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The topic of the use of counters has historically been an issue discussed in the
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Which
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The internet has been an invaluable opportunity as a level playing field for both
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with Awards
We all know some of the most famous awards, such as the Grammy's, Nobel Peace
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highly of the recipient, often resulting in lasting fame -- and in many cases,
prosperity.
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Website Usability Lessons Still
To Learn
 By
Neville Hobson
Via Boing Boing, I came across an interesting report on how people react to advertising
when visiting websites. No prizes for guessing the most hated advertising technique
- pop-up
ads.
What other lessons can be learned in using advertising on a website? Discuss
at WebProWorld.
The report by Jakob Neilsen
shows the 11 most hated advertising techniques.
My current 'favourite' is in there - sites that automatically start playing voice
commentary or music, or both, as soon as you land on the website. Boy, is that
irritating!
I don't find pop-ups so bad these days simply because my browser of choice (Firefox)
does an excellent job at blocking them. Internet
Explorer does now have improvements in this area, yet whenever I use IE, invariably
there will be pop-ups (or worse, pop-unders).
In his report, Neilsen says:
Advertising is an integral part of the Web user experience: people repeatedly
encounter ads as they surf the Web, whether they're visiting the biggest portals,
established newspapers, or tiny personal sites. Most online advertising studies
have focused on how successful ads are at driving traffic to the advertiser, using
simple metrics such as clickthrough rates.
Unfortunately, most studies sorely neglect the user experience of online ads.
As a result, sites that accept ads know little about how the ads affect their
users and the degree to which problematic advertising tricks can undermine a site's
credibility. Likewise, advertisers don't know if their reputations are degraded
among the vast majority of users who don't click their ads, but might well be
annoyed by them.
Looking a little more into Neilsen's research, I discovered a report by his company,
Neilsen Norman Group, on Designing
Websites to Maximize Press Relations: Guidelines from Usability Studies with Journalists.
You have to buy the report (from $248) for the detail, but the executive
summary on the website does have some very useful info on areas of web design
and usability that is most helpful from a PR point of view.
It's what journalists need that's the interesting thing, as the research points
out:
The Web is one of the most important research tools for journalists. When asked
how they would get basic information about a company, all the journalists in our
study said that they would begin by doing some Web research. About half the journalists
started by visiting the target company's website; the other half started by searching
an outside service (mainly Google, but also
traditional services like Dow Jones Interactive
and Lexis-Nexis). This finding emphasizes
the necessity for having a clean corporate website with a clearly labeled Press
or PR section that can quickly provide answers for journalists. It also emphasizes
the need to be well represented in external search services and databases, especially
since the trend over time is that more journalists are relying on search engines
(mainly Google at the time of this writing).
 Journalists
are not gullible, and they do not take a company's own word as truth. On the contrary,
they almost all stressed that press releases are useful only to find out how a
company is trying to position itself. We strongly recommend that a company's PR
area have links to external sources, including press coverage, since articles
from independent newspapers and magazines are often considered to be much more
credible than the company's own press releases. We have seen similar findings
in studies of prospective customers evaluating products on consumer- and business-oriented
sites, so links to external press coverage will also help promote sales.
So many corporate websites just don't take into account anyone's - let alone journalists'
- needs for finding credible information about the organization. Links to external
information? Don't see much of that on far too many corporate sites. Another one
- not easily finding a simple link to contact someone.
The research also includes the top-five reasons journalists gave for visiting
a company's website:
1. Find a PR contact (name and telephone number)
2. Check basic facts about the company (spelling of an executive's
name, his/her age, headquarters location, etc.)
3. Discover the company's own spin on events
4. Check financial information
5. Download images to use as illustrations in stories
Very useful information. This report is worth reading by PR practitioners and
anyone who's responsible for producing and developing a website.
Comment on this
article in WebProWorld.
About the Author:
Neville Hobson is the author of the popular NevOn
blog which focuses on business communication and technology.
Neville is currentlly an independent communication practitioner helping companies
build dynamic relationships with customers, employees, shareholders and other
key audiences and influencers. Visit Neville Hobson's blog: NevOn. |
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Contributing
Authors: 2,353 |
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Measuring
& Managing Visitor / Customer Retention
 By
Jim Novo
Recency: Visit Behavior Predicts Visitor Value
Over the past five decades, a lot of research and testing has been done concerning
the profiling of customer behavior based on transactional data. The appearance
of computers and "data-mining" created the ability to carry on even more extensive
studies across a wide range of industries.
The end result? If you had to pick one variable to most universally predict the
likelihood of a customer to repeat an action, Recency, or the number of days /
weeks that have gone by since a customer completed an action (purchase, log-in,
etc.) is the most powerful predictor of the customer repeating this action.
As each day goes by after the customer completed the action, the customer gets
less and less likely to repeat it. Plain and simple. You can run all the fancy
data-mining scenarios on "likelihood to buy" or "likelihood to visit" you want
to - Recency almost always comes up as one of the most important variables in
predicting the likelihood of a customer to repeat an action.
 Read
the Full Article
It's that time of the year again!
Today's post comes from akbigdog.
Since it's the holiday season and the year is winding down I've decided to take
the time and reflect
on WebProWorld. It's funny to see where WebProWorld started compared to where
it is now. It's changed
a lot since it first began. For those of you who are familiar with the WayBack
Machine you can take a trip down memory lane and veiw WebProWorld from the
beginning. As for today's post, akbigdog is a little curious about how WebProWorld
came to be. Maybe you can tell him a
little about WebProWorld, and tell him all there is to know about being a
part of the family.
|| Rafael||
WPW's
early days
By akbigdog
I am curious about some of the history and inner workings of a large site like
WebProWorld, so I've jotted down some questions that hopefully some of you can
answer. Also, feel free to add your own questions.
What started WebProWorld?
Whose idea was it?
What did it look like? (Screenshots?)
When did it begin?
Who were the original mods?
How many people are now on staff? ...
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nobody wants to read."
- Mark Twain
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What is the character limit a search engine would read for
meta description and meta keywords?
- Burf.com
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