I can’t believe it’s been 25 years. Happy anniversary, Macintosh.

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Your IT person says Joomla. Your PHP person says Drupal. Your marketing person says SharePoint.

Let’s be frank: they are all buzzwords, and the person speaking to using that system usually has an ulterior motive outside of what’s best for the users. It’s like that Linux guy that likes Linux because it’s easy for him and no one else. Does that really serve the office?

If you have a Microsoft Gold Partner sitting in your office, he’s going to say SharePoint fits the needs for anything short of curing cancer even if MOSS is completely the wrong system. And frankly, all developers have their favorites, and sales people sell, regardless of what the product is. Mac vs. PC. Windows vs. Unix. Drupal vs. Joomla. They’re all religious wars, wars I’m especially tired of.

Every product has it’s merits, and should be judged on them alone, not on a salesperson’s preference. End of sentence.

What do you do? Read On…

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This is from Tom Kuhr, a member of the OleOle startup team. He blogs over at Kuhr Strategies. This is his list of tips on what kills it, and also what improves site conversion.

Things that kill conversion are few, the biggest issue is creating a need for registration.

What Kills Site Conversion

• There’s more than one page for registration
• The site asks for data during the initial registration that isn’t crucial for setting up an account
• There’s an initial asking for any sort of payment method, even if not charged at the time

What Improves Site Conversion

• The use of an in-situation registration (not taking user to new page) using AJAX or lightboxes
• Pre-populating data fields based on known user attributes, like location
• An SSL-secured registration page for ecommerce sitee
• Stating clearly the benefits of registration i.e. if you register, you will be able to access more areas of the site
• A clear reason to convert, which should be spelled out in the context of a page for a new user. “If you want to this, just sign up here. You’ll also be able to other features”. The initial request should have a clear benefit to the user.

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How are your marketing programs doing? What's your average response rate, cost per sale and size of sale? Which publications, venues, ads and offers have received the best response?

If you're like many business owners you've got a gut feeling about all of these things, but a dearth of hard data. If so, you're really flying blind…and you may be wasting much of your marketing budget as a result.

Better Data = Better Decisions

Every business should systematically track and analyze responses to their marketing programs, so that future decisions can be based on historical results. What data should you capture? As much as you can! For example, for print ads I recommend that you track the publication name and circulation; ad name, date and cost; offer and coupon code (if applicable); date and amount of customer's purchase; and customer name and contact information (if appropriate). Remember, it's not enough to know that a customer saw your ad in XYZ Publication; you want to know if she saw this month's ad or the one you ran last fall.

Analyzing Your Responses

So what do you do with all of this data? Start by looking at your response rates for each marketing program. This is the number of people who received or had the opportunity to see a particular ad or marketing piece divided by the number who actually responded to it. Look to see how this response rate changed if you changed the ad, offer, publication, mailing list or other factor. How many sales were made? Compare the average cost per sale and size of sale of each program, and then look at the return on investment (ROI) by comparing the total net sales (or the anticipated lifetime sales to these new customers) to the cost of the program itself.

Think of your historical data as a valuable treasure trove of information, and use it to fine tune and maximize the success of your marketing program.

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I’ve been doing very simple company sites, and frankly, they don’t need too much information architecture. Think about it — how many different ways can you display a case study? What else is there to use other than About Us?

Most of the company sites I’ve been designing have been fairly static. For new ideas, I’ve been popping over to Template Monster. They have pages and pages of ideas, and if you want to pick one, the designs are fairly cheap, usually around $70. Not bad, considering you get the PSD file to start from.

I wonder when there’s going to be an Information Architecture Monster.

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If interested, send your resume to jobs@usabilitycounts.com.

A company located in Denver, Colorado are looking for a senior level Lead Experience Architect with strong interests and capabilities in the rapid development of Rich Internet Applications. The ideal candidate will thrive in a work environment that requires strong problem solving skills and independent self-direction, coupled with an aptitude for team collaboration and open communication. The candidate will also have extensive experience in a fast-paced and innovative development environment. A thorough understanding of user-centered design methodologies is a must.

Responsibilities

• Gather business requirements, user needs, and visual requirements
• Facilitate key client workshops to solicit feedback and generate consensus
• Guide clients through key design engagements
• Brainstorm best practices and innovation
• Design interaction design diagrams and interface wireframes
• Help define the user model and user interface for new applications
• Develop storyboards and prototypes to communicate UX and design ideas
• Analyze functional and performance requirements to maintain design architectures
• Lead a small team of professional UX Designers
• Strong client-facing presentation and communication skills

Required experience and skills

• 8 or more years of user interface design experience focused around
  visual design for software applications, web, mobile devices, CD-ROMs, or
  kiosks
• 5 or more years as a User Experience lead
• Extensive knowledge of and experience with user interface design patterns, visual design elements, web technologies, and development methodologies
• Demonstrated experience in designing usable applications
• Experience with SaaS platform UI design
• Strong knowledge of MS and Adobe Suite software
• Solid academic background in human-computer interaction or related field (BS or MS in Computer Science or related field a big plus).
• Strong knowledge of user interface design processes and methodology, particularly as applied to web-based applications
• Experience with activities and deliverables associated with user centered design, SDLC, and functional requirements gathering.
• Excellent leadership, communication, project management, and teamwork skills.

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I love LaCie products. I have a few of their hard drives sitting on my desktop (there’s something very manly about having close to 2TB of storage),and I love their industrial design, especially the Porsche drives.

Llet’s just say a few weeks ago, one of the power supplies died.

(Well, it didn’t die, I cut the wire accidentally while the hard drive was on).

Over to the LaCie website, their website is as elegant as their products. It’s clean as hospital white sheets, and very easy to shop there (like any online shop should be).

Most importantly, when shopping for parts, the website list the name of the product, show a thumbnail of both the drive and the connector type. The only failing is no buy now button.

But I clicked on the part number, and was on my way in minutes.

Why don’t more sites do it this way?

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Great meme.

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Have you ever stopped to think about what it is that you’re really selling?

When it comes right down to it, you’re not selling a product or service. You’re selling solutions to the problems, needs or desires that your ideal clients have. Does your local gym sell hard work, major time commitments and exercise? Of course not! They sell sexy bodies and good health. Likewise, Mercedes doesn’t just sell transportation – they sell status.

Different Messages for Different Audiences

Of course, you’re probably selling more than one thing. For example, a restaurant might sell “convenience” to one target audience, a “fun evening out” to another group of people and a “way to connect with family and friends” to others.

The important thing is to figure out what solution you’re offering to the particular group you’re targeting, and then focus your message on this.

Customers Don’t Buy “Things”

People don’t buy things; they buy what things can do for them. For example, people who buy my book, “What’s to Eat? The Milk-Free, Egg-Free, Nut-Free Food Allergy Cookbook,” aren’t buying recipes. They’re buying a way to feed delicious food to their entire family, including a family member who is on a restricted diet.

This adage is equally true for services. For example, your neighbor goes to the chiropractor to relieve his back pain. The chiropractor is selling pain relief, not spinal adjustments.

To really connect with your customers and potential customers, keep in mind that you’re selling solutions, not products or services.

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From Kottke, still relevant after all these years.

Here’s a small and nerdy measure of the huge change in the executive branch of the US government today. Here’s the robots.txt file from whitehouse.gov yesterday:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin
Disallow: /search
Disallow: /query.html
Disallow: /omb/search
Disallow: /omb/query.html
Disallow: /expectmore/search
Disallow: /expectmore/query.html
Disallow: /results/search
Disallow: /results/query.html
Disallow: /earmarks/search
Disallow: /earmarks/query.html
Disallow: /help
Disallow: /360pics/text
Disallow: /911/911day/text
Disallow: /911/heroes/text

Plus 2400 lines.

The new robots.txt? 2 lines:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /includes/

The robots.txt blocks certain directories from being indexed by search engines like Google — which means it also blocks archival for things like legal proceedings.

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