BUX Podcast #50: Design Patterns and Better Contact Forms

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Episode 50 of the BUX podcast! Five sets of ten podcasts. 10 sets of 5. Dang that’s mucho podcasts!

Ben and I are ‘live and direct’ from the beach bungalow at the South end of Wrightsville Beach – AKA the epicenter of new-style web development.

Today is a special podcast. 50th podcast sounds baller. Ben and I are in the same place, HOORAY!. We have special guests, Alana and Charles (non-speaking roles). And, we get into the free ranging, wild-ass, ‘two web builders talking shop’ kinda conversation that makes this podcast great.

Topics, Points and Links:

Our posts this week – Late Night with Design and Patterns and How to Improve Your Site’s Contact Form to Increase Leads/Sales

Contact forms suck. Why is that? Is it because of a legacy pattern of the static, isolated print material? Is it because designers haven’t thought of it before? Read and implement Ben’s advice and not suck so much.

Adwords can’t help you, if your landing page doesn’t match the expectation set by the ad copy. Adwords can begin the ‘storytelling’ of your product. If the Ad copy is the first step, make sure the following steps make sense.

Adwords landing pages – don’t make them leave that page to complete the next step. What’s the difference between a sqeeze page and a landing page?

We want to be involved with the Super Hero Supply Company. That’s the place where craft, attention and creativity convince kids that it’s okay to learn stuff.

Home page is the front of the critical path. Contact page is the end… of one phase and the begin of another.

A website is a sales generation machine [at times]. Why not get paid for leads and not for a website? We talk about the idea of changing up the model of web builders. End the tyranny of the hourly wage! Sic semper tyrannis (creepy motto of Virginia, BTW)

Ryan Singer and Christopher Alexander can tell you all about the forces that create patterns. But to understand it, best to find a peer to explain it to you – Thusly, this Ryan Singer vimeo.

Also We talk about:

Olympics are a giant sex party orgy. Thanks and God speed to you, who are basically an aggregation of the most fertile and sexy people on the planet. Ben has some scientific proof of this. Dana Torres has some other [90] proof. [ I could have sworn she did an interview to talk about this, but I can’t find it. I could be makin’ stuff up.]

… and a bunch of other stuff to get you motivated to change up and create a better web designy experience for all.

Enjoy!