Insights – Page 3 – ACS Reduc 2022

The App is Dead

October 12, 2017

Our team attended DC’s An Event Apart this summer, a conference about the latest web design and development trends. We’ve been writing about our takeaways, including accessibility, measuring engagement, and image optimization. In this post, we dive into the world of progressive web apps.

Apps, as we know them, may be dead. The mobile landscape is changing, and traditional apps are being replaced by better, faster, slicker mobile websites known as progressive web apps.

Jason Grigsby filled us in on the rise of this technology during his presentation, “The Case for Progressive Web Apps,” at An Event Apart. Our Creative Director Rob Smelik also wrote about this topic on his website. Here’s an introductory look at this emerging trend.

Why are native apps going away?

Whenever you download a game like Candy Crush from the app store, you are adding a native app to your smartphone. These apps are developed by specialists who know the ins and outs of Apple and other native app hosts.

The time, effort and costs of native app development are some of the reasons progressive web apps are becoming more popular. As Rob puts it, “With the growing number of mobile OS platforms and the cost associated with developing apps for each, it comes as no surprise that mainstream companies are jumping ship to more cost effective web-based alternatives that rely on the flexibility of responsive website design.”

Responsive websites have improved over the last few years. In 2015, Google changed its infamous algorithm to favor responsive websites, which perform well on any desktop, mobile or tablet device.

Rob explained that Google’s change led to many companies to invest in mobile-friendly sites, rather than native apps. “Why pour money into the development of multiple apps for iOS, Android and even Google’s newest platform Fuchsia, when you can develop one web app to cover all bases?” he wrote.

What are Progressive Web Apps (PWAs)?

You may be asking, “So are these really apps, or just regular mobile websites?” According to Jason Grigsby, it doesn’t really matter. Whether you call them progressive web apps or responsive websites or any other name, the technology is changing the way many companies operate online.

Like native apps, PWAs also deliver push notifications. You can add a PWA to your smartphone home screen, which is not a feature of typical mobile websites. Then, you can opt in to receive regular updates from the site, the way you would from a weather or news app. It’s important to note that this PWA option isn’t available on iPhones. In fact, iOS doesn’t support many PWA features, at least not yet.

Based on Jason’s presentation, here are some other reasons PWAs stand out from other websites.

Speed: With better caching technology, PWAs load faster than other mobile sites. Users also have a smoother experience as they navigate the PWA.
Security: PWAs have SSL certificates, which encrypt user information. You can read more about HTTPS websites in our recent blog post.
Responsiveness: PWAs work well on any desktop or mobile device.

According to Jason (@grigs), PWAs are showing promising results, even in their early stages. Companies are seeing improved SEO, website traffic, and engagement from their progressive web apps.

What should I do?

As PWAs become more popular, you may want to consider how this affects your digital strategy. For instance, maybe developing a native app doesn’t make sense for your company. As Jason pointed out, almost half of U.S. smartphone users don’t download any new native apps on a regular basis.

You may also want to upgrade your website to include PWA features. However, you don’t have to make a lot of changes all at once. You can take small steps to move your site into the new age of progressive web apps.

First and foremost, you can make sure your website is responsive. That way, it will look great on any desktop or mobile device, even if you don’t leverage all of the tools PWAs have to offer just yet.

Your Guide to Image Optimization

September 19, 2017

Since our educational adventure at An Event Apart in Washington DC this past July, we’ve discussed Website Accessibility and Measuring Engagement. Today, we’re diving into the ever-important realm of Image Optimization.

What is Image Optimization?

When Una Kravets, UI Engineer for Digital Ocean, began her AEA presentation with a full screen photo of Bob Ross, we knew this was going to be good. Essentially, Image Optimization is what makes a raw, high-resolution photo or graphic look good and load fast on the web. This is accomplished using various tools and practices, which we’ll get into later. Worth noting, we aren’t necessarily talking about the physical size of an image in inches or pixels here, but instead the file size in bytes.

Every time you visit a web page, your computer is essentially downloading the embedded images to view them. This consumes precious bandwidth on your hosting environment as well as your visitor’s browsing device. The goal of image optimization is to minimize the bandwidth required to experience a website.

As Google so eloquently puts it, “Image optimization is both an art and science” because there is a definitive yet subjective balance between quality and file size. In the example below, you’ll see our original photo on the left, straight from the camera, with zero compression or optimization. To the right, that same photo has been saved at 10% quality to significantly reduce file size.

With any image optimization, there is give and take. The higher the quality (more colors, finer detail) the bigger the file. There have been major strides in lossless compression that retain the depth and variation of photos. Such methods rely on extremely complex algorithms unique to each of the popular file types (JPG, GIF and PNG). Painting happy trees might make us smile, but image optimization is serious business.

Why it Matters?

You might ask yourself why this extra effort is necessary. You have a nice broadband internet setup at your house, so why bother with a saved kilobyte here and there? For that answer, you’ll have to step outside of your own home. When Una Kravets refers to “Responsible Imaging,” she’s talking about serving all audiences, across the world, on any devices, with a wide range of connectivity scenarios. Like her, if you believe access to information should be a basic human right, then image optimization becomes a top priority. If we look at mobile traffic alone, about 50% of all visitors are using a phone or tablet to browse your website – often from a 3G connection. Statistics show that 53% of mobile sites are abandoned after just 3 seconds. Can you afford to lose that much business due to slow page load times?

Additionally, search engines like Google are starting to place increased importance on page load times. Websites that load faster rank higher in search results and that will only become truer as expectations evolve. Just for fun, check out your current Google Page Speed Score.

According to Una’s HTTP Archive data, nearly 66% of a site’s total size is comprised of images. Stylesheets, scripts, HTML code, and fonts are barely a sliver on the pie chart compared to the bandwidth consumption of graphics and photos. Look around at the current trends in website design. Pages are adapting large, full-width images and big, bold graphics throughout for an impactful brand experience. With this movement comes an increased need to keep quality up and file size down.

How Image Optimization is Done

It’s best practice to get into the habit of optimizing your graphics before uploading. Again, there are a handful of great tools and software to make it happen, but it often requires a human touch to get just right. Starting from scratch is one thing, but optimizing a website that is already established and packed with images can be a real challenge. Doing so in a creative, innovative way is a whole new level of complexity. Luckily, ACS Creative is always up for the job…

Take a webpage we built for our client, B-FOR. The company provides international trade show and exhibit services. We designed their original website, and we recently expanded the site to include their Brand USA content. Brand USA encourages international travelers to visit the United States.

On one of the new Brand USA pages, we included dynamic images. Each time the page loads, a new header image appears. Normally, this would slow down a webpage. But we changed the typical way an image loads. The full image does not load all at once. For a split second, the image is blurry. This allows the rest of the page content to load, while the rest of the image catches up. Customers can see the content they need right away, without waiting those extra painful seconds for the page to load.

Optimizing the images on your site doesn’t always mean crunching the file size. Replacing icons and simple graphics altogether with web fonts is also an effective measure. Furthermore, uploading images that are no larger (in pixels) than their use on your site is equally crucial. For example, your logo file doesn’t need to be 900px wide if it never appears larger than 300px wide. Don’t serve an image that could be a font and don’t serve an image with unnecessarily large dimensions, and you’re already off to the races with your optimization efforts!

Tools of the Trade

Over the years, we’ve utilized several means of image optimization. Here are a few of our favorite tools and resources:

Adobe Photoshop (software)
Photoscape (free software)
Ewww Image Optimizer (WordPress plugin)
WP Smush (WordPress plugin)
Optimizilla (web interface)
TinyPNG (web interface)
Kraken (API)

These will get you started, for sure. When experimenting with different image optimization services and settings, it’s important that you save the original graphic files separately. If you opt to utilize one of the WordPress plugins, be sure to backup your site before running any automated functions.

The Future of Image Optimization

Perhaps the most engaging element of Una Kravets’ presentation was her excitement about how far image optimization has come – and where it’s going. This fascination extends far beyond the current capabilities of common file types, but is also stunted by the limitations of cross-browser support. For instance, the WebP file format, which boasts transparency, better compression than JPG, as well as animation, or the Picture Element fallback, which controls responsive images based on the visitor’s resolution. WebM promises stunning open video compression with minimal loss. These are just a few examples, of course. The future is bright for image optimization, and we intend to remain at the forefront of progress.

We’d like to thank Una Kravets (@una) for inspiring us to share this fascinating topic with our readers and clients. Be sure to follow her for wonderfully whimsical insights on digital marketing, community building and technology.

Nonprofit Websites: Your Mission, Our Vision

September 12, 2017

Nonprofit organizations have the distinct task of conveying and executing their missions on a tight budget—and those goals are of no less import than their for profit counterparts. We get that. With hubs across the DC Metro area (a hotbed of nonprofit organizations), we have decades of experience helping causes economically harness the power of the web to communicate information, raise funds and do more good with their nonprofit websites.

Inform and Educate

A modern, strategically-designed website can help you reach a larger audience on the internet. Older websites that are not responsive (meaning they don’t adjust content to fit all devices) don’t rank as high with search engines—if at all. Any company, regardless of whether it is nonprofit or otherwise, needs a website that shows up when people search. We’d argue though, that properly designed websites are even more advantageous for nonprofits because a little spend really goes a long way. Compared to other forms of advertising, investing in a website that is communicating who you are and what you do 24/7 is a very smart marketing move.

Fundraising Efforts

If your nonprofit depends on donations, then a website can be a valuable fundraising tool. You can pitch your cause online with stories, images and case studies, and give potential donors the ability to send funds instantly and conveniently. This creates a sense of immediate gratification–which can lead to more donations. If folks have to mail checks in, chances are they won’t.

We created such an opportunity for online fundraising for Fairfax Casa, an organization that pairs court appointed special advocates with the children that need them. Fairfax Casa relies on both donations and volunteers, so the website we designed for them has several red and dark blue buttons on the homepage that grab your attention and encourage you to act. The images of the cute kids really help the nonprofit’s cause, too. There’s a powerful story being told here, and that story pulls at the purse strings.

Serve Your Interests

While we often associate nonprofits with heartfelt causes, many have other equally legitimate agendas. For example, we designed a website for AAEI, the premier trade organization that represents US companies engaged in international importing and exporting. Conducting global business is a complicated affair. AAEI assists these companies by conveying the latest information on government regulations. They have members and hold conferences. What better way to collect and dispense information about laws and events than through a modern, easy to navigate website? And that’s exactly what we designed for them.

Event Promotion

The Federal Administrative Law Judges Conference (FALJC) is an annual meeting featuring seminars and other networking opportunities. The website we designed for them makes it easy for visitors to find other members, meet the officers and learn about upcoming events. There’s also a message board for folks to address common concerns. The clean website design really allows the information to be the hero, which is perfect for FALJC. We don’t believe in flash for flash’s sake.

Measuring Engagement

September 5, 2017

This is our third post in a series on the web design and development conference, An Event Apart. After you learn about measuring engagement here, read up on improving website accessibility.

There’s a popular meme we like. The image shows a beautiful brick walkway, designed to get park visitors neatly from point A to point B. Right next to the walkway, there’s a dirt path, well-trodden by people who have ignored the intended route.

This meme perfectly demonstrates how users behave on your website. Some will take the beautiful path you laid out for them. Many more will move through your site in ways you never predicted. As we’ll explain in this post, effective web design isn’t about controlling your visitors – but adapting to how they behave on your site.

We all wish our website visitors would follow the paths we laid out for them. We wish they would find what they need quickly and painlessly. We know that’s not always the case. So what do you do about it?

One guy might have the answer. Gerry McGovern (@gerrymcgovern) helps companies improve their customers’ experiences online. He capped off DC’s An Event Apart with his presentation, “Measuring The Customer Experience.”

During his presentation, Gerry showed us different examples of less-than-ideal customer experiences. He then explained how he helped resolve those problems with research, testing and analysis.

He opened with an example from Canada’s travel website. As you can imagine, it was difficult to manage, with different government agencies contributing to different parts of the website.

With testing, they found that visitors were having trouble finding information on travel documents for tourists. They expected users to look under “Immigration” for this information, but tourists did not know to look there. By moving the content to the “Travel” section instead, many more site visitors found what they were looking for successfully.

Why does measuring your customer experience matter?

As with the Canada website example, it is important to keep in mind what your website audience actually does, not what you want them to do. That way, you can keep them on your website longer, even though attention spans online have never been shorter.

As Gerry put it, we expect our Amazon deliveries within hours of purchase. We expect websites to load in milliseconds. In that way, we also expect information to be available instantly.

Gerry was quick to point out that wait times are your competitor’s opportunity. The longer it takes to find valuable information on your website, the more frustrated they’ll be. If your website is hard to use, customers will abandon you pretty quickly.

How do you prevent this frustration? First, you need to identify customer pain points. These are the blind spots on your website that slow down your customers and hurt your bottom line. To find these frustrations, you can run tests to measure how quickly customers can find key information on your website.

How do you set up these tests?

Creating these sorts of tests is easier than you think. Gerry outlined a few key steps to help get started.

Keep your sample group fairly small. You only need 13-18 people in order to get reliable results from your tests.

Set up a simple testing environment. You don’t need a fancy lab to learn more about your customer’s experience. You should have the customer at one computer and a proctor following along at a second computer.

Carefully design your questions. Have them track down specific information on your website; there should only be one possible answer for each question. Your questions should be short, 20-30 words max. You want to be clear, but you don’t want to give them too many keywords or clues on where to find the answers.

Have target goals in mind. See how quickly customers can complete the tasks you designed. The target times should be somewhere between 20 seconds and 2 minutes.

How do you measure success?

With these tests, you should be able to see which tasks tripped up your customers. Don’t worry too much about outlier results. Instead, look for patterns. See which parts of your website could be improved based on these pain points.

If you need to sell these improvements to management, Gerry recommends showing videos of customers trying and failing to complete the tasks you designed. By combining data and empathy, you can overcome office politics and make real improvements to your site.

More Addy Awards for ACS!

August 29, 2017

For the last three years running, ACS Creative has earned the accolades of its industry peers. We are grateful for the judges who think so highly of our work, and we are doubly grateful for the clients who trust us with their brands and allow us to do great things. Our Addy Awards (Addy’s) are not the result of one creative mind. It takes a team effort, agency and client working together, to develop ideas that lead to designs that garner awards. You might say the real winner here is our customer service. You also might say that three years of wins means we can proudly state: ACS Creative, an award-winning branding agency. We hope you don’t mind if we do.

But wait, what is an Addy Award?

For those of you unfamiliar with the moniker, Addy is the affectionate nickname given to the awards presented by the American Advertising Federation (Ad Club). The annual event, which draws over 40,000 entries per year, is the advertising industry’s largest and most representative competition. Ad Club recognizes winners through a tiered system at both local and national levels. The Addy’s primary mission is to recognize smart, artistic and creative work across the U.S.

It’s an honor to be included among the distinguished group of agencies that were recognized for their outstanding work in 2016.

Our award-winning entries.

ACS Creative has been developing successful brands for clients for decades. It was no surprise then that the judges chose to give us two Addy Awards in the areas of branding & identity. The third win was for web design — one of our core competencies. It is particularly satisfying to be acknowledged for the things you do well. The ACS team spends much time honing their design skills and staying ahead of industry trends and best practices. Not to win awards, but to help our clients meet their business goals. The trophies are just icing on the cake!

About that award-winning logo.

The logo that garnered the most acclaim was designed by us for a company named Britepaths — which was a new name as well. The company, originally called Our Daily Bread, has been around for more than 30 years and is dedicated to developing sustainable solutions that meet the challenges of low-income working families through emergency assistance, financial literacy and one-on-one mentoring. A great cause worthy of a great logo. We went to work gathering brand insight, developing a name and finally crafting a logo. The process was harmonious collaboration between agency and client. It couldn’t have gone smoother. Probably why the end product turned out so good.

Here’s the winning logo. We like it and, more importantly, Britepaths likes it!

So what makes a great logo?

First, the research that goes into it. You need to understand the industry, the brand’s history and the competitor logos already out there. Then you start designing. You draw out several options. You revise them. You throw some out and you finalize some others. Then you get the client involved for feedback. Repeat until logo is finished. That finished logo hopefully dovetails with what great logos have in common:

They use a simple, iconic mark consumers can recognize
They use colors that are appealing and attract the eye
They look great across all types of media

Trust us, it’s not as easy as it looks—which is why we are so pleased with our Addys. Hard work does pay off.

Your Website isn’t Safe, and Google Knows It

August 23, 2017

*You’re going to want to pay attention to this.

Upcoming Chrome changes will affect millions of non-secure web pages, including yours.

Big changes are coming to Chrome, Google’s web browser, in just a few months. The browser will flag any web forms that do not have a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) Certificate installed as non-secure. That warning will drive viewers from your contact page, e-commerce checkout, and any page where you ask for customer information.

Chrome is currently the most popular web browser in the United States with 44.71% of internet user market share.

What are SSL Certificates?

They are small data files that encrypt information online. This helps prevent third parties from intercepting vulnerable user data. You purchase and install an SSL certificate to build a strong, secure connection between a web browser and a web server. Once an SSL certificate is installed, a web page changes from HTTP to HTTPS.

Eventually, every non-secure/non-HTTPs page visited in Google Chrome will have a red triangle next to the URL, warning customers that the page isn’t secure. It’s part of Google’s broad strategy to make the web safer.

The search engine giant is taking the next step in this epic web security plan. In October of this year, Google Chrome is laying down the law on website forms.

But don’t panic (at least not yet). We can help you work through this major security update. Here’s what this change means for your website and your business…

What is Going On?

In January 2017, Google Chrome added a non-secure warning to all pages that collect payment and/or password information. This was the first step in Google’s plan to push all websites to adopt HTTPS.

October’s change marks the second step in this process. “Not secure” warnings will appear on pages that ask people to enter ANY kind of information, not just sensitive payment data.

Google wants every website to have an SSL certificate – and that’s a good thing. It will protect you from potential cyber threats while giving your customers peace of mind.

Why Do You Need to Pay Attention?

You want your customers to feel safe on your website. Non-secure pages will drive customers away.

Whether you’re a retail store or a law firm, you want people to get in touch with you online. If you don’t have an SSL certificate, customers will see this new Google warning on your contact page, or anywhere else you ask them to send you information.

That means that your contact form to your sales team will be flagged as non-secure. Your request for an email address so your marketing department can build effective campaigns will seem unsafe. The employee intake form from your HR department will actually drive top qualified candidates away from your organization. All because the data that you are asking for is being transmitted in an non-secure, unencrypted manner making it vulnerable.

Besides the obvious security benefits, an SSL certificate could also help your SEO. Google’s search algorithms favor HTTPS websites. Your website could rank higher in search engine results if you have this extra protection.

You can also stand out from your competitors by adding an SSL certificate. Google’s October updates will likely catch a lot of companies off-guard. Customers would probably choose your secure website over a competitor’s non-secure site.

What Can You Do about It?

If your website does not have an SSL certificate, NOW is the time to get one. This small investment can make a big impact.

It’s not terribly difficult to install an SSL certificate, nor is it especially intuitive. You can add one yourself, or you can have a web developer install it for you. There are many companies that sell this service, including ACS Creative.

In preparation for the Google Chrome change, you should apply an SSL certificate to your contact form. Even if you’re only asking for an email address, you need this HTTPS page to avoid the dreaded non-secure warning.

Thinking ahead, you may want to apply an SSL certificate to your entire website. That way, you’ll be covered when Google Chrome does decide to add scary red triangles to all HTTP pages. Though Google won’t say when they’re taking that bigger step, the change is coming sooner or later. You want to be prepared when it does.

3 Reasons Why We Loved AN EVENT APART

August 1, 2017

There is a Japanese concept called kaizen. It means constantly improving, always growing. It’s a great way to approach any part of your life, especially your work. ACS Creative embraced this philosophy when we attended the well-known and well-respected conference, An Event Apart.

The three-day Washington, DC design conference brought together hundreds of designers, developers and industry professionals from all over the country for expert insights into the latest web trends. Celebrating its 10th year, An Event Apart curated an impressive lineup of accomplished speakers from the creative field to share their glimpse into what’s next. Like our fellow attendees, we were there to absorb industry tips like a sponge — and that’s what we did.

It’s not often we pause our busy days at the office for a company excursion, but we couldn’t pass up an opportunity to share exciting new ideas with our current (and future) clients. We appreciated the chance to reconnect as a creative team and prepare for the latest developments in web design. Here are just three of many reasons why we loved An Event Apart.

1. Learned the latest industry trends

In the world of web design, nothing stays the same for long. That’s why it is important to stay tuned to new developments in web apps, internet browsers and other ever-changing technology. It was tremendously helpful to get insider tips on the latest design news, directly from experts at the top of their field.

2. Strengthened our team

There’s nothing like back-to-back sessions on content, CSS, coding and other best practices to bring your creative team together. After every session, we found ourselves brainstorming new ways to improve our clients’ websites.

How can we compress images so pages load faster? How can we apply this Progress Web App technology for better mobile experiences? How can we make our sites more accessible for people living with disabilities? We asked ourselves these questions, inspired by talented speakers like CSS guru Rachel Andrew and mobile web expert Jason Grigsby.

These rapid-fire conversations not only made ACS stronger as a team, but it also made us better prepared to serve our clients.

3. Shared insights with our clients — and with you!

As much as we value professional self-improvement, we value our clients even more. We want to stay sharp to make sure they have the latest and greatest tools at their disposal.

We don’t want to keep all of the great industry practices to ourselves. We want to share our insights with you too! That’s why over the next few weeks, we will be publishing a series of blog posts on what we learned at An Event Apart and how it applies to your business. Be sure to follow us on social media and check back often for more exclusive content like this!

Addy’s Wins

March 28, 2017

We humbly accept more Addys.

For the last three years running, ACS Creative has earned the accolades of its industry peers. We are grateful for the judges who think so highly of our work, and we are doubly grateful for the clients who trust us with their brands and allow us to do great things. Addy’s are not the result of one creative mind. It takes a team effort, agency and client working together, to develop ideas that lead to designs that garner awards. You might say the real winner here is our customer service. You also might say that three years of wins means we can proudly state: ACS Creative: award-winning branding agency. We hope you don’t mind if we do.

But wait, what is an Addy?

For those of you unfamiliar with the nickname, Addy is the affectionate moniker given to the awards presented by the American Advertising Federation. They hold annual competitions with over 40,000 entries in a three-tier, national contest that begins with local competitions followed by regional and national. The only point is to recognize the smart and artistic work being produced by creative companies nationwide. It’s an honor to be included in the distinguished group of agencies that were singled out for their work in 2016.