Sitegeist Blog - Beitrags-Archiv für die Kategory 'Being good'

Happy new year! A change of years puts us in a reflective mood. We ponder the year we have just left behind; and we think about the one that’s just started. We get nostalgic; and we try to predict the future. It’s all about personal narrative.

Narrative…now there’s a good topic. (seamless link, John…)

If you were a teenager in the 1980s you’ll probably remember the Choose Your Own Adventure books.

They were little paperback adventure stories. What made them interesting was that throughout the book, the reader had to make decisions:

If you decide to start back home, turn to page 4.
If you decide to wait, turn to page 5.

The books – though sometimes circular and sometimes very brief – were nonetheless interesting artefacts, and – in hindsight – successful precursors of hypertext.

The only thing disappointing about these books was that they ended. Concluding was inevitable, though. Being a printed book, there was only a certain number of pages available.

The End of Narrative?
You don’t have to spend long online to know that context-rich links are pure gold; they enable your search to continue, hopefully bringing you closer to the information you need.

Web pages with no useful links (either internal or external) are like a locked door on the Internet…or like the disappointing final page of a Choose Your Own Adventure book.

Having your online journey halted before you’re ready is disappointing; but not in the inevitable way of a 116-page kids’ book. The disappointment is felt more keenly because finding the ‘last page’ of an online trail is a betrayal of the promise – even the very purpose – of the World Wide Web.

So good site writers always strive to provide quality, contextual links wherever possible. If links are to another page on your site, great! Encouraging internal site exploration is good for business. If the links are external, that’s great too.

Block the Exits!
But many site managers are still worried that linking to external sites will drive away business. Why, they ask, would we provide arrows to the exit?

But every web user already knows where the exits are: the back button, the big X in the top-right corner, getting up to make a cup of tea, typing in the letters g-o-o-g-l-e, etc. And web users are very happy to use these exits if they think they’re otherwise wasting their time.

If You Love Something…
If your site hasn’t sated a user’s information needs, allow them to continue their journey. Allow them to create a useful online narrative. Tear down the wall. Users will be happier.

And they might even remember you later…

Speed. When we’re online, there’s nothing like it. Click and load; fast and easy.

And then we arrive at a site with…wait for it…wait….still waiting…a Flash intro. And faster than you can say ‘skip’, momentum has been lost and we’re annoyed. A waste of our time. And there’s nothing that makes a user hit the close box or the back arrow faster than having their time wasted.

I’ve been trying to think of a legitimate use for a Flash intro. And I can’t. How about a funky designer showing off what they can do? No – not if ‘what they can do’ is encouraging their clients to build sites that waste our time.

Here it is again, in case you missed it: There is no excuse for a Flash intro.

And it looks like Google agrees. In a December 2009 interview on WebProNews, Google software engineer guru Matt Cutts hinted that Google search results might take a site’s speed into account:

“Historically, we haven’t had to use it in our search rankings, but a lot of people within Google think that the web should be fast,” says Cutts. “It should be a good experience, and so it’s sort of fair to say that if you’re a fast site, maybe you should get a little bit of a bonus. If you really have an awfully slow site, then maybe users don’t want that as much.”

At Sitegeist, we believe that the content on the page is of paramount importance. If the words are right, then we’re happy to wait an extra second or two for the page to load. But the problem is that we don’t know the content is good until the page loads. And we hate waiting for a slow site with bad (or not relevant) content.

So we approve of Google’s move to reward faster sites. Content and reputation are still the reigning monarchs at Google, but a dose of speed can’t hurt either.

For developers, Google has some speed tools and tips. For the rest of us, expect things to get just a bit quicker online in the next year…

Ahhh, the freelance coffee-all-day, work-for-yourself world. Marvellous, isn’t it?

I just recently knocked back a job because I didn’t like the business. Initially, I was keen for the work. I had nothing on my books and (like all of us) could have really used the money. And there would have been pretty good money.

But I wasn’t on-board with their business. And I didn’t sleep very well, pondering the work.

What they do isn’t illegal or on the fringes. And they run a good, professional show. I just don’t like that show. And so I said no.

I’m a service provider. If I was an electricity company, would I feel bad about supplying power to a business I didn’t approve of, such as a racist political party? Should I? Banks spend bucketloads on creating a friendly corporate image. Do they have any obligation to ensure that their customers operate in a manner that reflects their own brand values?

And if not, why not? Is it just a market-driven free-for-all?

I claim no moral high ground. I’ve worked on products I don’t believe in. Sure I have. But I don’t think those products have caused harm, and I haven’t had to lie in order to describe them. Not knowingly, anyway.

But my work constantly requires me to make decisions based on both business need and personal morals. And this one fell on the wrong side of my morals.

I know a bit more about myself as a result. I know where I draw the line. And that’s worth something.

So help me out, fellow users, buyers, freelancers… Did I short-change myself for no reason?

Do you care that cigarette companies own Starbucks, Lifesavers and even Vegemite? Does it matter? Cigarettes are legal.

A fairly large soft drink company you may have heard of has been accused of torturing union leaders in Colombia. Kellogg’s uses GM sugar. L’Oreal tests on animals. So does Procter and Gamble (USA), and they make Pringles which are yummy and Duracell batteries which last for ages…

Where do you draw the line on what you buy and who you do business with?

Lots of product development and marketing processes call for the creation of personas. Personas are fictional characters, based on real user information, that we then use to test our ideas out on.

If we know that our target market is female, university educated, aged 30-39, married with one child, and interested in netball, we might create a character and name her Fiona. We then assign attributes in keeping with our demographic knowledge, and then flesh her out with additional details we make up.

Her favourite magazine is Marie Claire, she still listens to the Cure, she met her husband Chris at RMIT where they both studied journalism. He’s now a web manager and she’s a marketing director. And so on…

And now, with a small handful of personas, we can ‘market test’ product decisions, marketing initiatives, development ideas and more. It’s not as good as real market testing, but it’s fast and cheap.

Right, so personas are good. They help writers write, designers design, developers build and marketers sell.

But maybe there’s one more persona you should add to your toolbox. Your product – be it a company website, a software product, a blog, a shoe or a brand of coffee – probably has a ‘personality’ and a voice. Why not add flesh to this by developing an internal product persona?

This embodiment of your message can then be used by anyone who has anything to do with the product in question. You’re more likely to create consistent experiences for your consumers/users if everyone in your organisation is channeling the same character and characteristics.

This doesn’t mean that everyone pretends to be ‘Jason’ in the call centre, just that product messages, tone, values and approach are consistent.

And – if you get it right – your persaona might even give you ideas for your next successful step…

Alt text (alternative text) is the little bit of descriptive text that displays:

• when you hover over an image in a browser, or
• in the place of a broken or missing image

Importantly, alt tags are also used by vision-impaired users who rely on screen readers to gether information from websites. The alt tag is literally read aloud to these users.

So alt text describes the image. And it’s a requirement for accessibility for many government and business sites. And it’s also handy for SEO purposes.

But just saying what’s in the image isn’t enough. When describing a photo of a monkey wearing a fez, it’s not enough to write “monkey wearing fez”.

Designers work hard to create or source images that evoke a feeling. Images are a significant part of the ‘voice’ of any good website. Just like writers, designers are attempting to say something. Don’t the vision impaired deserve to share that?

So set aside SEO considerations (alt text isn’t that important anyhow). Actively write alt text. Describe the emotion as well as the content of the image. Write alt text for humans. “A scary monkey wearing a red fez poses for the camera”.

It’s good for usability. It’s good for creativity. And it’s good for the soul.