February 2008

buy.at Roadshow comes to Bristol, 6th March - Karting on Ice!

Our friends at buy.at are stopping by Bristol on their Affiliate Marketing roadshow.

Most of the team here at existem will be going to the ‘Karting on Ice’ and for a few or more drinks afterwards, be great to catch up.

buy.at reps in attendance:

Warrick Lambert - Head of Account Management
Rosalyn Fenwick - Senior Account Manager
Chris Mockford - Affiliate Development Manager
Kris Kennedy – Business Analyst

Meetings will take place from 11am - 2pm @ Mercure Holland House Hotel & Spa Bristol.

Go-Karting on Ice will start at 2.30pm meeting at the hotel before heading over to Bristol Ice rink.

Full details can be found over on our forum

The Design Process

I thought it might be nice to pass on a few hints, tips and my ideologies about designing and building websites that I’ve either picked up or developed over the past year or so. I won’t be going into super detail here so if you have any questions feel free to pop me and email.

Stage 1 - The Design Process

Research and Inspiration - I’ll often have a glance over at cssremix or cssmania to have a glance at what’s going on around me and generally keep an eye open for emerging trends (or ones that are dying out). I try to avoid taking layout or colour inspiration from any sites on here though, I’ve tried that in the past and just ended up cloning a site I liked (and i have no urge to become one of those designers). Instead I think its a good idea to take your inspiration from a sideways perspective, finding an idea and concept from something as easy as mind-mapping your thoughts. This will often take you down the ‘road-less-traveled’ with your ideas and you’ll probably develop a much stronger design concept. Websites like designyoutrust often get the creativity flowing by taking you out of a ‘web’ mind set and getting you thinking about the overall image of what you want to create.

Embrace what you like, and fight for it too! - There’s no harm in designing as you design and this means you bring a certain set of values, styles and methods to the table that no-one else can. Removing all trace of what makes something you will ultimately result in something generic. If you believe that what your doing is right then fight for it. I’m not saying be a stubborn mule about everything, there is always room for compromise and sometimes a new perspective and input can be really useful too. Choose your battles and give reasons for your choices.

“A camel is a horse, designed by committee” - Involve a maximum of 2-3 people on the design process if you can. Being a visual medium everyone has an opinion on how things should look, thus the more opinions, the more convoluted everything can become. If you receive criticism, encourage it to be constructive and detailed. Its much better to hear ” I’m not sure about the image it conveys as I think its too informal” than “It doesn’t feel right”.

Stage 2 - Creating a design

Wire framing - I didn’t used to do this that often, and, to be honest, I found when I did it made the whole project a lot easier. By simply setting out areas where things will go on each page first, you can save yourself hours later on.

Design the homepage last - Yep, thats right. I’ve found, especially with larger projects, that the homepage is the most organic, and ultimately the hardest to get right. As ideas for the site, importance of features and layouts change (they all happen) the homepage will look a million miles from what you had planned by the time the site goes live. I know this from experience of re-designing home pages several times. Save yourself some time and do it last

Write down your hex-codes - Seems obvious but if you keep them all together (in a book, online, wherever) you’ll save yourself the bother of picking through the css at a later date looking for them. While I’m on this, its always a good idea to write down some variants on your main tones, these can come in really handy later on.

Stage 3 - Coding

Comments, the more the better - Make sure you comment everything clearly with start and end comments. This lets you, and anyone else who looks at your code, understand it and know where they are.

Keep a clear class - Using “clear:both” to clear floated elements is fundamental to css design and by keeping a class such as “.clear { clear:both:}” in your style sheet you can apply it wherever its needed, to whatever element.

Hot Headings - Recently I’ve started using h1, h2, h3 etc.. tags in a slightly different way. I still keep then semantically correct on the page, but in the css iIve given them zero margins and padding and defined the text size to something standard across the board (say 18px). Then I style them using different styles via classes. This gives you much more control over each heading, but keeps the structure the same.

Outline:none - If your like me and you don’t like the little dotted line that appears in firefox when you click an image, add “outline:none;” to your “a” styles. This will remove it.

I hope this is helpful :)

Change – Good or Bad?

The past week has seen some issues raised over the current trends of the Affiliate Marketing Industry, and a recent stir over certain announcements has got me thinking about change.

‘Change is something that affects everyone, every place and every thing at some point in this ever changing world, change is there for better or worse’

Surely, the world develops through change, so should this not also be true in the case of Affiliate Marketing?

In my eyes, technology develops, that equals change, marketers move around, that’s change, commission’s increase that’s also change.

‘The first step toward change is awareness. The second step is acceptance’ ~ Nathaniel Branden.

Awareness: The objective of everyone operating within Affiliate Marketing should be to create/develop professionalism – why? To continue working towards becoming a respected, profitable and worthwhile marketing channel for businesses, clients and investors. Making people aware of our industry.

Acceptance: Surely, changes are introduced with all the best intentions for the industry, and usually from someone who has great passion for it.

Changes can receive very negative feedback. While not all changes will please everyone, I am sure the end objective is the same for all involved – to shout out loud about this fantastic industry we operate within!

Without accepting the fact that everything changes, we cannot find perfect composure. But unfortunately, although it is true, it is difficult for us to accept it. Because we cannot accept the truth of transience, we suffer. ~Shunryu Suzuki

Change is inevitable. Let’s accept the fact that times are changing, and delve into constructive discussion over the future of this developing industry, not knocking it down. Is this the view we want to provide outside of the channel?

‘The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind’ ~ William Blake