Good design doesn’t just mean pretty, it means functional too. Sometimes a website is born that combines those two things seamlessly. It’s like a miracle. Or more likely, people worked hard and communicated with one another, allowing design, functionality, and content to come together and deliver a clear and helpful message.

A functional website satisfies two important needs:

• People who’ve never heard of you before should be able to figure out what you do in less than thirty seconds, without clicking on anything.
• People who know about you should be able to get to what they want in 1-3 clicks.

A well-designed site must allow both to happen, while being aesthetically pleasing and providing relevant information. If you’re stomping your feet and whining that you don’t want to have to do all of those things at the same time, the Internet should be taken away from you and your bad web design. You can have it back when you’ve had some time to think about what you’ve done.

So, in no particular order, let’s see some good design!

Ript Apparel

Ript Apparel is a clothing company that specializes in made-to-order t-shirts that feature original pop culture designs contributed by independent artists. With the exception of a few reprints, the designs are only available for 24 hours, making each shirt they sell a limited edition collector’s item.

If you didn’t know any of that before now, it’s at least immediately clear from their homepage that they’re an apparel company and you can get a rad shirt with featuring a pirate-esque Super Mario water-skiing on a couple of Koopas

Due to their unique business model, they have no need for any kind of category page, so nearly all of their content can be reached within 1-3 clicks from their homepage. While there is, admittedly, not a lot of content on the homepage, everything above the fold is relevant and useful, and everything below the fold is devoted to engaging their users in a discussion.

Camera+

Camera+ starts off with the bare minimum of what you need to know – it’s an app, it takes pictures, you can buy it for $1.99. Mission accomplished. To add some icing on that cake, the image of the phone plays a little video that shows you how to use the app, and if you want a more in depth tutorial there’s an intro video linked right above the ‘buy now’ button.

You could argue that it loses a little functionality by lacking any sort of navigation – if you want to know more about the product you have to scroll down, getting into finer and finer detail the farther you go, but there’s no way to go straight to the information you’re looking for without skimming all the information available. Still, the page isn’t that long – it tells you everything you need to know without being verbose, and it does so using excellent photography and consistent attention to spacing.

Crowdrise

Crowdrise holds a special place in my heart because the entire site is laced with humor, which as we’ve mentioned before, rules the internet. This is another site that knows how to keep things simple. Nearly any information that you could be looking for is available in one of those top five drop-down menus (though they could probably stand to make it a little more obvious that those are, in fact, drop-down menus).

And if you don’t know what Crowdwise is about, the navigation and slideshow text is full of keywords to clue you in that their mission is, as the tagline says, to give back. Crowdrise is an easy, secure way to raise money for good causes, and they provide that service with a great sense of humor.

Strawberry Jam

These guys break the 1-3 click rule a little bit – but you don’t actually have to click the big pink button to find out what they do, you can just scroll down. And to be fair, the big pink button is – you know – big. And also pink.

Strawberry Jam combines all your social media feeds so that, for example, if you’re friends with all your coworkers on Facebook and/or Twitter and they all suddenly decide to share the same link to the same article at the same time, you only have to see it once. And if you already knew that, you need only fill out the form to sign up for the beta. One click and done.

Trip Lingo

This is another app – which you can see from the handy pictures of it shown on both i-Phone and Android screens. For newcomers, all the basic info about what the Trip Lingo app does – it helps you learn other languages so you can communicate with locals while you travel – is right there when you arrive on the page, no clicking necessary. For people who already know what it is and simply need to have it now, there’s a big shiny button to get you started. And if that’s not enough for you, there’s a big ol’ features section right below the fold.

Foodzy

Foodzy is another addition to the craze of turning diet and exercise into a fun social networking game. The site combines fun, colorful, retro-style illustrations with a clean, to-the-point design. Their purpose is laid out in three steps at the top of the page, there’s a cute video to watch if you’re still not sold. If you’re already shouting sign me up there’s a big green button at the top, just for you.

Louise Fili

Louise Fili specializes in packaging design for restaurants and food products, which is what it says in that big red bar. Her work is divided into clear categories which are listed along the top, and she combines beautiful photography with a minimalist design to showcase her art. This is another example of a website that’s lacking a lot of text content, but portfolio sites are one of the few cases where that’s not terribly necessary. Portfolio sites should be carried by the work you’re presenting – if you have to mince words to convince people why they should like your art, you’re doing something wrong.

GOOD

Editorial sites often have a problem with spacing; they get caught up in trying to fit as many interesting headlines on the page as possible and forget that if they aren’t easy to read, no one is going to read them. GOOD doesn’t fall into that trap. The site is pretty and easy to read, there’s a nice balance of images, content, and negative space, and the title changes from ‘Good Morning’ to ‘Good Afternoon’ depending on what time it is, which is nifty.

Evernote

It’s hard to explain what Evernote is, since there isn’t really anything else like it out there (it’s not quite a blog and not really a social network), but they do a pretty good job of presenting the basics. If you already know what Evernote is and want it, the download button is right there in the middle of the page. Plus the logo cleverly combines an elephant (because they never forget) with a standard page icon, and I’m a sucker for clever logos.

Squarespace

These guys don’t do anything terribly fancy as far as visuals, but they don’t need to. Squarespace is a site creation software and they follow the rules to the letter – the who, what, and why are spelled out for you above the fold and the call-to-action is the first thing you see (as it should be). Any other information you desire is available within 1-3 clicks and overall, their site reflects the clean, elegant professionalism of the product they offer.

And that’s it! Ten beautiful websites for you to fawn over and strive to emulate. If you have any that you think should have been featured (or any good design, not just websites but logos, posters, email blasts, etc.), let us know!

The post Good Design Roundup appeared first on Portent.

You spent thousands of dollars on a print advertisement. You included a special URL to help you track visitors. Then you showed them your home page?

* * * F A I L * * *

Advertising is all about the ROI or return on investment. You know the adage, “You got to spend money to make money.”

• Genius photography costs money.
• Compelling copy costs money.
• Eye-catching design costs money.
• Placing your ad in the perfect magazine costs money and getting onto the good pages costs lots of money.

If you are willing to invest all of that time, effort and money into crafting a persuasive print ad then you should follow-up with the custom message your visitors expect to see.

But Tom, Why Not Send Them to My Home Page?

You have a great home page. You invested lots of time to make your home page gorgeous and convincing. A professional writer lovingly crafted the copy and your designer spent hours selecting photographs. All those links will take visitors wherever their heart desires, as long as it is on your web site. Unfortunately a great home page is exactly the wrong follow-up for visitors from your print ads.

The problem is that great home pages are generic. You should design your home page for everyone throughout your target audience. Good home pages help different audiences to branch-off and find the information they want. Visitors can self-select the right content and click to it.

Visitors from print advertisements are different. When your they picked-up that magazine and responded to your advertisement, they made a decision about the type of content and the message they expected and wanted. For example:

If you run a museum and you show an add promoting your Egyptian Mummies Exhibit, the people who come to your web site will undoubtedly want to learn more about the mummies. They do not want to read about the Ships of the Sea room or the Dutch Dikes Display. Send them directly to a laser-targeted web page about your Egyptian mummies. What they are. Who they are. Opening and closing times. And most of all, a link they can click on to buy tickets, schedule a cab, and make reservations at a nice restaurant for afterward.

Of course I’m joking about the cab and the restaurant, maybe, but definitely make it easy to respond. They should only have to click once if they wish to buy tickets.

If you show these visitors your home page instead of a targeted landing page you force them to step backwards. If you’ve ever been in a customer service situation you know how annoying reverse progress can be. Don’t annoy your visitors.

Instead of your lovely but generic home page, give web site visitors arriving from your print advertisements what they want and what they expect.

• Continuity – a continuation of the message in the print ad, both content and style.
• Fulfillment – deliver on promises you made in the ad. You did give them specific and special reasons to visit your web site, right?
• Paths – links that lead directly to the products or services you mentioned or alluded to in your print ad. Or, better yet, immediate conversion links like, “Buy Now!”

Ultimately, when you follow this marketing guideline you show your visitors respect. People appreciate respect. Respect gets rewarded.

Bonus Idea!

When you give visitors a web address use a short, catchy and meaningful word that appears in your print ad copy. For example, http://www.museum.org/mummies uses mummies. Using a real word can invoke anticipation. If visitors do not think they will be rewarded they’ll be more likely to pass on typing the extra character and go straight to your home page anyway.

Bonus Benefit!

By creating an original landing page for your print ad you also create original and search engine friendly content that you can add into your web site’s navigation. Just be sure your analytics tracking can differentiate direct visitors from web page referrals.

The post A Case for Customized Print Ad Landing Pages appeared first on Portent.