This article is an encapsulation of my life – and more importantly my career… or rather – my lack of one.
Stop working so hard — I.M.H.O. — Medium.
i can racapping shit. read it. you might just see yourself in it too… at least a little.
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greg
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Bobby
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Bobby
Better in Theory than Practice | Digiday
“Full-service” agenciesAs their margins continue to erode and the cost of acquiring new clients grows, agencies are increasingly looking for new ways upsell existing ones and to offer “one-stop” shops for their clients’ needs. The result is that many agencies refuse to specialize and instead claim to do everything well. In theory, that makes sense. Why should a client hire six different agencies if it could hire one. In practice, it doesn’t work like that. Most agencies tap major agencies primarily for a single service, like media buying or creative, but not both. Some execs argue agencies are actually better off selling themselves as specialist, rather than generalists, as the digital world continues to fragment. There will always be a place for broad strategy, they say, but execution is still best handled by specialists.
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Bobby
Material Honesty on the Web – Flat vs. Skeu
Today there’s a materials debate between flat and skeuomorphic design. While design debates are healthy, too much finger-pointing is prolonging the problem—web folks on all sides are still figuring out their sensibilities to and vocabulary for web materials.
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Bobby
15 Alarming Stats About Banner Ads – AKA Banners SUCK
15 Alarming Stats About Banner Ads | Digiday.
Here are 10 facts about banners that might make you wonder if there’s got to be a better way.
1. Over 5.3 trillion display ads were served to U.S. users last year. (ComScore)
2. That’s 1 trillion more than 2009. (ComScore)
3. The typical Internet user is served 1,707 banner ads per month. (Comscore)
4. Click-through rates are .1 percent. (DoubleClick)
5. The 468 x 60 banner has a .04 percent click rate. (DoubleClick)
6. An estimated 31 percent of ad impressions can’t be viewed by users. (Comscore)
7. The display advertising Lumascape has 318 logos. (Luma Partners)
8. 8 percent of Internet users account for 85 percent of clicks. (ComScore)
9. Up to 50 percent of clicks on mobile banner ads are accidental. (GoldSpot Media)
10. Mobile CPMs are 75 cents. (Kleiner Perkins)
11. You’re more likely to survive a plane crash than click a banner ad. (Solve Media)
12. 15 percent of people trust banner ads completely or somewhat, compared to 29 percent for TV ads. (eMarketer)
13. 34 percent don’t trust banner ads at all or much, compared to 26 percent for magazine ads. (eMarketer)
14. 25-34-year olds see 2,094 banner ads per month. (ComScore)
15. 445 different advertisers delivered more than a billion banner ads in 2012. (ComScore)-
RyRy
Interesting stuff. Do they differentiate between ads with and without CTA’s? It would be interesting to see if ads with CTA’s effect those numbers at all. Sub-question: is an ad a failure if noone clicks on it?
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greg
The dangers of cross-browser testing with IE9′s Browser Modes
It’s 2013; we’ve come a long way. But there are no jetpacks yet, and we still have to test websites in older versions of Internet Explorer. While many of you probably haven’t had to open IE6 in a while, IE7 and IE8 are still with us. At Typekit, we still test our web fonts in all three (along with all the other major browsers), but today we wanted to discuss a potential testing pitfall that some of our customers encounter.
MORE @ The dangers of cross-browser testing with IE9′s Browser Modes | The Typekit Blog.
uh oh….
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Bobby
5 Ways Brands Are Cutting Out Agencies | Digiday
5 Ways Brands Are Cutting Out Agencies | Digiday.
Interesting read about how brands are moving away from the need of agencies.
Agencies love “Mad Men.” One reason: It shows when they were at the zenith of their standing with clients. That’s slowly gone away, along with the culture of drinking copiously during the day.
Agencies are in a perilous position. As Digiday’s Confession series has shown, this is a known fact. At the root of all this is the tendency of agencies to cede power — to brands, to tech platforms, even to publishers. Digiday spoke with several sources on all sides of digital media — agency, brand, publisher, platform — to determine the five biggest disintermediation challenges now facing agencies.
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Bobby
For Email, Users Reach for the iPad – eMarketer
For Email, Users Reach for the iPad – eMarketer.
Interesting findings:
For reading emails, more than half of respondents chose the tablet as their preferred device, beating out PCs and Macs by over 20 percentage points. The difference was understandably narrower for sending emails, given that the keyboard is essential to writing emails. Just under half of respondents said they preferred the tablet vs. 41% who preferred a desktop or laptop computer.
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greg
To customize bootstrap a bit more, here’s a site that generates the CSS to use different colors for buttons when using bootstrap.
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Bobby
RWD and eCommerce come together – Electric Pulp
You like apples? | Electric Pulp..
We took a popular ecommerce store (O’Neill Clothing) that we’d recently redesigned and monitored conversions, transactions and revenue for three weeks. Then we quietly deployed the responsive conditions to the already live site and monitored for another three weeks.
This was not an A/B test. We simply picked 6 non-holiday weeks that perform similarly year over year to get as near to similar conditions as we could.
The “responsive conditions” were typical mobile patterns. We made the site fluid. We collapsed the primary navigation menu, allowing visitors to expand it by tapping a Menu link. We increased the size of the font, the tap areas and detail photos. We reduced the number of columns. We spent a lot of time just “fixing Magento forms.” Everything in a way that lets the O’Neill team continue to manage 100% of the content on the site.
Here’s what we found:
iPhone/iPod:
CONVERSIONS: + 65.71%
TRANSACTIONS: + 112.50%
REVENUE: + 101.25%Android Devices:
CONVERSIONS: + 407.32%
TRANSACTIONS: + 333.33%
REVENUE: + 591.42% -
RyRy
Love Full Stop’s style Here’s a fantastic…
Love Full Stop’s style. Here’s a fantastic responsive site from them that just launched.
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RyRy
had to fix that link.. the previous link was to one of the pages in the site.
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greg
going to have to disagree. The majority of the massive graphics have a lot of text in them that isn’t in the markup – meaning it can’t be searchable or display to screen-readers. And the “Big News” goes to an Access Denied page…
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RyRy
Hmmm, I’m not getting that error. Agree that the info graphics aren’t searchable, but they sure look perty!
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Bobby
46% of Holiday “Mobile Price Matchers” Bought In-Store
More adult mobile owners used their devices to help them shop during the 2012 holidays than during the 2011 season, finds the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project in new survey results [pdf]. Among various actions taken, 27% used their device to look up product pricing “mobile price matchers”. While that was not up significantly from a year earlier 25%, what they did after comparing prices did shift. Specifically, 46% of this group reported ultimately purchasing the product at the particular store. That represents a significant 31% increase from 35% who reported doing so the prior year.
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Bobby
20 Clean and Minimal Ecommerce Designs
Ecommerce is an ever-growing industry that is convenient for both seller and buyer. Shoppers can buy products without leaving the house, while merchants can manage a website rather than an entire store. But when developing your online store, you should approach its design the same way you would a physical store, and think about what your customers will want to see. Excessive clutter and confusing navigation will turn visitors away; quality product photos and a clean layout will draw them in. The success of your ecommerce site relies on the functionality of the store, as well as an attractive and professional look.
This is a collection of twenty ecommerce websites that are especially appealing in the way of aesthetic design. While different in the way that they reflect their own unique brands, they share certain characteristics – subtle background textures and colors, attractive typography, creative layouts, white space and quality imagery – all resulting in beautiful, minimalistic designs.
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RyRy
Looking Beyond User-Centered Design ∙ An A List Apart Column
Looking Beyond User-Centered Design ∙ An A List Apart Column.
Interesting and measured take on this. It is my opinion that each design project will always have it’s own unique solution.. comprised of various processes and smaller solutions. It’s good to have best practices, but we can’t lose site of what we bring as front-end designers. In other words, we shouldn’t be automatons, churning out generic, indistinguishable work.
“User-centered design has served the digital community well. So well, in fact, that I’m worried its dominance may actually be limiting our field.”
Money quote: “I don’t expect UCD’s pre-eminence to change. Nor do I think it necessarily should. But a design community is most healthy when it shares a respectful variety of opinions.”
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greg
the headphones rule
the headphones rule
no headphones, you can talk to me.
1 headphone, you can talk to me if i like.
2 headphones, do not talk to me.
via the headphones rule.
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Bobby
sparkbox/Build-Responsively-Workshop · GitHub
sparkbox/Build-Responsively-Workshop · GitHub.
Not sure I ever posted this, but it’s Sparkbox’s Github from their Build Responsively conference.
Some great stuff in here!
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Bobby
Rise of Infographics: Marketing in the Social-Media Age
Rise of Infographics: Marketing in the Social-Media Age.
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Bobby
The Post-PSD Era < AGREED!
This is one of those posts that really makes me think and then cringe. While I totally agree with this…
Throughout my career, I’ve watched immensely talented designers waste a shitload of time creating fully fleshed-out comps of what a website could look like. Pixels get pushed, details are sweated, pages are printed out, hung on walls, and presented to clients. Clients squawk their feedback, then designers act on it. They repeat this dance until everyone is content (or until nobody gives a shit anymore, which happens more often than you’d think). Only then do those pristine comps get handed (more like shoved) over to developers to build.
It’s an increasingly-pathetic process that makes less and less sense in this multi-device age. I’m not making a case for ditching Photoshop altogether and designing solely in the browser (where are the blend modes in Chrome dev tools again?) but rather better understanding how we use Photoshop in modern web design (thanks Trent).
I hate to see this era coming to an end.
I will say that last year (’12) I started prototyping in a web based app called PROTO.IO This was the first time that I honestly believed I could design a complete site or mobile app and not rely on photoshop 100%.
This doesn’t make photoshop something I wouldn’t use. I would use it to create background textures, icons, and any images needed, but the actual layout I can do in something like Proto.io.
The advantage to using an app like Proto.io is that it will let me not only design the experience, but prototype the experience. It forces the designer to think about HOW something is used and not just what it will look like. It also lets you preview your work via the device you’re designing it for.
So yes, I believe that we are in a Post-PSD era.
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Bobby
Walmart is Mobile Retailer of the Year – Mobile Commerce Daily – Awards
Walmart is Mobile Retailer of the Year – Mobile Commerce Daily – Awards.
Is anyone shocked at this? I’m not.. it’s Walmart.
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greg
And exactly WTF is this ‘award’ based on…?
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Bobby
Generation X Is Sick of Your Bullshit – AWESOME RANT
Generation X Is Sick of Your Bullshit.
I know this isn’t about what we usually post on here, but it’s so awesome I couldn’t NOT post it.
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Bobby
obviously a Millennial rated this a 1 star.. hahahaha STFU
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RyRy is discussing. 
greg are discussing. 
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