Matt Sonnenberg over at Ignite Marketing shot me over a link to this cartoon today by Tom Fishburne. I hate to say it but I have dealt with clients who are guilty of being one of these critics, but then again, I’m sure they can find some cartoons about designers like me out there too

Thanks Matt, this was hilarious and made my day!

When reading customer testimonials on websites I sometimes wonder how genuine the words are. There is often no way of knowing whether the quote even came from a real person, whether it was unsolicited or how old it is. As a business owner you have to keep these testimonials fresh and remember to request new ones from customers and clients. Despite these problems customer testimonials feature on many sites and can really help to reassure people before they purchase.

When we launched Perch, just over a year ago, we used Twitter extensively to get the word out and to respond to our potential and new customers. Drew and I have been using Twitter socially since not long after it launched so it made sense to promote Perch that way. As people started to buy and use Perch, they began to post nice things to Twitter and so we added them as favorites for the Perch account on Twitter, over time building up a large list of nice comments from our users.

When we launched the recent redesign of the Perch website we used the Twitter favorites as a way of putting testimonials on the site. In the footer of the Perch website is one of our Perch birds tweeting a tweet drawn from that list. These display randomly, so as a visitor moves around the site they will see a variety of different testimonials. Each tweet links through to that status on Twitter – so the testimonial is verified as being from an actual person. On Twitter you can see the date it was posted, so it is possible to tell how old this testimonial is. In addition the visitor is able to click through to the grabaperch account or search and see all of the mentions of Perch – not just the ones we really like!

You can get your favorites from the Twitter API. What you should avoid however is having something running on your site that gets the favorites every time someone visits. Instead, use the API to pull back the favorites and store them locally (in MySQL, another database or a text file) and then display your latest or random favorite from that data store. Twitter is often unresponsive or very slow and that will effect your site if you do this in real time.

Using the favorites list to add content to your site gives you a very simple way to add moderated Twitter content to your site. High profile sites have had problems in the past by displaying content based on a hashtag, as then anyone using that hashtag can get their thoughts displayed on your site. By using favorites you keep control and choose what goes into the list. Although you have chosen which Tweets go into your favorites, the visitor can use Twitter to find out more about you and the person providing the testimonial. This is a very open and transparent way to display testimonials and I believe this makes them far more useful to a potential customer or client.

This is a classic scene from “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” where the main character is trying to walk his dad through the process of sending an email. I’m sure many of us will find this situation painfully familiar.

This is an article by Kristen over at Paste Interactive, the guys/gals who built Jumpchart; this article appeared on their blog. I was asked if I would be willing to answer some questions about Jumpchart so I obliged and they were kind enough to give Vectyr a shot out.

We decided to reach out and let our users know how other people are using our products. We talked to Steve Reed, a graphic designer in Las Vegas who uses Jumpchart to plan and build websites for his clients.

How’d You Find It?

A lot of people stumble across Jumpchart, but Steve was actually out looking for a solution- and Jumpchart landed in his lap.

“I was searching for a tool that non-tech-savvy clients could log into, build and manipulate a sitemap, and add simple content- that’s it. I didn’t want to scare them or have to spend time teaching them about some complex system. Jumpchart was exactly the solution I was looking for.”

Steve admitted it’s a rather giant leap from their old system, which involved shooting word documents back and forth via e-mail. He advised anyone who is still doing this to, “Seriously, stop it.” and warned how tricky things can get when dealing with a design by committee situation, or outdated versions of Word.

“Now,” he said, “everyone gets access to Jumpchart!”

How Do You Use It?

Steve found a way to solidly implement Jumpchart into phase two of his website building process.

“I use a brief online form to collect information, some of which involves a potential list of main navigation items for the site. Next I set them up a fresh, new Jumpchart and create some new pages and subpages based on the information from the form and possibly some other sections that I would recommend. The next step involves collaboration with the client. If they have a good idea of what they want I ask them to log into Jumpchart and write a brief sentence on each page describing what kind of content they are envisioning. We then go into greater detail as we address each page individually.”

He also took the time to create a video intro to introduce clients to Jumpchart’s interface. It’s here if you want to check it out! It helped his clients feel more comfortable being in control, and they can move pages around and play with the basic wireframe to test the feel of the navigation.

You Use the Export Feature, Right?

“I use the export feature to transfer the entire sitemap along with all the content we’ve been working on over to Wordpress. Jumpchart generates a nice little .xml file I can upload to Wordpress and have all my pages greeted, with their subpages and all the other necessary content we’ve put together. This process is smooth and it just plain works.”

“Jumpchart is like the Twitter of Website Planning”

Steve appreciates such features as the public view option so his clients can play around with something that feels more like an actual website. He also uses the comment section frequently- he has conversations with his clients specifically about each page, and the e-mail notifications help them all stay on top of the latest ideas. But what’s his favorite feature?

“I really like the general simplicity of it all; it’s what lead me to Jumpchart over all the over services out there.”

Boilerplate Info on Vectyr.

Located in Las Vegas, Nevada, Vectyr was formally known as “Suspended Studios” and made its transformation on January 1, 2010. Although Vectyr is advertised as a graphic design firm, they take their work deeper than aesthetics. They work with a lot of people who are unfamiliar with the web, and who are looking for guidance. Vectyr builds a solid strategy for the flow of the content, and directs the visitor to accomplish the goals set forth on the site. Steve Reed is the founder of Vectyr, a hard core designer at heart, and a ninja in his spare time.

In terms of coding, categories and tags are almost identical. A category system could very easily be used as a tagging system, and vice versa.

So what is it that makes the two different? And how are they best used?

Understanding and Using Categories

Categories are best imagined as a paper filing system. Each page in the system must be filed away in the appropriate drawer. There are only a set number of drawers, and so each must cover a rather wide blanket.

In your blog, categories are best used in exactly the same way:

• The number of categories should be small. Resist the temptation to add new categories because a long list of them will not be read or browsed by anyone and so, is of no use.
• Each post goes into one category. The categories are a way of giving a post permanent storage, just as the drawers do. You cannot put one piece of paper into two drawers, and in the same way, a single post should go into a single category.
• Categories are navigation elements. Categories are not simply a way of labeling posts, they are a core element of your navigation. Your categories should be factored into your site’s architecture and navigation, and displayed appropriately.
• Categories in URLs. A category represents the traditional folder system of a HTML website. Using permalinks with category names included is a good way of displaying the tiered architecture of a web site. Consider this URL – http://domain.com/category/post-name/ – If I want to return to the post’s category (i.e. go “up a level” in the architecture), I simply slash the post-name off the URL.

Complement the Categories With Tags

The most common problem with tagging is that it is used for the same purposes that categories are. Your tags aren’t categories. They are complements to your categories.

Think of tags as the colorful little page markers you might use to flick back to your favorite pages in a book. The tags don’t describe the book as a whole, instead they describe individual sections of the book.

• Use the same tags over and over again. The tagging system is useless when the tags you use vary. For instance, if you have a series of posts on writing articles, you could tag them as “journalism,” “writing,” “copywriting,” or a hundred other variations. The important thing is that you choose one of them, and then reuse it on every post you ever write on the topic.
• Tags do not need to be displayed in the sidebar. Tagging is not a part of your navigational structure, and so it does not necessarily have to be displayed in the sidebar. Why not simply list a post’s tags at the end of the post? The contextualisation will make them much more valuable to readers, and could even be used to replace “Related Posts,” plugins and such.
• The tag cloud is easy to scan. If you do use your tags in your sidebar, then use the tag cloud. A list of categories is very easily recognised because it is in a list. A list of tags will be clearly recognized as such if it is in a cloud. The cloud works because it fits a lot of information into a small space, and is easy to scan over.

Tags have a lot of potential. To a certain extent, they could be used to replace searching, if done well. Let’s say I’m interested in posts about FeedBurner. Am I more likely to get good results by searching and having every post that has ever mentioned FeedBurner returned to me, or by clicking a tag and only seeing the posts which have been specifically tagged as discussing FeedBurner?

Comments from Steve

First of all, I re-posted this article because I thought that most of Michael’s comments were great. However, I want to make a comment on his ‘one category per post’ idea. Ideally, I think most people in the know would agree that one category per post is recommended, however, it’s not an abomination to place a post into two categories, it really just depends on the content of the post and how you have your categories set up.

Now that said, if you find yourself constantly applying multiple categories to a post, your categories might be too similar and you may want to consider consolidating them into one category. For example, let’s say you have “Sushi” and “Robots”, those are two obviously distinct categories. But let’s say you have “Trips” and “Vacations”, you might want to just nix “Vacations” and put everything under “Trips”.

Proper planning is key to effectively setting up your categories. Sit down, think about it and then create your categories.