Posted on September 3, 2010 | No Comments »
Jakob Nielsen has been writing his bi-weekly Alertbox articles on web usability for a long time. I was just getting started with web design back in 1999 when somebody told me about his website, useit.com. It definitely opened my eyes to some things I had never thought about and I still check out the site about once a month to read or at least skim the latest columns.
When most people see the useit.com site, they immediately say it’s too plain or too ugly. If you read Nielsen’s writing, though, you’ll start to understand why the site looks the way it does. Whether or not it’s true that the site is too plain, it is certainly easy to navigate and effective at what it does, and those are the kinds of things Nielsen advocates for in his writing.
What really sets Jakob Nielsen’s articles apart though is not just his views on keeping things simple, but the fact that his recommendations are based on research. He’s not just throwing around his opinion, he does usability testing and shares what he’s learned from observing how people interact with websites.
Anyway, I’m just posting this here to recommend that anybody who is trying to learn about web design include useit.com in the mix of things you’re reading. Here are a few of my favorite Alertbox columns:
Also, for what it’s worth, Jakob Nielsen’s “ugly” website has a Google PageRank of 8. Other sites that have a PageRank of 8 at the time of this writing are eBay and Digg.
Posted on September 1, 2010 | No Comments »
WordPress + Twitter + Email.
Tumblr + Flickr + Twitter.
Facebook + Twitter + simple landing page website.
These are samples of what I would call the web mix for a small business (or maybe for a larger business). That is, the combination of tools and platforms that you use to form your web presence.
You could say that a web mix is the same thing as a web presence. If you want to get picky and wordy about it, the web presence is what you build over time using the tools in your web mix.
In any case, one thing I like about the term web mix is that it sounds like something that would be fluid and easy to evolve. That’s a good thing. Situations change, and the web definitely changes, so your web mix should be able to adapt as needed over time.
So how do you find your web mix? I think there are a couple of key things to keep in mind:
- Which web tools fit the needs of your business?
- Which web tools fit the way you like to work?
The first one might seem obvious, but you’d be surprised how many small businesses use tools that don’t make any sense for their goals just because they’re trendy.
As for the second, it’s not all about having fun, but when faced with 3 technologies that will all help you accomplish your goals, it’s reasonable to choose the one you enjoy using. If you think you need to be using Twitter but you hate it and really like, then you might want to use Facebook.
One thing a lot of people miss in finding the right web mix is that you should know right up front that you’re never going to do everything there is to do on the web. Don’t try. Just choose the tools that work best for you and do a great job with those. And remember, you can always make adjustments if things aren’t working the way you expected.
Posted on August 25, 2010 | No Comments »
Mark Hurst writes good stuff on customer experience, user experience, etc., over at Good Experience. He just published a nice post called Solving media overload takes one word. Here’s a somewhat chopped up excerpt:
… infinite bitstreams beckoning from every corner of life and work. The question, then, is what sources will you not dive into? Or to put it in more practical terms …
Work: You have plenty of ways of tracking the 1,000 things you need to get done. But which are the three most important tasks for today? …
… Will anything keep our interest for more than a page, a kilobyte, a second? The only way to answer “yes” is to say “no” to the thousand other available options.
This reminded me of a Steve Jobs quote on innovation and saying no that was pointed out on the 37signals blog back in 2004:
And it comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don’t get on the wrong track or try to do too much. We’re always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it’s only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important.
I think the ability to say no is one of the most important skills anyone working on the web these days can have.
As I was reading Mark Hurst’s post, the words that kept going through my head were “no is the new yes.” I know I’m not the first person to turn that phrase, and I also know the whole “X is the new Y” cliché is getting worn out, but I think there’s an interesting bit of truth in that particular cliché.
What it means to me is that in the current web environment, if you’re saying yes to everything, you might as well be saying no, because it’s impossible to do everything there is to do in the digital world. In fact, when I come across people who say yes all the time, I just assume they’re trying to be polite and proceed as if they really said no until I see them actually doing the thing we talked about.
Conversely, when I see someone saying no to a lot of different things, it tells me that they probably have some stuff they are really working on with a good deal of dedication. Like the Hurst and Jobs quotes point out, saying no is actually what enables you to say yes.
The reason I feel like no is the new yes is that the current dynamics of the attention economy and the digital landscape are increasing the importance of saying no with each passing day. Just for kicks, let’s say that in 1995 there were 100 things you might want to be involved in on the web as a small business (that number is nowhere near correct; I’m just using it to illustrate a point). What would that number be now? 1,000? 10,000? 100,000? The options increase constantly.
So with my silly 100 number, maybe in 1995 you would have said yes to 10 of those things. That would mean you’d need to say no 90 times. Now, let’s just make the wild assumption that increased efficiency allows you to be involved in 100 things in 2010. That would mean you’d have to say no 900 times, or 9,900 times, or, well, the point is you’ll need to say no more in 2010 than you did in 1995.
This is to say nothing of the fact that some of the technologies on the web today are so time-intensive that they could require a person or an entire staff of people to work full-time on that one thing just to have any chance of doing the work well. And certainly there are plenty of specialized tools and techniques that are wonderful ideas for some businesses and at the same time horrible for other businesses.
It’s not easy to get around the perception of no being a negative word. And there will always be some folks who think saying no means you’re being lazy or unwilling to explore new things. I think it means you have discipline and focus in a world wired for distraction. Those seem like qualities that are going to be massively important on the web over the next 5 to 10 years and possibly beyond.
