From the category archives:

Design

A Pioneering Approach to College Admissions

January 20, 2012

This post was written by Marianne Amoss, Fastspot’s content strategist and resident writer.
What is the next generation of admissions marketing? And how can we integrate Web marketing and print marketing? These are questions that plague universities and colleges across the country, as they struggle with the cost and manpower required to keep materials updated and [...]

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The Making of a New Online Museum

November 11, 2011

When the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore Maryland approached Fastspot to help solve one of its core challenges, allowing online visitors to browse its collection of works, we jumped at the opportunity. Here is a recap of some of the hurdles, surprises, successes, and failures that we encountered during the course of the project, with [...]

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What Makes a Good Main Navigation?

August 30, 2011

Your website’s main navigation, the primary navigation presented to users who first arrive on your website, should do several things, and do them well.
The main nav should be simple. The language, the organization, the placement, the size of the font—everything—should be simple. This is the most useful element of your site, and much like a [...]

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Your Website is a Party! Who is on Your Guest List?

July 12, 2011

The other day, as I was sitting in a presentation where major project findings were being shared, the subject of Website visitors came up. One of the members of the client side team stated that it would be almost impossible to implement the findings and recommendations into anything cohesive, because that would mean setting a [...]

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The Nutritious Content Revolution

June 7, 2011

Just as Americans have finally started caring more about what they put inside their bodies than what they cover them up with, Website teams are finally caring more about what they are saying than what things look like. Let’s face it: Healthy eating, and healthy content, takes work. It’s much easier to roll into a [...]

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Rules for Creating Compelling Website Content

May 24, 2011

Here are the golden rules to live by when creating content for your website.
Your content is NOT for you. Make sure it IS for the people who are visiting your website.
Don’t be boring. When did boring ever win out over entertaining?
Provide clear pathways to the information. If you refer to something in your content – [...]

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The 10/90 Flaw in CMS Design

March 15, 2011

There is a fatal flaw in many of the content management systems (CMS) out on the market today. I refer to it as the 10/90 failure. The CMS has naturally evolved to provide complex functionalities that are desirable to about 10% of its eventual users, often created in response to the request of developers and [...]

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Storytelling is the Catalyst: From Technique to Experience

October 13, 2010

When it comes down to it great storytelling wins. Every time. A great story will trump great effects, great technique, great design, great production, anything else. Really good storytelling gets the viewer or reader emotionally invested, and once you have someone emotionally invested, you have them hooked.
Great storytelling should be the goal with everything we [...]

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Why Different Isn’t Always Better – Thoughts on Drake University and Stamat’s “D+” Campaign

October 1, 2010

I was going to write a post about the recent campaign Stamats created for Drake University, but most relevant points have already been made in the media. It’s an interesting discussion with no clear cut lines, and it brings up the question of how in touch we are with our teenage target audiences? Stamats makes [...]

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Creating a Great Presentation

September 3, 2010

There are lots of good posts out there on how to give a great presentation, but how do you put a good one together? How do you take your audience on a ride with your content even as you are hula-hooping and doing all your other best saleswomany tricks to give it enthusiasm, conviction and [...]

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