One of my favorite ways of offering my help is to be “on call” to clients. These are the folks who likely already worked with me and know that I don’t mind their out-of-the-blue, “Hey, are we doing this right?” emails.

And so it is that I managed to hook up with a relative newcomer to web design consulting, who has gone solo and begun to offer her services in holistic SEO/M/U/D (Seo, Marketing, Usability and Web Design.) I met her at a conference and was instantly impressed with her complete lack of fear for asking questions and her obvious wish to do everything ethically, professionally and correctly.

She’s taken on a client whose site requires a rebuild of an existing site. As I watch her work and offer tidbits of advice or input when she needs it, I can’t help but think that the very wise client who hired her is getting more than their money’s worth, even if she is a relative unknown with a tiny portfolio. She not only won’t rest until she’s given the project 120% of her best skills, but I can tell she truly cares about the long-term success of her client.

You can’t put a dollar amount on that.

Dare To Be Dedicated and How Dare You Show It!

I see this “extra something” in some members of Cre8asiteforums.

I’ve seen young people go from beginner to the point where they are teaching me stuff. In fact, my interest in CSS was prompted by a wonderful man from the UK who joined my old Cre8pc Website Promotion Club in the 1990’s, and who is now a Site Administrator for Cre8asiteforms. He never stopped learning and growing and this has made him an asset to both the forums, and his employer.

There are those persons in both the Usability/User Centered Design/User Experience Design and Search Engine Behavior, Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing industries who have been given some less than favorable labels because they are long-timers, well-known and often in the position to stir things up with their writings.

I’ve never understood why these people are publically assaulted with hurtful verbal remarks, that we know most of these people would never say to the faces of the people they are blasting. Whenever I see a big name written about in ugly terms, my response is to think the person is jealous, envious, has an ego the size of Jupiter and hasn’t learned how to communicate. Toddlers often react the same way ruthless writers do when they wish to have a public hissy fit.

I have a much different feeling about popular people, and it matters not if I agree or disagree with everything they write or the way they do their work. When someone shows dedication for their craft, and applies that dedication in their work, they most likely have earned my respect.

However, the moment they start negating someone else in public with a barrage of repulsive, vicious remarks, I value their opinion less. It signals to me that they are severely limited in the grace department and guided by their egos.

The Price of Achievement. The Rewards for Passion.

Would you prefer to hire someone who is putting their energy into bettering and testing the accuracy of their skills?

Would you wish to work with someone who finds all sources a free resource for introspection and growth? Or, do you feel more comfortable with attaching yourself to people, ideas and techniques, with no desire to consider other possibilities?

What I find interesting is the people who want the “Can you check this over?” assistance from me tend to lean on the side of “control freak”. This is a good thing in this instance!

One of my favorite moments in my work life was when one of my bosses introduced me to someone and said, “Kim is one of my over-achievers.” I was a single mom then, with two young ones, living on 4-6 hours of sleep while teaching myself web design and SEO. I was never an over-achiever in anything except making sure I got to the best dance clubs on weekends. But when he said this, I realized for the first time that I had a job doing something I really loved and wanted to do, and I wasn’t afraid to share this passion.

Like my new client who isn’t afraid to ask questions. She’s on fire, and it shows in her work.

I think you can tell the kinds of people who have discovered they are good at something and even better, that they adore this thing they do. They share what they know and share what they discover along the way. Sometimes those discoveries are met with resistance by those comfortable with the status quo.

It takes guts to express one’s opinion on the Web. I cringe when I see pioneers and popular people turned into mincemeat because they had the nerve to write their opinion or share observations from the field. There are ways to disagree with someone on the web and still show respect. It is possible to listen and ponder, without judgement or public flaming. Some well-known writers have been met with death threats (I’ve had two myself, for speaking out against “link-farms”) and calls to their homes, where family members are threatened.

The price some people pay for dedication to their craft can be harsh, and yet these same people, when you are lucky enough to hire them or work with them, are priceless.

A famous true story in Human Factors/Usability circles is the one where Rolf Molich ran a study called CUE-2, where nine teams did usability testing on Microsoft’s Hotmail email system. All nine came back with different types of reports, noting different problems. Few agreed on what these “problems” were and they didn’t all pick up on the same trouble spots.

The Molich study raised all kinds of questions, including how accurate usability testing is. Now they are evaluating data from a similar study called CUE-4. I’m interested in these studies and the opinions by Jakob Nielsen, Jared Spool, and many others. It is Nielsen who coined the phrase, “discount usability”, in which the practice of heuristic evaluations became popular because they are affordable and simple to execute.

Pin The Tail on The Problem

But, do they truly root out problems? An article written by Christine Perfetti called Usability Testing Best Practices: An Interview with Rolf Molich looks into this.

According to Molich, “Usability tests are spectacular. They are excellent for convincing skeptical colleagues that serious usability problems exist in an interface. But they are also inefficient and costly. We should use them mainly in an intermediate phase to establish trust with our colleagues, and then use much more cost-efficient preventive methods such as usable interface building blocks, reviews based on standards and proven guidelines, and contextual inquiry.”

There are some points I strongly agree with, such as heuristic reviews being a way to send “false alarms.” He also feels that these reports are often opinion-based. The latter is why I don’t provide metric scores in mine, other than noting obvious defects that would be critical to a launch (as in, causing failure of some sort.) But, how I may feel about colors, layout, and even my own personal emotional response to a site is irrelevant unless they are paying to get my opinion.

What matters is how the end user reacts, responds, and the actions or inactions they take.

Are Usability Evaluations Worth the Investment?

I was happy to see that the reports I developed for my own use with clients, which are based on a software QA background, met Molich’s suggestions for how reports should be presented. Things like no more than 30 pages, provide a summary and always, always, always accentuate the positive.

However, reading the interview had me cheering one minute and frustrated the next.

For example, when he says, “In my experience, usability testing is very effective for showing your colleagues what a usability problem looks like in their interface. But I think the study results indicate that usability testing is ineffective for finding all usability problems in an interface. Our results also indicate that it’s ineffective even for finding all the serious usability problems in an interface.”

This is because one visitor’s “problem” may not be a problem for another. So often a product launch is the time when actual user feedback comes back that wasn’t picked up in QA testing or wrestled out of user personas and task analysis beforehand.

It is because to get to every freaking possible serious problem, we first have to define “serious” and then convince stakeholders, who have different ideas of what a “serious” show stopper is. It’s no fun being an “anal QA Engineer”, but trust me. You really don’t want to not have one of them on your side.

Such As…

Some of your target market may not mind entering their private home phone number on your form, while another several hundred thousand of them simply can’t bear the thought and require an alternative. I would deem this “serious” if the form is a sales lead form and is the sole reason for building your web site and you’re paying $3000 a month for Google ads, and invested $100,000 for search engine optimizattion.

Consider, too, that some companies have installed policies that prevent employees from entering their work email addresses, in an effort to control Spam. Ordering a part online or signing up for training may require managerial permission to enter company information of any type. How many manufacturing web sites consider online customer situations such as this, and design alternatives?

No matter what Molich says, the SEO/M industry benefits from including heuristic and cognitive walk through evaluations as part of their services. For any company, site owner or application developer investing in marketing to search engines, it pays off in the long run to make sure the site or application meets usability, accessibility and web design standards.

More Bang For Your Buck

It pays even more when someone is brought in who understands conversions and the emotional connections between user interface and human beings. You can throw all the money you want at Pay Per Click marketing but if the site doesn’t convince the visitor within 30 seconds that the click is relevant and “worth it”, that money is no better than cow pasture decoration.

Consider landing pages. Conversions are known to drop off from landing pages. Why? Because the visitor could not complete a task. Because the landing page didn’t confirm the visitor arrived at the right place. Because it was hard to figure out what to do or where to go next. These are common problems that go untested because some SEO/M’s think any landing page is going to work miracles.

So, are heuristic evaluations useful? Yes. If you can find someone willing to “mind meld” with your project for awhile and help you think about how to make it work better, you’ve taken a huge step forward towards long-term, user centered success.

Is Google User Centered?

That could depend on what you hope to do once you go to Google. If you want to search, that’s easy. They provide an obvious field to begin your search. But, if you want to use their 15 sites, or find 15 Google topic blogs or play with their seven tools and download sites, you need to book an appointment with the site to look around and find the stuff.

Or, you can just go to Chris McEvoy’s redesigned user centered Simply Google and learn how to use the site before dinner.

Other Cool Stuff

Take your Vitamin. This is a new classy web dev site with an impressive list of contributors.

Loren Baker’s Umdum blog and Umdum Directory. (Where do people get these names?)

Yet even more blog stuff from the V7N side of the planet. The latest trick seems to be that they kidnapped Peter DaVanzo for Blog V7N.

And finally, may I close with a respectful nod to Professor Sullivan. I’m into my 10th year too, but to accomplish what you did in your 10 years, I would need a wife too. Heh.

There was so much hoopla over the story about print news headline writing being influenced by search engine marketing techniques that I ignored all the links to those stories. I just wasn’t inspired to read them.

Reason? Boring! Repetition! Yawn. This is not really exciting news for me, since I already know the importance of keywords in headlines. In fact, the hysteria over injecting keywords and keyphrases into headings, headlines, post titles, article titles, sub-headings, etc. etc. sometimes forces me into the opposite direction because it’s so, well, confining and limiting.

I will put in there what makes sense. I will put into article titles and blog post titles words that contain a bit of zest as it relates to the topic - not as it might relate to search results or, sheesh, page rank, popularity or gobs of traffic. (Okay, I like the traffic stuff. I’m not a complete idiot.)

When I create a headline or post title, I much prefer writing for the “scent of information”. I’m trying to emulate the thrill of beveled buttons - only with words. We know that beveled edges make people want to PUSH on the button. It’s an action that often brings back something rewarding or makes you feel productive on a web site. We can do this with words too. We can make every click rewarding.

I enjoy being creative and letting my mind roam around for words it likes, rather than what algorithms like. I like the freedom of knowing I can pick words for my readers without being forced to use up my characters on words intended for robots.

Jared Spool wrote a great piece that explores further why print headlines don’t convert well to the web. From Boring Headlines or Great Links?

“Like web pages, newspaper pages are often scanned. And like their web counterparts, newspaper headlines are intended to attract the reader’s eyes to a particular story.

But, unlike the web, the rest of story is located next to the headline. (Snip.)

On the web, the headline is often doubling as a link. This is a duty it was never originally designed for.”

He goes on to explain that headlines that are effective for print don’t translate well to the web because they often lack the “scent of information” that inspires a click to read more. Inspiration just isn’t that critical when the bulk of an article is placed close by and can be scanned quickly to determine if it’s worthy of a whole read sitting.

On the web, its often the link that makes or breaks the decision to keep reading or not.

Once again, the relationship between search engines and people is very close, but I still vote for rallying the people. They have the credit cards.

It’s difficult to communicate passion and enthusiasm on the Internet by design alone. Do you try? Does it matter to web site usability? Will a spirited approach help tease out a coveted link from another website? You bet!

Tell Me Something Good

This is what we usually read on a homepage.

(Read outloud in your best gloomy, “Eeyore” The Donkey, voice.)

“Welcome to my website. I do this, that and the other thing and if you believe me, click here to use my form to buy this or contact me about that.”

Sometimes there may be a stock photo of a man looking important inserted on the page. Or, a picture of a machine part. Or, textured background from the 1990’s that signals a “We haven’t touched this web site in years. Why are you here?” type of message.

For a homepage that communicates excitement and passion for your topic, I find the easiest trick is to answer these questions:

Who am I
Where am I
Why am I here
What am I offering
How am I offering it

That’s the starting point.

Move To Your Web Site Beat (also known as Dancing With Yourself)

Even better is:

Who am I and who are you: Who is your target market/audience? Acknowledge that you know who they are. That includes their gender, age, eyesight and favorite flavor of ice cream.

Where am I and where are you: If you want to stress you are a local business, point this out and acknowledge that you service your specific area. More importantly, if you expect to sell golf balls in China, make sure it’s obvious you sell to China.

Why am I here and why are you here: Prove you understand why someone has just clicked into your web site. This means you must make it easy to perform tasks. Provide validation that you actually do what the search engine description just said you would do. Need more clues? Research “scent of information”, “call to action” and “Don’t lie to me.” Okay, I’m just kidding about that last one.

Kinda.

What am I offering and why you should care? This one is for every baby things, jewelry, wedding gifts and accessories and crafts themes web site ever lovingly built. By the time brand new visitors (your potential customers) read the 132 links to your stuff in the left side navigation, they no longer care or remember why they came.

Categorize.
Organize.
Specialize.

Read up (again) on “scent of information”, “call to action” and buy the book by Steve Krug called, “Don’t Make Me Think.”

All I’m really saying here is, “Yes, there are many people who will happily poke around the medicine cabinet in your bathroom, but there are many more who trust that if there’s something really cool and special in your house to look at, you will show them off yourself.” Pick a few. Don’t overwhelm. Flirt with your web site visitors while at the same time, inspire them. Indulge them. For heaven’s sake, convince them that your web site is not one to go blindly whizzing by.

How am I offering it and why my deal is better: You ship golf balls to China in cute little boxes stuffed with coupons for discounts on future shipping. You carefully write each baby announcement, one by one, from your kitchen table, while your toddlers are napping or playing with sock puppets.

Convince your stubborn customer that yes, Paris Hilton wore this same shoe before you found it on Ebay, bought it and added the glitter and pink silk straps to it. Absolutely, you must show close ups of the glitter and pink silk, at every angle, and that matching little doggie outfit you designed to go with it.

Value proposition, product features, customer benefits and all the extra special things you lovingly do are wonderfully powerful things to put into your website content.

Know When To Shut Up

There’s a lot to be said for sharing your passion on your website. I’m always looking for new and creative ways to do this in user centered design. It’s something people want to know about once I inform them that it’s safe and good to share one’s intense devotion to their service or products on their web site.

However, there’s a line you can cross over. This is when you see a melodramtatic site that goes on for 3 hours, on just the homepage, about how impressive, fantastic and incredible their service or product is. You know this one. It’s the kind of web site where you read it all, get to the bottom of the page and still have no idea how or where to place the order.

This is because they didn’t shut up long enough to notice you were even there.

How Do We Share The Love?

I bet you think I’m going to tell you how to share the love. You want to know what colors to use or design tricks or how to write value proposition content chock full of desirability, engagability and captology. I could do that.

But you will only be frustrated in the long run because it’s yet another technique or technical thing or standard to impress the boss.

The true emotional energy driving your web site must always come from you, because of you.

The best way to show passion on your web site is to be very clear about everything you want your visitor to know. Visualize taking their hand and showing them around by linking and building logical navigation around your web house.

Be honest with yourself, first, about why you have put up your web site. Do wish to convey that you’re doing this because you want to get rich in two days? Do you prefer to be open and up front from the start that your idea of customer service is to spend two days selecting the right beads to match the dress your customer has ordered the earrings to go with?

Passionate, enthusiastic, heart-to-heart web design is about establishing trust, communicating excellent customer service, proving expertise and not being afraid to admit you absolutely love what you do.