Websites. When we started in this business, websites and web marketing were basically interchangeable. Wired had only recently launched “the banner,” and everyone was abuzz. Most people, if they thought about the Internet at all when thinking about their brand, figured they’d need a website, and that was about it.
Back then, the website was everything. Every page, every link had to count. There was, just as there is now, a lot of trendiness and bluster and things you Really Should Do. Nowadays we all joke about how every site needs a send-to-a-friend component, because really how else would it be viral (never mind that things “go viral” because people like them, not because there’s a form to fill out). Back then, every site needed a links page. That was really important. And later on, every site needed an intro.
Where were the Barbarians back then? Some were working on vw.com, of course. Others were working at web startups such as Nerve.com, Send.com, and DMOD. A few were at some of the digital agencies, and well, let’s face it, a few were still in computer school. But all of them were making websites. Along the way, things got crazy, and we became advocates of thinking about the rest of the Internet when thinking about your brand, and web marketing was born and banner ads and viral marketing, short form videos, games and the like. But the website never really went away.
A company’s website can be so many different things. It can be a brochure, of course – the popular choice among brands in the mid 90’s. It can be an application – we see this at a lot of the computer and technology companies. It can be an entertainment vehicle, it can be a store, it can be home to a community of like-minded individuals. In every successful web engagement, we start at the beginning and look at what the website is going to be. What is the vision? This is vitally important, of course, because it leads to entirely different approaches, even for brand websites.
Some of the websites we’ve maintained have been for brands that don’t have an active, engaged audience or web marketing strategy, and, therefore, the sites have been pretty stagnant. We could talk about our website projects for people like Milwaukee’s Best Light, and of course, we’ll show that to you, even if it’s sort of a strange example. Still, it’s instructive from a point of view of our web design capabilities. It ties into the brand. It is well-designed. It speaks to its audience clearly and in their language. It is a coherent site, not frankenstein-bolted together. The games and content and information all feel like they come from the same place. It has a consistent tone, look and feel.
This, then, forms the core of our web design capabilities:
- Clear, consistent, well-thought-out information architecture and user interface design, as developed by our in-house User Interaction Department.
- Well-crafted, elegant, uncompromising art direction and design, coherently executed across all sections, with the development of enough templated pages to handle any content need, and designed without preference to any one technology. If the site design works in Flash, it also needs to translate into that e-commerce site running in .Net that you have no control over, or vice versa.
- Design that, from the get-go, understands it’s designing for a website, and embraces and anticipates the limitations of modern day technologies and markup possibilities. Design for the reality of the technologies out there, not for art.
- Copy and copy editing for the web to ensure that all the copy is both effective from a marketing point of view, but also from a usability point of view. Copy that is the right length. Instructional copy and error messages that don’t put the user to sleep or confuse them unduly. The brand’s voice infused throughout the project.
- Rock solid markup. No compromises. Usable in every browser people might be using. Compact, elegant markup code that degrades gracefully.
Across these points, there are about 15 Barbarians whose traditional roles focus on these goals: art directors, designers, markup specialists and user interaction designers. As Barbarians, they have developed web projects for companies such as * Apple, Goodyear, Saturn, Volkswagen, Kashi, Nike, The Webby Awards, Virgin America and more.
on September 06, 2008 at 03:27 PM
