.Ben* » | .Ben*

Link: The Importance of Imagery in Web Design

.ben* — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 21:53:09 +0000

There’s an interesting post over on Think Vitamin about the importance of imagery on websites. It raises a really good point (as well as a couple of equally interesting ones in the comments) about images and layout as a content scent. I recently conducted some user testing on a booking page, where the user had to search for something by date. They got pretty stuck. I then tried something different, I loaded up the website for an airline, changed the language to Swedish and asked them to book a flight – that was much easier in comparison. Read the full post at The Importance of Imagery in Web Design [Think Vitamin]

Link: Designing Hyperlinks: Tips and Best Practices

.ben* — Sun, 05 Dec 2010 19:27:52 +0000

Designing Hyperlinks: Tips and Best Practices at Six Revisions explores the possibilities available when designing hyperlinks.

Link: Usability is No Longer Enough

.ben* — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 15:17:49 +0000

Eric Schaffer at Human Factors International argues that having an easy to use website is not enough. Just because you make it easy to do something it doesn't mean people will.

Link: SEO for Bing Versus Google

.ben* — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 10:00:33 +0000

Here’s a pretty interesting look at the difference between how Bing and Google rank pages. I had thought Bing used a similar method of ranking pages, but it seems that is doesn’t value the quantity and quality of links to a page as much as Google does, instead it pays even more attention to the anchor text used in the links. Read about all of the comparisons here: http://sixrevisions.com/content-strategy/seo-for-bing-versus-google/

Link: The Cost of Bad Forms

.ben* — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 13:00:00 +0000

The Cost of Bad Forms at Formulate.com looks at the negative effect of having a bad web form. It's particular interesting as it doesn't just look at lead generating forms that generate profits, it also looks at forms where there is no choice other than for the form filler to complete the form.

Link: How a Well-Designed “Thank You” Inspires Community Uptake

.ben* — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 09:00:00 +0000

If somebody is engaged enough with your site to have gone through a form process, then you should use the thank you page to promote further action.

Link: Fight The System: Battling Bureaucracy, Smashing Magazine

.ben* — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 09:00:00 +0000

A blog version of Paul Boag's Fight the System webinar is now available at Smashing Magazine and I cannot stress enough how much I recommend you read it.

Link: Good microcopy in the wild: Picnik, Dirty French Novel

.ben* — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 09:00:00 +0000

Cutting out unnecessary words on your website does not mean you have to lose your personality. Dirty French Novel takes a look at the use of microcopy on Picnik.com, showing that even the shortest most functional copy doesn’t have to be boring. Read the article here: Good microcopy in the wild: Picnik

Does it matter how long people spend on Google?

.ben* — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 09:00:00 +0000

When looking at your webstats, don’t get distracted by measures that don’t give you something that can be used to improve your site. Decide what’s a meaningful measure for you, use it and act on it. It was announced recently that Facebook has overtaken Google for time spent on their site. So what? It’s important to set your goals so you can understand and interpret your stats. Google are really clear about their goal, they want a faster web. They’ve just released Google Instant after measuring the time it takes to use their search engine and deciding 9 seconds is too long and they want to reduce it by 2-5 seconds. All measures can be interpreted both ways; a low page view count can be better than high, a high bounce rate can be better than low and low time on site can be better than high. You should set your expectations for each page on your site so that you can understand and interpret your webstats. It’s a mistake to assume two pages on the same website can be compared using the same goal, let alone two separate websites.

Trust overload

.ben* — Thu, 27 May 2010 18:17:10 +0000

Doing too much to prove your credibility can backfire and trust completely. If you bring up the issue of trust with your reader, you’re forcing them to start thinking about the one question you actually want to avoid – do they trust you? Getting it right Getting the design right is essential. Getting the wording of page titles right is essential. Subtly reinforcing trust throughout your content is essential. Trust is the most important thing you do on your website. Getting it wrong? From from the point of view of your reader, trust has to be invisible. If they can see that you’re trying to engineer trust it makes the whole thing look like an illusion. Any trust that you’ve managed to build up will be destroyed. Over on E-consultancy, Graham Charlton posted an excellent analysis of the use of trustmarks; E-commerce trustmarks: do they matter? “Trustmarks are the images or logos that retailers can place on their websites to show that they have passed various security and privacy tests, and reassure customers that it is safe to shop on the site.” Graham Charlton Graham suggests that overloading on trustmarks can actually be counter-productive by making the customer question why [...]