When it comes to a critique, there are many important factors to consider as a business owner. The initial design mockup that you receive may not always be exactly what you had in mind, or the way you would have designed it yourself. The question is, where do we go from here?

Behind the Design

Often, there are specific reasons behind almost every element of a design that comes from an agency with years of experience on the web. Color, font style and size, geometric shapes, borders, and graphic elements call all be determining factors in the way your site communicates to your consumer target, and may ultimately determine the success of your business online. The goal of any great agency is to put our clients first by putting their clients first.

By focusing on our skills in visual communication and psychology we develop a “language” so to speak, that communicates a message to our client’s target audience. For example, by using certain colors, fonts, and shapes on the site, we’re able to tap into a demographic and make their experience on the site more pleasurable. This hopefully leads to an increase in sales on your part, provided the site is well maintained and the communication remains consistent.

How to Critique

In order to make this communication successful, the process requires trust, patience, and an open mind just as any other critique. For example, when a client first receives our initial design for a website’s homepage, we ask that they put themselves in the user’s shoes, versus the shoes of the designers. This means that they ignore the natural urge to focus on specific elements (color, fonts, sizes, etc), but rather on the overall function and flow of the design.

Things to be considered:

• Are all the links in the main navigation (menu) necessary? Should there be more or less?
• Is the main purpose of the site being achieved? Is the user able to benefit from the content itself?
• Ease of use. Is everything easy to find and understandable, or is there too much thinking involved?

Things to Avoid being caught up on:

• Personal opinion on colors and fonts
• Focusing on the competitor or trying to emulate their approach
• Opinions of friends and family on the design itself, rather than ease of use and content.

The reason behind putting yourself in the user’s shoes versus the shoes of the designers is that ultimately, the users will be the ones visiting your site. How often will you, your nephew, grandfather or wife be visiting the website as opposed to your consumers? It’s more likely that the site will be successful if the design agency is able to direct the design and you are able to make sure the content is available to your consumer. After all, nobody knows your product or service like you do, and nobody knows how to visually attract the target audience (consumer) to your product or service on the web like we do!

A Quick Analogy

There are many analogies that can be applied to web design. Take a presidential speech at the United Nations for example. The President’s speech is written in English, which for us, is easy to understand. For others, the speech is only as good as the translator behind it. If the translator wasn’t a professional at communicating to his or her audience, there may be difficulty when trying to understand the message, causing frustration and loss of interest. But with the right translator, the message reaches the audience in a way that helps them to appreciate the concept and be part of the experience.

This can be directly applied to the design process. You are the writer of the speech and we are the translator. We need your content and information about your business. You need our knowledge and expertise to properly communicate your content to your audience. By playing our positions and working together we’re able to create a website that will hit your target audience and encourage an increase in your sales on the web!

Somewhere in the tri-state area, someone’s father is telling them how back in his day, he had to walk two and a half miles to school in blizzards like this. Well guess what dad, school’s canceled. Apparently, in 2010 we still haven’t come up with methods of combating inclement weather to the point where it doesn’t cripple whole cities. The good news is, at Keylex business goes on as usual. (We now apologize in advance for this cheesy joke. Pardon us) We may not be snow plows, but we keep on trucking! (ugh - eyeroll ) Anyway, while your kids are out having snowball fights, and you’re trying to come up with creative ways to shovel the walkway without throwing your back out again, we’re still taking care of you! Thanks to the good fellows at Google, Adobe, Apple, and The Internet we’re doing just fine in this winter wonderland. Anyone up for a snowball fight with us on twitter??? CLICK HERE

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s the Woot Monkey! WOW is this thing FUN / annoying! Three of these lil’ guys came flying through the door today and while we’re not used to “monkeying around” (okay, we promise that was the last cheesy pun) we’re pretty fond of them! Here’s Woot’s fun description of these air-born apes:

Navigation (also known as the “menu”) is one of the most important features on a website. It should be functional, but also visually impressive. Because of their importance, navigation menus are usually placed at the top of the page, therefore making a big impact on a user’s first impression of the website.Check these out!

Google always has creative ways of celebrating every little holiday and milestone in history. Today is the 40th Anniversary of Sesame Street. Check out Cookie Monster on Google!!! C is for Cookie, buddy! As a creative agency, we had to add our two cents by suggesting that the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button be changed to “I’m Feeling Cookie”…at least for today…Just saying…

You may own or remember one of our eye-popping, 80’s retro, fluorescent brochures from this past year. Well, it’s time to reprint and we’ve redesigned them for a whole new look! Inspired by Russian Revolutionary Art and Constructivism, our new brochure is a little more eye catching from the outside, yet still packed with the same useful information about what we do here at Keylex. Want one? Well, since you’re here we can assume you already know where to find us! Just in case you’re struggling though, try contacting us by clicking here.