I was reading Seth Godin’s blog post a few days ago about “the magic of low-hanging fruit” and was reminded of the power of fixing low-hanging fruit when redesigning your web site.

You see, when we perform web site assessments, the first thing we look for is low-hanging fruit.  Often, fixing these small, easily identifiable issues requires little effort and produces a big return.

If you think your web site is fully-optimized, think again.  I’ve yet to work on a site that doesn’t have some small issues that can be easily fixed.  Understandably, some companies are reluctant to make changes.  I’m currently working with a client whose site won some major awards in the early 2000’s (”back in the day”).  They conducted rudimentary usability research and had a great site, but they haven’t changed anything but content since.

Now, years later, they’ve hired me to do a web site assessment.  They are understandably reluctant to totally overhaul their once award-winning web site.  In addition to needing some design updates, this site could beenfit from fixing some low-hanging fruit to significantly improve their bottom line.

The most dramatic example I have of fixing low-hanging fruit is an e-commerce client I had about 2 years ago.  The product images on his product pages were so large that they took up a normal customer’s entire screen.  By shrinking the image and moving all pricing information near his add-to-cart button — all of which took 2 hours to change — site revenue improved over 60%.

I encourage you to contact us — we can identify what changes should be made to your site.

Today, we launched a new web site for an author friend of mine, Charles Jones (I call him “Chip”). Chip is a former Richmond Times-Dispatch staff writer who paid his way to Iraq last June to research this book, entitled Red, White or Yellow? The Media & the Military at War in Iraq.

The site contains a video trailer about the book, which we posted on YouTube, and a slideshow of original photos that Jones took while in Iraq. The book can be pre-ordered from Amazon and will ship in September. Congrats Chip!

Visit RedWhiteorYellow.com

Having dealt with some large organizations and different kinds of personalities in my past work, I thought I would share a tip about how to share feedback effectively with your web design firm. Admittedly, this post is not for the do-it-yourselfer, but the company that hired a web design firm to design their web site.

The design phase of any web design project solicits lots of back-and-forth communication between client and designer. The key to a successful project is to communicate in a meaningful way. Here’s what I mean:

To be effective, the designer should share why they made certain design choices and ask the client specific questions that help the designer compile good feedback. The designer should interpret client feedback and create user-friendly solutions, then document the decisions that were made and why.

The client, on the other hand, should communicate the “big picture” without being too specific. For example, designers don’t usually respond positively when told to design something a certain way. For example, telling your designer to place specific clip art on your web site will probably make your designer mad. Designers like to hear what you want to achieve, then figure out how to best design it. Hint: this probably doesn’t include cute clip art.

I encourage clients to provide a general idea of what they want, and that I reserve the right as an expert to create a few designs that a) solve your problem in the most attractive, user-friendly way and b) solve your problem in a way that I’ll be proud to display in my portfolio (and won’t embarrass your CEO at the next networking event).

Communicating effectively with your web designer and being open-minded to their design concepts will produce a design that works better and is finished quicker. Oh, yeah, and you and your designer will be happy with the end result.

You probably read this headline and scratched your head. No, the flu bug that I’m still getting over isn’t speaking to me — your customers really can help design your site. But don’t send them an email asking them to buy Photoshop just yet… Even though your customers know nothing about effective web design, there are two ways they can help you design your site.

The first is covered in GrokDotCom’s recent blog post about A/B testing. The premise is that your designer can post two versions of a page or page template, measure results and keep the page that works the best. This way, you enable your customers to indirectly tell you what they like best. Continually testing new designs doesn’t have to be time consuming or costly — it can be as easy as changing the placement, size or color of a button, or just pulling important copy out of a paragraph and making it a headline.

Second, you can conduct a usability test of your site with customers. This can be done in a lab (which can be a very expensive option), or you can test your site with remote users. There are some new options in the remote testing arena that are promising, especially for sites that have never been tested before (and nearly 77% of online retailers don’t test their sites). Remote testing, while less costly, will identify “low-hanging fruit” that you can easily fix.

No matter which you choose, you can let your customers design your site through their feedback and through the use of both quantitative and qualitative data.

The Get Elastic blog has published a good blog post on the size of add to cart and call-to-action buttons. Their advice in this article not only applies to product pages on ecommerce sites, but also to application design and screen design for non-ecommerce sites.

It’s worth a read to see how a designer works through the challenge of creating a page that helps customers navigate the web site.

The Nielsen Norman Group — a well-known group of usability experts — is kindly offering a free download of their report titled “Beyond ALT Text: Making the Web Easy to Use for Users With Disabilities.”

You’d normally drop $124 on this report, which details 75 best practices for designing web sites for those with disabilities.

In my opinion, every web site should be designed and coded with accessibility as a consideration. This report will give you the fundamentals and you’ll be able to figure out how your site stacks up. Business owners, download a copy and send it to your designer as their holiday gift.