This year, WordCamp Orlando was held at the Rosen College of Hospitality on the beautiful UCF campus. Johnathan and I had been looking forward to our trip to WordCamp for a few weeks. WordCamp, for those who don’t know, is a conference geared towards designers, developers, publishers, students and any sort of techy nerds in between. It focuses on everything WordPress, a content management system which occasionally, we use here at Brand1111 in order to provide our clients with easy to update and beautiful website. WordCamp is a great way for us to find out about the most cutting edge technology, share ideas, and get to know other designers and developers.
Designing Your Brand Through User Experience by Dan Maccarone was my first session, and by far the one that I got the most out of. Dan is the co-founder of the NYC based product design company called Charming Robot. He also works with start up companies such as Rent the Runway and Foursquare. Dan gave a lot of great examples on how to best convey your brand through the web.
Listening to Dan talk about the common mistakes that many start up companies make, I couldn’t help relate to some businesses that I’ve seen in the past. One tip that I thought was extremely important was to focus on your product and do one thing right. Don’t try to do to much with your website, just focus on one thing. After launching, gradually introduce extra features every six months or so. Web visitors do not like to much complexity. It kind of goes back to the old rule that simple is better. Especially from a design aspect.
About half way through the afternoon, the Rosen College of Hospitality catered an amazing lunch, provided us with beverages throughout the day and even had a cookie buffet. The students had out done themselves and truly did and amazing job taking care of everyone. Lunch was a great opportunity to connect with other people in our industry, discuss tips and get a feel for what other WordPress users are doing in or area.
We look forward to applying our new found knowledge to current and new clients alike. Thanks to Brand1111 for allowing us the time to expand our designer and developer minds. We encourage businesses to consider WordPress as an option to update your old site. Feel free to give us a call, we’ll be happy to answer any of your website questions!