My favorite usability hero, Jakob Nielsen, has some new results from eye-tracking technology that can help you improve your web site. OK, the results aren’t that earth-shattering (except for the bit near the end about men checking out George Brett’s crotch–and if that’s not worth a WTF?!, I don’t know what is), but they are worth repeating:
Use subheads & bulleted lists.
Make the writing shorter and more concise.
Include more white space.
Write useful headlines (not cute or witty, unless they can also be useful).
Making those changes can help users get through the content in half the time and remember 34% more.
The article also has tips for online graphics, namely make the pictures useful. If the picture doesn’t add anything, it’d be better to have white space. It’s also better to use real people instead of stock imagery, and if your target audience is men it’s apparently good to include “areas of private anatomy.” Again, WTF?! (link via kottke.org)
This guy visited all 50 states in a week’s vacation (that’s the standard five days off plus weekends on both ends plus leaving after work on Friday for 10 total days, or 9.5 really, since that Friday isn’t a full day). Of course “visited” means he simply crossed the state line–no time for sightseeing (or pictures, or food or much sleep).
As cool as I think this is (I’ve counted how many states I’ve crossed in so many days before), I think it’s funny how much we celebrate arbitrary milestones. Whether it’s the round number in an anniversary or the zeros in the calendar or the man-made state lines of a trip like this. It really doesn’t mean anything. Yet we still do it. (link via kottke.org)
I’m not a big fan of parenting advice. There are so many theories and ideas and ways to do it that if you change your style with every article or book you read you’ll be schizophrenic. Plus my wife is practically a specialist in child behavior, so I just ask her (plus she explains why something works, which helps me so much more than ‘just do this’).
But despite my tendency to ignore parenting articles, I found this article in the New York Magazine, How Not to Talk to Your Kids: The Inverse Power of Praise, incredibly fascinating (well-written and insightful!). It basically says that heaping general praise on your kids can do more harm than good. Kids who are told they’re smart end up relying on their sense of how intelligent they are instead on their ability to try. On the flip side, kids who are praised for their effort learn to keep trying and that effort trumps intelligence.
I realized I switched from Vimeo to YouTube for no reason. OK, YouTube is now backed by Google and has the advantage of a massive audience. That’s tempting. But Vimeo has really nice design. Which do you like better?
Let’s compare. Lexi Combs Her Hair, Vimeo vs. YouTube:
(Keep in mind that the aspect ratios are different. I forced them both to be the same height–187 pixels–but Vimeo has a width of 250 vs. YouTube’s 227.)
So marketing guru Seth Godin wanted to help everyone out with some spring cleaning. He suggested you call your credit card companies and threaten to cancel if they don’t lower your interest rates. It’s a good idea, but he suggests you’ll save a few hundred dollars.
That’s true–if you have credit card debt. If you don’t have credit card debt, well, it won’t save you anything until you get some credit card debt (which I don’t recommend). I realize credit card debt is pretty standard, especially among my generation. But that should be a bad thing.
Go ahead and get that interest rate lowered if you can, but don’t stop there. Mother-approved spring cleaning would mean paying off that credit card. It might take until the next spring cleaning (or the next one), but that would be worth rejoicing over. Boom.
Part of communicating effectively about yourself is responding to criticism. Of course you need to do it in appropriate ways. Another pet peeve of mine (And I do tend to have a lot of them, don’t I? Sorry, blogging is just a nice way to get them out of my system. It means my wife doesn’t have to listen to me complain as much.) is when organizations respond to criticism effectively, but don’t use all the tools at their disposal.
JetBlue was the example I gave yesterday with their massive delays and response that didn’t quite filter through all their channels.
Another good example is (Product) Red. Last week a critical Ad Age article tore into (Product) Red the same time as a critical protest site was launched. Not a good week. And Red certainly responded. Bobby Shriver responded on the Red web site. He’s also been talking to the media.
But what’s the word on the official (Product) Red blog? Not much.
We’re in the midst of the user-generated revolution. Content generated by users is skyrocketing in popularity. Which means anyone who can generate that content has much to gain. There’s always the random blog entry or video clip from folks like me who have full time jobs. But then there are the people with the most to contribute and the most to potentially gain from this focus on user-generated content.
I’m talking, of course, about teens. Who else has the free time to create loads of user-generated content and the patience to wait for their payday? It could be articles, blog entries, photos, videos, podcasts, even links. The Wall Street Journal just explored some of the users behind user-submitted link sites, like Digg, and found that one of the top submitters to Reddit is 12 years old. Netscape even pays a 17-year-old $1,000 a month to find links.
In my experience it’s always hardest to communicate effectively about yourself. That’s why writers like me keep busy. That’s why users usually have better ideas and suggestions than the team doing the work. That’s why designers often complain about the ridiculous ideas clients suggest.
Part of the problem is getting perspective. You already know the whole story about your self, your company, your product, your whatever. It’s not easy to step outside that viewpoint. I often wonder if companies use their own web site (or phone service or product or whatever)–if they did, the flaws would be obvious.
All of which is a trap I think I’ve fallen into with my own company, Monkey Outta Nowhere.
I just installed a new comment plugin which should eliminate spam and do away with the need for authentication with TypeKey (famous last words). It asks you to type in a word when you submit your comment to confirm that you’re a person and not some spamming robot bastard. We recently installed it on Church Marketing Sucks with amazing results, so I thought I’d give it a try here.
Let me know if you notice any errors or funkiness. My biggest pet peeve so far is that when you tab through the entry fields it skips the challenge question field. I’ll see if I can find a way to fix that.
You may notice other funkiness around the blog. I’ve been trying for weeks to get my category archives to rebuild without an error. I finally did it (by switching to dynamic category archives), but now I’m having dynamic publishing issues. If it’s not one thing it’s another. Since I am working on cobbled together templates, I’m tempted to just blow everything up and start over with new templates where everything is up to snuff. We’ll see.
For now, comment away!
A work-at-home dad wrestles with faith, social justice & story.