It takes plenty of resources to bring you articles about design and development free of charge. Without our sponsors, we wouldn’t be able to bring you top-notch content that you can enjoy, discuss, and learn from.

Thankfully, we’re able to do all of this with the help of our sponsors who support our community — companies that also create amazing products and provide excellent services to web professionals like us.

We’d like to thank our sponsors and talk a little bit about what they do.

As readers, you can support Six Revisions by checking them out and seeing if they have products and services that you can use and purchase.

1. Site5 Web Hosting

Site5 is a web hosting provider catering to the needs of web designers. They have several plans starting from shared hosting at $4.95 a month to dedicated servers at $165 a month. If you are on another web host and would like to move to Site5, they offer a free website migration service handled by their expert migration admins. Only a few hosts can reconcile excellent uptime, features, and support with dirt-cheap prices — Site5 is one of them.

2. FreshBooks

FreshBooks is a web-based application for sending, managing, and tracking your invoices. It has a wonderful interface that makes it a cinch to produce invoices that you send to your clients. They have over 1 million users and were able to conduct $1 billion woorth of transactions in just 4 months — a testament to the excellence of the app.

3. Wistia

Wistia is a business-grade video hosting, sharing, and tracking service. They have a slick admin interface for keeping track of your video marketing campaigns and for analyzing  trends and usage. For developers, they provide an API for working with your hosted videos. Some companies that use Wistia include Nestlé, Map Quest, and Bostley. Check out their product tour to see what Wistia can bring to the table.

4. Stackable.com

Stackable is a relatively new VPS provider aimed at web application developers. For only $35 a month, you get 1TB of bandwidth, 256MB RAM, a DNS manager, and more. What’s great about Stackable is their 1-click scalability: At no cost, you can scale your VPS up if you’re expecting a lot of traffic (bursting it up to 16GB), or scale it down during idle times. Stackable can be your development and staging server to test new features before deployment, or it can be your production server. Stackable has a nice knowledge base filled with helpful tutorials and reference for VPS administration.

5. MailChimp

MailChimp is a web application for dealing with email marketing campaigns. Used by over 400,000 people, the application is loaded with useful features such as social media integration, a slick backend for managing your email campaigns, and even mobile apps for when you’re on the go. Developers get access to their robust API for creating apps and tools that leverage MailChimp’s web service.

6. Bigstock

Bigstock is a user-friendly marketplace for high-quality stock images. Started in 2004, they quickly grew to become one of the Web’s leading stock photo sites. Bigstock has over 5 million royalty-free photos organized in 27 intuitive categories. You can purchase stock photos for as low as $1 each. The way it works is you buy Bigstock credits to download only the stock photos you need, which starts from $15 for 5 credits.

7. KISSinsights

With KISSinsights, you can build slick feedback forms to integrate within your web products. KISSinsights differs from other polling apps out there in that it is focused on gathering actionable insights from your customers. Integration is easy and is a simple matter of including a JavaScript in your site template (similar to integrating Google Analytics or Google Webmaster Tools). The tool is being utilized in sites such as BuySellAds.com and Savings.com.

8. Verio

Used by over 250,000 companies in 146 countries, Verio is one of the largest hosting providers for sites, applications and SaaS. They were named the Best Hosting Company of 2008 by HostingReviews.com. They have many hosting services such as small business website hosting, Microsoft Exchange email hosting, domain name registration and management services, dedicated servers on Linux or Windows, and more.

9. Shutterstock

Shutterstock is one of the biggest stock image sites with over 12 million royalty-free photos. They have monthly subscription plans or the option for on-demand subscriptions to their images (such as 5 high-resolution photos for $49). They have over 240,000 photographers contributing stock photos to their marketplace, and they add close to 80,000 new photos per week!

10. Top 25 Web Hosts

TopHosts.com is a complete web hosting resource, providing site owners tools and information about the hosting industry. Founded in 1997, TopHosts.com has been around for a quite a while! They provide a forum as a venue to bring people together to discuss web hosting, as well as a Top 25 Web Hosts list that highlights top-notch hosting providers in various categories (such as Best Customer Support and Best Shared Host).

11. Remote Tiger, Inc.

Remote Tiger, Inc. is a creative agency offering several professional services including web design, web application development, mobile application development, and more. They cater to over 200 clients worldwide, from small businesses to publicly traded companies. They have headquarters at Washington, D.C. and 65 developers at hand.

12. SiteGrinder 3

SiteGrinder 3 is a website development platform plugin for Photoshop. For web designers that have difficultly in coding and deploying websites, SiteGrinder 3 is a tool you may want to check out. You can expand SiteGrinder 3 through addons, including a Commerce add-on for building e-commerce-enabled websites.

13. PSD to HTML

PSD to HTML offers Photoshop file to HTML/CSS template conversions for web designers wanting to focus on just design and have someone else deal with all the coding. Their packages are reasonably priced, starting from $149. And we all know how much of a pain making HTML email templates are. Why subject yourself to all that frustration when you can have PSD to HTML code it up for you?

14. Formstack

Formstack is a hosted web form app for developing contact forms, surveys, and more. What’s so great about Formstack is that they have integrated solutions for accepting payments, which makes the service awesome for receiving online payments, donations and managing event registrations. They have a slick form builder that can get you up and running in minutes, theming and embedding features so that you can seamlessly integrate your web forms into your existing site, the ability to brand the app so that you can provide it as a service to your own clients, and more.

15. ThemeForest

ThemeForest is one of the web’s leading marketplaces for site templates and CMS themes. They offer close to 3,000 site templates and themes (starting from $1 each) for static HTML sites, HTML emails, WordPress, Joomla, Magento, and more. They also have a tumblr blog that covers topics in web design and web development.

16. Site24×7

Site24×7 is an application for monitoring your website and web servers. It logs, records, and watches out for website uptime issues, website performance issues, DNS records, and much more. Site24×7 has an iPhone version so that you can keep yourself clued in to the status of your web properties even when you’re located remotely. Developers will gain access to their API for creating custom tools and apps that utilize Site24×7’s service.

17. WORKetc

Worketc is an all-in-one app solution for project-based work. It’s a customer relationship management (CRM) system, it can handle your billings, sales, support, and can manage your project and timelines. If you’re sick and tired of juggling a myriad of apps to run your business, Worketc gives you an integrated solution.

18. eConnect

eConnect is a web-based application for creating, managing, and sending email campaigns. It has an intuitive interface that gives you features such as reporting and analytics, the ability to create subscription web forms, and an API for making your own tools and apps. It has possible integration with other applications and services such as Salesforce. To get started, you can request for a personalized live demo of their product.

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• Website Features That You Can Easily Offload
• 10 Android Apps Every Web Designer Should Know About
• 10 iPhone Apps Every Web Designer Should Know About
• Related categories: Site News and Resources

About the Author

Jacob Gube is the Founder and Chief Editor of Six Revisions. He’s also a web developer/designer who specializes in front-end development (JavaScript, HTML, CSS) and also a book author. If you’d like to connect with him, head on over to the contact page and follow him on Twitter: @sixrevisions.

After several months of researching, testing, and using various tools for social media monitoring and response, I thought it might be helpful to share some of my findings. It was fun to dive into these tools, but I hope the information in this article will save you time and help you quickly find the tool that’s right for your needs.

Why Bother Monitoring Social Media?

Even if you or your clients have "decided" not to actively participate in social media, it’s really not a choice. Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does social media. Either you can fill the vacuum with your perspective, or your customers and competitors will fill it for you. The choice is clear.

Monitoring helps with branding and marketing and can help identify quality control or customer care problems that may have gone unnoticed.

Monitoring is only one piece of the puzzle, however. It’s important to find out who is saying what, and where the conversation is happening so you can respond appropriately.

Terminology

There are few terms you’ll need to be familiar with before we talk about the tools, so let’s take a moment to cover them before we jump into the details.

Influence

If you find there are customers who have a strong opinion of your brand, it’s important to understand the influence of those customers.

• How many followers do they have?
• Do they get retweets?
• How many external links point to their blog?
• How many comments do their blog posts attract?

Several of the free tools listed below include this measurement to assist in your monitoring and response efforts. All of the paid options include it.

Sentiment

Are the comments positive or negative? Most current tools attempt to assign sentiment to a post automatically. While this is helpful for brands with tons of mentions, it’s only about 70% accurate in most cases^[1], so manual verification and spot-checking is encouraged across the board before making any decisions based on influence data.

Volume

This is simply the amount of "buzz" that exists. Many monitoring tools give the ability to chart volume for specific keywords over time. This gives you a great way to measure the impact of your marketing efforts and social media campaigns, especially when combined with sentiment. A lot can be learned about your brand and your customers by investigating spikes in social media volumes.

Workflow

Workflow is the process of assigning, tracking and responding to social media, typically in a team environment. An effective workflow can prevent double responses and missed opportunities.

Now that we have an understanding of the purpose and the terminology surrounding social media monitoring, let’s take a look at some tools that can help you monitor your presence.

1. Google Alerts

An oldie but a goodie! Google Alerts allows you to set up keyword searches for the name of your company or competitors, for example, and receive updates in your email inbox or through an RSS feed.

When combined with iGoogle, you can create a pretty nice consolidated page that contains the latest findings for your selected keywords. When it comes to monitoring social media, this is the least you should be doing; it’s free and an absolute snap to set up.

2. Twitter Advanced Search

By using the advanced features in Twitter’s search tool, you can use simple Boolean logic (true or false conditions) to perform some pretty powerful searches.

Once you set up your search, you can save the query as an RSS feed so you can keep up to date on the latest news.

3. Icerocket

Used by many, Icerocket helps you keep watch over Twitter, blogs, web, news, images and more. Features include a topic cloud and basic listing of mentions. This social media monitoring tool also offers the ability to bookmark your search results for later reference.

Although helpful, some users might find the interface and the style of the search results pages a little archaic compared to the other options.

4. Addict-o-matic

This tool is a consolidated page with search matches across blogs, Twitter, Digg, Flickr and more. Featuring an appealing interface and one-page dashboard, Addict-o-matic is one of the best free tools available for summarizing all your "buzz" in one place.

5. Boardtracker

Boardtracker focuses on grabbing "buzz" from message boards and forums. Features include a topic cloud and influencer list. There are ads mixed in with your search results which may turn off some users. A premium version is offered. If your target customers are more active on message boards than other channels, this could be the right tool for you.

6. Twazzup

Of the Twitter-focused monitoring tools I’ve come across, Twazzup does a great job of getting everything on one page. Sentiment, top links, and influencers are available.

The ranking of influencers, however, seems a little mysterious. A quick check of Klout scores on profiles for a few key topics didn’t reflect a high level of influence, so Twazzup must be using a different calculation.

7. Social Mention

This social media monitoring tool features an interesting combination of easy-to-read metrics including reach, sentiment, passion, and strength (volume/day). Social Mention tracks blogs, blog comments, Twitter, mainstream news, images, video, and audio. Searches can be saved as an RSS feed so you can easily stay up-to-date.

8. HootSuite

HootSuite is a popular tool that can be used to manage multiple accounts across Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, WordPress, Foursquare and LinkedIn. Although HootSuite could be categorized as an account management tool rather than a monitoring tool, I believe it deserves mention here because of its large user base and powerful functionality.

You can push updates to one or more profiles, track click-through, deploy timed updates, monitor your social media buzz across multiple web services, and assign tasks among team members based on roles. If you use HootSuite, you’ll want to use an additional tool to supplement monitoring of forums and blogs. HootSuite apps for both iPhone and Android are available.

9. Seesmic

If you try HootSuite, you’ll find the interface of Seesmic fairly familiar. The similarity doesn’t end there. They also share the capability to manage multiple accounts across all the popular social media outlets. Seesmic gives up some ground to HootSuite, however, on the team collaboration and workflow front.

10. TweetDeck

Another account management tool, TweetDeck is available as an application for Mac, Windows, Linux, iPhone and iPad. You can use TweetDeck to manage profiles across Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Foursquare and Google Buzz. If you’ve used the other tools on this list, the multi-column format will feel familiar.

TweetDeck is lacking a good workflow, so it is not for those who will be collaborating with a team. In addition, because it needs to be installed on your system instead of being able to run in a Web browser, many people won’t be able to use it in a secure corporate environment.

11. Scoutlabs ($249/mo)

Scoutlabs has a great clean interface and overall excellent features for volume trending, sentiment-tracking, learning about key quotes (based on sentiment), and managing workflow for response management. Unlimited results helps protect you from increased monthly cost due to unexpected spikes in volume.

It’s a great option for agencies and freelancers because you can give clients access to a dashboard with your logo on it, branding the service as your own. Note that it can be a challenge to output some graphs and reports which may be an issue if you want to produce reports for your clients.

12. Radian6 ($500/mo)

Radian6 is a powerhouse that gives you the ability to slice-and-dice your data until your head spins. Integrated workflow, alerts, sentiment, monitoring across blogs, forums, news, Twitter, and more is what this social media monitoring tool has to offer.

The amount of monthly volume can influence pricing which is a little scary for companies that may experience wild swings in monthly volume. This is not the type of solution you should set up and hand over to your clients; it provides you with a wealth of information so you can become the go-to expert for them. If you invest the time to learn this tool, you can discover insights that will make you a hero to your clients.

References

1. Is Automated Sentiment Analysis Reliable?

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• Related categories: Tools and Website Management

About the Author

Jason Schubring has built more than 100 Websites and delivered e-mail campaigns for companies of all sizes. His strategic, design, and Web development background creates a unique perspective on effectively combining digital and traditional marketing. To connect with him, follow him on Twitter @jasonschubring or find him on LinkedIn.

1)Promote Your Work

– This is probably the way most creative types would think of using social media, whether it’s tweeting about a new client’s page that just went live or sharing a link to the guest post you wrote for your favorite design blog. However, there are also a few designer-specific social media platforms out there that aren’t cluttered with sponsored tweets and e-book offers just yet. Most designers know about the Digg-like sites such as DesignBump.com or WPVote.com, but there’s more out there. There are communities like Coroflot and deviantART where you can share your portfolio and get feedback, but there’s even more still. For instance, Dribble.com is like crowdsourcing site/Twitter for designers – a site where you can share small snapshots of your designs for comment and assessment by your fellow designers. Whatever platform you use, social media has changed the way we share, promote and often improve our work.

2)Blog Away

– You’ve probably got an online portfolio – yourname.com, perhaps – and it probably links to and has screenshots of all the work you’ve done. If you really want to benefit from being online, though, you should definitely add a blog to that site. A blog will help in several ways – it can be a platform for quick comments about breaking tech/design news, sharing links or workshopping designs. More than that, it can help your work and name get found online. By creating unique content and updating it regularly, your portfolio will reap the SEO benefits and more potential clients, when looking online for a designer, will come your way. Moreover, a blog can serve as your base of operations on the web, providing a regularly-updated home to direct your legions of fans back to.

3)Location, Location, Location

– We all have friends on Facebook or followers on Twitter who won’t stop with their Foursquare checkins. But what if you used those checkins for good rather than to show that you go to the same bar every night? Alert your followers when you go to the museum or the art supply store or, better yet, include your friends and followers by making a design, art or architecture-themed scavenger hunt on Foursquare or Gowalla. Here’s a free idea – most cities these days have an artwalk of some sort. Create a Facebook group that details a list of checkin stops on the way to and all around the artwalk. Set up some teams and check in using Foursquare, and tweet pictures to other teams of your team checking in before everyone one. Then share the photos of the entire group celebrating a successfully-launched new tradition on that Facebook group and watch more people clamor to get involved next time. I just made that up. See? Using tools with location capabilities can help show that you use your creativity not only in your work, but in your life as well.

4)Profiling

– Just stop resisting already and round out your social media profiles. Definitely create “the big three” – Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are extremely useful tools for finding work, sharing information and connecting with colleagues and clients alike. If privacy is what you’re worried about, then limit the amount of information you share to non-personal topics, but get out there. As someone who’s trying to exist online, you need to be able to show that you understand these technologies better than the average bear. You need to know that LinkedIn is best for networking and looking for work opportunities, how to create a Facebook group or FanPage, and how to put together a targeted Twitter list. You should be doing these things anyway, but if you can prove to a client that you have more than just a casual knowledge of the major platforms, you’ll be ahead of the game. Which brings me to…

5)Add Value With Social Media

– If you DO enjoy social media and can interact with people through a variety of channels, then why not add value to your existing services by designing a custom Facebook page or teaching your client how to tweet more effectively? Companies large and small are out there right now, trying to figure out the best ways to utilize these exciting new tools. If it comes down to you and another designer, don’t you think a smart client who wants to start leveraging social media will choose the designer who seems to get it and can help implement some policies and practices?

6)The Real World

– Social media is great for connecting online, but it’s just as useful for networking in the real world. If you live in a decent-sized city, then chances are there’s a group of tech professionals getting together to discuss business. There are meet-ups of social media professionals, designers and developers, WordPress fans, bloggers – if you can imagine a group of people, then they’re probably getting together to talk shop. That’s not even mentioning the more regular events that spread the word to new members via social media. Try this: go to Twitter and search for some combination of “tweetup” and “web design. Chances are you’ll find a Twitter list or Facebook group you can join so you won’t have to kick yourself when you miss another chance to meet the guy who could have given you your next design job.

About the Author:
Blue Derkin is a Social Media / Project lead at web hosting company InMotion Hosting. You can follow him on Twitter @WHHG_InMotion

  

By Cameron Chapman

We’ve all heard it: time is money. And as much as we sometimes hate to look at it in such base terms, it’s mostly true. As service providers (designers and developers), the time we spend on a project is directly proportional to how much we’re getting paid. How we spend our time also has a big effect on when money comes in.

If we want to get a better grip on our cash flow, we need to get a better grip on our time first. Sure, we all recognize that the time we spend working effects our overall income. But it’s often hard to see the relationship between time management and cash flow. Regardless of how muddy the relationship seems, there are direct ties between how you manage your time and how much money comes in when. Read on for more information on how to better manage your time so you can better manage your finances.

Take a Wide View

Time management is often dealt with on a micro level. We look at our time in blocks of fifteen, thirty, or sixty minutes, and assess how to best utilize those blocks. But when it comes to managing your time with an aim toward more stable cash flow, this micro-management doesn’t do much good.

What you need to do is take a macro view of how you’re spending your time, and manage it based on when you need to complete billable work. Rather than looking at time in blocks that make up a fraction of your day, look at it in terms of what you’re doing this week or this month.

Regular Billing Intervals

One thing you’ll want to consider when planning your long-term time management is the frequency at which you’ll be billing clients. There are a few things to take into account here. One has to do with how many projects you have going, and how staggered they are. Ideally, you’ll want your projects to overlap in such a way that you can send out bills on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. This means you’ll have money coming in virtually every week, which is a big plus for any freelancer’s cash flow.

The other thing to consider is how often clients are billed for work. Some designers might only bill their clients at the end of a project (in addition to a deposit up front, of course). While this results in larger payments, it also means payments are coming in less frequently. You’ll need to decide if you can justify billing more often during the project. Breaking down the project’s fee over three payments can not only aid your cash flow, but also your client’s.

Again, the goal here is to have money coming in on at least a semi-regular basis. Many freelancers will want payments arriving on a weekly basis, so there’s less budgeting involved. Others might prefer to have larger payments coming in less frequently. You’ll need to work out which system works better for you and the types of bills you have and then plan your projects so deadlines and billing cycles correspond with your desired payment schedule.

Set Goals and Work to Deadlines

Goals and deadlines are two of the biggest tools in your time management arsenal. Putting them to the best use take some practice, though.

You’ll want to set both long-term and short-term goals. Your short-term goals might include things like finishing up a project or landing a new client. Your long-term goals might be income-related or have to do with purchasing new equipment, hiring an employee or two, or expanding your services. Your goals don’t need to be set in stone, but you should have an idea of where you want your business to go, and then make sure you’re allocating enough time to certain projects or activities that will help you reach those goals.

Some people opt to put their goals up where they can see them. Others don’t bother writing them down, even. Either way is fine, just make sure you know what your goals are and what you need to do to move toward them.

Goals don’t have to be set in stone. There are people who are resistant to setting goals, as they feel like it might limit them and make them miss other, better, opportunities. That doesn’t have to be the case, though. Just because you’ve set a goal doesn’t mean you can’t change it or adapt it if you’re wants or needs change. The goal’s true purpose is just to keep you moving forward and give you something to aim for.

Deadlines

On most projects, you’ll have a timeline or deadline you have to work to. But sometimes a client is more lax about when their website needs to be done, giving you a deadline that’s months away. This can wreak havoc with your work schedule and your cash flow. So set a deadline that’s more closely tied to when you can realistically finish the project.

It’s also a good idea to set deadlines for yourself for stages within each project, especially for milestones that will trigger a payment. Set deadlines for things like invoicing and making any collections efforts, too. You should aim to send invoices as soon as possible, but setting a deadline of 1-2 days after work is complete (and/or approved by the client) is a good practice to get into. You at least want to be sending invoices on a weekly basis to ensure you have a steady cash flow.

Establish Good Habits

If you want to keep a steady flow of cash coming into your business, you’ll need to develop some good habits. Habits are necessary because they become second-nature after awhile. When you’re in the habit of doing something, it’s automatic; you no longer have to think about doing it. While habits aren’t necessarily essential (a good to-do list can replace them), they will make your business run smoother.

There are some habits you may want to develop that have little to do with your cash flow directly. Things like starting and ending work at the same time each day, taking regular breaks while you’re working, and taking time off are all good habits to get into, but they won’t have a direct impact on your cash flow. However, these habits all serve to make you more productive, which will have a positive impact on your cash flow and other aspects of your business.

Send Invoices Regularly

In order to have money coming in, you have to ask for it. That’s what invoices do. Depending on the volume of your business and how tight your budget is, you may want to dedicate a few minutes at the end of each day to preparing invoices, or a couple of hours one or two days each week. You also might consider getting in the habit of taking time as soon as a project (or part of a project) is finished to prepare the invoice, before moving on to the next project.

Another option is to keep a running invoice for each project, adding hours or other billable items to it as you complete them. This way, when you reach a billing trigger, the invoice will be ready and all you’ll need to do is print it out or email it.

Other Bookkeeping Tasks

Keeping track of bills and outgoing money is just as important as keeping track of income. You need to know when your bills are due or when to expect an expense so you can prepare for it and make sure the money is available. There’s nothing worse than getting a big payment for a project and then realizing you have to send three quarters of it off for your rent or some other bill.

The same goes for taxes. Get in the habit of keeping track of how much money you’ll owe for taxes and taking that percentage out of each payment that comes in. Considering in many countries you may pay anywhere from 25% to 50% of your income to taxes, this is vital to making sure you have a stable cash flow and won’t get hit with a huge bill when tax time rolls around.

Taking a few minutes each day or an hour each week to make sure your finances are in order is vital to making sure you have a stable budget and a stable business. If you’re constantly having to scramble to make payments on things, set aside the time to better manage your finances.

Respond to Requests Promptly

Sometimes the reason between you getting a contract and your competitor getting it has more to do with how quickly you respond than with the actual proposal. Once a client makes a decision to go ahead with a website redesign, in many cases they want to dive right in and get started. If you turn around and get a proposal to them within a few days, and your competition takes a week and a half, they might sign with you before they even receive the other proposal.

It’s a good idea to get into the habit of taking some time whenever a request for a proposal comes in, and deciding right away whether it’s something you want to respond to or not. If it is, take the time to gather any additional information you need and put together the proposal right away. More work will almost inevitably help your cash flow (provided, of course, your new client pays their bills when they’re supposed to).

Keep Better Track of Your Time

Tracking where your time goes helps to eliminate wasted time. Now, that doesn’t mean every single minute you’re sitting at your desk has to be spent in the most productive way possible, but if you track your time and find you’re spending more time on Facebook than actually working, you should probably make some adjustments.

There are dozens of time-tracking apps and methods out there. Any of these can be used to better determine where your time is being spent. I’d suggest keeping track of your time for at least a week before you make any adjustments. A month is better. After all, you might find that you’re less productive on a certain day of the week, but on other days you completely make up for it.

The other big advantage to accurately tracking your time is that you’ll be able to create more accurate estimates for your clients, and you’ll be less likely to undercut yourself. Maybe you think a certain web design task will only take you an hour, but when you actually look at the time you’re spending on it, it’s taking you three. While you might not be able to bill for the difference on your current project, at least you’ll know to bill more for the next one.

Make Adjustments as Needed

Time management is a constant process, not a one-time project. You can’t just set up a schedule and expect it to work for the next five or ten years. You’ll need to review where your time is going on a regular basis, monthly or bimonthly is usually a good schedule, and make sure you’re not only not wasting time, but also billing for the time you’ve spent on particular projects.

By better managing your time, you can make sure that your cash flow is more consistent, and that you have money coming in when you need it. And the only way to effectively manage your time is to review, on a regular basis, where your time is needed, where it is most effectively spent, and where it is being wasted.

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In modern web interface design, no other principle has been heralded and pushed onto us as much as the concept of user-centered design. User-centered design tells us that we should do everything we can to make our user interfaces as easy to use and as intuitive as possible.

However, a big part of designing user interfaces that are easy to use also involves figuring out what things should be a bit more difficult to to use. It’s a counter-intuitive notion that’s central to effective user interface design.

Why Make Certain User Interface Items Difficult to Use?

I can think of 3 main reasons for making an interface element more burdensome to utilize:

1. When using the interface element is costly to the user if used by accident
2. When there’s an overall improvement to the UI as a whole
3. When the cost of maintaining a feature is costly to the provider if used frequently

High Cost of an Error in Usage

When you accidentally delete a file or click on a button that you didn’t mean to, there’s going to be a cost. For example, recovering a deleted file in a traditional operating system such as Windows costs time. To get your deleted file back, you need to:

1. Minimize your current application so that you can see your desktop
2. Click on the Recycling Bin icon
3. Locate the deleted document in your bin (or type in a search term if you have many files in your bin)
4. Right-click on it to see and issue the restore command
5. If you want to continue working on the document, you need to reopen it

That’s a costly mistake. Good user interfaces will have safeguards for this situation, such as obfuscating the visibility of the delete command and showing you a confirmation dialog that asks you if you really want to delete the file. Burdening the deletion process is a purposeful design choice to avoid the more costly event of accidentally deleting the document.

Example: Deleting Content in WordPress

In older versions of WordPress, when you deleted content by accident (such as that post draft you’ve been working on for a month), there was no simple way to recover from the mistake. There was a confirmation dialog window that asked you if you did in fact mean to delete the content, but if you’re quickly going through, say, spam comments and deleting them one by one, there will be accidents. In older versions of WordPress, when you delete something, it was irreversible.

To fix this, WordPress added an additional feature called Trash. It works much like the Recycling Bin in operating systems that temporarily house files you’ve deleted in case you want them back.

Although it’s now harder to permanently delete WordPress content since you have an additional step to go through to remove the stuff you deleted inside your Trash, by intent, the deletion process was extended and made more difficult to prevent the more costly event of accidentally deleting a post or comment.

Improving the Overall UI System

When there are a lot of interface items competing for your attention, the result is an intimidating and cognitively burdensome UI.

For newer users of the system, having too much noise going on all at once can slow down their ability to learn how the system functions.

But we want people to have ready access to all of these awesome features, so the tendency is to fit as many things as we can into our screens.

Fitt’s Law

To help explain the value of making some interface elements more difficult to use for the overall good of the system, I’ll borrow from Jeff Atwood’s discussion of the opposite of Fitts’ Law.

Fitts’ law is a human-computer interaction (HCI) model that predicts the speed in which someone can move to an objective. It applies to any human-computer interaction situations that involve human movement and a target.

In the context of graphical user interfaces on computer screens, the model attempts to quantify the factors that improve someone’s ability to, for example, point and click on an interface element such as a call to action button.

If that sounds too complicated, we can simplify the model this way: Things that are important and frequently used should be bigger and closer to the user^[1].

It makes sense: Bigger things that are closer to us are easier to get to and touch than those that are smaller and farther away.

So, if Fitts’ Law states that interface elements that are essential to the user should be bigger and closer to them — or in the context of a computer screen, easier to find and see — Atwood looks at the problem in reverse and asks, "What should we do with UI elements we don’t want users to click on?"

The answer is simple. By logic, we make those UI elements more difficult to use, locate, and find by making them smaller and more distant to the user.

Doing this forces us to prioritize what interface elements are more important. In turn, this creates visual hierarchies in our UI elements that help the user understand how the system works.

Example: Freshbooks

One of my favorite apps, Freshbooks, demonstrates this point well.

The web app’s design smartly implements a logical visual arrangement of its interface elements to make things easier and more intuitive.

For example, in the Expenses tab, there are 6 commands you can perform from the top interface command set:

1. Add a new expense
2. Archive
3. Delete
4. Copy
5. Convert to an invoice
6. Search

Look at the variations in size, grouping and spacing of those commands. Some are close together, some are farther down to the right, Search is deemphasized.

Which command is the most important? Which one is the least important?

Counter-Example: Microsoft Word

Just because they’re our favorite whipping boy, let me follow the trend and pick on a Microsoft product: MS Word 2007.

MS Word has a cluttered main menu, and there’s not a lot of thought put in, in terms of Fitt’s Law. They all seem of equal value and thus, it’s harder to find the things you need.

How many times do you need to adjust your document margins or theme? Probably just once.

How many times do you need the Acrobat tab? (Never in my case).

Should all of these options be shown by default, or should they be hidden and more difficult to access for the overall good and simplification of the UI?

By hiding some interface elements or by making them smaller, you are afforded with more room to work with for commands that are truly important and often used (such as styling commands for bolding and emphasizing text).

High Cost to the Provider

Some features might be too costly to us as providers if they’re used regularly. An example of this situation is in obfuscating or burdening the customer support process so that users are encouraged to help themselves before submitting a help ticket.

Let’s use a real-world analogy to explore this topic: Toilet paper in public restrooms. Toilet paper in public restrooms are typically provided free of charge as a courtesy to bathroom goers. You can guarantee that toilet paper in these restrooms will be as rough as sandpaper and manufactured as cheaply as possible.

The reason this is so is that it’s a free service. One of the ways to cut costs is to get the cheapest toilet paper possible.

But what if the public restroom operator had some spare money to spend? Should he/she improve the quality of their toilet paper?

Nope.

There are other benefits to keeping toilet paper as crappy as possible. By making toilet paper difficult to use, they discourage people from taking advantage of the offering unless they absolutely need to.

For instance, many would hesitate to take rolls of toilet paper home because they’re unbearable to use and they probably have better stuff waiting at home. Some might even refrain from using public restrooms if they know that in five minutes they’ll be at home and in the comfort of their own restroom.

It doesn’t take away from the user; they still have the feature (toilet paper) but they’re just less likely to use it if they can avoid it. There is no lack of feature availability, so it’s okay.

Example: Download Feature in Design Instruct

I’ll use an example closer to home. On Design Instruct, everything is free: You don’t have to pay a subscription fee to access the site, you don’t have to register to use any site feature, and you don’t have to jump through hoops to download stuff (such as Photoshop files and freebies).

On similar sites that provide free downloads, they’ll often have large call to action buttons placed prominently at the top of the web page, enticing the user to download their source file.

In retrospect, on Design Instruct, the download feature is at the very bottom of the tutorial, as a link with a purposefully intimidating heading ("Download Source Files") and link name ("some_file_name").

Our reasoning is to discourage the feature’s use unless you really need to. This is because the download feature, although great for our users that need it, costs us an arm and a leg in bandwidth and servers (we need a dedicated server and CDN just for these downloads).

The download option will be used more by long-time readers who are already familiar with the interface and less by one-time visitors who’ll never return to the site again.

The objective here is simple: we want to prioritize our resources in such a way that the readers who’ve been with us longer are the ones that are likely to take advantage of this feature.

Example: Minimizing Free Signups in Basecamp

Another example where this concept can be seen is in Basecamp’s pricing page. Basecamp offers a free plan, but they’d much prefer you sign up for their premium plans.

In the screenshot below, I’d wager that many people miss the "free plan" option and find it more difficult to click on because of the option’s size and position, especially when compared to UI elements around it.

Even though they want to make this option available, minimizing free signups versus premium signups is the objective of this screen.

Further Reading

Here are a few articles related to this topic.

• The Opposite of Fitts’ Law
• Visible Narratives: Understanding Visual Organization
• Visual Hierarchy – 52 Weeks of UX

References

1. Fitt’s Law

Related Content

• Negative Space in Webpage Layouts: A Guide
• An Introduction to Website Split Testing
• How to Increase Conversions on any Website in 45 Minutes
• Related categories: User Interface and Web Design

About the Author

Jacob Gube is the Founder and Chief Editor of Six Revisions. He’s also a web developer/designer who specializes in front-end development and a book author. If you’d like to connect with him, head on over to the contact page and follow him on Twitter: @sixrevisions.