Must Design

Knowing your website's navigational taxonomy can mean the difference between millions in traffic and money. Here are 5 Simple Navigational Taxonomy Rules.

* It's About THEM not YOU.
* Create A Commons.
* It's FREE and EASY.

* Srart with Brands & Work OUT.

* Find Engagement & Work IN.

Easy to follow rules so your site's nav WINS traffic, hearts, minds, SEO and loyalty needed to be around for a bit.

Designing G+ In
Crazy to suggest using G+ as a tool to power your online marketing right? Maybe not. Greatest return always comes from the least understood ideas. GooglePlus is a "least understood" idea these days.

Their leader left and TechCrunch said G+ the social net is dead. They may be right, but that is beside the point. G+ has always been more than a social net. G+ is a suite of tools marketers can use to find blue oceans.

Blue oceans are the as yet unspoiled places where marketers can still swim without fear of a herd of sharks. Oceans where sharks eat themselves are "red oceans" such as Facebook.

We suggest designing G+ into your marketing and site. Hold weekly hangouts, you don't need a G+ profile to use hangouts now, and created a branded community if only so you rule your name in #seo. Finally we suggest curating the great comments you will receive on G+ as a source of future content.

We've never been able to figure out how to use circles in a unique way, but they too beckon with possibility. By creating weekly content based on Hangouts and Community you get lots of GoogleJuice, the least expensive #videomarketing we know about and great community development tools that cost you NOTHING.

The linked post discusses Mark Traphagen's call to use G+ as a hub of your marketing. That's a great call since the price is RIGHT (free though you may spend some making G+ play the way you want it in your design). Designing G+ tools INTO your community creates the cheapest, biggest and best online win we can think of.

So the death of G+ is greatly exaggerated and, if you are smart, you will find a way to design the tool's many possibilities into your marketing.

We've had a HUGE Day over on GPlus today. I wrote a post about why G+ is magical thinking (https://plus.google.com/102639884404823294558/posts/F5fXyrkTPCr ) and my post got picked up by my friend Mark Traphagen (@MarkTraphagen) and it BLEW up into an amazing conversation.

Given the MONSTER day we've had I thought it would be a great idea to share some of the most successful G+ Brand pages. GPlus is a massive Blue Ocean for most.  Blue Oceans are where your content gets MORE traction with less work. Red Oceans are where your content requires more investment to generate LESS return.

GPlus is really a set of TOOLS. Incorporating Hangouts, maps, communities and other widget-like tools. The first website or agency to figure out how to combine those powerful tools in unique combinations is going to WIN big. Some of these examples approach the top of the mountain, but G+ has more power than even anyone here captures.

Designing Tomorrow's Ecommerce
I'm writing a blog post for Curatti that will go live at midnight tonight that discusses the "best practices" of "Tomorrow's Ecommerce". I'm also writing a Curagami blog post (also published at midnight) about how social shopping will change Tomorrow's Ecommerce.

Tomorrow's Ecom Current Best Practices (Curatti tonight)
Tomorrow's Ecom Social & Mobile Web (on Curagami now)

The Haiku Deck that bridges both of these posts is linked above and here:
http://shar.es/1nkJef

As we publish each post we will link them here.

Pageless design frees websites from the outdated conventions of print design and fully utilizes the digital platform they’re built on. 

8 Compelling Reasons Why "Pageless' Web Design Wins (in the end):

* Tells a better story.

* Easier to "digest" or understand what to do.

* Emotionally more powerful.

* Higher Conversion Rates!!!
* Makes updating faster & easier.

* Lowers BOUNCE & encourages sharing.

* Looks great on all devices (mobile included).

* Lower cost to develop.

Marty Note
I confess to not being in love with the "infinite scroll" just yet. One modification we worked out for @Curagami, our Startup Factory funded startup, is to include a Call-To-Action at the top & Bottom.

CTAs help prepare the scroll. Remember "open book" tests? Putting a CTA on top of a waterfall of content helps prep a visitors mind. It "opens the book" for them. With this many impressive benefits I'm going to have to figure out how to start loving "pageless" design (lol).

I bet there are 5 (or so) similar modifications we can make to help us know how to create the paths and conversion we want by going "pageless".  

There are many of content heavy websites out there, but very few seem to take good design into account. We take a look at those that do.

Marty Note
Content can KILL a website design. Content needs to be well thought out. How can you tease the click without frustrating your visitors and readers? How can you share all the content you need to share without wrecking your design? Here are 25 examples of how to use content as a helpful design element instead of ending up on content's rocky shores.