Web Designers: Why You Don’t Need DreamWeaver

DreamWeaver is supposed to be a one-stop shop for web design. The package offer is very tempting to the beginning web designer in search of web-design training wheels, or even the small business owner who is comfortable working with HTML but needs help with everything else. But unless you can get DreamWeaver as part of a larger Adobe Suite, buying it alone is hardly worth it. Here, we break down the stages of designing a basic website and show how to avoid paying hundreds of dollars for something you really don’t need.

Concept Design

Obviously, the first place to start is with a paper and pencil. If you’re putting a site together for a client, ask as many questions about their design aesthetic as you can think of. If the site is for you or your business, make sure you cover all the functionality you need. Jot down the structure of the website as a chart or on separate pages. Plan everything out before you go to the computer.

Cost of Concept Design: $0

Graphic Layout

Not only is it nice to see what the site will look like before you do all the hard work, but a good digital mockup of your site will be easy to slice up for the images you’ll put in the code. Many designers use PhotoShop, but if your site doesn’t need to do back-flips and speak Martian, you can easily get away with using a more basic image editor.

PhotoPad Image Editor allows you to work with digital pictures, resize, and edit as you need for your website, then save in a web-friendly format. You can also add text and get a good feel for the layout you’ll be building into the site.

Cost of Graphic Layout: $0

To the Trenches: the Text Editor

This is where I geek out, so there’s no way I want a program that is going to do the coding for me! And the sooner you can wean yourself off the idea that web design can happen like any WYSIWYG word processor, the better. Plain and simple, you will have to know HTML and CSS to build a website. Once you’re comfortable with these two peas in a pod, any text editor will do. You want a fancy one, you say? Sure! Get one that color codes your tags for easy readability. Go big, but be sure to go free. There are several free, quality text editors out there that are more than qualified for this job.

Cost of Text Editor: $0

Test, Test, Test

Testing is a matter of opening your .html files in a browser and making sure they don’t look funny. And last time I checked, browser downloads are free.

Cost of Browsers for Testing: $0

FTP to Your Web Host

Your website is ready for the big time, finally! But how to get it off your local machine, and out into the World Wide Web? FTP, of course. You’ll do yourself a favor to find one that is easy to use, reliable, and can guide you through the initial setup with your web host.

Classic FTP is all of these. It has an intuitive interface that doesn’t get in the way of the functionality, and it stores your connection settings so that making updates to your site later on is absolutely painless.

Cost of FTP Software: about $45

There you have it. Web design without DreamWeaver, for a highly reasonable price. Try it. You’ll probably like saving money and getting just as much accomplished in the meantime.

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Helping or Hindering Users

I can't stand it when a software program like Word decides it knows what I want to do better than I do. In their efforts to be user-friendly they seem to actually gone past helping me do what I want to do, and have started making some incorrect guesses that make it harder for me to do what I wanted in the first place. While I applaud the effort to remove some of the tedious work of formatting out of the hands of the user so that they can focus on the content I find some of the formatting changes disrupting. While on the other hand automatically correcting obvious typos like changing 'teh' to 'the' for example actually was an absolutely marvelous idea.

Sometimes we as developers think we know best, but it is a question worth considering: Where do you draw that line between what you do for the user in the name of usability and what you leave for the user to do themselves?

At NCH Software we strive to make our software as user-friendly, and easy to setup as possible, so we need to think a lot about what the default settings for programs should be and make as many educated guesses as possible about what will work for the most users. Whenever there are options you will never be able to pick settings that will actually work for everyone but you want the defaults to work for as large a majority as possible, and make it easy for the few that need to change them to do so.

If there are too many question marks as to what will work best for the majority of people that is often when we introduce a setup wizard for programs like Axon PBX Software which allows us to ask questions to help us set default values for the user instead of straight out guessing how many phone lines the user will have on their phone system. By carefully choosing the questions we ask we can get all the answers we need to help the user get their customized system ready as quickly as possible without them needing to hunt down every option on their first run, even though all of those settings can easily be changed later.

It is a fine line to walk trying to help the user along the way but not get in their way of being able to configure options for themselves, but it is one we are doing are best to get better at in our ongoing effort to make our applications user-friendly.

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Interactive Voice Response Best Practices & Design Tips

We've all been stuck on the phone trying to get information from an automated telephone system in a battle against the machine that sometimes seems to be designed specifically to prevent us from finding what we're looking for. While that almost certainly wasn't the intent of the automated phone system, poor execution can leave a multitude of customers with a bad taste in their mouth.

A well designed IVR (Interactive Voice Response) phone system can be a valuable resource, but a poorly designed system will only reflect poorly on your organization’s communication and customer service. With that being said, here are a few pointers to help make sure you are designing a good call flow for your automated IVR system:

• Outline the Call Flow for Your IVR
  A flow chart or an outline is the perfect place to start. You really need to take the time to plan out how someone is going to interact with your phone system long before you start creating the actual IVR in your software. Taking the time to plan it all through at the beginning will help you keep the big picture in mind and to avoid creating a long trail of prompts.
  
  
• Think Like Your Customers
  Always keep your customers in mind. Why will they be calling the system? Put the options for the most frequently used items at the beginning so they can be accessed quickly and easily. At every step along the way think about how the message will come across from a customer's point of view.
  
  
• Keep It Simple
  Don't try to do everything. Less is more. With an automated phone system you want to keep the number of key presses to minimum. Trying to do too many things just gives the callers more places that they can get lost along the way. Really think about what options should be available and who is calling in. For example, if you need to offer different services to customers and vendors it might be better to have two different systems rather thane on that does everything, keeping each line simplified and tailored to its purpose instead of trying to do everything on one line.
  
  
• Keep Menu Prompts Clear and Concise
  The longer your message, the harder it is going to be for a caller to remember everything that is being said and what they need to do to interact with the system. Be sure to use the same language as your customers, avoiding industry slang and terminology callers might not be familiar with.
  
  
• Offer Universal Commands
  Options like pressing the star key (*) to return to the main menu at any point during a call, or an option to repeat a prompt will make it much easier for callers to navigate the IVR system.
  
  
• Give the Option to Talk to Someone or Leave a Voice Message
  The goal of an IVR system may be in part to reduce the number of calls that your staff needs to handle, but there will be times when the system does not fulfill a customer's needs. You need to offer these callers the alternative to either talk to a live person or leave a message for someone to call them back.
  
  
• Test, Test, Test, and Test Some More
  Test the call flow every step along the way test the flow. Think of as many possible scenarios as you can and go through the process yourself. Get other people to try it out, too. Never think of your system as being completely done. You need to monitor how well it is working, and make sure that you are offering the right options at the right time. Get feedback from your staff and customers. Designing a good IVR call system should be an ongoing process.
  

These are just a few of the tips to help you get started on the right foot when you are implementing an interactive voice response system. Taking the time to thoroughly plan out a new IVR call flow, before you even start working with an application like IVM interactive voice response software, can make a significant difference in the final result and is well worth the time and effort.

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Do More With Software... In Three Minutes or Less (Part Two)

In Part One, I spoke about how important the first three minutes in a user’s experience with any software are. That expectation has led NCH to focus a lot of attention on what the user’s needs and any roadblocks they might encounter early on. Here are some of the elements we look for in the user experience:

At first glance, the application should have a clean appearance. A screen cluttered by an excess of buttons, panels, options, and graphics is a distraction. Absolutely everything on the main screen should work toward helping the user accomplish their task, and should do so in an organized and hierarchical manner according to the user’s most common actions. Think about a workshop: You keep items you don’t often use in a drawer, while tools you use frequently are hung on the wall in front of you for easy access.

Next, using the program should be intuitive. If you can’t figure out where to start, that is a huge problem. Your frustration builds, and you blame it all on the application. Sometimes using a new program requires the help of a wizard, a quick start guide, or even a tool-tip bubble popping up saying "Start here." However, balance must be maintained. A more tech-savvy person may be turned off by too much hand-holding. In every case, it’s important to know who the user is and what their experience level is.

Finally, an application should do what it promises to do. This sounds simple, yet can be the most difficult part to design. For example, accounting software needs to fulfill a business’s needs, yet accountants are not the people who are writing the code. We need to anticipate the user’s needs and facilitate getting the task done, otherwise users are bound to move on to the next possible solution.

In the end, it is really all a balancing act. But ultimately, the final goal remains—that you will be able to be up and running within three minutes of installing our software. It’s what we care about.

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Do More With Software... In Three Minutes or Less (Part One)

When you’ve downloaded as many NCH Software applications as I have, you’ll notice one thing time and time again: the applications download and install faster than you can recite Mary Had a Little Lamb. It amazes me every time. As product downloads become more common on the Internet, and we are becoming more and more an on-demand culture, it’s moments like these we really appreciate.

Of course, while fast downloads and installations are important, it’s what comes after that really counts. During installation we have stars in our eyes, anticipating what this application we’re downloading can really do. We’re hoping it’s better than other programs we’ve tried; faster, smarter, and more attractive. We’re hoping to witness software evolution and reap the benefits. And we want to do it quickly.

That’s why NCH focuses so heavily on the initial experience. Each application is designed with the goal that a user will be able to be up and running within three minutes.

Only the first impression matters, especially when you’re sitting alone at your computer. If that slideshow creator you just downloaded doesn’t load properly, or you can’t figure out how it works right away, you’re likely to walk away right then and there and go try something else. We know you do that, because we do it too. That’s why we work so hard to win you over quickly.

To help make sure we’re meeting this goal and providing the best user experience, we have several tactics in place. First, every time an application is updated, a design committee provides feedback and makes suggestions to improve the application. User feedback is also considered, and even rewarded. If NCH uses a customer’s suggestion for a product, they will receive the next release of that application for free.

Another approach we use is to provide quick start guides and tutorials for some of our applications. Quick start guides either load in a browser upon installation, or are included in the help documentation. And we’re always working to add more videos to our tutorial series. You can view the tutorials we've completed on our NCH Software YouTube Channel.

We also do user testing so we can watch new users interact with our software. User testing allows us to see how we can improve the user experience firsthand. The data we collect from these tests is compiled into a list of suggestions, given to the application’s developer to be implemented in the application's next release.

In Part Two, I’ll talk more about the user experience and how it affects those first three crucial minutes.

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Report from Development Land.

Here is an exciting update from NCH that our talented bunch of programmers are currently working on improving the well established CD Label software Disketch.

Upcoming features include the ability to easily drag and drop text and images onto your CD template and arrange together to make your label masterpiece! You will be able to change your font type, size and color, and automatically fetch file information from your disc (to list on your labels).

Designed for people who want to print directly onto their disc, or for those who print onto sticky labels, the new Disketch is soon to be the most intuitive label maker found on the web. And best of all, it will still be completely free!

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