This presentation was originally given on January 23, 2015, in front of an audience of about 140 attendees at Outdoor Retailer, as part of the Outdoor Retailer Education Sessions. The presentation format and flow have been modified slightly to better fit our site vs. the presentation slide + speaking format at Outdoor Retailer.
On Friday, August 8th, we had the opportunity while at Outdoor Retailer to sit down for an hour with SmartWool and Nau to talk about brand, e-commerce, content, and how these things relate to the future of adventure brands online. We're expecting to upload video in the next few weeks, but in the meantime here is the presentation deck and some notes from the panel.
What is effective web design? It's kind of like art... you know it when you see it. But when I was asked to present at the 2013 Oregon Governor's Conference on Tourism about "Effective Web Design," I had to take a step back to think about how effective web design happens. And after that, how do you present this idea to a large and diverse audience?
I was recently invited to present at the 11th annual eTourism Summit on the topic of web site redesign. Unless you're a brand new company, most companies/brands have had at least one (if not multiple) web sites. But things change... brands change, technology changes, content needs change, business goals change... any and all of these can necessitate a redesign.
Words, photos and videos can't do it alone. Through content, along with interactivity, back-and-forth communication (a.k.a. conversations), context, and reciprocity, the goal is to create useful information... something people care about and serves a purpose.