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“Great science is always dependent upon a creative and artful process. The two work together. We use the creative to generate ideas that we convert to hypotheses. And then with these hypotheses, we use science to determine which of them is most accurate. From this, we’ve developed the most important concepts in the advancement of civilization — Predictability.”
These are the words of Flint McGlaughlin in this replay of a live interactive session on Hypothesis Development. McGlaughlin and his YouTube listeners work together to construct an AB test to decide which email copy will receive the greatest amount of clicks. The first step is to create a hypothesis together. This is the first in a two-part series on test development.
Watch the video and learn how to use the MECLABS four-step hypothesis framework to remove the guesswork from your marketing efforts by performing accurate tests that will help determine what brings the greatest conversion lifts.
Who’s your audience? It sounds like an easy question, but it’s not. Knowing your audience helps keep eyeballs on your site, website traffic up, and visitors eagerly returning to your site to consume your content, and buy your products.
But a lack of understanding leads to a potentially dangerous domino effect. If you don’t understand your audience, you won’t understand what content it wants, and without that knowledge, your site traffic will suffer.
Read on for 10 strategies to understand your website audience so that you can ultimately protect and grow your business:
1. Use an Analytics Tool
This point may seem elementary, but it’s not. Roughly one-third of all websites monitored by W3Techs don’t have analytics attached to their sites. And an even worse statistic — less than 30% of small businesses use analytics, according to a 2017 study by the U.S. Small Business Administration. That’s an audience killer.
Analytics is the backbone for understanding your audience’s behavior. Analytics helps answer the most important questions in the process of identifying your audience. For instance, what content do your clients read? What time of day do they come to your website? How long do they spend with you? And where do they go after they visit you? You’ll certainly want to know if your audience is headed to a competitor after they visit your site.
More than half of all websites, according to W3Techs, use Google Analytics, though there are dozens of other available programs. If you don’t have an analytics program, do yourself a favor and get one.
2. Understand Your Analytics
We already know that a sizeable number of websites don’t attach analytics to their sites. In reality, having analytics is just a small part of what comes next. You have to have someone who understands the data. It doesn’t do you any good to have the data if you can’t tell what it means and you can’t use it to understand and then grow your audience.
Reading the numbers isn’t hard, but putting the numbers together to tell a story is far more difficult. For example, if you have data coming from Facebook, Twitter, and Google, you’ll need someone who can take the numbers and paint the picture of your audience’s habits, needs, and wants. Even if you use a social media management tool like Hootsuite, you still must have the skills to analyze the data. Having analytics and understanding them goes hand-in-hand.
3. Understand Keywords
Keywords are the words and phrases users type into a search engine. They’re important because they either send web traffic to your site or drive it away. A part of understanding your audience is knowing how people find your site. What search terms do they use? To start, you have to understand the keywords relevant to your business. The right keywords help; the wrong keywords drive no traffic.
Also, customers may ask for content in a way that’s different than how you describe the service. For instance, if you own a “wiener stand” but customers are searching for “hot dogs”, your search results will suffer. That’s why it’s critical to know what keywords your audience uses when searching. Use Google Keyword Research and WordTracker to find out what keywords work best for you.
4. Learn How to Use Facebook
You may think you know how to use Facebook. You may think that it’s simply a matter of posting something on the world’s largest social media channel and then waiting for your audience to land on your website. How wrong you are. There’s an underappreciated art to using Facebook and crafting messages that audiences find useful.
All of the parts of your Facebook post have to be in harmony. The overline — the part above the photo — must be catchy without being clickbait. The photo has to be alluring while conveying a message. The headline has to pull your audience in and make them want to click through to your site. We could spend multiple blogs discussing how to use Facebook to your advantage, but instead, take advantage of some of the free online tools that will put you on the road to knowledge. Facebook has lots of free tutorials, as does LifeWire and WikiHow.
5. Understand How Your Audience Reacts on Social Media
Facebook is the biggest social media site with nearly 1.7 billion worldwide users, according to data featured on Statista. But other social sites can help attract an audience, even though they all act differently. For instance, Pinterest makes heavy use of photos and graphics, while Instagram uses photos and messaging. And Twitter has become an outstanding tool for breaking news and marketing messages that are pushing a specific product.
There is no one size fits all in social media, and it’s incumbent on businesses to understand how their audiences use all of the available social tools.
6. Monitor Your Audience’s Comments
I know a business owner who stopped monitoring customers comments. Why? Because she didn’t like criticism. Sure, it’s hard when customers say bad things, and it’s harder if you consider the comments unjust. But audience comments, unjust or not, provide a window into what your customers think and how they expect to be treated.
Experienced media managers know the value of monitoring comments and using the available tools to talk directly to customers. Ignoring your customer’s comments means you’re not only throwing away a valuable source of information, but you’re also potentially losing eyeballs and business.
7. Let Your Audience Tell You What’s Important
Let’s use a newspaper analogy here. Newsroom editors decide what the most important news is each day, and those stories show up on the front page of the newspaper. That’s the way the news business has operated for centuries — an editor decides what’s important. But not anymore. Now, the audience tells you what’s important through analytics.
An audience tells you what they care about by the amount of time they spend on your site, by the number of times they click on your site, whether they make a purchase or click on an ad, and whether or not they come back. This may seem harsh, but the only opinion that matters belongs to your audience. Giving your audience anything besides what they crave means you don’t understand their needs, and those customers will go elsewhere.
8. Understand Your Business and What You Provide
As Forbes notes, the niche business market continues to grow, offering opportunities for entrepreneurs. That’s fantastic. But you have to know your business and what you provide, and not chase any business opportunities that detract from your core offerings.
Additionally, you’ll know exactly what you should provide through your marketing data and analytics. To illustrate, Tom Cruise’s character in the movie “Jerry McGuire” famously said, “Show me the money.” In this case, “show me the data” helps identify whether the niche works, and if it doesn’t, it also helps to determine what changes you need to make. Don’t stay too far afield from the business core.
9. Don’t Be Everything to Everybody
This point ties very nicely into understanding your business. In today’s growing niche marketplace, you can’t be everything to everybody. A cosmetics company trying to expand into apparel might work, but at what cost?
In addition to the startup costs of a new venture, there’s also the lost opportunity cost when you take your eye off of your primary business. Besides, as I’ve said, the audience will tell you what it wants. Give them what they want, and you will have a better chance of thriving.
10. Survey Your Audience
Surveys are an easy and often free or low-cost way to understand your audience’s desires. Short surveys with specific questions yield results you can use to keep customers.
A collection of statistics put together by Access show that loyal customers come back and spend more money with a business, and these surveys can help identify areas in which you can improve. However, the surveys also yield marketing data that will show customer concerns and provide clues for marketing strategies adjustment. Helpful tools include sites like SurveyMonkey, GutCheck, and AYTM, all of which offer free or low-cost surveys.
Final Word
Understanding your audience isn’t easy. You need a strong website analytics tool and someone who can interpret the data for you. Social media complicates matters since the biggest platforms — Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest — each attract audiences in different ways. The analytics help to paint a picture of who your customer is so that you can ultimately increase your users.
However, without a strong understanding of your audience, that growth will suffer. A lack of understanding can result in businesses moving too far away from their core offerings, paying less attention to their strength. A strong analytics program and analytics team helps organizations better understand why customers come to your website, giving you a better chance of increasing the number of repeat visitors.
Every day, people are asking themselves things like, “React or Vue?” “VR or no VR?” “CSS Grid or Flexbox?” These are the wrong questions entirely, because the technology you focus on or use next should always be matched to both the job and the people at hand.
Besides, here are the answers:
Personal preference.
Not yet, wait ‘til the market starts to truly expand again.
CSS Grid for known quantities, Flexbox for unknown quantities. Except for all the times where that’s wrong. CSS is a bit like English that way.
And that “Except for all the times where that’s wrong” bit is exactly the problem with making definite pronouncements about which technologies you should focus on next. I can’t reliably do that. However, in my years of muddling through tech problems, I’ve discovered ways to make an educated guess. Since people often use the new year as an excuse to try new things, I thought I’d share my principles of educated guesswork with you all.
1. Watch People
Watch how people use tech: Don’t be creepy about it. Conduct studies with willing participants, if you can. Otherwise, keep a non-invasive eye on your spouse, friends, and any kids you might have just lying around. If you see them using an app (for example), try it out for yourself. If you notice them ditch an app, maybe ask them why.
If you want to understand why VR hasn’t taken off on billion-dollar wings yet, look no further than smartphones. The smartphone has something everyone wants, and just about anyone can use one anywhere, and at any time. VR has yet to make that connection with people.
Watch what people do, not just what they say looks cool.
Watch the people who make tech: Research the people who make the tech you’re considering buying into. Do they listen to their community? Do they consider the edge cases? Do they care? Can they write clear documentation?
While there’s something to be said for the brilliant visionary who drags everyone else along with them to distant visions of grandeur, you should mostly be looking for the people solving simpler, more everyday problems. Stable people make stable tech.
Unstable people are better advertisers though. ahem Steve Jobs ahem.
2. Look For Convenience (For Your Users)
Because your users are looking for it, too. If a new bit of tech only adds steps to the process of just… getting things done, users will be frustrated. Now, when choosing between programming languages, for example, it’s all down to what you build with it. PHP, Node.js, Python, and ASP.NET can all process form data, after all.
But if, for example, you’re choosing pre-built software like a CMS, this factor becomes a whole lot more important. People don’t care how powerful their new content editor is, if they now have to do more things before they finally get to hit “publish”. A new tool that’s more convenient for you is all well and good; your users may have an entirely different opinion. Do not sacrifice their convenience for yours.
3. Integration
No tool is an island. Everything you use gets used in tandem with a bunch of other stuff. It’s for this very reason that some companies have opted to stick to older operating systems or browsers, sometimes. Ask anybody in IT or InfoSec: new software can upset entire ecosystems if you don’t do your research first.
Now sometimes that’s a good thing. Using an OS after support has officially ended, for example, is not a thing you want to do. But as web designers and devs, the choice is not always so clear. With the sheer massive numbers of libraries we use nowadays, conflicts can come out of nowhere. So maybe—just maybe—if your entire layout up to this point is still based on Bootstrap 3.x, starting to use CSS Grid everywhere can wait until you have the budget for a full redesign.
4. What Happens When Things go Wrong?
How Does the Tech Respond to Bugs? An improperly coded WordPress theme, for example, can refuse to display anything at all if something goes wrong in a single function. It’s one thing for a single feature to break on your site. As long as it’s not the navigation, or anything else that’s critical, chances are your users will ignore it. It’s quite another thing to have your whole site go down because someone mistyped something.
What are Your Support Options? At the very least, you want an active community and a developer that responds to questions when things go really wrong. Paid support options aren’t bad, either. A little money for support, or other expert help, can save a lot of lost sales.
5. Extra Tips
Remember that your needs are not necessarily everyone else’s needs. Tech that sounds like it might improve things for your users needs to be tested on a smaller scale. The world is littered with dead products and features that sounded useful and even delightful until you actually bothered to think about them.
Buzzwords be damned. Most likely whatever you’re doing does not need to be on the blockchain, or whatever else is popular this week. Chances are that trying to implement a “fashionable” solution to your problems may cause more harm than good. Again: test.
Perceived value is value. Think of website optimization. A website that feels fast is almost the same thing, in the eyes of the user, as a website that actually is fast. They want things to be snappy. The same goes for value: no matter how amazing a new bit of tech actually is, it’s got to feel valuable to the people who actually have to use it. If they do not feel as if it does them any good, they may forget about it or worse, actively avoid it.
If it ain’t broke, implement all fixes with caution.
As you draw closer to the finish line with a website, does your client see it just as clearly as you do? Or are they still wavering on design and copy choices even while you’re in the final stages of QA, or talking about additional features they’ll want to add to the site “some day”?
Unless you are getting paid — and paid well — for every single hour you put into a website, you have to be willing to enforce a final stopping point. If you don’t, your client will undoubtedly play the “What about this? Or this?” game for as long as you allow them to.
And you can’t afford to do that. You have other clients whose websites deserve your attention.
Just as you have created an onboarding process to smoothly kick off a new website project, you must do the same with an offboarding process.
Step 1: Collect Your Final Payment
Once the client has given you the approval on the finished website, you push it live. After some light testing to confirm that all is well on the live domain, it’s time to initiate the offboarding process.
You’ll do this by sending along the last invoice. Better yet, your invoicing software should automatically be configured to do this upon reaching the final project milestone.
Because each of these elements exist within the same place, setting up and scheduling invoices based on your project’s milestones (including the launch date) is really easy to do.
Don’t move on to the next steps until you collect the payment due though. Letting a client go any more than seven days after the project’s end without final payment simply invites them to ask you to do more work.
Step 2: Send the Wrap-up Email
Upon confirming receipt of payment, send your client a wrap-up email.
This doesn’t have to be lengthy. The goal is to get them to schedule the closing call as soon as possible. Something like this should work:
Greetings, [client name]! I wanted to thank you for the opportunity to build this website for [company name]. I hope you’re just as pleased with it as I am! I know you’re excited to put this website to work for you now that you have it, but I have just a few things I want to show you as we wrap up. When you have a moment, please go to myCalendlyand schedule a 15-minute Wrap-Up Session for some time this week. During this call, I’ll give you a behind-the-scenes tour of your website and show you how to edit your content. Afterwards, I will send along the login credentials you need to manage your website along with all of your design assets. Talk soon.
As I mentioned in the message above, Calendly is the tool I use to simplify my scheduling with clients.
All you have to do is create an event (like “Client Offboarding” or “Client Onboarding”), set up your availability, and then send the link to your clients to pick a time when you’re free. It makes life so much easier.
Step 3: Do the Wrap-Up Video Call
This final call with your client needs to be done over video or, at the very least, a screen-share. For this, I’d suggest using Zoom.
The above example is how I used to do my offboarding calls with WordPress clients.
I’d log into their website and then give them an orientation of all of the key areas they needed to know. I’d show them how to create a post, how to create a page, and explain the difference between the two. I’d also show them important areas like the Media folder, the area to manage Users, and maybe a few other things.
This “training” call is yours to do with as you like. Just make sure the client walks away feeling confident in taking the reins over from you.
Step 4: Deliver the Remaining Pieces
The website is done, you’ve collected the payment, and you’ve had the final call with your client. Now, it’s time to deliver the remaining pieces you owe them.
Logins – If you created any accounts from-scratch (e.g. WordPress, web hosting, social media, etc.), send along the login credentials.
Style guide – Did you create a style guide for the client? Package it up in a professional-looking PDF and send it over in case they decide to work with another designer in the future.
Design assets – Again, on the off chance they work with someone else, you’ll want to send along the design assets you created in their native formats.
Licenses – You may have licensed certain assets during this project, like stock photos or design templates. If that’s the case, you’ll need to bill them for the licenses (if you haven’t already) and transfer ownership to them now.
While you could send these along before the wrap-up call, you run the risk of the clients taking the materials and running away… Only to show up months later wanting to know what all this stuff is, what they’re supposed to do with it, and wondering if you’ll have time to walk them through the website now.
Or they don’t open any of it and then message you months down the line, urgently demanding access to their site, files, etc. To avoid this from happening, clearly label everything and send it along in a shared Dropbox folder.
Even if they lose the link to the Dropbox folder at any point, you don’t have to repackage up all their stuff again. You can simply grab the link from your end and resend.
Step 5: Follow Up in 60 Days
Set a reminder in your project management template to follow up with website clients 60 days after the wrap-up. This will give them enough time to sit with the website and either:
Become really comfortable using it;
Realize it’s too much work.
Either way, it’s a good idea to check in.
If they’re taking good care of the website and using it to promote their business, that’s great. This email will simply serve as a reminder that you remain their trusted ally and you’re here if they ever need anything.
And if they’re not taking care of it, this is an excellent opportunity to offer your assistance in providing (paid) support and maintenance.
Bringing Projects to a Close with an Offboarding Process
Then again, you know how clients can get. They’re so excited to actually have a website now that they can’t stop imagining the possibilities. So long as you’ve delivered what they paid for, though, you are under no obligation to keep this project open to entertain those ideas unless they start a new contract with you.
Use this offboarding checklist to ensure you give each of your web design projects as strong and final a close as possible.
Just like all of the other live platforms, it works similarly, but the whole purpose is to show off and promote your products so you can drive more brand awareness and sales.
The video above is by Skincare by Alana. Alana presented tips in the video about how to reduce puffiness around your eyes and how to make them brighter.
Can you guess how many views that video received in the first week it aired?
Well, based on the headline above you are probably going to guess 29,090. That is correct.
And all Alana spent was $200 to boost the video.
It’s not just Alana who is seeing massive success… I know 2 other people that are getting similar results, but they won’t let me share their stats as they are white labeling other people’s products and don’t want more competition.
So how do you get thousands of views from Amazon Live?
Well, there is a simple process… let’s break down how you can do it step by step.
Now before we get into that, I need to be transparent: You are going to find it a bit awkward at first. But after you do it a few times, you’ll find that it is easy and fast.
Step #1: Download the Amazon Live app
You probably have an iPhone or an Andriod device. Log into your app store and download the Amazon Live app.
Although you can view Amazon Live on your desktop computer, you can’t post a video unless you do it from your phone.
When you install the app, make sure you allow Amazon to access everything on your phone. This will come in handy later when you try to upload your slate image. I will get into what a slate image is later on…
Step #2: Open the app
Now open up the app. Once it’s opened it will look something like this other than the fact that you won’t have any videos.
On the bottom left you will see a “Streams” navigational option and that will show you all of the videos you have aired.
On the bottom right you will see a “More” navigational option that shows you all the preferences and options you have.
And to get started, you would click the “+” button at the bottom.
Step #3: Getting started
When you click the “+” button at the bottom, you’ll see a screen that looks like this:
Amazon Live has a cool practice mode feature. I highly recommend you start off with a practice run or two.
Once you get the hang of it, create a real live video. But before you do you’ll want to add products that you want to promote. You can select one or multiple.
As for video source, your phone camera will be the easiest. There are other options as well such as an encoder and other things for video ninjas, but I would just use your phone camera (also known as phone cam) as it’s simple and works well.
You’ll also have to name your live stream. This is where you enter the title of the video.
This is very important because if your title sucks, you won’t get as many views. If you don’t know how to write amazing headlines, check out these posts:
It doesn’t take much money to get thousands of views. Technically, you will get thousands of views without spending a dollar. But if you want to spend a few hundred dollars it will go a very long way.
Again, this tactic works without spending any money, but a few dollars can help you get a lot more traction.
Step #5: Schedule or post your video
You’ll have 2 options when it comes to posting your video. You can go live and post right away, or you can schedule your video to go out.
If you haven’t filmed your video during peak hours, I recommend that you schedule it. The last thing you want to do is publish a video in the middle of the night or too early in the morning.
Step #6: Add a slate image
A slate image is a cover image. This is what people see when browsing Amazon Live. Here’s an example of a slate image:
Remember how I said you’ll want to allow the app access to files on your phone? You’ll want to do that so you can upload a slate image.
Step #7: Show a banner
You need to show a banner. It will change the number of sales you generate.
You have 2 options when it comes to showing a banner. The first is to share a promotion with the views, and the second is to share a custom message.
When you select the “share a promotion” option, your promotion will be displayed as a banner at the bottom of your video. Customers can click on the banner to apply the promotion to their account.
And when you select the “share a custom message” option, your custom message will be displayed as a banner at the bottom of your video. People can hide the message at any point.
You can test both options, but I recommend that you at least “share a promotion” so it makes it easier for people to get a discount with just a click.
Step #8: Watch the sales roll in
Alana only generated one sale on her first video, but that’s because she didn’t push too hard. She already knows how to drastically improve that number and, in a bit, I will go over how to generate hundreds of sales through Amazon Live.
The other accounts I have access to have generated hundreds of sales through Live. One has generated 391 sales so far from 2 videos and the other has generated 328 sales from 3 videos. And I will share below why they were able to generate sales and why Alana wasn’t.
How to maximize your sales from Amazon Live
Here’s how to get more sales:
Buy equipment – if using your phone, get an awesome ring light and a vertical phone holder. It will NOT record horizontally. This will help improve the quality of your video.
Sell, sell, sell – Amazon wants this feature to sell, sell, and then sell some more. This is the big mistake Alana made and she knows it and will fix this during her next live video. If you don’t sell, don’t expect sales.
Offer a discount – Pick an awesome product, and a deep discount. If you don’t offer a discount you won’t generate over 100 dollars in sales from your live video. If you generate more sales, you’ll typically get more video views because when you sell Amazon makes more money. I know I have talked in the past about how giving discounts is a bad long-term strategy for your brand. I still stand by that. However, live videos are a much different way to sell in the short term and offering discounts will drive many sales and more awareness quickly. Because the offer is only accessible during the Live and nowhere else, this is one of the situations where not only do I think discounts are acceptable but necessary.
Be careful – if you are sending tons of traffic to a product and you don’t generate any sales, you will hurt your Amazon organic rankings. For that reason, you really have to sell. If you aren’t willing to sell hard, Amazon Live may not be for you. If you perform well, it can help with your organic rankings.
Create a sign – hold a sign at the beginning of the video that says “UNMUTE ME” or something like that. Amazon appears to track how many people actually listen to your video, and how long they listen. This should help you get more views and sales.
Hook viewers – making bold statements that are true or telling people what you are going to cover later in the video is a great way to keep people engaged longer. Poor engagement will lead to very little video views.
Build authority – although I told you to sell hard, you need to provide amazing information and tips at the same time. This will help you become an authority and it should boost your sales in the long run. Selling without providing value will make you look bad.
It really isn’t that complicated. As long as you follow the tips above, it shouldn’t be hard for you to generate dozens of sales from each Amazon Live video.
Conclusion
Just like every other video platform, the reach will eventually be limited, and it will be harder to get results. And sadly, there is nothing you can do about it.
For the time being, though, you need to jump on the Amazon Live bandwagon and create as many videos as you can. Once you get the process down right and you are seeing sales, I would create 1 video each and every day.
I can’t create videos on Amazon Live as I don’t sell ecommerce products myself, but you can. That’s a requirement that I can’t get around.
So, what do you think about Amazon Live? If you aren’t jumping to create a video after reading this, you are missing out.
Welcome to our roundup of the best new sites to be launched (or relaunched with significant updates) in the last four weeks.
After last month’s flirtation with monochrome, this month’s set of sites return to the overriding trend of 2019: color. Huge images are still popular, and parallax is still finding its way into our scrolling experiences. Enjoy!
Middle Fork Rapid Transit
Middle Fork Rapid Transit is an adventure vacation company that transports you over 100 miles down the Middle Fork river in Idaho. Its site packs in as much as one of its trips, and there’s tons of little details to get you fired up; I love the animated raft, and the grub looks amazing.
To Taste
To Taste is my favorite recipe site of the moment. Packed with food ideas for every occasion and palette, the simple site is laid out perfectly for browsing, and choosing something to make is a culinary treat. What really makes it, as with all food sites, is the mouth-watering photography.
The Face
Style bible The Face returned from oblivion this month, with a new team behind the iconic publication. Its site opens as daringly as you’d expect, before slowing to a more traditional, and more usable blog format.
Kia ProCeed
The site for the new Kia ProCeed is precisely the type of site we used to build back in the day. With interactive video, a unique navigation system based on established design patterns, and carefully designed usability, it’s an enticing experience.
Hiraeth
Co-founded by Rooney Mara, Hiraeth is a fashion label that produces desirable clothes free from any animal product. Its elegant site exudes quality with generous white space, and an almost Scandinavian minimalism, matching the garments perfectly.
Future of Sustainability
According to some estimates, we have just 12 years until we face not just climate change, but climate breakdown. Future of Sustainability wants to inspire you to change the 2020s, before it’s too late. It communicates a complex, and difficult message engagingly.
Nicholas Jackson
Nicholas Jackson is a New York based designer and art director. His portfolio site is a bold, confident expression of the work he loves to do for clients including Canon, The Wall Street Journal, The NY times, and Siemens.
Mansi
Mansi makes some of the best pasta this side of Naples, and it has an equally delicious website. Dotted throughout the site are pasta shapes, some of them animated, making Mansi’s site the most appropriate exponent of the blob trend I’ve seen to date.
Azab
Azab is an architecture firm with a love of mouse trails. Despite most designers abandoning them more than a decade ago, Azab’s site is built entirely around the path of your mouse on the screen. It’s surprisingly compelling.
Corpus
Corpus is an all-natural, all-vegan company producing deodorants that don’t harm you, or the planet. Its site intriguingly turns a standard e-commerce layout on its head, by presenting products up front, and the traditional hero video, down below.
Calidad Beer
Calidad Beer is a Mexican-style beer, brewed in California. With Levis-worthy art direction, and brand appropriate animation, its site is ideal for an unknown company trying to tap into a saturated market. Constantly reinforced, the brand identity is key here.
DEMO
The Design in Motion Festival, or DEMO for short, takes place in Amsterdam in November, when 80 screens in the central train station will showcase the best motion design work. The site itself features beautiful interactive lettering that Saul Bass would be proud of.
Camille Pawlak
The online portfolio of Camille Pawlak is based around a beautiful central animation that rotates as it transforms into the next project. It’s a simple, but elegant way to navigate between projects, and the work that she’s showcasing is excellent too.
Green Chameleon
Green Chameleon’s site is only temporary, with a full website redesign on the horizon. But with a portfolio like this, packed with parallax effects, and dead simple navigation, I think the Bristol agency should stick with what it’s got.
Flwr
Flwr is a New Zealand based florist with a modern approach. Its site uses text to mask its beautiful photography, creating an intriguing and inviting mini-site. It even embraces the split-screen trend to great effect.
Daly
Daly is a PR agency founded by Alex Daly, from her contacts built helping some of the world’s most successful crowdfund campaigns reach their targets. Its site is bold, colorful, and fun. The period after its name isn’t new, but I love the way it follows you down the page as you scroll.
Pacto Navio
When the finest Cuban rum is introduced to French wine making traditions, you get Pacto Navio. The rum, distilled near Havana, is served by a beautifully art directed site, featuring brand illustrations, and a distinctly Caribbean feeling.
Cheval Blanc
The French have a reputation for refined hospitality, and that trend is reflected in their love of sophisticated web sites. The site for Cheval Blanc is no exception, with a just-right level of parallax scrolling and refined typography.
Staat
Staat is a design agency specializing in event design for some of the world’s best known names. Its site features video case studies of its work, and the site itself takes a step backwards and allows the portfolio to shine.
Festa da Francofonia 2019
The 2019 festival for Francophones, is a festival celebrating the 220 million people worldwide who speak the French language. Celebrated from Morocco to Canada, the event’s site is a colorful, international feeling affair, appropriate for a multi-cultural event.
Who’s your audience? It sounds like an easy question, but it’s not. Knowing your audience helps keep eyeballs on your site, website traffic up, and visitors eagerly returning to your site to consume your content, and buy your products.
Every day, people are asking themselves things like, “React or Vue?” “VR or no VR?” “CSS Grid or Flexbox?” These are the wrong questions entirely, because the technology you focus on or use next should always be matched to both the job and the people at hand.
As you draw closer to the finish line with a website, does your client see it just as clearly as you do? Or are they still wavering on design and copy choices even while you’re in the final stages of QA, or talking about additional features they’ll want to add to the site “some day”?
Welcome to our roundup of the best new sites to be launched (or relaunched with significant updates) in the last four weeks.
