Five Easy Ways to Improve Your Homepage
It’s easy to overlook important information that your website visitors may need when they first arrive to your homepage. While landing pages are helpful in guiding searchers to your site, eventually even these folks will find themselves on your homepage. Everyone has the same basic questions. These questions revolve around Who, Where, What, When, Why and How. Answering them is fun, and not as obvious as you might believe. Using them as guides for credibility, trust, persuasiveness and...
Read MoreTreat Yourself to the Affordable Online Media Boot Camp
Nothing beats affordable training with reputable teachers and that’s just what’s coming up on November 3, 2011 at the Online Media Boot Camp. Held in the historical Valley Forge area outside Philadelphia, in King of Prussia, PA, you’ll be treated to a day of sessions offered by three lively ladies who love to teach. Liana Evans, Kim Krause Berg and Sarah Doheny are ready to help you learn new skills or update your present knowledge on: Search engine...
Read MoreWebcast: How User Centered Web Design Techniques Enhance Online Marketing
The recorded version of How User Centered Web Design Techniques Enhance Online Marketing is live and available to listen to anytime for free. Presenter: Kim Krause Berg, UX Manager, LiBeck Integrated Marketing Slideshare version or Listen to original recorded...
Read MorePay Per Conversation – Bringing User Behavior into a Social Networking World
It took us 15 years but finally, FINALLY, humanity is connected by one unifying activity. Online communication. This is not the same thing as chatting, emailing, newsletters or forums. They’re the medium. What I mean is that we’re making contact and learning from it. I had an epiphany in 1995 the first time I ever saw the Internet. A neighbor had showed me AOL and chat areas grouped by interests. I’m driven by a powerful sense of curiosity (when untamed, it can be...
Read MoreFacebook Ties Up, Blindfolds and Gags Its Usability Department
As if this is isn’t an already stressful season, Facebook has decided to change its user interface YET again. We had a learning curve the last time they did it. With this latest “upgrade”, they’ve clearly lost their minds. Facebook. What have you done! Let’s explore. If I wanted to update my status, or add a link, photo or video, that main task was front and center and easy to use. Underneath that, in the wide center column, it was easy to scan what I linked to...
Read MoreThe You-Don’t-Matter Website (A Look At Ego/Vanity Sites)
Last week I conducted a web site usability audit for a famous brand corporate web site. It never fails to amaze me why these companies don’t hire designers trained in search engine marketing and user experience design. I won’t divulge who they were. I never do that with client work because for starters, they had the brains to find me and get help. But what I found illustrated what I often find on corporate, famous brand web sites. There seems to be this arrogance that says,...
Read MoreFacebook Removes User Profile Rights and Choices
Facebook has removed your right to present your user profile the way you want it. Without your permission, they simply went ahead and turned every profile into a Facebook link farm. What They Did Your personal profile is now a list of links. They link your content at their own discretion. So for example, I have the phrase “I am very proud of her”, referring to my daughter, in my profile. Facebook decided to link that to this Facebook page they created, without my permission. You...
Read MoreReadings from Planet UX
Just plucking out some of the good stuff from my pile… Information Architects Are From Venus, SEOs Are From Mars Here are some common mistakes that SEO professionals make that can negatively affect a website’s search engine visibility and ROI… Decisiveness and Search: Two Different Strategies A new study out of Wesleyan University explores the actual cognitive mechanisms of decisiveness. This has direct implications for search marketers, because every time we use a search engine,...
Read MoreThe Secret Wisdom of Search Engine Algorithm Chasers
I wanted to describe how the combination of organic search engine optimization, combined with captology (emotional web design) work together for findability on the Web. You can read The Algorithm Chasers at Search Engine Land’s Just Behave column, that was published online today. The incentive behind algorithm chasers is to drive traffic to revenue generating web pages and to know that, search engines seek out what’s relevant to users and what motivates them to click, read or...
Read MoreUser Experience Supports Findabilty and Usability
I’m always asked how to explain web site usability and why a site owner should bother investing in user experience design. What would make an impact on users? Understanding, in-depth, who web site visitors are is a good place to start. When we use the Web, we agree to an Internet, computer based experience. We may spend so much time with the journey itself that we never reach our destination. User experience design aids and supports findabilty and usability. Consider what happened when...
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