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Information architecture shows the web designer’s commitment to understand the client’s user base, their backgrounds and their goals before the start of the project.

What is Information Architecture?

Information Architecture (IA) determines the structure of information on a website and is represented with site maps, diagrams and spreadsheets. Like all great projects, modern web designs also command a thorough, well thought out plan and blueprint to what exactly needs to be executed to build beautiful and effective web designs.

Building Good navigations

Good navigations start with good IA. One of the greatest accomplishments of modern web design is how it considers users’ needs from the very inception of the project. Navigation involves the elements of an interface that people use to make their way through the structure that is menus, links and it is represented in wireframes. Thus, having a good IA requires analyzing the website’s content and structure first and then navigation is based on those foundations.

A bad IA will ruin your entire website

In any project, organization is the key. These days one sees a lot of bad IA work happening. When was the last time you spent hours looking for things in a complex system only to be lost? Like something you need in a supermarket, but you just can’t seem to locate that product.  This only adds onto your frustrations. You’ll only end up asking the store guy to find the product, which is if you haven’t left the supermarket already. The same holds true for a user’s experience on web.

Organize better

When it comes to the web, your users are even more impatient. If they can’t find what they need within seconds by browsing or searching, it is highly unlikely that they’ll stick around. Hence, building a website requires an intuitive structure and organization. When one fails to address this issue, that is when the sales go down and customers grow annoyed only to leave sooner.

How do you end up with a bad IA?

In spite of your best intentions, there are times when you may end up with a very poorly organized website. This generally happens when the IA is based on the business structure rather than from users’ needs or when the content structure is organized based on the preferences of senior members in the company, instead of banking on user feedbacks and survey reports. This leads to the downfall of the strategy of what could’ve been a great website.

User feedback and survey reports are your God

For a web designer, the only person whose opinion should matter is the user, for whom the website is to be created. Their choices, preferences and accessibility is what the IA should be based on, in order to create a website that is not only stunning in appeal but equally responsive to the user’s needs and requirements.

Clients often ask what strategies to employ in order to break through the competitive clutter and here’s what we say: Just be earnest. Provide something genuinely useful to your consumer and you’ll not only capture attention, but also gain their loyal support.

The current Indian media landscape has grown competitive in terms of which brand can be bigger, brighter and louder just to get a few seconds of the consumer’s attention. But in all honesty, most of these eye grabbing advertisement tactics hardly work, especially with language like “OMG Sale!” or “All-Natural” or the over-used “handcrafted artisan”.

All in all, things that matter today to customers is how genuine your services are and how straightforward your approach is. It’s all about solving a problem and meeting a need. With consumers turning out brands right and left, it’s no surprise that we have to help them break through the clutter and find a connect with the brand.

And this connect comes with honesty. The recent example was Flipkart’s Big Billion Day sale. Touted as the biggest eCommerce sale of the year, the team at Flipkart left no stone unturned in order to advertise their sale widely, right from billboards to alerts on mail, TV commercials and text prompts, they made sure, that each and every person, knew about the sale, before the Big Day!

The sale turned out to be the most widely marketed sale in eCommerce history in India, but also left the majority of masses disgruntled and agitated, owing to their web page crashing, products going out of stock, all due to the heavy traffic and increasing number of online shoppers who turned into Flipkart on The Big Billion Day.

In spite of the economic reaps; the day was a downfall for Flipkart in terms of losing the trust of their buyers and the sale coming off as a scam, with certain product prices being raised just few days before, only to be brought down at discounted rates on the “Big Billion Day”.

And that’s when Flipkart, a company led by visionary founders went on to issue an earnest apology, which only few in India have been able to execute, showing that they are not hiding behind the INR 600 crore sales figure.

Instead, they acknowledged in this honest to heart letter to each and everyone of its consumers that they messed up. The founders admitted to the lack of preparations at the company’s end and apologized. “We saw unprecedented interest in our products and traffic like never before. We also realized that we were not adequately prepared for the sheer scale of the event. We didn’t source enough products and deals in advance to cater to your requirements,” they said.

The letter from the founders ended in an emotional note saying, “Everything that we have achieved at Flipkart is purely on the basis of our customer's trust and faith. This is why we come to work each day and continue to remain extremely passionate about building the best possible customer experience for Indian consumers. We failed to live up to this promise yesterday and would like to apologize once again to every single customer for our failure.”

With a genuine and earnest apology like that, the same buyers who dished Flipkart took to social media to appreciate the honesty with which the company accepted its mistakes and how they’re willing to give Flipkart yet another chance. Now, that’s what we call an excellent PR.

“Mail me the project timeline”, the client replies and then starts a train of tasks to set one.

When a project is approached, there is always a tentative date that the developer sets as a personal milestone. He then figures an approximate date considering the miscellaneous work to set a date and sketches a project timeline for the client to understand the flow of work with time. Sounds legit and simple, you think?  Stick to the plan. Get work done.

Ah! If only it were so.

Although a definite date is set, this date now has to overcome several obstacles. For starters, awaiting the designs from the web designer. Making sure the developer has finally got his hands on what now is termed as the “approved design” by the client. This step takes longer, since sometimes feedback arrival from the client team takes longer than the tentative estimated time.

After coding the website, it still takes another week to test it. No digital agency that believes in quality services skips this one and none should.

At times, the client’s marketing team already announces the website launch date, starts campaigning the release on social media, newspapers and so on without consulting the developers. This leads to greater confusion. To avoid this confusion, it is always better to have the developer in the loop, as to what stage the project is on and ONLY when you get a green signal from the developers’ team, should the marketing strategy prove good for one and all.

So, now you know why project timelines have been so dreaded for years on by both parties alike. We at Jetbro, hence believe in keeping things better organized with regular discussions with clients, reporting them with our progress milestones during a regular interval of time. Saves the mess and avoids confusion.

With a creative digital agency, one has several presumptions. And they are bound to be. A team of highly opinionated set of creative thinkers. Must be a handful, eh? But with Jetbro, although we have our own set of loud laughs and occasional melodrama, what we proudly never had are ego clashes.

This is mostly because Jetbro, doesn’t address the team as “Employees” but as “individuals”. You won’t find any of us introducing each other as a “colleague”, that’s how tightly knit our creative juices, has got us. We have our weekly Dartboard leagues and cake smashing birthday celebrations along with those crunching Friday night deadlines that keeps us on the edge of creative freedom. While all these factors differentiate Jetbro from other tech/web design companies, the best differentiating factor that keeps Jetbro way above the rest is the ability to resist the corporate culture and management level hierarchies. Each one of us are the kings and queens of our own projects and seek shameless privileges in boasting about them during team discussions.

Lately, the service industry has been obsessed with the idea of User Experience. Debates over multicolour website, monochromatic websites, flashy layouts, minimalistic designs are only getting more complex with every passing day.

The industry spends huge sums on understanding its user and the subconscious susceptibility of every layout and functionality of a website on the user. What many forget while trying to pick the best User Experience is that THERE IS NO Best. There are Bests.

Bear with us, as we elaborate what that means. There is no good, perfect or bad taste. There are different tastes for different people. What seems perfect for one, must be of a lesser value for another. Another thing about the human psyche is that we don’t really know what we want deep down. You may go to coffee shop and order a dark chocolate coffee, but deep down you seek comfort in a milky mild chocolate coffee. So what exactly makes people happy? How do you pin point on that one User Experience, which will make them happy, when they themselves remain indecisive of what they like and don’t like.

The idea is simple. Give them multiple options. This very idea has revolutionized food and packaging industry over the past decade.  Be it Lays, Kurkure, Tomato Ketchups or a Starbucks counter, the consumer is spoilt with choices. He can get exactly what he wants. He might try multiple choices, but he’ll turn out a regular for that one Garlic flavor tomato ketchup or that one Roasted almond dark chocolate. And there! The brand owns another religious consumer, who’ll always get back to them because they serve them that one flavor or taste that others skipped.

This very philosophy can be applied to user experience to earn that religious stream of users, who’ll get back to your site over and over again. Instead of undertaking surveys to find out that one best user experience, the data could be addressed to find out bests. Let the users decide two versions of a website. For example Flipkart could come up with two versions of their website. One is their regular mode, where you stream for options for let’s say shoes and then wait for another page to load to look for more options. Or another one, where all the options are laid out in a PDF file and all you have to do is hit a ctrl+F key to narrow down your product of choice. To those who know what they want and don’t want to waste anymore time, going through other unwanted display of choices, the second website is the perfect platform to do just that.

So, why not make 2-3 user experiences available? Because there isn’t just one Best. There are multiple bests. The bell curve of user experience analysis is never a perfect curve, there are always, 2-3 choices that standout and the analyzer with his intellectual decisiveness, pin points one. Let’s not do that. Let’s have our users decide, which user experience suits them best.

The client has nothing to lose. In fact two websites for his business will only lead to higher conversions for a site like Flipkart or say an IRCTC website. Increased sales and more traffic and not to mention a chain of consumers who now have a website that works exactly how they want it to, thus earning a religious follower in each and every one of them. 

Wondering how these amazing concepts come from? And how we could help you track those multiple bests? Give Jetbro a call. We’re always up for a coffee. Or drop us a line at [email protected].

Being a start-up or just starting out implementing your own idea and to see it grow is a privileged journey of its own. Being a digital creative agency with its own set of foot holds in the commercial arena, Jetbro knows exactly what it needs to fuel your start-up venture into an established business model.

Define your Brand

Every start up venture needs to define its own Brand. With our team of creative assets, we help you through this journey. This is more about what kind of an emotion or school of thought do you want people to remember you by. It’s about how your brand makes them feel. Like, Coca Cola is about “Spreading Happiness” and has a young, vivacious energy to every new endorsement they make. While Old Spic takes the plunge as bold and teases on its audience to be “Mantastic”.

Branding (Logo/Design/Office Stationery)

The feel of the brand invites every aspect of your company. After defining what your brand starts for, we set out on a journey of illustrating a logo, that defines everything that your brand and business, stands for. Be it sketching that perfect logo or staging your office stationary to leave a customize feel to your space. We do it all.

Your Official Website

Website is the most efficient portal to reach to a wider spectrum of audience across the globe and we understand the pressure that comes with building the perfect website that soothes your business and brand value. For us, website isn’t about just another set of web pages. We brainstorm. We contemplate. We survey your user demographics and then sit to draw multiple sketches or blueprints of how your website could look. Giving you multiple options to choose for, in terms of designs and functionalities. So, yes! When it comes to building a brand’s website, we are the guys that will get things done.

An Internal Business Application

Start-ups today look for ways to ease their work flow, data inflow and outflow through customized applications to reduce the amount of work force put in. Our team builds business applications and systems that will further ease your business operations to simplify your start up for your staff and consumers alike.

 Bringing your Brand to the Masses

Nothing gets the word around buzzing about your start up any better than social media sites. This is where our team converts your monologues into dialogues. Be it just starting an instant buzz or acing the conversation on Facebook/Twitter, converting your followers into future user/client base, we know exactly what needs to be done. We understand the budget constraints that a start-up faces and hence, sometimes it is easier to just provide our expertise to devise a social strategy, where from the start-up team could post their own tweets and posts and build their business audience on social media sites.

We have worked with several start-ups as well as incubation centres like iCreate and Incube Ventures, who recommend us to several budding start-ups in the country. So believe us when we say, we know exactly what you’re going through while sketching that first business model or crowd sourcing funds online. We’ve seen it all and we understand the economic constraints. For us, in your brand’s successes and growth charts, lies our selfish interest to see our market grow with you.

Starting from cementing that first corner stone to marketing your business presence across audiences and demographics, Jetbro will make sure that your Business reaches the heights you always imagine it to be and more.

The hierarchy of the existent Mandi bazaar has been a cause of worry for farmers and buyers alike. With there always being middlemen, between the two parties, not only do the transactions lack in transparency but it also leaves the farmers with any profit margin for the vegetables that they’ve toiled for months to cultivate.

Senior Professor at IRMA  M. V. Durga Prasad, realizing this plight among farmers and buyers across states,organized a study of these “mandis” in five states in the country, including Gujarat. While studying the tomato market in Madanpalle in Andhra Pradesh, he discovered that the current mode of auctioning in the vegetable markets leaves little room for transparency with the 'mandi' agents getting the best of the bargain.

In order to make sure that the farmer, the true beneficiary, reaps profits off his produce and to invite transparency in these auctions, Prof. Prasad inferred a need for automation of the same. This allows conversion of the oral auctioning ascending order into an automated tendering process while ensuring transparency. With years of research and countless interactions with farmers across Gujarat, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, Odisha he laid the foundations of a system whereby the transformation process is brought with the help of internet-based web applications.

The task became incredibly easy for us at Jetbro, with the amount of research and detailed visions as well as objectives set across by Prof. Prasad. We couldn’t wait to transpire them online with a system that benefits, the buyer, the middle men (commissioning agents) and the seller (farmer). The system also helps governments when a commodity like onion that reaches inflated rates.

We were extremely elated to read about the system in The Times Of India, (dated 11th 2014).You can read more about the system and the ingenious contributions of Prof. Prasad to the same, in TOI’s article here

Think you’ve got a similar idea? Or have identified a problem that could probably be solved through automation? Give us a call. Even if it is a theoretical research idea, we’ll help you turn it into an automated functional reality at Jetbro. Because we understand the wonders of automation technology like no other.

Come on! Don’t be shy, we all know it. A generation of web designers have been torn and bittered to pieces explaining how there are a billion other shades and tones we could work wonders with. So, here’s a list down on things that bother web-designers about Flashy Colours.

They’re too repetitive

Do you know how many bright yellow websites already exist online? Too many. Infact so many that Awwwards.com has a special category where they pick the best out of the legions of yellow websites created year after year. So when someone tells us, ‘Let’s do something different with a flashy yellow background.” Here’s what we are thinking to make your website look different from others, “Let’s NOT do yellow”.

The content loses its purpose

A design is crafted with such intellect and artistry only to make sure that the content on the website gets its due attention. Yes! That! While flashy colours grab attention, they will possibly overshadow the very content of the website. Hence, failing to get across the message that you were choosing to deliver. And isn’t that why you build the website in the first place? For your users to read and know more about your business or project. Clearly, that ain’t happening anymore. Now that there’s a bright orange flashing right back at you.

They are not easy on the eyes 

A website with too many bright colors, tire the eyes easily, making it an uncomfortable experience for users. Readers prefer websites that are light, for it is easier to read. It gives a more clear direction to the eyes and it doesn’t tire the eyes easily. That is why designers suggest going for monochromatic websites.

Not the fonts too

Sometimes, going with a younger appealing demographic and staying in zone with the brand appeal, it become important to have bright colours on the website. It depends entirely on the user demographic, a younger user base or a fun promotional website could always use a fun upbeat website with bright colours, but then it becomes necessary that you don’t overplay it by using equally bright or even brighter colours to go over your fonts. And using dark blue fonts over an orange background is pure blasphemy.

The “Minimal brigade” will never forgive us

Yes, they are a thing and they exist. Ever since we graduated and decided to be web designers, a section of our fraternity, in the form of teachers, mentors and professionals who we look up to have made us sworn, to ALWAYS stick to a minimalistic design. ALWAYS. Do your thing. Know your limits. Never go over-the-top and craft a design that will remain truly timeless. If one wishes to stay minimal and classy, flashy colours are not a consideration. And if we ever were compelled to create one, the Messiahs of Minimalistic designs would never forgive us. Never.