My wife recently took back a cordless phone because it didn’t work. She had left it in its charger over night like she was supposed to but the thing just wouldn’t produce a dial tone. I looked at it briefly, pushed a few of the buttons and agreed that the thing was dead out of the box.
Read MoreAuthor: Christian Watson
Make Internal Links Scroll Smoothly with JavaScript
There’s an interesting article over at Sitepoint about using Javascript to enable jump links to scroll you smoothly down the page to another location. According to the author, the reasoning behind this is that:
When they’re navigating through a long document, users often are confused or disoriented when they click a link that jumps to another location in that same document.
Are they? Based on what evidence? In all the usability testing I have done, never once has a user complained to me that having a link take them to another location on a page is confusing.
Read MoreSaaS Vendors: Tell Me How Much It Costs
I recently visited the web site of a company that provides conversion to and hosting of streaming video. We’ve been looking into doing this at Children’s, and although we are running a pilot with one vendor, I was interested in seeing how this other company might compare.
We’re a non-profit organization and so are always looking to do things in a cost-efficient way. Consequently, price is an important factor for me in purchasing decisions. However, nowhere on the site could I find any mention of pricing. As Jacob Nielson has rightly said:
Read MorePrice is the most specific piece of info customers use to understand the nature of an offering, and not providing it makes people feel lost and reduces their understanding of a product line.
Using Site Search Reports to Enhance Web Analytics
Web analytics are an essential tool for managing a website, and packages such as Webtrends and Click Tracks can tell you all kinds of things about how easily your visitors found information, what paths they took to get there, how long they stayed, and how often they returned.
Read MoreTabbed Browsing for Internet Explorer
I’m one of those people who likes to surf the web by opening up multiple windows when I find something of potential interest. That way, I can keep the current page open if the content in the new window turns out to be a false lead and I can click on a whole bunch of links and get to them when I’ve finished reading the page I’m on.
Read MoreBloated Home Pages Increase Travel Site Load Times
Optimizationweek.com has a great speed comparison of three leading travel sites and comes up with some interesting findings.
Plus it has a catchy title — Overweight Travel Sites Delay Holiday Travelers — although, from an SEO standpoint, it would benefit from being a little less cute and a bit more obvious as to what it’s about.
Anyway, the fact that the sites’ home pages average about 150kb is pretty scary; don’t they care about dial-up users? I’d never heard of the term “HTTP Compression” before reading this article either; there’s a useful technology that more sites should be using.
Maybe they are and I’m just late to the table?
Usability Testing Shopping.com
So I finally decided to buy a portable MP3 jukebox and settled on the Rio Karma. Off I go to Shopping.com to compare prices. Little did I know that I would be running an impromptu usability test in the process.
Read MoreAsterisk Redesigned
Keith has done a nice redesign of Asterisk, making it more readable while still maintaining a nice design aesthetic. Read More