B(abble)log - Archives
- This is one of my favourite quotes this week, “Not all marketing stories are literal; be aware of the story told through your site design choices.” Read this outstanding article by David Rossiter that reflects on storytelling, user-friendly design and the social web.
- Finally, Twitter has brought real-time search to us all!!
- Wolfram|Alpha hasn’t yet launched but that hasn’t stopped it from being called a “Google killer” The search engine uses natural language queries and doesn’t just supply results, but rather answers them directly.
- With Swine Flu being the conversation-de-jour. Lifehacker reported on a Google Map mashup to track the disease.
- All you emotive people out there will be glad to know that Gmail has added more emoticons.
- Are you a B2B marketer? Gord Hotchkiss has authored a white paper titled “Mapping the BuyerSphere” in which he examines different buyer roles, the identified risk control mechanisms, and the relative effect of a vendor's credibility and positioning. You can download it here.
- Mitch Joel offers his insights on speaking in a powerful new way as part of Cluetrain Manifesto's 10th anniversary. Read other posts expanding on Cluetrain’s tenets at Cluetrainplus10.
- Online Marketing Blog has some great tips in Public Relations Activities That Affect SEO. As Lee Odden points out “content that can be searched on can be optimized.”
- The always-inspiring Valeria Maltoni has written 5 Marketing Ideas You Can Use Today.
- Is it any surprise that even online men feel the need for speed? Find out more about gender issues in website usability.
Friday Fun
Twitter Magnets – Don’t say I didn’t warn you – it’s addictive!
Kathryn from Zoonini and I would love to thank everyone who has enjoyed and shared our public service announcement Do I Need a Flash Intro? We got over 50,000 unique visitors in 4 days from over 130 countries. Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!
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Last week, when I compared visiting a site to having a meal at your favourite restaurant, the irony that most restaurant websites aren’t very good did not elude me.
I’m not quite sure why. Maybe as an industry they aren’t very online savvy and use the same sort of “glossy brochure” offline design thinking? If you’ve got any insights, please share them. (You can also reach me at Twitter.)
There is just missed opportunity after missed opportunity to have a great website. Here’s an example…
Café Santropol is a Montreal sandwich restaurant that is awesome. The food is outstanding, the service is friendly, the shabby chic interior design is quirky and welcoming, and they've been roasting their own fair-trade coffee long before it was ever fashionable to do so. They also donate a percentage of profits to charity and are actively involved in the community. Whatever the polar opposite of “bland coffee & sandwich restaurant" might be, this would be it. And don’t get me started on the cute secret garden - I could wax poetic for days! In short, I’m a huge fan. I’ve taken friends and family alike and everyone falls under its magical spell.
But the website makes me weep.
It is so dreadful, in fact, that it’s practically a tutorial on what not to do. It exemplifies how a poorly conceived and designed website can almost destroy the real-world wonderfulness that is Cafe Santropol. And, they aren’t alone. As I started looking around, it became apparent that criticizing restaurant websites would be like shooting fish in a barrel. It’s far, far too easy.
In the case of my beloved Cafe Santropol, there are a few issues that are not just particular to their site but to many other restaurant sites as well.
Unnecessary Clicks & Choices
When you arrive at the homepage, you are forced to make a choice – do you want to learn more about their coffee, or more about the restaurant? Site visitors shouldn’t have to choose. It would be just as easy to have a coffee section on the Santropol website, so users don’t have to toggle between the two. And, once you do make your choice, you are faced with an empty language selection page; yet another barrier to the stuff you really want to know about – the food, the prices, how to get in touch, etc. (Go ahead, guess how you find the language of your choice! I dare you. Yes, by clicking on the faces peeking out from the curtains! Which segues to…)
Mystery Meat Navigation
When someone had to type “Pull on the ropes” to indicate how you are supposed to navigate around the site, didn’t something click? Didn’t someone think, “Gee, it’s supposed to be apparent how to navigate through a site.”? Why all the theatrical metaphors? I don’t know either.
Help Me Find You
The contact information -physical address only- is below the fold on “splash page #3” While the operating hours and address are appreciated, it is entirely too easy to miss. And there is no separate Contact page. What if I had a question? There isn’t a telephone number or email address that I can readily find. I eventually did find it, but by accident.
Don’t Change the Rules
So, I’ve discovered that I need to pull some ropes to navigate the site. I click on Links to find out more, and –presto-chango– my rope-pulling nav has disappeared. Gone. Poof. Dear freaky ropes, why have you forsaken me?? Instead, I need to use my back button. Or, if I was extremely attentive, I might scroll down and down until I saw a smallish icon of a house. The same thing happens on the About page, but without my newfound friend, the home icon. To boot, it also opens up in a new window.
No New Windows
Many of the top-level navigation items open in new windows. I don’t want a bunch of new tabs opening up as I navigate a single site. All internal links should open in the same window. End of story.
There are also untitled pages, one section suddenly and inexplicably designed in a completely different way that uses frames and on and on and on. It breaks my heart. Why? Because I know what a great place this is.
I know the care and love they put into their food and restaurant. And I’d love to see that translated into the website, with photos of their amazing sandwiches and the cute outdoor terrace. This dark, theatrical website has absolutely no connection to the funky restaurant that Montrealers rave about. In real life, the experience is friendly and cohesive, but online it is a bizarre collection of web pages that don't have a consistent look, feel or navigation. And, unfortunately, the user experience is mind-bogglingly bad.
1. Marketing Profs tells us how Pop Labs' Charles Lewis, a.k.a. the Poetic Prophet uses a rap video to spread great tips on Web site design coding for prime SEO. I first told you about this back in February, but it's definitely worth the revisit!
2. How can you make the ordinary stand out? Scott Monty from Crayon introduces us to Jim Kosek at AccuWeather.com in From Mundane to Engaging: How One Man Does It. The 6 minute video is worth the watch.
3. Scott Buresh gives us the lowdown on coding your pages for robots in All Search Engines Love Spiders: How Meta Commands Can Help You Love Them Too.
4. While we're on the subject, Copyblogger tells us Why Writing for Spiders is the Least Sticky Strategy of All.
5. Purina is using the long tail (*groan*) to aggregate and rate user-generated content about pets with PetCharts. AdAge has the scoop.
6. On April 12th Andrew Baron, founder of the popular Internet tech show Rocketboom, decided to auction his Twitter account on eBay, complete with more than 1,300 followers. Moments later, Chris Brogan posted Is Your Community For Sale?. The differing viewpoints expressed in the comments show what a hot topic this became. The eBay auction was pulled 3 days later. Mashable has the re-cap.
7. Smashing Magazine brings us Web Form Design: Modern Solutions and Creative Ideas and proves that it is important to provide a good user experience where site visitors provide feedback.
8. What to do when your competitor has a misstep? AdAge reports that Skyy Vodka Capitalizes on Absolut Mess in the debacle over the U.S.-Mexico border.
9. SEOMoz shares the lessons learned from trial and error using Digg in I Submitted to Digg But All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt.
10. SEO is Not Free Traffic from SearchEngineLand.com debunks the claim that there is no cost to SEO.
Friday Fun
Well, maybe not so much fun, even on Fridays, for the kids that have to play in them. Check out these nightmare playgrounds amassed by darkroastedblend.com. Creepy!
Admittedly, the above title is a bit of an attention grabber. While it’s no secret that the SEO crowd can be in the “Flash is Evil” camp, the truth of the matter is that I don’t hate Flash itself at all. I just hate how some designers use it.
There is a LOT of great Flash out there – this Netherlands department store uses Flash brilliantly to entertain while showcasing its wares. And Schematic is a jaw-droppingly awesome example of Flash-driven navigation.
Flash can add a dynamic element, showcase a company’s creativity and originality and be a fabulous tool for embedding videos or tutorials, or presenting an interactive game or experience. It isn’t always the best for accessibility, for instance people with visual disabilities (as screen readers depend on HTML), people on dial-up or people who surf the net with mobiles or PDAs. So, like everything else in the world, it’s got its plusses and its minuses.
But here’s where the use of Flash really makes my blood boil:
- When it interferes with user experience (like making me hit a “more” button eight times to learn about the company.)
- When it is used as a Flash-only splash page or Flash-only site for a SME whose online objective is to gain visibility.
If you want search engine visibility, you need to have readable text on the page. Sure, the Gucci site is slick, but face it, what's good for the Gucci isn't always good for the gander. People will link to Gucci just because it’s Gucci. Shiny stuff that moves doesn’t cut it for the average SME.
So where does this little Flash-bash outburst stem from? I had yet another call from a very nice woman who is concerned that her site is not performing. You guessed it – a Flash-only intro and the interior pages in frames. (Yes, the best of both worlds!)
I hate being the bearer of bad news.
Most of the time you get what you pay for… the exception being if you’ve just paid for a Flash-only site when you want a usable, visible website.
Last word? Flash is an excellent tool, just make sure you understand your objectives before making a decision about your website.
Recently I flipped open a marketing magazine and read a rather provocative ad by the Canadian advertising agency Huxley Quayle von Bismark. The ad claimed that they were embracing new technology and new thinking. That they wanted to "take people from being spectators of advertising to becoming participants." and "challenge each other daily to create the best work of their lives."
“Bravo!” I thought. Well, it was “bravo” until I went and checked out the website and blog.
Oh. My. God. I'm sure they are a great bunch of people and do excellent work, but it was another example of “site architorture.”
It started with the slightly nervy “Be patient…” notice as the 100% Flash site loaded and went quickly downward from there.
So I put aside my instinctive rant and thought, well, let’s be helpful. Let’s offer these folks some solid, constructive advice.
Let My People Scroll
The coolest thing about the Web is that it is fluid, dynamic and flexible. On any given site there will be pages with varying text. But through the magic of something called a scrollbar, we can adapt to any length of copy. But if a site is designed with a fixed height as many 100% Flash sites are, it means that when text falls below the fold, the only solutions are an annoying internal scrollbar or to chop up the text with a series of “Next” buttons. Both solutions are really unfriendly in terms of usability. To me it is a tip-off that a designer does not understand the way the Web is supposed to work, but is stuck in a controlled presentation mindset typical of print. Let people scroll to get information in a way that they are already familiar with.
Just Say No To Carpal Tunnel
You want to be engaging and move people from spectators to participants? Ensure that you keep the number of clicks that it takes to get to information to a minimum. Navigation should be intuitive. I shouldn’t have to click on a “Close panel” button to go back to a sub-menu.
No PDF Surprises
The news items opened up as PDFs, without any prior notice. If you aren’t going to allow people to read your press coverage online, please at least mention that it will be in the form of PDF downloads. And, go ahead, call me tediously pedantic but shouldn't this News section be called "Press" or "In the News"?
Consistency is a Good Thing
The blog didn’t match the look and feel of the rest of the site and started with the oldest entry first, which meant a scroll-o-rama fest to get to the current entry. (This has since been corrected.) Even within the blog there was a lack of consistency. This is how an advertising agency that claims to see "endless possibilities in this new 2.0 world" represents itself online with its About page:
It did not follow the taupe and greeny-beige colour scheme of the blog (which in turn didn’t follow the chestnut brown colour of the corporate site, but I digress). Instead, there is the big white page you see above with little information and no obvious way to get back to the previous page other than my own browser’s “Back” button. The kicker: It took me awhile, but I eventually figured out that the “About Me” (don’t they mean “About Us”?) heading links back to the main blog page. Whaaaa?
Details, People, Details
It's the little things that build professionalism, brand and trust. Oversights like the ones above and these below eat away at credibility:
- On the "About Me" page, under "Contact" it read "Website:" and then an empty space. If you are going to type in "Website:" please include the URL beside it.
- It would be great to incorporate social bookmarking tools into the main blog, in addition to the RSS subscription.
- Throughout the blog posts many links were not hyperlinks. So, a visitor is greeted with a sentence like "Follow the link below" and is unable to click through to the suggested destination.
While the blog entries themselves were quite interesting, the three-line profile on the aforementioned "About Me" page included this sketchy bit of copywriting:
Using new thinking and embracing new media technologies, we use expensive and increasingly less effective traditional media less, while building the involvement in your brand more.
I’m glad they use expensive, less effective media “less.”
Am I being too mean? Maybe, but...
Here’s the thing: If you’ve got the chutzpah to place a highly visible ad about how you’re so 2.0 blah blah blah, then you should make sure you abide by some very simple user-centric design tips, have a nice consistent look and respect your users' time/experience by including contact details, clickable links and easy bookmarking tools. Don't claim to get it when you don't.
Before creating a website, or when you are considering a remake, consider this:
- What are your website’s desire lines?
- How can you help your site visitors get to where they really want to be?
 – Swaths of dead grass that eventually become well-trodden dirt paths made by people just like …&topic=Online Content Random Thoughts Tips Usability){kind=small}
Thanks to Twitter pal @Mashable (Pete Cashmore) for this post! Cross-browser, cross-platform compatibility is one of those things that we never really think about until –wham-o!– something is completely goofed up. The Financial Times is promotiing its new social network with a 1700 GBP (about $3350 Canadian dollars) yearly membership fee designed to keep the riff-raff out. The main page of the FT site promoting the membership doesn't work in Firefox. A simple oversight, and immediately I lose confidence in, not only the site, but the product as well.
Let this be a cautionary tale to all.
So, do you want to see how your site withstands a variety of browsers? Browsershots is a great tool. Check your site and if something looks askew, contact your designer!
 for this post! Cross-browser, cross-platform compatibility is one o…&topic=Online Content Tips Usability){kind=small}
I had a series of meetings in Montreal on Friday that prevented me from posting my weekly wrap-up. So, with my apologies and no further ado... here it is:
1. If you read my blog with any regularity, you know that I get positively
bent out of shape when Web designers forget to include user experience
in their planning. Here’s a great piece from Smashing on 10 Principles of Effective Web Design.
2. What would it take to topple a giant? SEOmoz shares The 4 Biggest Threats Google Faces.
3. Since the death of the Microsoft deal, Yahoo! has sadly announced massive layoffs including senior executives and one employee who live-Tweeted his last day.
4. Newsweek reports that a host of new companies are offering to polish and shine reputations online. “We're the next generation of public relations. From here on out, you need to own your first few Google pages.”
5. PETA’s Zombie Colonel Sanders ad was denied airtime during the Superbowl. Copyranter postulates why.
6. SearchEngineRoundtable reports that Google Begins Testing Video Ads in Search Results. Could this change the game of PPC?
7. Looking for people to link to you? Here’s How You Shouldn’t Ask for a Link from SearchEngineRoundtable.
8. Neatorama has the source of bad English in China. Engrish picture blocks have never been so confusing.
9. This week, Facebook bowed to pressure to allow users a way to completely delete their accounts, rather than just disable them. Mashable has the summary.
10. Running counter to popular opinion, Laurel Papworth argues against users being able to completely delete social network accounts as a way to combat online predators.
Fun:
DDB shows how their agency chases ideas.
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