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On tonight's reading list
Content Strategy for the Web by Kristina Halvorson
Typed with my thumbs on my iPhone
Usability - the simple wins
OK - this ought to be a post. But I fear it might be a rant. Rants are OK aren't they, as long as they are born of genuine frustration and not just for the sake of ranting? I think so anyway.
So I have just visited the website of a major West End hotel. And in short, the experience was terrible. Terrible but not surprising. The hotel is a boutique hotel, styled on an art gallery, and so most of the thought that had gone into the website was to make it a clever, continually animating, over engineered experience, closer to a pop-video than a useful, informative hotel website.So far so terrible.I only wanted a phone number for the restaurant. That's all. And could I find it? No. It was maddening. Just maddening. In the end I Google'd the hotels name+telephone number and found it another site. I then phoned them to find that despite it being 11.00am, the 'answerphone' told me that they didn't open until 10.00am (eh?) and that I should leave a message and someone would get back to.And here's where we all site up straight and learn the lesson. Because this sort of usability failure is just inexcusable in this day.Despite being a self-confessed techie, I still prefer a telephone number to confirm things like restuarant and hotel bookings. THat's just my preference. I still like to talk to people and ask questions and get answers right away. And so do a lot of people, a lot of people who won't be staying or eating at this hotel. So where is the phone number? I am also acutely aware that a lot of people will stay at this hotel as the arty-farty website will appeal hugely to them, and they will probably make the booking that I do not, but they won't do it online as it is maddeningly complicated and offers no confirmation print-out, email, or anything to provide a booking reference. And don't try to phone them for one as they are all out according to the answerphone.But even that is not the real reason for this rant. The real reason is that when your online offering fails, as it will do from time to tim depsite your best efforts. This hotel clearly has budget to improve their offering, but you may be a small enterprise that doesn't. You uite possibly know better than this hotel as to how they should be doing things, and how you would dearly love to market your bed and breakfast, shop, church or mobile hairdressing serice, but you don't have technical expertise enough to take online orders or reservations. Never mind all of that. Just ensure that your offline service makes up for it. That is so vital I cant begin to tell you. The hotel failed to take my reservation online, and failed offline. 0 out of 2. Nil Point. Zip. It would not have been hard for them to call me back. It would not have been difficult for them to have routed my call back to the desk rather than to an answerphone (it's a hotel, people are always working) and it wouldn't have been hard for the answerphone to have offered an email address, the email address so impossble to find on the website. But nothing. Insane.So there you have it. So many easy wins are just that - easy. Forget them at your peril!
Was ist innovativ? So sehen es die Webnutzer
Immer wieder stößt man in Gesprächen mit Kunden, aber auch aus eigenem Antrieb auf die Anforderung, einen innovativen Vorschlag zu erstellen.
Prinzipiell ist die Bedeutung dieses Begriffs klar: Eine Innovation ist etwas, was es in dieser Form vorher nicht gab.
Aber wie sehen es eigentlich die Webnutzer? Was wird von einem „normalen“ Besucher Ihrer Site als innovativ wahrgenommen? Welche Elemente verstärken diesen Eindruck besonders?
Wir haben dazu den Mitgliedern des Online-Access Panels der eResult GmbH die Aufgabe gestellt, ein Bild einer Bedienmöglichkeit im Internet zu schicken die für Sie innovativ ist.Zurück kamen viele Einsendungen unterschiedlicher neuer Funktionen und Dienste im Web, unter denen drei Bereiche immer wieder aufgefallen sind:
Zum einen waren häufig Kartentools zu finden.
Besonders begeistern kann hier offensichtlich Google Maps bzw. Google Earth, welches gleich mehrfach eingesandt wurde. Entscheidend war bei dieser Wahl, so konnte man es den Begründungen der Teilnehmer entnehmen, die Verknüpfung mit zahlreichen Funktionen. Beispielsweise wurden integrierte Routenplaner oder zahlreiche Suchmöglichkeiten nach diversen Dienstleistern und Angeboten genannt, die dann direkt auf der Karte angezeigt werden.Ein weiteres, häufig genanntes Thema waren intelligente Suchfunktionen, die die Nutzer aktiv bei Ihrer Suche unterstützen. Dies kann durch eine Vorschlagsfunktion geschehen, die dem Nutzer schon während der Eingabe eines Worts einen Vorschlag zu mögliche relevanten Suchbegriffen macht, wie beispielsweise bei Amazon. Einzusätzlicher Aspekt einer innovativen Suchfunktion aus Nutzersicht sind Filterfunktionen, die zielgerichtet und effizient zum gewünschten Produkt leiten.
Und noch ein Thema, dass besonders innovativ wirkt: Individualisierbarkeit.
Egal, ob es sich um den Webbrowser handelt, der durch Add-Ons an den persönlichen Bedarf angepasst werden oder um den Einrichtungsplaner von IKEA, mit dem man das eigene Wohnzimmer Testweise mit neuen Möbeln bestücken kann. Möglichkeiten der Anpassung an die eigenen Bedürfnisse wirken innovativ.Als Fazit aus diesen drei Schwerpunkten lässt sich zusammenfassen, dass Funktionen, die sich ganz individuell auf die Bedürfnisse der Nutzer anpassen lassen und die Fragestellungen von Nutzern in Alltagssituationen bedarfsgerecht klären beim Nutzer derzeit als besonders innovativ beurteilt werden.
Dieses vermutlich nicht ganz unerwartete Ergebnis zeigt auf, in welcher Richtung sich viele Webauftritte weiterentwickeln könnten. Sicherlich sind genau das auch Bereiche, in denen sich noch echte Innovationen erwarten lassen
Was meinen Sie dazu? In welchen Bereichen erwarten Sie die am weitest reichenden Innovationen in den nächsten Jahren?
via usabilityblog.de
Heading for login sections should not start with regist-something words
Today I noticed that while coding one page I caught myself on not seeing the login section form. I also realized that my mistake was connected with the heading the login section had. The header was “Registered users”. I did not read the whole heading at first and because of this I assumed that the section with header starting with Reg-something is about signing up (registering) and not about loging in.
So, the conclusion states that as users scan through the headings, the choice of a first word in that heading makes a great difference. The importance of this exaggerates especially when opposed things use words that (while not read carefully) might be perceived as the ones labeling the other thing.
Scrollbar Contents - Example
Scrollbar Contents Example
Post
This example page accompanies the post Scrollbar Contents (aka Visual Page Contents).
nice idea!
There is no web 1.0, 2.0 or 3.0
This is deliberately similar to my first Posterous post, "There is no new vs. old media"...
There is no web 1.0 or web 2.0 or even web 3.0. There is only the evolving web. I despise the use of the phrase "web 2.0" when it relates to web design, for example - it implies that it needs to have cool jQuery and Ajax stuff going on. You know what, if you're building a site figure out your user need and build it using the right technologies. Don't just build a "web 2.0" site 'cause it's what all the cool kids are doing.
Okay, rant over. But who's to say I'm right. Disagree at will using the comments.
Searching through Mail.app rules
What to do when "rules" list is long and there's no search option available?
