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Partner Capital One website and branding


Partner Capital One is a private equity firm that invests in businesses, primarily focusing on small and mid-sized companies with a specific emphasis on financial services and the provision of health services.

XUNY were asked to design a simple logo, stationery and website.

www.partnercapitalone.com

Clusterscale 6 page brochure & stand graphics



Clusterscale are going from strength to strength. As well as designing 2 show stands for them this month, we were asked at the very last minute to create a full 6 page brochure to accompany the trade shows..
www.clusterscale.com

Freelance designers wanted

Good graphic and web designers are hard to come by. This market is becoming slightly saturated with poor design and bad practices as more and more people attempt to embark on what is a very rewarding and exciting career. If you are a good egg and have a good portfolio with the right attitude, give us a call on 0759 007 0584. Or send examples of your work to info@xuny.co.uk

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Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools

WebAIM recently released the WAVE Toolbar for Firefox, which augments their free online accessbility evaluation service, known as WAVE. WAVE is currently in version 4, much like Cynthia Says but with a focus on developer friendliness by overlaying results visually above the page you are testing. I think WAVE is a pretty cool idea. The fact of the matter that no automated tool can ever tell whether a website is truly accessible means it always boils down to human assessment in the end. So a visual tool is much welcomed as the explanations you get from Cynthia are quite cryptic at times.

For more power in your toolbar I recommend trying out the Firefox Accessibility Extension. This one is primarily an assistive tool for people with disabilities browsing the Web but also doubles up as a great accessibility evaluation tool for developers.

Ca Phun Ung - 13th Apr 2008
http://yelotofu.com/tag/accessibility/

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Conversion rates

It’s all very well pumping money into online advertising to drive traffic to your site, but if it fails to convert into sales or enquiries then you’ve wasted your money.

Tools such as Google Analytics can help you determine ‘bounce rate’  - the number of people who leave your site on the same page they enter. The bounce rate is a fair indication that people who arrive at your site have not found what they are looking for.

So how do you improve conversion?

There are several reasons why your site might not be converting effectively.

Where is your traffic coming from and what page are they landing on the most? Look at your site stats to see which page they leave on. If there's a pattern of users leaving your site on a certain stage of the checkout process then test it. Is it intuitive, does it crash or is it slow?

Is the information on the site informative and up to date? Are there offers on the ad landing page and do you have a call to action? Eg Buy now, free, click here etc.

Driving traffic to the wrong destination

On your promotional material you should include your web address. However, if your offer relates to a particular product or service, then the page that you direct your promotional traffic to should lead with this offer. Keeping the url quick for radio ads is fine, because the shorter they are, the more memorable they will be. But if you have an ad in print, you are not limited to just your company home page address. If you want to up-sell then you can build this into the checkout process, but your goal here is to convert that ad spend into a sale with the minimum amount of clicks.

It is important to test your website from the viewpoint of your customer. Try inventing personas, and think about the technical ability and browsing characteristics of those personas. You should know your audience better than anyone, so these personas should cover a broad spectrum of clients. You should then test your site by creating goals and thinking how these personas might achieve those goals. For example, create a new account, complete the checkout process, find a specific product or service.

Once you have conducted these tests you can then evaluate whether the goals were achieved:

Rather than yes or no questions, get the testers to rate each out of 10, which will give each aspect a percentage rating making it clearer where the improvements should be.

How clear was the language?
How useful was the product information?
How clear was the signposting on the site?
How easy was it to find the right information?
Did all pages load correctly and quickly?
How would you rate the search, did it return relevent results and could those results be refined effectively?

Craig Goult - September 28 2008