A year in the life of a budding entrepreneur
The importance of user experience
Aug 15th
Something that has interested me (at least for the past couple of years) is user experience. Whether it be online or in “real life” I have found more and more that I find issues that make day to day tasks more difficult than they need to be. One “real life” example is supermarkets. Now I am not a big fan of shopping in supermarkets and I do prefer to do it online most of the time, but there are unfortunately times when one must pop in to get milk or bread or something that was left off the online shop. Anyway I’m getting off topic, when going to said supermarket, we assume that certain things will be grouped together, to make it easy to navigate yourself around the shop and find what you came for. Now the majority of supermarkets don’t mess this up too much. However one in particular, and I wont name and shame the supermarket in question (just hint that Bill Bailey wrote a song about them) who, no matter the store, seem to want to create the worst user experience and stress out their customers.
Now this gets right up my nose, and anyone who has been shopping with me in said shop knows about the ranting that ensues when I look for something, lets use orange squash (or is it cordial) as an example; you would assume that any normal shop would group all non-alcoholic, non-fresh beverages such as squash, juices and carbonated drinks together right? Not this shop, it puts them miles away, between aisles for completely unrelated products. It puts condiments and jams above the frozen section, but not things like gravy… It’s a very stressful experience for someone who just popped in for a few bits (and if they happen to be orange squash and gravy you’re screwed).
So how is this relevant to my online world of user experience? Simple, things should be where people expect them, information should be clear and you shouldn’t have to go around in circles finding what you came for.
So a quick list of my pet hates in web design and how they should be tackled:
1. Search – If you are going to have a search function on your site, make sure it works. You will frustrate your user no end when he/she knows something should be on your site but can’t find it. For example if you run a clothing shop and someone searches for “t-shirt” and finds nothing you more likely than not will lose a potential customer.
2. Links – In fact navigation as a whole should be absolutely faultless, if you have a lot of different parts to one page (such as a products page) then perhaps think of having a drop down navigation which illustrates that you have many different groups of products on that page. Also make use of link visited, hover, and active states, they help your customer know where they have been and prevent the aforementioned circles.
3. Uniformity – Possibly one of my earliest annoyances with the web was that people didn’t use style sheets and had about 8 different colours, multiple sizes and every different font possible used on their site. It quite frankly hurts your eyes, looks crap and doesn’t make your business look professional. Also I find the need to tell designers to embrace line-height, having a lot of info in a big block is not good user experience, unless your aim is to give them a headache.
4. Clear – If within the first 10 seconds of being on your site, your customer hasn’t been told who you are and what you do (even through imagery) they may well get bored and move on. There is no point in having a site that doesn’t instantly tell someone what it is about. Even search engines will ignore you, you should have specific text on your home page telling your user exactly what your company does, pack it with keywords and google too will know what you do.
This isn’t by any means all you should be doing, there are millions of articles out there about user experience, and I will always find new ways of improving user experience, both online and in real life.
Have you got any user experience stories to share?
Finding the time…
Aug 7th
One thing I have noticed over the past few months of starting up WildFire is that I seem to have more and more to do in what seems to be less and less time. I find myself waking up early to work, working for most of the day; designing, writing, networking and going to see clients and then doing the same in the evening. When it comes to weekends; when I should be shutting off and enjoying some down time, I find that I am actually spending it researching, writing more articles and blogs, checking up on stats and campaigns, working out marketing plans (add to that a new project that I am currently planning out – more on that soon!) and doing even more networking.
I even find that even when I’m out, without the distraction of my laptop, I am constantly writing down website url’s and handing out flyers (which I did today around the Northern Quarter in Manchester). I simply find that I can’t (and don’t really want to) switch off.
I wondered if perhaps there was just not enough hours in the day, that I have so much to do that I just don’t have time to squeeze it into 5 days. But I have actually come to the conclusion that I just really enjoy what I do and want to do it all the time, it doesn’t feel like work to me, and if it did then I probably would do less of it.
The main reason I am putting in so many hours now is because I know that as we get more work in and more of a name we’ll grow and take on staff, I won’t have to spend 50% of my time networking (I’m sure then it will be filled with design work and more client meetings) and will have a bit more of a reason to have some down time and get back to other pass times I have outside of the working day (9-5 is a thing of the past, I don’t know a single business owner who keeps these hours) like photography and music.
In the past month I…
Jul 20th
This is going to be quite a meaty post…
The past month has been filled up with getting everything in motion to start up WildFire Digital Media, everything from reading what felt like War and Peace several times over on the business link website and meeting with Blue Orchid, to form filling for HMRC, designing a brand, finding a professional printers and getting a bank account sorted.
A site for sore eyes
I have never had to take in so much information in my life (you’ll probably feel the same after all this!) as I have had to whilst learning what needs to be set in place before starting a business. Business link have pages and pages of guides; guides for business partnerships, guides for marketing, guides for tax, guides for selling, how to write a business plan, how to get funding. The list goes on and on.
So as you can imagine it takes some time to get through it all, me and my business partner felt like we were reading for days and days. I think it probably weans out people who aren’t really committed to starting a company.
Over all though it’s very helpful to know. Having knowledge of taxes for example means that we’re less likely to cause havoc for our accountant when it comes to our end of year reports. A lot of it is just common sense regarding sales, marketing etc but that is just my perspective, I’ve grown up around business and a lot of things just stuck over the years.
We are family
One of the things that has been very helpful, and something we’re very lucky to have, is a number of family members who’ve been there before. Sarah’s Granny (when she worked) and uncle have both been in retail/wholesale industry and know a lot about sales and aftercare, and my father has run about 4 different but very successful companies in his life and performed practically every job within those companies from accountant, sales man, estate agent to warehouse manager. Though WildFire is totally different to anything they have done; it’s nice to have people to bounce ideas off.
Don’t get so Blue
We have also had a lot of support from Ann at Blue Orchid, who helped us on a more face to face level, helping us put together a business plan, sorting out P&L sheets and giving us more of a “what you need to know” break down of the Business Link guides. What has been invaluable about the meetings with Ann aside from the support with the business plan and advice, was that when we cheekily asked if she would pass our details around other Blue Orchid advisors and give our card to any new business’ that needed a website, she did so. So far in the last week or so we’ve had several enquiries from new business’ that need help getting an online presence.
Marketing the brand
We had spent a fair chunk of our first month building the brand identity, creating the logo, designing and building the website. Then came business cards, we weren’t sure how we would tackle this one as neither of us had business mobile phones yet, we had set up our 0845 number and so decided to have shared business cards with just the office number and get personalised ones once we got business mobile phones.
Bank Accounts
This has been the biggest ball and chain for the last month, we applied for a business account with Natwest because I do my personal banking with them and have always felt they were a very helpful bank. This unfortunatly can’t really be said with regard to their business banking division. Promised call backs that never happened, long winded applications, slow delivery of paying in books, bank cards and cheque books, not to mention no online banking for over a month. We’re finally at the end of the horrid process but not before being at the end of our tethers…
I think that will probably do for now.
No rest for the wicked
Jul 8th
2010 has been a crazy year so far. It started off in quite a negative way after being made redundant from a job I had thrown my heart and soul into for 18 months, and where I had a nice group of friends to work with.
I started out doing a few small commissions from friends of the family but mostly learning about how I could get social media and blogging to work for me. Which was roughly the time I started this blog.
After only a month of working for myself I had a call from my boss asking me to come back, the other web designer had found another job and they needed someone who knew the ropes (and the customers) to hit the ground running. I accepted the offer and went back.
I found that in my wake, none of my clients (who I looked after so well and made sure were all happy before my final day) had been spoken to or had any work done for them while I was away! I had to quickly sort this out, if there’s one thing I will continually do throughout my career its keep my clients happy, regardless.
Around 3 weeks after starting back I was offered a job that I simply could not turn down, sad as I was to leave the company I had worked so hard for and formed client relationships for. I had to be honest with myself and remember that they had made me redundant and only taken me back when they needed me to clean up the mess.
The new job sad to say didn’t work out, projects were pushed back and eventually jobs ran out, and by the start of June I was again out of a job.
So as most of you who know me will know; I have now started a new business with my partner called WildFire Digital Media. The main idea behind the business is this; “Amazing Customer Service, Amazing Value”. We’re not out to rip people off, we want to teach them why they should be online and help them understand how they can make it work for them.
I’ll go into more details about the setting up of the business and all its ups and downs, marketing ideas etc in coming weeks but for now wish us luck as we go out into the Wild.
A photo a day keeps boredom at bay
Jan 6th
Recently I have started my own 365 on my flickr page, a lot of my online friends have started and finished theirs and whilst I have wanted to start one for a long time, I have simply lacked the time to actually dedicate myself to starting (watch this space on whether I stay as active with it!).
I read an article on Photojojo.com a while ago about the 365′s and really liked the way they explained it “Project 365: How to Take a Photo a Day and See Your Life in a Whole New Way”. I find that with other photo’s I have uploaded I have simply named them (most of which generically so) and perhaps tagged a few of them and moved on. I have now started to actually write some details about the photo in question and it had become a sort of digital diary of my days.
I am using this project for many reasons, firstly I feel like I need to see something through with regards to my own personal “hobbies”, I tend to jump from project to project and I feel like I need a bit of routine and something that will keep me interested (whether it will interest anyone else – potentially seeing 365 photos of my cat Seuss or my fiance! I do hope to get other interesting things to photo…). I’m also hoping that it will make me a better photographer in the long run too!
In the long run I hope I can create a photobook to have a hard copy of my year, and perhaps continue to do it in the future (I have a pretty interesting few years coming up!).
From now on I am going to try and take my camera everywhere I go, so I can force myself to look around me a bit more *which, being that I am very clumsy, will hopefully benefit my wellbeing!*
Goals for 2010
Jan 5th
Inspired by John O’Nolan’s blog post about goals for the year ahead, I have decided to give myself a few goals for 2010.
1. Keep myself financially sound
2. Find some new clients
3. Start a 365 on flickr finally
4. Release 5 wordpress themes on themeforest
5. Work towards more business partnerships
6. Read and learn as much jQuery as possible
7. Get myself known in the design community
8. Have a holiday
9. Learn as many new techniques as possible.
On a more personal note I also am hoping to finish the recording of my first album and to lose weight and just become more healthy in general, I wouldn’t go so far as to say I want to start exercising but perhaps start walking more and getting the bus less…
I figure that they are pretty achievable goals, some more difficult than others (namely the relying on my feet more), but if i set myself anything too hard I would probably struggle with coping with the rest of them. So with my magic nine for 2010 up for all to see, lets see how I do…