maanantai 6. helmikuuta 2017

The most productive week this far



It has been very productive week for me. After three nights of less that 5 hours of sleep each night, on Monday, we got our big project. I was already super excited and little bit hyper not only by lack of sleep, but also because I spent last weekend in Mikkeli, annual Ice Breaker Event for board members of Entrepreneur societies. Was by the way, the first time ever I went to avanto (the hole in the ice) lost my talviturkki (there is not really word for this in English) that I had been growing since summer 2013.



Anyways, on Monday we could choose from two websites from one company either suoramainonta.fi aka Suomen Suoramainonta Oy or Lisäduuni.fi which is site to recruit mostly young people to work for SSM as a paperboys and girls. Our group was fast and we decided to do our work for SSM. So the big project in this course involves five parts.

1. Company analysis
2. Customer survey /analysis and Creating specific buyer personas
3. Competition analysis
4. Digital marketing strategy
5. New webpage design and content

As I understood, the final product here is for us to plan and make a new webpage for Lisäduuni.fi or suoramainonta.fi. I have to give some negative feedback now about the assignment; making a working website is not suitable task for us.

I did ask from Pasi Latva, the marketing manager of Suomen Suoramainonta OY, after the lecture that what was the purpose for the website; was it to use it to guide their website to be better and possible changes then done by professional, or were they planning to use the website right away.
The answer was unfortunately the last one, but I think I made him to understand that they are not going to get quality website from us because first of all; we study business, not information technology.
And second of all; Myself included I think there is only couple people on our class how know how to code. Or build a website.

Building a website is not easy, specially for people who have not had any education for the task. We can of course tell them what to improve in their website and why, but not build one by ourselves. Or is Laurea going to offer us a lecture about how to build a website? Because last time I studied web design it took a full month from us beginners to build a functioning website. And still we cannot have all the features that they use now on their website, like the chat or search option.

Even that I think that the task is not very suitable for us, I will probably enjoy designing it. That’s why I am super excited for this project though, since it is one of my strong fields and I have chance to use my design skills while developing myself.

What then makes a good website?

 Design is not just what it looks like and feels like, design is how it works. -Steve Jobs 

Effective web design is judged by the users of the website and not the website owners. There are many factors that affect the usability of a website, and it is not just about form (how good it looks), but also function (how easy is it to use). There are some things to keep in mind when designing or improving a website design.

Simplicity. 

While the look and feel of your website is important, most visitors aren't coming to your site to evaluate how good the design is. Instead, they're coming to your site to complete some action, or to find some specific piece of information. Adding unnesserary things and design only makes it confusing and hard to use. So for prespective of design and usability here is some guidelines;

Don’t use too many colours. I would say that maximum 3, plus black and white. Out of those 3 colour, one to be the main colour. Also think about what kind of colour is easier to the eye to look. Let me demonstrate; which one of these yellows you thing is more user-friendly and more relaxed to eye to watch?


The one on right, right?

In general typefaces are important part of your website. Sans Serif fonts such as Arial and Verdana are easier to read online. Sans Serif fonts are modern looking fonts without decorative finishes. The ideal font size for reading easily online is 16px and you should use a maximum of 3 typefaces (if you use bolded version of the normal font, it counts as one) in a maximum of 3 different point sizes to keep your design simple and easy to watch. Also think that what kinda image do you want to give out about your company? As I hope, all of you know, Comic Sans gives childish look and so on. Bad font choices may make people to dislike your website.




After you have kept in mind the colours and typefaces, next thing to focus is visual hierarchy, which states where the eye lands on the site. Where it should land? Emphasise those features and pieces of information, for example using colour that straws the attention behind them.

Don’t make user to think. Everything should be as easy as possible to use and access.

Don’t upload too big pictures. Even if you use a program that scales the pictures down in your website design, pictures online should always be fixed to they terminated pixel size. If the optimal weight for picture is 900px, like for example in my blog, the pictures should already be 900px wide when you upload it. It also frustrates the user to wait to pictures to load.


Exsample of good visual hierarchy; the eye goes to where Spotify wants it to go.

Keep the structure of your primary navigation simple and include navigation in the footer of your site, preferably near the top. The labels and location of your navigation should remain the same on each and every page of your site. Don’t use too many sub categories. More than three is usually too much.
Here is a good article about this: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/flat-vs-deep-hierarchy/

The overall look and feel of your site should be consistent across all of your site's pages. This means backgrounds, color schemes, typefaces and even tone of your writing. The consistency of these have a positive impact on usability and user experience. (UX) I don’t say that every page should look the same, the opposite, different purpose pages (example: main page vs. information page) should have a different layout. By using those layouts consistently, you will make it easier for visitors to understand what type of information they are likely to find on a given page.



There is already more people surfing the internet by mobile phone than using a computer So make sure that your website works in mobile also. Other wise it gives very bad impression about your website, and excludes a big part of your possible audience.

Here is good overall examples about design overall.
http://www.boredpanda.com/graphic-designer-vs-client-differences-illustration-trustmedesign/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=BPFacebook



Thursday we had lecture from Petteri Avilia. I had never heard about him before, but was truly amazed by his story and I was so inspired after the lecture, that I actually watched it again yesterday. (btw, coaches, next time live streaming; mute your phones notifications) There were very many good points in his lecture and I think the most important thing was about self branding and being true to yourself and others, even thought he talked very good about self development and being humble also.

Self-development was a subject that interests me personally most. He had very good points and made me think a lot about how I develop myself and what is the outcome expression that I give to people. Am I good to be around? Without going into too much details that I am not comfortable sharing, - there was long time I though that I was not. School bullying left deep scarfs but it made me stronger and left me with huge passion to develop myself. I do have multiple list of things I want to learn about. Writing and digital marketing, few to mention.

 Developing yourself is constant learning everyday. 

His main point was in digital marketing and social media behavior. Besides your networks it is very good way to improve your brand. And be honest, because nobody trusts a brand that gives a false image. There is multiple ways how to improve your social media and later on that Thursday we had a mini task from Etelä-Espoon Pallo (later Espa), which is a small football team in Espoo. This task was about improving Espa’s supporter card sales and their social media. This partially was to prepare us for the big project since one of the 5 tasks is to come up with a new social media strategy for SSM.

In all social media I personally believe to the expression; quality over quantity. These days when there so much stuff published everyday and new trends are made every week it is very hard to stand out from the crowd. But quality is how you stand out, if you want to stand out. We went over few basic things how to improve your social media and brand in our presentation. (which was bit too long and detailed, uupsie)

If social media is used as a tool to market your company, product or service, the visibility is the key. When you have more visibility, you will gain more followers and from those followers you find new customers and so on. Basically visibility is that possible followers find you very easily and without searching. There is couple key factors how to gain more visibility;

Feature and to be featured. If you want to gain more audience, be featured and tagged to photo of someone else’s account. There might be overlap in the follower group but the probability is that you will gain more followers.



In Instagram and twitter use hashtags. Again, this is how your possible followers find you. To optimize your hashtag use, use tags that are popular and relative to the subject. You can use your own hashtags, but make sure those are not the only ones. If you only use hashtags that you know and use, nobody is going to find you by those hashtags, because they don’t search them. And that ruins the whole point of a hashtag, which is the make it easier to find your post.
 There is multiple sites that let you copy paste already made hashtag list (http://www.tagsforlikes.com/ )

In all social media quality is the main factor. People don’t want to follow blurry Instagram pictures, or tweets with lots of typos or Facebook post without content. Here is some links to articles about how to improve your own social media and brand.

50 ways to increase your twitter followers
50 ways to increase your instagram followers

Btw, I added my social medias to the side bars, feel free to follow :)
Overall, I really enjoyed last week and all the lectures and tasks. It made me excited for more and increase my hopes for this course a lot.

Peace out.

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