Brown Deer-based Northwoods Software, began offering its Live Looks- ten minutes to a better website seminar last month and plans to continue to do so every month as long as it remains in demand.
“The seminar series actually sprung out of a different Writing for the Web seminar which we’ve been doing for over a year now," said Northwoods president and founder Patrick Bieser Sr. ‘We previously took 15 minutes at the end of that seminar to take a look at audience member websites and critique what they were doing well and what they could improve on.”
According to Bieser, the demand for the seminar content pertaining to the critiques led to the Live Looks Learn at Lunch series, which focuses solely on 10 minute critiques of audience member sites.
Participants at the Learn at Lunch submit their website URLs with their registration and then sites are randomly selected from a bowl during the seminar. Bieser, and one of his colleagues, spends 10 minutes critiquing the selected website and offer ideas for improvement.
“So many people think they know a lot about the web,” Bieser said. “But no matter how much they know they always have concerns, fears and anxieties about what’s the right way to do it, because there are so many variations of web designs out there. Everyone wants to get results from their website, but nobody ever tells them how to do that. That’s what we do when we critique these sites.”
Bieser and his colleagues at Northwoods, Bradley Fell, creative director, and Mike Rohde, senior art director, are web creators, designers and architects by trade and also sell a content management solution as part of their business.
“The goal of these pages is for a visitor to buy something or obtain some important information. Our goal is to help you understand that if you want to accomplish those tasks, this is what you need to do,” Bieser said. “Very few web designers will actually do that, and in the context of this seminar participants can voyeuristically learn as they watch other people get their critiques.”
Ben Liesch, Interactive designer and Julie Tramonte, senior copywriter at Mader Communications Group, Inc., in Mequon attended the first Live Looks seminar specifically looking for that kind of input.
“Overall we got some really good tips on how to make our website work better from a user point of view. The feedback we received was definitely valuable and unique in that our clients wouldn’t typically give us that sort of feedback,” Liesch said.
The seminar is open to any business, small or large in any industry, Bieser said.
The date for the next Learn @ Lunch is Tuesday, Aug. 11 from 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. at the Northwoods Software facility, 4600 W. Schroeder Dr., Brown Deer. You can register by visiting www.learn.northwoodsoft.com. Lunch is $5.
