User-experience design

At some level, every time you visit a website you respond to the colors, images, organization, and words on the page. If you can't find what you want, you might get discouraged. If you end up reading something really great, you might bookmark it or email someone the link. If a page comes up with an obscure error message, you might get a little anxious and worry that your computer isn't working.

All these experiences are part of the user-experience.

As website owners, we each have a say in shaping the experiences that visitors to our web sites have.

Why user-experience design is important

Your website represents your organization

Your website is always helping to shape your brand. What does it say about your organization?

Here are some words that positive and negative user-experiences can elicit from users.

Positive user-experience	Negative user-experience
Accommodating Friendly Informative Professional Fun Smart Helpful Accurate Up to date Affordable Useful Elite Interesting Amazing Adventurous Exciting Careful Reserved Respectful Thorough	Cold Sloppy Unfeeling Careless Stupid Irritating Expensive Useless Timid Boring Inaccessible Belligerant Rude Confusing Rigid Pushy

A positive user-experience goes a long way: people send emails, tell stories, and share good experiences and information.

Likewise, a negative user-experience goes a long way too. People are critical. They complain to friends and colleagues, they express their frustration. At best, they are silent, but never return to the site.

What you get

I create great user-experiences.

This means not just shaping the visual design, but also grooming the text to really speak effectively to your audience, honing the interactive parts of your site, testing your site's navigation, and working with server administrators and programmers to make sure that the hardware and backend programming are doing what they need to do to please and serve your audience.

Cost

Cost depends greatly on the scope of the project. A small project might run two thousand dollars, from start to post-launch. Larger projects may be five-figures.

Scope varies greatly on the web, so the only way to get an accurate estimate is to contact us with details.

External resources:

• 2002 Web Price Index. Includes median per hour rates for web services. At $85/hour, you'll find ours are well below industry average.
• 2001's median prices for full-site development. New to pricing web projects? This is an eye-opening look at what it takes. Fortunately, rates seem to be coming down.

Questions? Ask.

I welcome questions about user-experience design, as well as feedback about this page. Contact information is at the bottom on left of each page.