Website measurement is now firmly planted in the business lexicon, thanks to Google. “Google Analytics” has become a generic term among companies, meaning that lots of stuff on a website is trackable. It’s true: I was told by Omniture that its premium analytics toolkit, Site Catalyst, has over 100,000 report variations! So, the problem is not measuring your customers’ site engagement, it’s understanding that measurement data to create improvement in the experience. Technologies continue to emerge and evolve that are intended to help us understand what web customers are doing, but sometimes you just have to look them in the eyes and ask them.

Online usability testing is just starting to gain a greater appreciation despite being around from the late ’’90s, and with decades-old off-line roots in advertising focus group testing. Where Web analytics can tell you the, “what people are doing” on the site, it lacks the intuition of the, “why people are doing that” on your site. For example, analytics tools can report that 32% of visitors to a product page are returning to the homepage rather than purchasing, but it’s a darned mystery in that data of why they go that direction. If you want to know, why not ask them?

The discipline of online usability testing involves selecting a representative sample of customers, bringing them into a face-to-face test environment (this can be as simple as a computer and an activity-recording device in a boardroom), and moderating them through a user scenario with a set of associated tasks. The process can be both simple and challenging. As the guru of web usability Jacob Nielsen stated a decade ago, you only need five testers to determine 80% of the usability problems in a particular scenario. This means learning can occur very rapidly, to provide the foundation for some very significant improvements in your site architecture. The challenge comes in recruiting a representative sample of your customers, in effectively moderating sessions to minimize bias and maximize insights, and in collating the opinions into actionable documentation that roadmaps both business and technology improvements for the site.

Technology is even trying to simplify the online usability testing discipline. Usertesting.com is a service where you can just throw in your own site scenarios, define a tester group by selecting ready-and-waiting web surfers with some basic demographics filtering, and ta-da… instant insight! There’s just no substitute, however, for a trained expert to work with you on defining and executing a successful, strategic, testing program that works in concert with your web analytics insights, and can even guide much more effective Google Optimizer multi-variant test programs.

Talk to us, if you’re ready to stare your online customers in the eyes.

On June 15th Hot Tomali officially moved into our own building at 1441 E Pender St. This move was a big step for the little agency that I started in the living room of a one bedroom West End apartment in the summer of 1998. Since then, we’ve upgraded our work spaces a few times as necessitated by growth. The first big move came in October 2008 when I took a flying leap and hung out a shingle at Homer and Helmcken in Yaletown, above what used to be the swanky Century Grill (now the Blue Water Cafe). That 1,200 sq/ft space saw us hire our first employees, land our first big contract, and win our first awards. Ah, memories.

Three years later (2001) we were in the middle of the dot bomb crash and the once lucrative office space in Yaletown was now plentiful. Rather than renew the lease on our cozy little studio, we opted to move across the street into a bigger space that had previously been home to notable organizations such as Vancouver Film School and Stratford Internet (a big victim when the dot.com bubble burst). Things were good—we had high tech wiring, built in modular workstations, and air conditioning that “usually worked” in this amazing brick and beam construction office space that had been converted from an old warehouse. More contracts, employees and awards soon followed.

A couple of years later our neighbours, Network Productions (makers of the “Bell Making The Cut” reality series) moved out and we opted for further expansion. We blew through the wall and added more office space and a production facility with two HD editing bays. Our already bustling studio now felt like a real agency, with departments, separate offices, and even a kitchen sink.

Now you might ask, if times were good, and the space was great, then why move? Well, being the principal owner of Hot Tomali, I was always a little bit dismayed with the fact that we’d spent a great deal of money to work in all these trendy buildings over the course of a decade, yet aside from some great memories, we had nothing to show for it. We were also faced with the need to expand again, and I was reluctant to invest a huge sum of money into a space that we might outgrow in a couple of years.

I had been passively following the commercial real estate market for several years with a sense that when the time was right we would make a move. About a year ago there was all this inventory coming on the market and it was just sitting there, often dropping in price by hundreds of thousands of dollars, as anxious owners tried to instigate a sale in a stagnant market. The media was talking about the real estate bubble being burst, and everyone was speculating about where the bottom might be. As with any market downturn, you had your doom and gloom guys trying to scare the pants off of everyone by saying we faced a recession worse than the great depression. What were we to make of it?

Sub-prime mortgage crisis be damned, I wanted my own space! I ramped up my search efforts and we looked at several offices in Yaletown, Hot Tomali’s home for the last 10 years. The thing that held me back was mainly the fact that most available spaces for sale were the same size or smaller than what we were already in, and the only ones that were bigger had big strata fees to go with those big mortgage payments. It just didn’t feel right—I just couldn’t justify the commitment.

Working with our realtor, Mario Felicella over at Sutton, we started to venture out a bit. We checked out some live/work studios in Coal Harbour that were funky, but too impractical for a company of our size. We investigated some big lofts in Gastown and the Cambie area, which were super cool, but required a full on gutting and reno before they would be suitable for us. Then, we finally ventured over to the Commercial Drive area to check out this building on East Pender St. that I had found on the Internet.

It was love at first sight. Upon arriving to look at the building I was immediately impressed by the stunning and awe inspiring facade of the place. My initial thought was that the building almost seemed out of place—a structure of this nature would surely belong in a chic-modern European setting such as Copenhagen or Barcelona.

The building’s developer, and current occupant, Randy Lim of Revolution Designs met with us and gave us the tour. Randy’s appreciation for fine design is apparent in his passion for every detail in the space. Everything was custom fabricated—there are no Home Depot finishings to be found here.

The building exterior is comprised of structural concrete block that has been finished with expert precision. The facade is finished with galvanized, custom fabricated paneled soffits and downpipe, and custom exterior trim.

Arriving at the 11 foot tall entrance doors makes visitors feel as though they’ve arrived at the residence of some gigantic being. These towering doors provide a touch of grandiose in an otherwise minimalist modern design, and often times when entering through them I’m reminded of the feeling a child might have entering an intentionally oversized theme house at Disneyland.

The main office at the front of the building provides retail worthy storefront, with floor to ceiling windows and a fantastic concrete feature wall that runs up the entire height of the building. (This space is currently occupied by our tenants, Mango and Aloe Designs.)

The staircase to the second level is comprised of powder coated, checker plated metal stairs, a 15-foot feature wall, and railings with custom fabricated powder coated steel pickets and thick commercial glazing. These touches provide a futuristic design element that would be worthy of a setting in a Phillip K. Dick novel.

At the top of the stairs, visitors are greeted by a lush garden deck that houses a large bamboo planter. This cedar decked patio is surrounded by floor to ceiling glass on three sides, providing natural illumination to the second floor offices and the stairwell below.

The offices on the top floor are furnished with built-in millwork, consisting of white laminate storage and custom fabricated workstations with powder coated metal frames and larch counter tops. The view from the north side of the building provides a stunning view of the North Shore mountains and the Vancouver shipyards.

The backside of the building features a mezzanine level, which sits halfway between the ground level and the second floor of the building. This space overlooks an additional 1,000+ sq/ft of broadcast production and photo studio with 16+ foot ceilings.

Shortly after arriving on the top level of the building for the first time I said “this is it”. It was essentially a turn key solution that provided ample space for our staff, a great studio space for us to aggressively expand our production capabilities, and the entire building in itself was inspirational.

Although I had some hesitation to move away from Yaletown after 10 years, the Commercial Drive district is a thriving creative community with great amenities. With local hot spots like Stella’s, The Reef, and Havana Cafe all within blocks of the agency, there are a ton of options for lunches and client meetings.

All in all, the benefits of having a place to call our own simply outweighed sticking with the status quo and paying through the nose to lease for another 10 years. Some people cautioned that we were buying during a time of incredible uncertainty. I believe the best opportunities to be found are really only available when you’re willing to take a risk. This step in our evolution holds many similarities to that fateful “flying leap” I took 11 years ago when I leased our first office space. The difference this time around is that I jumped into something we can take pride in and call our own.

Ultimately, you can put the right creative people pretty much anywhere and have success. The space doesn’t define the agency so much as the agency defines the space. That being said, smart agencies are realizing that they need to make good business decisions to grow and prosper for the long haul. Wise investments provide valuable equity and resources for future expansion and growth. It’s not all about drawing pretty pictures, and making people laugh—it’s about setting goals and executing a plan to get you there.

As much as I love our new high-end digs, I will never forget the experiences I learned by bootstrapping an agency in my one bedroom apartment in 1998. Many agencies try to sell themselves as “new age” because they keep their overhead down by using IKEA furniture and buy their boardroom tables at garage sales. My question for them is what will you have to show for your leased office space 10 years from now?

Generic Condo HQ. I can't even tell where in Vancouver this is...Where are the landmarks?

Having recently returned from Barcelona, I found it felt somewhat like a time warp stepping off the plane back onto North American soil. That may sound strange out of context, given that Vancouver is of course a much younger city than Barcelona, but what I mean is that the Barcelona environment feels like 2009, while Vancouver feels more like 1989. Now, I’m not usually one to bad-mouth the place I live, but I think Vancouver gets more than enough positive attention, what with being voted “the most livable city” and all.

Below are a series of shots from Barcelona (and not even one Gaudi is shown).

Vila Olympia (Olympic Village) Barcelona

I’m not sure whether it’s a general lack of interest in design that plagues us here, or if it’s simply a lack of quality architects, but I found myself thinking how I have come to accept the sub-par architecture as the norm. What do we have here in Vancouver that we have to be proud of? (And don’t say the mountains, cuz we didn’t make those!) The Harbour Centre? The Steam Clock? The Vancouver Specials? There seems to be a whole lot of kinda old or kinda average, but nothing really old or really cool (besides our office). Sure, the really old we can’t do much about, so that’s out, but the really cool, we can do something about. It’s not like good design has to cost more. It just has to be good design.

You say why? I say why not?

As I sat on the Barcelona hop on hop off bus, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the hoards of people who jump on Vancouver’s hop on hop off bus to do the city tour, only to find themselves overwhelmed by wall to wall cookie cutter leaky condos. Science World is perhaps the only deviation from blah we have, and even that isn’t great. Is it that we are so preoccupied with nature in Vancouver that we forget to create new things? Barcelona is a coastal city surrounded by nature, and yet it manages to decorate the coastline with brilliant man-made structures bridging the worlds of style and functionality. Yes, it has a rich history, and amazing classical architecture too, but works of the last 20 years alone are stunning.

Drassanes Metro Station freshly renovated

Side note: Not everyone knows this, but the beaches right in the city are actually man-made. As in they cover the ground in some kind of carpet and then dump thousands of tonnes of sand on the shores. It sure fooled me.

The city is like an art gallery; the attention to detail is a real pleasure.

The first Monday back at work from my holiday, I walked by the two Barcelona chairs we have adorning the second floor landing of the office, and caught myself wondering, “What would a Vancouver chair look like?”