Redesigning A Website With Email Marketing In Mind
August 27, 2007
I am all for technology related to email marketing. Over the last few weeks I’ve been getting a design ready for PureWebAnalytics as I begin to take the site and business in a new direction. I’ve spent a little time figuring out what CMS architecture I wanted to build my site on because when I first started PureWebAnalytics, in January 2007, WordPress was a simple choice. Now, 8 months later, I have decided to stay with WordPress because of the amount of plugins and developers that know the architecture that runs the site it would be a bad idea to go to a lesser piece of software to run my site. Perhaps you’ve run into this when renovating your website or maybe you never thought about it but if you are building a business naturally you need to think about the systems behind the business.
For online businesses one of these systems is email marketing. I know that I’ve talked about it in the past on PureWebAnalytics but email marketing if you do it correctly is one way to building ongoing relationships with people interested in your service or products. So many companies have the ability to send and create email marketing campaigns and yet they don’t. One component behind the new PureWebAnalytics is a newsletter capture feature that will allow me to build lists, run promotions and build a bigger list in the long run and keeping people loyal to the PureWebAnalytics name. As I get closer to the release of the new site the articles will pick up on here again. I cannot believe its been 20 days since I posted an article on here.
Luc
Would you use a CSS Framework?
August 7, 2007
I just got back from a nice weekend in Northern Ontario (in Parry Sound) and it was nice to be away from the computer for 4 (actually almost 5) days. Following the idea of a lazy weekend I was reading through StyleGala today and an article prompted my interest. The article was about a framework that someone had developed to make coding CSS simpler and easier. If you’ve ever had the chance to learn CSS then you’ll know that it is not a hard language to learn (once you’ve learned the concepts) and that it really doesn’t take that long to learn.
It boggled my mind a little as to why someone would go the trouble of making a CSS framework. Sure speed is always an issue but to be honest it isn’t like it takes long to code CSS.
My programming teacher back in college once said to us “Why reinvent the wheel?” Personally I think that if you are a developer or professional designer you’ve either got your own CSS styles built and ready to go and would probably find this a waste of time. However, if you are just learning CSS then this could be a beneficial resource to use as you learn more about CSS.
Luc
User-Centered Websites: Designing With People In Mind
August 2, 2007
Most people are amateur in their approach of designing websites and web apps in general. It goes something like this “Our online business plan is awesome and we are going to make tons of money”. Sadly most people think about web design from this point of view. Where does the customer factor into your plans for world domination? When you have to close your virtual doors 6 months or a year down the road because no one visits your site perhaps this is when you’ll start to think about those potential customers that never were.
When you forget to design for people regardless of what you are designing you pretty much run the risk of designing a bad product. If you designed a chair without thinking about the person sitting in it you’d have a similar result. Just look at IKEA furniture 
(just kidding). If you designed a chair you would naturally need to study ergonomics to understand the experience of the chair from the point of view of the end user. This is why site optimization and analytics exist and are slowly becoming predominant in the web design and development communities. You cannot build truly excellent websites without the end user in mind.
