social blog roll with tag: usability

Testing Color Contrast for WCAG 1 & 2

Use the Color Contrast Tester Some time ago, while pondering whether web accessibility posed limitations on design, the thought occurred to me that there are presumably some colors which simply cannot be used for text or text backgrounds in any site. WCAG 1 does not, in fact, provide any specific guidelines concerning color contrast. The formulas ...]

Refining Text Presentation with your Web Browser: Windows

It wasn’t long ago that I wrote an article on authoring an effective text-resizing widget. In that article, I made a point not to espouse the use of text-resizing tools, since it’s generally more effective to allow people to use their browser’s built-in text-resizing functionality. In fact, browser’s allow you a great deal more control ...]

What is “Cross-browser compatibility?”

Here’s the first clue: it’s not creating a pixel-perfect replication of your ideal version of a site in all browsers. In fact, cross-browser compatibility ultimately has very little to do with what a web site looks like, and a lot more to do with how it functions. It also has relatively little to do with ...]

Google Site Links for “Joe Dolson”

This is just cool: “Sitelinks” are additional links Google generates from the contents of a site in order to help users navigate your site — they provide these links in their search results for selected terms. Most sites don’t have site links, so I’m finding it pretty cool to notice them for myself! If you can’t see ...]

Why use semantic HTML?

This is part 1 of 2. Part 2 is my Guide to the use of Semantic HTML Elements I’ve seen a lot of articles discussing the importance of HTML and XHTML semantics. I’ve seen articles describing what it means for a document to be semantic. Most of these articles, however, don’t provide a serious overview of ...]

Guide to Semantic Use of HTML Elements

This is part 2 of 2. Part 1 is Why use Semantic HTML? digg_url = 'http://digg.com/programming/Guide_to_Semantic_Use_of_HTML_Elements'; This guide only deals with elements which have a specific, human-readable meaning. The semantics of elements such as link, which are not seen in normal browsing, have been left out, as have replacement elements like img or object. In some cases, ...]

Long-awaited update to PHP/MySQL poll

Example Poll Download the .zip archive It didn’t quite take 2 years, at least. But very, very close. The last release of this script was May 25th, 2006 — so I made it just under the wire. But this is also a bit more than just a script update. In fact, this is a complete overhaul. I’m ...]

Review of “Mobile Web Development”

This new book from Packt Publishing and Nirav Mehta is a quick and effective introduction to developing websites specifically targeted at mobile device users. I say “users” for a reason — one of the strongest advantages to the book is a strong focus on considering your user and their needs as a key element of ...]

WebAnywhere: a Screen Reader On the Go

Hat tip to Henny Swan. “WebAnywhere” is a new screen reading product (available in May of 2008) from the University of Washington and the WebInSight project. The basic concept is simple: it’s a web-based service which provides a proxy service as a screen reader. Fantastic tool for anybody requiring a screen reader at a computer which ...]

Best Practices: Writing for Accessibility

Thanks to an off-hand comment from Steve Green while discussing a forthcoming Accessites article, I’ve spent some time today thinking about what it takes to write for accessibility. Most of the time, the primary focus of information about accessibility has to do with making non-text information available as text. Captioning and audio description for video, ...]

The Key Ingredient for SEO and Web Design is True Passion

While presenting a class on web site usability in New York for Internet Marketing Ninjas Marketing Training, my husband was in the audience as cheerleader and teacher. I wasn’t connected at first and I could feel it. I wasn’t inspired. I had a feeling I wouldn’t be because the first part was the boring ...]

New for SES - Search Engine Strategies Awards in August

Every time I see an awards announcement, I always make up categories in my head they haven’t bothered with, like “Best SEO Costume” and “Old, Loud Mouthed and Still Kicking Ass”. Today’s awards news comes out of the folks who run Search Engine Strategies conferences and their awards launch. The San Jose conference coming up ...]

Search Engine College Celebrates Four Years

Kalena Jordan and her husband celebrate their fourth year as founders of the Search Engine College. What began with a few courses and high hopes has evolved into an online school offering certification for SEO’s. Kalena had the forethought to include web site usability in her course lineup. Like my friend, Jill Whalen, whom ...]

You’ve Got Your SEO in My Usability

I’ve spent the past few years writing about usability to SEO’s and trying to not burn bridges while doing so. Each industry contains skills that benefit the other, and both benefit the client. It’s rare to find good dialog by user experience folks on SEO, however, so I found the following interesting - Seo ...]

Angry? Destroy Their Reputation Online!

An old friend once told me back in 1995, “Assume that every email you send will eventually land on the lunchroom bulletin board for everyone to see.” It was great advice for email. It’s even better advice for blogs. Miffed at someone? Kill them with words. With the Web as ammo, it’s easy to ...]

Changing my name online - easy or impossible

As I mentioned recently, I am changing my name back to Donna Spencer. Last time I changed my name was pre-internet and it wasn’t terribly hard. But now I have identity spread out all over the web, and am wondering just how easy it will be to change my name, and how important name is to ...]

Website user experience & CSS workshop

I’m very excited to announce that I’m teaching a new workshop with Russ Weakley. It’s called “Website user experience & CSS workshop: Designing for usability, building for the future“. It will be run in Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, in late March and April. I’m teaching the day on user experience, and Russ is teaching on ...]

A big change: From MT to WP

I was given a wonderful, if slightly geeky, christmas gift this year - a year’s hosting with a new provider. Of course, a new host meant work - I had to move my website and weblog to the new host. I was happy to rebuild my website from scratch as it needed it anyway, and chose ...]

User Interface 13 Conference - I’m speaking

Today’s big, exciting announcement is … I’ll be speaking at this year’s User Interface 13 Conference, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I’m teaching a full day workshop called Information Architecture Essentials: Best Practices for Organizing Your Site’s Content. I’ll also be doing a ...]

Announcement - I’m changing my name to Donna Spencer

This is just a little post to let you all know I’m changing my name. I’m returning to my maiden name, which was Spencer. So if you all of a sudden see comments, posts and general noise from Donna Spencer, it’s still me.

New IA Summit speakers

I had an IA Summit epiphany today… When I looked at the program this year, I was a bit disappointed that some of my favourite and noisiest IA folks weren’t speaking. It felt a bit odd to see a program with loads of names I didn’t know (back story - I’ve been on the organising committee ...]

It’s not about you

In the last few weeks I’ve been in different situations that all reminded me of a key principle in any persuasive communication - no matter whether it be writing, designing, pitching or delivering a report. It is a principle that is absolutely key, and all so easy to forget… The situations I found myself in were ...]

Peugeot’s website made me want to buy …

… any car other than a Peugeot. The back story … I’ve recently started to think about buying a new car. I don’t mind my current one (it’s a Nissan X-trail) but it is a bit bigger than I need and sort of just not me. I’ve been thinking about buying a Peugeot for well over a ...]

Reducing the learning curve

In my last post, one of the things I most criticised Peugeot for was providing navigation based on a series of numbers, and making me decipher the numbering system before I could start to learn about their cars. This numbering system (or strange names) problem exists throughout the car industry. It is just one of the ...]

IA & collaborative design - workshop

Yet another workshop announcement… On 7&8 August, I will be teaching a 2-day master class on information architecture and collaborative design, run via Ark Group. The thing that is slightly different about this workshop compared to my IA workshop is that, duh, it includes a lot of collaborative design. I’m adding more material on user research, design ...]

User Experience Mind Tricks: Remembering Names, Remembering Faces

First, I need to ask you a question. Do you remember faces really well? And, here’s a second question. Do you remember faces better than names? Do you feel frustrated because you remember people when you see them, but you just can’t remember their names? Yeah, well, you’re just like 99% of the rest of the ...]

Jakob Nielsen Provides Tips on Parenting

Are you looking for tips on parenting? If you are, you’re in luck. It seems that Jakob Nielsen has put together a web site for parents. Well, maybe Jakob didn’t literally put together this web site. Perhaps he did not write the helpful articles. Maybe it’s not even his site at all. However… I think it’s really interesting ...]

It Doesn’t Matter if You Have The Best Mobile Web Site

Even if you think you have the best mobile web site on the planet, many people still think the overall mobile experience is terrible. That means that your wonderful mobile web site isn’t all that special to those people. Let’s take a look: Five Reasons Why The Mobile Web Sucks 1. Wireless carrier networks are SLOW 2. Public ...]

Would You Recommend “X” to a Friend?

I’ve seen this concept twice now. It’s the same guy: Fred Reichheld Would You Recommend Us? (Business Week) — McCabe says higher scores have already been linked to a greater likelihood that GE Healthcare will win new contracts from existing hospital clients. “Ultimately, it’s not about the score,” he says. It’s about “focusing on the customer.” Measurement: ...]

How Direct Marketing and User Experience Are the Same

As most readers know, I write articles for Daniel Szuc and Apogee. We’ve just released my latest article… How Direct Marketing and User Experience Are the Same The punchline is that direct marketers depend very heavily on data and metrics. Keep in mind that many types of marketing do not focus on measurement and testing. Many marketers ...]

Focus if You Want Great Usability

Without a doubt, the best work is done by people who are dedicated to their work. The reason is pretty simple. It is hard to develop something amazing if you don’t care about it, when there’s no interest or passion. If you talk to people who do great work, they will tell you that there is ...]

Choice Kills Usability

Wow, I’m surprised I didn’t blog about this… Back in November I wrote Choice Kills Usability for my good friend Daniel Szuc over at Apogee. Here’s a little teaser for you to read: “One of the easiest ways to improve usability is by focusing on just one thing. When you present something to the user, be sure ...]

Usability of Pagination Links

My friend Jesper Rønn-Jensen wrote something I think you might want to take a look at right now. It’s a great article, if not an outstanding reference: Usability of Pagination Links It’s a response to the Pagination Gallery which is also a great resource. ~ John p.s. If you want to make sure that you don’t miss great resources ...]

It’s Been 3 Months and I’m Still Here

It’s been a very, very long time since I last posted to WebWord. It was in the middle of January this year. So that’s about three months. So much for frequent blog postings. Ugh! I’d like to give you a quick update on what I’ve been up to the last three months. First, I finally took ...]

Accessibility Blog Looking for Consultants

Posting has been light lately at the Accessibility Blog, as things have been very busy. So I thank you for being patient. Because of this, I am making the following request: The Accessibility Blog is experiencing a higher than normal demand for consulting services. If you are an ...

Web Accessibility and International Law

The World Wide Web is significant because of the boundaries it traverses. The web places the opportunity to buy from, learn from or interact with companies outside your neighborhood, your state, or your country right at your fingertips. This is a fantastic opportunity for everybody, and the nature ...

Accessibility Testing Labs

I had the privilege of attending accessibility testing for an enterprise-level software application and found some interesting issues that are not typical to many projects. Actual user testing is strange like that – dealing with humans brings out all of the random factors. First Issue: User Interaction with JAWS One of ...

Leading Technology Companies form Accessibility Alliance

The Accessibility Interoperability Alliance, AIA (http://www.accessinteropalliance.org) has been formed from some of the World's biggest technology companies: Adobe, BayFirst Solutions, HP, Microsoft, and Novell. Included in the founding of this alliance are a number of specialist assistive technology companies: Claro Software, Dolphin Computer Access, GW Micro, HiSoftware, Mandentec, TextHelp ...

Target.com update - Jan 2, 2008

Target loses an appeal of the class action status of the Lawsuit brought by the National Federation of the Blind. Target had appealed the class-action status of the suit to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The petition was denied and the lawsuit will proceed "on behalf of ...

NFB Makes a Deal with Amazon

Hattip to Joe Clark. The Target v NFB lawsuit seems to be cruising to the netherworld of settlement. Meaning that it will be even longer until there is substantial (or intelligent) legislation or precedent establishing the responsibility of companies in developing an accessible presence online. Who would ...

Accessibility and Usability Report offered by Jacob Nielson

Nielson Group offers research data as a gift for the New Year. Jacob Nielson, whom I have long admired for his excellent research into web usability, is offering a fantastic PDF report for free on his website. I am not sure if this is a limited time offer, so go ...

UK Retailers do not meet Accessibility Standards

Webcredible got some press recently with their survey of UK retailer websites. According to their study, 35% of retailers fail to meet the Disability Discrimination Act. In disabled access tests, the average score was 57%, but H Samuel topped the list with a 76% accessibility rating. Webcredible ...

Accessibility Blog author to present in London

Matt Bailey, founder of the AccessibilityBlog.com, will present an Accessibility and Usability training class in London. The four-hour class will take place on February 22nd from 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM at the Business Design Center, 52 Upper Street, Islington. The class will focus on the development of accessible,yet usable ...

The Best Reason for Accessibility

Courtesy: Good Experience Blog The number one reason to build an accessible website (or to be accessible, no matter what the subject): You lose money, and potential customers have bad experiences. Good Experience Blog shows an experience at Bloomingdales when a father with a stroller asks a store clerk if there ...

New Website Launched: Play On

We’ve just launched a new website for a fabulous company, Play On. Play On, based in Perth WA, offer fun sports games for kids programs. Just by looking at the photos you can see how much fun the kids and Wayne, the founder and coach, are having. If you’re in Perth I imagine your kids would ...]

Hello 2008

I’m back from my Christmas break and looking forward to getting back into work and blogging. Thanks to all of you who’ve been reading my blog - I’m planning to blog more regularly in 2008 so I hope you’ll stick around!

The Reasonable Test

I was just chatting to a colleague (hi Michael *waves*) and we got discussing what I call the “reasonable test” and I figured it would be a good blog post. We’ve all heard of job creep, whether it be through additional features and functionality or due to having to do numerous mock-ups for a client. Doing ...]

Too Many Web Designers to Choose From?

With the number of web design firms around getting a website should be easy. Sadly too often the opposite is true. There’s too much choice along with too many differences in services and price. What to do? Obviously budget is important but I feel it is far more important to choose a company that can meet your ...]

Trusting Your Instincts

I’ve written a lot about how important it is for businesses to choose the right web designer for their online project. Not just the cheapest but the one they feel will best help them realise their goals. On the flip side it’s just as important for web designers to vet their prospective clients too. A business ...]

Web Dev Funny: File Not Found

I like this. Thanks hon.

Anyone Can Perform Basic Usability Testing

I am researching the competitive market for a new client and have been surprised at how poor the usability is on many of their websites. And these aren’t the sort of errors that could be overlooked - they are basic mistakes that anyone using their website will come across. If any of these sites had performed ...]

A Succesful Website Starts With the Strategy

It’s pretty obvious that any good house starts with a solid foundation. The same applies to a website. In order to ensure a successful website that achieves your goals you need to start with a solid foundation. You need to develop a sound website strategy that outlines your goals, target audience, market position, competitors and ...]

Customers Want To Know When Their Goods Will Arrive

Selling products online? If you are then take note: let your customers know when they should received their order. I’ve ordered from two different online stores in the last 24 hours and neither of them gave me any time frame for delivery. In both instances I received confirmation of my order but no delivery time ...]

What’s Wrong With My Website?

I talk to a lot of people who are puzzled by the lack of success of their website. After spending some time looking at the site in question I can usually spot a number of reasons for that lack of success. If you have website that is not performing as it should it’s time to ...]

The 19-Hour Website Analysis, in 20 Minutes or Less

Performing a complete website review is rarely easy. I've found that you can start a site analysis intending to spend just a few minutes looking over it only to find that it quickly spirals into a multi-hour marathon of research. Complete website reviews can be time consuming and often produce many more hours of work beyond that.

One of the problems is that people tend want to skip right to search engine optimization forgetting that users matter. Many people want to rush into the marketing without realizing that the website itself is part of the marketing

How to Optimize for Google Part 1 of 3

In today's online world search engine rankings can make your business succeed, and while rankings in Yahoo and MSN are very valuable, their combined market value is still less than that of Google. This makes achieving top rankings in Google that much more important.

In this three-part series on How to Optimize for Google we will touch on a number of important aspects for top Google rankings including website optimization, links, Google Webmaster tools, and a number of other considerations.

The focus of Part 1 will be with on page website optimiz

14 Website Usability Guidelines That Keep them Coming Back for More

Sites that are designed to sell products and/or services must go the extra mile to enhance the visitor's engagement with the website. Shopping cart abandonment (shoppers abandoning their carts before deciding to pay for the "items" they've added to their cart) can result in a significant loss in potential sales. But much of that can be reduced when the shopping process is streamlined and geared for shopper satisfaction.

The selling process--from initial interest to the very last checkout page--must be able to grab shopper's attention and proceed to drive t

The Genesis for a Successful Online Marketing Campaign - Part 3

In this series we have looked at several ‘spokes’ that contribute to a winning web marketing strategy. Part 1 looked at several of these building blocks: marketing budget and timelines, market research, and competitor analysis while Part 2 discussed the importance of keyword research, focus on achievable phrases, creating relevant textual content and search friendly website design. A future article will deal with the remaining spokes: link building, blogs, newsletters, and website analytics.

Since creating a website that is "user friendly" is often difficult and time consuming, I thought it would be fun to explore a few ways to create a dissatisfying user experience on your website. Unlike the dozens upon dozens of things that go into creating a website that provides a positive visitor experience, one that creates an atmosphere of trust and is likely to improve conversion rates, creating a dissatisfying experience can be done fairly easily in just a few steps.

In fact, while I'm sure there are just as many t

10 Ways to Help Your Visitors Trust You

Trust is a key usability issue when it comes to running a successful online business. Most people automatically view web businesses with a bias against them compared to their brick and mortar counterparts. Your ability to convince your visitors that yours is a trustworthy business is one of the key components to getting visitors to convert into customers.

Creating a website that conveys trust can be tricky. There are rarely any answers that are always "right" for every visitor. There are, however, several factors that have universal appeal to the weary sh

Search Marketing Q&A: Social bookmarking implications on SEO

Are there any negative SEO implications to including a social bookmarking and sharing button to the more popular pages on your website to leverage some of the popularity of social networking?

PPC Management - A User's Review of MSN

This is the first in a series of articles intended to convey my personal impressions of managing PPC through Google Adwords, Yahoo Panama and MSN Adcenter.

Each engine has its pluses and minuses and I thought I would write a short blurb describing my experiences using the interface for each of these. The first engine I will be looking at is the lesser utilized of the three, MSN Adcenter.

Get Your Blog Google-Ranked in 30 Days Or Less, Part 1,
you aren’t going to want to miss it. But, here are even more useful suggestions to put your blog on steroids without any blog-roid rage. Please read on.

How to Optimize for Google - Part 2 of 3

Optimizing for top Google rankings includes a number of factors. In Part 1 of 3 we discussed onsite optimization. In Part 2 we will touch on incoming links as well as using Google Webmaster Tools.