The Kent House Design and Technology Seminar focused on getting the balance right online between artistic design and usability, accessibility and search engine optimisation. Julius Wiedemann, design expert and author spoke about the development of design through the ages and how we have gotten to where we are today with online design.

1. Kent House Design and Technology Seminar
22 June 2009
The Salvin Room, Keele Hall

2. The Kent House Product Basket
 Websites
 E-commerce
 Search Engine Optimisation
 Pay-Per-Click Advertising
 Email Marketing
 Content Management – Do It Yourself
 Event Management

3. Kent House Design and Technology Seminar
Your site – Design and Usability
Kevin Holdridge

4. “Ten years ago, the Web was exciting to people.
Today, it’s routine. It’s a tool. If it’s convenient,
they will use it; if not, they won’t ... Users are
getting less tolerant of difficult sites, so every
design flaw means lost business. Usability has
become more important than ever.”
Jakob Nielsen, 2006

5. When websites go bad ...

6. www.sharperfx.com
OTT design – by designers!

7. www.adamobydell.com
Nice site but what is it selling exactly?

8. www.jacksonsofpiccadilly.co.uk
Mystery meat navigation with a splash page!

9. www.msy.com.au
How much??! My nephew will do it for £50...

10. www.genicap.com/Site/
Mystery meat navigation and what is it exactly that you do?

11. http://www.evangelcathedral.net/
Obsessive use of flash

12. www.itfx.co.uk/
Splash page and a website built entirely with flash

13. Usability and Accessibility

14. “A usable website gives the visitor exactly what
they are looking for as quickly as possible”

15. “Every design flaw means lost business- if a
user can’t find the product they can’t buy
the product”

16. Key usability principles
 Users who can’t use your site, will leave your site
 Users should never need to ask “where am I?”
 Make your navigation obvious
 Structure your content – taxonomy
 Designing for usability means increased conversions
 Convention is convention for a reason
 Design for users not “robots”

17. “Once you discover how people interact
with your design, you can make it better
than your competitors”

18. Accessibility is making your website accessible or
“usable” by people with disabilities and by people
using different browsers, devices and systems.

19. Accessibility
 Inclusive design – design for everybody
 DDA
 Website Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
 Accessibility standards
• WAI “A”
• WAI “AA”
• WAI “AAA”

20. Accessibility
 Some simple accessibility factors:
• Font size
• Overuse of graphics such as “text images”
• Moving text
• Colour
• Text and background contrast
• Having sound on your site
 Visual impairment simulator
http://www-edc.eng.cam.ac.uk/betterdesign/

21. Design, usability and accessibility
i-frames links that don’t change colour when visited taxonomy
scrolling pop-up windows breaking the back button
putting text inside imagery pages that are too big
websites built entirely in flash splash pages
information architecture broken design links
pages that take too long to load no search function
bad navigation frames broken forms complex URLs
cross browser compatibility privacy screen size

22. The 5 Biggest Causes of User Failure
 Search
 Information Architecture
 Content
 Product Information
 Workflow

23. Kent House Design and Technology Seminar
Design, usability
and search engine optimisation
Kevin Holdridge

24. If a user cannot find you, he cannot buy from you.
...
If he finds you and cannot find what he is
looking for, he still cannot buy from you.
...
If he cannot buy from you,
he will buy from your competitor

25. SEO – the basics
 Search engine optimisation is the act of improving a
website’s position in the results of a search engine
query for a target set of keywords.
 This includes:
• Optimising your own pages by building a well designed, easily
navigated site.
• Having great, frequently updated content.
• Ensuring your site is easily used by human visitors.
• Making the site easy for search engines to crawl or read it.
• Encouraging other sites to link back to you.

26.  Other factors influencing SEO include
• The age of your site
• The speed of your server
• Any duplicate content
• Number of visitors – importance to internet users
• The size of your site (the number of pages)
• Weighting of content <h1>’s <h2>’s

27. The importance of appearing top
Position on page 1 Click Through Percentage
1 89%
2 33%
4 17%
5 17%
7 6%
Study carried out by Microsoft

28. “We can get you to number 1 on Google”

29. Design “v” SEO
 Everything is OK... in moderation
 Style and code
 Flash
 JavaScript
 Using headers just for style
 Text images
 i-frames

30. the global consumer phenomenon of 2008
2/3 of world’s Internet population visit a social network site
businesses examine 10% of all Internet time
how SNS can help their
organisations
the world’s 4th most
popular online sector
advertising on SNS
sites is not overtook personal
consummate with
the size and levels of
Social Networking email
audience
social networks online
started out among
facebook is the 5th youngsters but
most popular site on currently the age of
the Internet and the people is broadening
9th strongest brand
greatest growth comes from people aged 35-49 years of age

31. Types of Social Media
 Social Networking Sites
 Blogging
 Microblogging
 Photo and Video Sharing
 Bookmarks
 Social News
 Podcasts
 Online Forums

32. The Golden Rules of Social Networking
be genuine, human and upfront with your “fans”,
“customers”, “friends” and “followers”

33. Why Social Networks Matter
 To listen! Your competitors, vendors, customers and
prospects are talking about you, right now.
 To build a presence
 To enhance search engine ranking
 To communicate (but not to sell!)

34. Social Networking and SEO – The Benefits
...
links links links...
content content content...

35. Thank you again for taking the time to
come along to our seminar
Do not hesitate to contact us with any questions
Kevin Holdridge – kevin.holdridge@kenthouse.com
Yvonne Conway - yvonne.conway@kenthouse.com
0845 638 0700