and interesting content for topics related to their business have a much higher probability of being found for those topics.  If your site is totally controlled by your web designer and you need to contact them to add content, you have, as the Last Knight from Indiana Jones said, “chosen poorly”.  The 3 Magic Beans will accommodate business owners that want us to improve their search results, but we first look to educate our clients on the how-tos.
3. The third most critical issue for any website is one of our favorite topics, keeping your brand message simple and easy to understand.  This topic ties your graphics and text together so that your visitors do not need to try extremely hard to understand what it is that you do.  Often times it does take a third party to help a business focus on brand message and core business principles for you website success.  The famous acronym KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) is an important concept to apply to your graphics and messaging.  That’s not to say that your site doesn’t utilize powerful and complex tools behind the scenes, but your face to a new prospect needs to be simple and precise.

So an effective Website is user friendly, graphically pleasing, and simplified.  Following the path less traveled by following these steps to show your customers that their experience with your business and products is of utmost importance to you.

Sincerely,

3 Magic Beans

A web-designer acts as a bridge between the “virtual” world of the Internet and the “concrete” real world.  It can be like traveling to a new country to learn to navigate the web- but an infinitely large, confusing country.  How does one know how to get the attention they need for their company/organization in the midst of that new culture of technology?  Let the designer guide you.  As your cross-cultural guide (the web-designer) explains the language and values of the web, they are able to better gauge how to customize your site to reflect your business’s needs.

A certain teacher of cross-cultural education compares experiencing a new culture to entering a home.  For the best experience, one goes through the front door.  That is the area designated for new visitors.  Language is the front door of culture.  Web design has its own language, that, at first, sounds as foreign as French to an English speaker:  SEO (Search Engine Optimization), hosting clients, domain names, etc.  Your web designer acts as a dictionary- and explains context facilitating understanding.

Some societies feel that they are quick to change.  None change as quickly as trends in internet industries.  It is a full time job to keep up with them and keep relevant.  When you become irrelevant there is no reason to visit the site.  A professional, such as 3 Magic Beans in Denver, CO, stays on top of the changes in the industry and help you adapt your site accordingly.  No one wants to become extinct.

So, it is easy to see the benefits of trusting a professional web-designer.  They facilitate the transition to understanding the new culture of doing business on the Internet, as well as, presenting a relevant message.  Furthermore, there is peace knowing you do not have to navigate alone….you have a guide.

Contrast is one of the fundamentals of design that allow a designer to communicate significant material to their target audience.  Basically, that means, that by showcasing differences we can effectively get our point across.  The eye is constantly moving on a web page.  If there are no differences on the page, the eye simply wanders.  It follows no path.  There is no point.  Nothing jumps out as more important than any other area.  Chaos.  However, when a creative web designer utilizes the art of contrast, worlds of meaning come into existence.

“In the language of web design, contrast lends structure that leads the eye through your layout in a specific path.” (andyrudtleg.com)

The header and footer are clearly seen.  Customers can easily navigate and conversions are more likely.  A hierarchy of information importance is established.

There are many aspects of design that deliver contrasts.  Color is one that immediately jumps out.  For example, by using the same color of the header and footer, the vital content section becomes the main focus.  By changing font color throughout, the reader/customer is able to differentiate between texts, which enhances readability.  Some other tools of contrast are size, alignment, texture, position, shape, and orientation.  By experimenting with these categories, quality web design can be achieved.  But, a word of caution here, subtlety can be just as powerful a design tool as brash color, size, texture, etc.  The art of restraint is a sign of an effective designer—who knows when enough is enough, even when that line is a thin one.  In fact, subtleness lends detail the eye notices, which lends credence and dimension.  (webfunction.com)

Detail in design translates to an appealing web site that allows the eye and attention to converge on the business’s intended goal.  Through the art of contrast, a web site can clearly and concisely convey meaning.  Thus, life has been simplified for the business and the customer.  They will both have more time to enjoy the vistas of brilliant aspens against mountains of pine under the azure blue Colorado sky west of Denver.

Sincerely,

3 Magic Beans

As a design firm that focuses on creating clear, concise, and engaging brand messages, we have organized a few thoughts in this post on Website Design for local Denver based businesses.

1.  Simplicity:  Even five years ago, web sites tended to focus much more on quantity than quality.  “If I could only show prospective customers everything we do the moment they arrive on my site, I will increase my conversion statistics.”  This type of thinking generated very poor user experiences and hurt the overall Denver web community as a result.  If you can focus your content in a few general categories and step a visitor through a brief series of clicks to conclusion, your conversion statistics will be much better off.

2.  Location Based Content:  When local businesses create web content (pages, posts, images, video, and flash), they must keep in mind the location in which they do business and target messages at those locales.  Search engines routinely strive to become more relevant to the people performing the search.  One way the SE’s do this is by identifying the search locale and then displaying results that might be relevant to both keyword and locale.  This is better for local business and better for local consumers and that equals relevancy.

3.  Simple Tools:  You’ve probably heard that as far as the Internet goes, “Content is King”.  The more content an online business produces, the better that online business will perform in search results.  The simpler your content building tool is, the easier it will be for you to generate not just quantity of content, but time enough to focus on quality as well.  Make sure that your web designer is not building your site with a tool that only makes their job easier, but with one that makes your job easier.  We strongly recommend against proprietary Content Management Tools as you may become beholden to your Webmaster for any new content.

If you’ve read any of our posts, you’ll notice that the theme of simplifying your life and that of your customers is at the core of our business.  Life is complex enough without poor web design, and so rather than spending your time trying to figure all this out yourself, give us a call, cut us loose, and go enjoy the Rocky Mountains.

Many businesses don’t know where to begin when it comes to creating content for their sites.  Often these businesses offer a number of products and services and want to make sure their clients don’t miss all the wonderful things that their company can do.  The result is a lot of distraction for the visiting customer, and odds are that they will leave your page without accomplishing any of your goals.  In order to avoid this, one has to understand the client and some statistics about them.  One very general bit of knowledge is that people often multitask when they are viewing your site information as shown in the chart.Whether they are at a meeting, watching kids, at lunch, or watching TV, the chances are that you are competing for their attention. So, if your message is scattered and complex, most online customers recognize that it is faster to click back to a search result than to wade through your detailed information.

You should know you don’t have to opt for text!  Your brand message will be best told through: branded colors that emote your values,  intuitive slogans that people can relate to, helpful flash demos that educate, resourceful videos, and good, clean graphic design.

In the computer world, there are programmers and designers. The programmers develop, and designers are effective communicators.  In the small business world, our clients are the programmers who make the business work and we are the designers who help them look more attractive to potential clients. A good designer edits down and organizes your website content to make a distinctive impression on your clients and makes the navigation of your website feel effortless. It’s the art of saying more with less.

With the amount of websites we are inundated with everyday, it is imperative that we say more with less when attempting to communicate complex ideas. The job of great graphical design isn’t to be the loudest kid on the block, but rather a guide that makes the user-experience intuitive and effortless.

Why are visuals and graphics a necessity to clear and effective communication rather than straight text?  We will explore the importance of this concept and provide links to other similar thoughts and examples as well.

When I think of the relationship between graphics and text, I associate it with the relationship between tune and lyrics in music. The visually pleasing look of an ad, logo, or presentation relates to an enjoyable melodic tune that pulls your attention away from all the other stimuli around you and focuses your senses.  Success is only achieved when it focuses your attention.  Question for you: how many song lyrics would you recognize if they were out of context with the tune?  My experience is that unless you are a music junkie, you remember catch phrases in a song and not all the lyrics.  It’s much easier to remember a song when you hear a snippit of the tune.  In much the same way is Graphic advertising.  There are so many brand messages bombarding people that it is only in the context of the graphic and a catch phrase that a passerby may remember you and your message.  The trick is creating an experience that diverts attention from other stimuli and focuses attention on your message.

Luke Wroblewski and User Interface Engineering published an article in which they explored the value of graphics over text. “In order for visual design to communicate key concepts to your users by referencing the following needs:
•    “What is this?” = we communicate usefulness.
•    “How do I use it?” = we communicate usability.
•    “Why should I care?” = we communicate desirability.”
Clearly this communication goes beyond mere styling and “looking good”. When properly applied, visual design is all about communication. The better at communicating we are, the easier it is for our users to use and appreciate the websites we design.”  This article focused on websites, but these factors apply to any attempt to communicating a message whether on print, billboards, power point, flash design, or logo design.

In “Better Writing Through Design”, by Bronwyn Jones, she recommends “You remember those burning questions. The ones you ask yourself every time you kick off a new project. They probably go a little something like this:
•    Who’s visiting this site?
•    What do they want to know?
•    What’s service/product should we feature that will entice them to learn more ?
By answering these questions and designing a user-experience around your answers, you’re optimizing your presentation and you can then create a concept that will engage the interactive response you want. By designing text and images with the user in mind,  graphic design and effective flash animation helps us to:
1.    Quickly decipher complex information
2.    Break up and organize complex information
3.    Understand how things are related
4.    Quickly find information and resources we’re looking for

One of my favorite examples of the value of simplifying your message through graphics, flash in this case, is what Dropbox does on their homepage.  The simplification of brand message through graphics, flash, logo design, and presentations is what we strive to achieve at the 3 Magic Beans.  Let us know what you think!

A primary medium of business communication is Power Point or PPT.  Power Point has a proven track record for its ability to take ideas and effectively transmit them to a specific audience.  Businesses need to consistently sell their brand and their innovative concepts.  That is where PPT can help the most.

We all know Power Point can be a great tool of expression, but we also know that it can have an adverse effect if used incorrectly.  We can all remember that one presentation where Power Point was used—not to enhance a concept—but as a cheap gimmick that came across as tedious and poorly planned.

Life After Death PowerPoint from EMT Media on Vimeo.

With that said, how can professional Power Point Templates improve your business presentation experiences?  This article seeks to explore the benefits of Power Point to enhance branding, visual communication and audience information processing.

In the business world, branding means everything.  There are a myriad of ways to go about selling your brand in a hungry market.  Luckily, Power Point is a perfect way to introduce your brand to your demographic.  Power Point is strong in its ability to subtlety educate an audience about your concept, while summing up the totality of your brand in a single image.

Effective communication is strengthened by intentional visuals.  Imagine reading the New York Times without photographs of current events and high profile individuals.  Power Point does the same thing.  While selling your concept, visuals help your audience relate to you as a speaker and can better conceptualize your idea.  In our culture, we are competing for the attention of our target market.  Visuals make an idea more tangible and easier to grasp.  As well as adding to your innovative ideas, visuals personalize you as a presenter.  They help you appear less of a static sales person, but as an individual who understands the needs of your customer and can relate to the universal problem of effective communication.

The ultimate goal of any business presentation is to present a concept that is both clear and memorable.  One of the strongest arguments for the use of Power Point is its ability to help an audience thoroughly process information.  When sitting through a sales pitch, we have a much harder time recalling information that is given verbally.  Power Point can address that problem effectively.  With the use of well-thought-out photographs, graphics and flash design, Power Point makes a presentation less of a burden.  Power Point enhances communication through the function of several mediums; thus, the strength of Power Point is in its ability to stay with its audience.

PPT is an excellent tool for communication.  But, like most things, it can detract from what is being said if it is used incorrectly.  When you marry pleasing concise visuals that tell your story, you will have success and success is what we achieve at the 3 Magic Beans.

At the 3 Magic Beans, we pride ourselves on telling stories through our designs here in Denver, CO.  A very important piece of storytelling online is the electronic medium used to get that story across.  One of the most popular mediums these days is Flash which can provide an excellent opportunity to create the optimum experience for the end client when used correctly.  In this post, we’ve researched some quality references on considerations for Flash usage.

For the best recommendations on when and how to use Flash, I immediately go to the source, Adobe, for their thoughts.  They do have a vested interest however and are not the only source of quality recommendations.  “Using text and text equivalents – Flash designers and developers can create engaging and exciting content for users of screen readers and other assistive technologies.”  So it’s important not to keep all users in mind.

“Flash is ideal for developing rich, eye-catching content, such as skyscraper adverts, banner ads, and promotions. Use Flash sparingly for when it offers an advantage over other media. If you can achieve the same results with an animated GIF or style sheets, then use them and save the Flash for another section.”

The Nielson Norman Group has set out to create the end all discussion report in their Suggested usability Guidelines for Flash.  This report is based on usability research with 46 different Web-based applications in Flash that were tested with users in the United States, Germany, and Japan.  Great resource.

“Is Flash going help me in communicating with my audience?   The first thing you need to decide is whether or not it makes sense to use Flash. Will you be able to communicate better with your audience in how you address their concerns? You need to keep users’ needs and perspective in mind at all times.”

“Some users do not even have the software installed necessary to view Flash. If they do not have the Flash Player, then they will not be able to see any part of a Flash website. These users are incapable of seeing the website whether they want to or not: another lost customer.”

“Take websites that are fully fleshed out in Flash. A lot of these websites require hovering a cursor over menus. In a lot of cases, clicking the menu item takes you to a certain page and hovering over it reveals a submenu. This presents a huge problem to the interaction on a touch-screen device like iPad.”

Doing too much in Flash will sacrifice exposure on the search engines. In other words, the engines will not have enough text on which to base their indexing. If access to your site through the search engines is important to your success, be sure that you don’t overdo it on the Flash side.

As you can see, there are several considerations to take into account when designing a site or an ad campaign.  So don’t take your investment lightly by accomplishing only some of your online marketing goals with Flash and contact the 3 Magic Beans in Denver, Colorado.

Sincerely,

3 Magic Beans

Rating a Restaurant

Now, you might be asking why the 3 Magic Beans has any authority to speak on the topic of rating restaurants when our focus is Website Design, Brand Messaging, and Graphics.  And you would be right.  But the bigger issue here that the average American might improve upon, is recognizing what is truly special and different rather than lumping everyone together as the current rating system does.  The biggest problem that quality companies or restaurants have in any industry is being lumped together with average businesses where they have to compete more on price rather than the value they bring.  You probably have experiences or frustrations similar to this where in order to not hurt some one's feelings, we acknowledge everyone as being special in their own way and that, frankly, is a great mantra for mediocrity.  So, moving on, how do we rate a restaurant?

1. The most important point to get across for rating a business is the setting of expectations.  For restaurants, adequate parking, clean entry way, friendly reception at the door, organized and easy to read menu, timely service, tasty food, healthy food, clean bathrooms, good atmosphere, and reasonable pricing should not be considered special but should be considered average! That means a restaurant that provides these qualities should be receiving an average or middle of the road rating, a 3 out of 5.
2. You'll notice that I listed "reasonable price" as the last rating item above.  That's because superior quality demands a superior price.  Without that expectation, we're all average.  Don't let higher pricing negatively impact your dining and rating experience because you will mislead those who truly want something special.  To truly rate an excellent restaurant, one might argue that price should not apply to the rating metrics.
3. A restaurant who is truly excellent, maximizes all of the sensual experiences (not talking sexually here).  Great food needs to be balanced with great smells, great visuals, spacial concerns, touch.  A restaurant that has great food but lacks in another area is not an excellent restaurant but an average one.

It's possible to dig deeper into educating people on how to rate a restaurant, but we have covered the big topics here.  I would like to provide a good link to a more defined educational process on rating, but I did not find one.  The biggest thing to remember, no matter what you are rating, is that meeting all your needs is not exceptional, but average at best.  Exceptional businesses and restaurants give you more.  That is our goal at the 3 Magic Beans.

Sincerely,

3 Magic Beans

Just as the question of Nature vs. Nurture are debated on which impacts a person more, the question for a sports team is the value of Identity vs. Success.  Identity is how much a Logo, Color, and Brand Message impact your fan following compared with with a teams success?  The question is not as clear as you might think.  It’s always better to identify the extremities to get a clearer picture of the most accurate answer.

Chicago Cubs and their successful Logo Branding

On one extremity you have the “Lovable Losers”, the Chicago Cubs.  They have one of the larger fan followings in the game of Baseball but you can’t attribute that to success.  They haven’t won the World Series in over a hundred years.  What is it about the Cubs that keep the fans coming back, even when there is a decent team in the White Sox across town who have outperformed the Cubs on the field.  For the Cubs, the image and logo of the All American (red/white/blue), likable (baby bear mascot), and concentric circles to hypnotize you into forgetting about the game has served them well.  If you attend any Rockies games when the Cubs are in town, as I did this year, you know what I’m talking about.  The tag line on the Cubs official Website is “It’s a Lifestyle” which is exactly what they have created with their fans.

Failing Teams and Logo’s

On the other extremity, trying to find a successful sports team who didn’t have a logo recognized as a quality logo is hard to come by.  If you peruse websites that have rated either good or bad logo’s, one thing that strikes me is that failing logo’s are always associated with failing teams and successful logo’s seem to be associated with successful teams.  Which one came first?  I don’t think we’ll answer that here but I will rate what has to be worst logo of a major sports team in recent years.  This mascot for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers is a nice looking logo, but a handsome pirate with a knife is his mouth and winking at you has to create an uncomfortable feeling for most stereotyped football fans, like “Why is that guy winking at me?  What kind of Pirate is he?”  It is also consistent with bad teams associated with bad logo’s.

At the 3 Magic Beans, we understand that a companies logo and brand are much like that of a sports team.  A designer not only needs to be able understand the companies culture by asking the right questions, but also to consult on how that image will play out with the target market.

Let us know if you agree with our worst professional sports logo brand in recent years!

Sincerely,

3 Magic Beans