ChrisWrites dot com

Google opens door to text ad images in Adsense?

Chris — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 18:26:56 +0000

At todays Google search event a change to Google image search was announced that may have repercussions for all Adsense publishers. Advertisers targeting Google popular image search tool will now have the option of including a picture along side their text ads.

When searching for an image I usually am not considering purchasing anything and until users get used to the new format some will click the images mistakenly believing they are search results. I think its unlikely that images will increase conversion for advertisers but many existing advertising platforms (like Chitika) do achieve increased CTRs by showing images alongside text ads.

If this does have the effect of increasing CTR I am sure it would be only a matter of time before this feature becomes available to all Adwords search and content network advertisers. This could be a good thing for the millions of Adsense publishers with increased CTR hopefully in turn bringing extra revenue.

Qhub launches as Open Beta

Chris — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 11:34:41 +0000

It’s official Qhub is now live:

Build your own Q&A site with Qhub | VentureBeat.

Interview with Yahoo! Answers Q&A Competitor Blurtit | Inside the Webb

Chris — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 14:00:17 +0000

Last week Jake Rocheleau over at insidethewebb was kind enough to interview me about Blurtit.com and how it compares to other Q&A sites like Yahoo Answers.

Heres the link:
Interview with Yahoo! Answers Q&A Competitor Blurtit | Inside the Webb.

Norfolk firm answers web profit puzzle

Chris — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 17:14:05 +0000

This week Blurtit.com was lucky enough to be featured in the business section of the EDP:

Norfolk firm answers web profit puzzle – Norfolk Business News – EDP24.

5 Realtime Alternatives to Google Analytics

Chris — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 21:09:44 +0000

Realtime analytics is going to be big in 2010. Just as realtime looks set to add a whole new dimension to search, as-it-happens analytics could revolutionize understanding of the way visitors interact with websites.

I’m guessing its only matter of time before Google enters this field, but in the meantime here is my list of the 5 best available today.

Clicky

Cost: Free limited (see above) tracking on 3k pageviews per day, to get access to the full feature set $9.99 per month.
Who uses it: Wine Library TV, Buy Sell Ads, Mashable, Smashing Magazine.
Check out the demo site

Woopra

Cost: Free for upto 30k per month.
Who uses it: Unknown, let me know in the comments if you use Woopra.

Chartbeat

Cost: 30 day free trial then $9.99 per month.
Who uses it: The Onion, The Huffington Post, User Voice.
Checkout the demo site

Mixpanel

Cost: Free for 10k pageviews per month.
Who uses it: Posterous.
Checkout the demo site

Footprint

Cost: Free.
Who uses it: Unknown, let me know in the comments if you use Footprint.
Checkout the demo site

Force Spotlight to Reindex

Chris — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 19:57:16 +0000

Recently Spotlight on my MacBook Pro started having a problem where it couldn’t complete its indexing. While searching around for a solution I came upon this useful trick to force Spotlight into creating a new index without using the terminal.

All you need to do is go to the privacy tab in Spotlight preferences and add the volume you want reindexed by clicking the small + button. After around five minutes go back and remove it by selecting the volume and using the – button.

Spotlight should now reindex the volume and hopefully as in my case resolve any problems you have been having.

Q&A: Web Usability Expert Jared Spool

Chris — Sun, 03 May 2009 18:41:30 +0000

This week I had the pleasure of speaking with web usability expert Jared Spool. Jared is CEO and founder of User Interface Engineering the largest research, training and consulting company specializing in web and product usability.

Watch Jared speaking at SXSW 2009:
Journey to the Center of Design Pt. 1 and Journey to the Center of Design Pt. 2

Over the 20+ years Jared has been working in the industry, he has helped countless companies reach their business goals, both online and offline.

Jared was kind enough to agree to a short interview and share some invaluable insights into web usability.

What are the common mistakes made by designers?

I think the most common mistake is not spending enough time watching users work with their designs. They assume they know who their users are, what they are trying to do, and how they go about doing it. However, when they finally sit down and watch the users, they quickly discover their assumptions have been wrong, and therefore the decisions they made weren’t creating the great experience they thought they were.

“The best designers spend at least two hours every six weeks, just watching their users use their design or a competitor’s design”

The best designers spend at least two hours every six weeks, just watching their users use their design or a competitor’s design. If you’re not doing that, you’re missing important information. It’s not difficult or expensive, yet it’s something we all treat as a nice-to-have instead of a requirement. And that’s what gets us into trouble.

Over the past 5 years do you think in general web usability has improved?

I think there are more sites that have paid attention to their users’ online experience. So, that could be a ‘yes’ to improved usability. But there are still a ton of sites that are really hard to use. For example, many people regularly complain about their online banking site. Or that expense reporting application on the intranet.

I think, proportionally to the number of sites and applications now online, the percentage of sites that deliver frustrating experiences is still probably the same. But the high profile sites are better than they were. Mostly. Facebook recently redesigned their site and 97% of the users reported they wanted the old design back. They were frustrated by the changes.

A major retailer, in the top 15 e-commerce sites, redesigned their site in 2008 and immediately saw a 40% drop in purchases, because they made it more frustrating that it had previously been. It’s easy to break an experience, especially if you haven’t done your homework. So, I think it’s fallacious to say things are better in any major way. I think we all have frustrating experiences every day.

Which websites do you admire from a usability perspective?

I think Netflix has done an amazing job of really understanding how the design of the site drives their business. They make changes all the time, pushing new releases out every two weeks. Yet, they don’t make major redesigns or changes to the site.

Each time the user visits the site, it feels familiar, even though subtle things are now different. They can only do this because they spend hours each week studying how people use their site.

An important part of making a more usable website is about sticking to conventions, do you think the spread of blogging platforms such as Wordpress helped or hindered this?

I’m not big into sticking to conventions. I think that’s the wrong approach. Instead, I like to ask, “What are our specific users’ expectations?” “What do these users come having previous experience with?” And, “What pre-existing knowledge do we want to take advantage of?”

If you go into the design thinking you need to stick to conventions, you’re likely to pick the wrong conventions and thereby make a more difficult design than is needed. However, if you go into the design thinking you need to learn these answers about your specific users, you’ll end up designing something that works specifically for them. It’ll match conventions when it needs to and innovate when it’s the best time to do so.

Can a businesses online usability effect its brand in a negative way?

Absolutely! Of course, it depends on how engaged the customer is with the brand to begin with. Customers who are strongly engaged with a brand will put up with more usability issues than customers who are weakly engaged.

Take a brand you love, whether it be a e-commerce site, type of technology, or favorite restaurant. If their site is hard to use, you’ll likely give them some slack and just say, well, they are good in other ways. Now think of a company you regularly find frustrates you. Maybe it’s an airline or government agency. If their site gives you any problems, will you cut them slack? Or will it just frustrate you more?

“It’s important that designers focus on eliminating frustration and creating delight.”

The thing is that every little frustration reduces brand engagement, even if just by a little. And it adds up. We regularly watch people who go into a site with a high engagement and come out thinking they’ll never do business again. Frustration weakens a brand and delight strengthens it. It’s important that designers focus on eliminating frustration and creating delight.

Do all websites need to do some form of usability testing? and if they do, how should they get started?

No. Websites where the designers don’t care if anyone uses them (or don’t care if the users become very frustrated when they do) don’t need any testing. But, all other sites need testing. It’s really simple. Find a user, ask them what they do with the site, sit them down in front of it, and ask them to do just that.

Like anything, there are tricks and techniques for getting the most out of your testing, but it’s really just as simple as sitting and watching. You can do it anywhere with practically anyone and get useful information. Remember, usability testing is all about informing all the decisions that you need to make in the process of creating a great design. Every usability problem that has ever been introduced into a design has done so because the designer didn’t have a key piece of information.

When you conduct usability tests, you collect the information that will make your designs better going forward. So, if you want to get better designs, you need to conduct usability tests

If I wanted my website tested professionally how much would it cost?

It’ll cost you two hours every six weeks. If you want to go whole hog, you can spend two hours every week, like the best folks do. You can hire someone to do your testing for you, but I don’t recommend it. It’s sorta like hiring someone to take your vacation for you. It gets the job done, but it’s probably not what you were really looking for.

It’s easy to learn how to do usability test. My favorite book for learning is Dana Chisnell & Jeff Rubin’s Handbook of Usability Testing. They’ve just revised it and it’s a perfect way to learn how to do testing yourself.

“Usability testing isn’t hard to do. It’s not rocket science.”

Usability testing isn’t hard to do. It’s not rocket science. (We know it’s not rocket science because NASA is one of our clients and they have very strict definitions as to what rocket science is. They’ve told us this is not it.) Buy the book, read the chapters, and you’ll be up and running with a test in no time, learning cool things that will make your design rock.

What kind of people and businesses attend your conferences?

100% human. (We’ve never found that other species are that interested. Seriously, our conferences are attended by anyone working with technology and wanting to create great experiences.

For example, we’ve just launched our second UIE Roadshow series for this year. At these sessions, we’ll have people who design sites for all different types of applications and organizations.

Typically, the people who come are designers and managers in charge of their design’s user experience. They are all looking for ways to get better at what they do. And, because our teachings are all based on our years of research, they get more than they come for. We regularly hear that they took what they learned in our sessions and make instant, measurable changes that put their organization light years ahead.

Like this post? - Subscribe to my RSS feed or follow me on Twitter.

13 iPhone Apps That Make You More Productive

Chris — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 18:33:43 +0000

I am always looking for new ways to make myself and those around me more productive (which makes me really popular), this urge combined with my unhealthy iPhone obsession inspired to make the following list.

Please let me know what you think of the list in the comments, I would also be really interested in hearing about the apps that make your life easier.

iThoughts

iThoughts is a mind mapping tool. It’s main purpose is for brainstorming, but it can also be used for project planning, goal setting ans concept mapping. While I found this app difficult to get the hang of to start with, once you have it mastered, it becomes an indispensable tool for coming up with new ideas.

OmniFocus

OmniFocus is the premier Task Manager for the iPhone. Organize tasks by project, place, person or date. OmniFocus also synchronizes with Omnifocus for Mac locally or wirelessly through MobileMe or a WebDav server.

Evernote

Evernote lets you capture and synchronize text/voice notes and images from many devices and platforms then makes this information search-able from anywhere. It also uses OCR software to let you search text on you images.

Done

Done is a simple but innovative To Do list, which allows you to set individual priorities and due dates for each to-do item and across multiple lists. Done also has a feature to add your most pressing To Do items to your iPhone wallpaper.

Google Mobile

Google Mobile features all the main google services like Mail, Maps, Earth, Photos, Reader and Talk. In my opinion it is also the easiest way to read RSS feeds on the iPhone.

Air Sharing

Airsharing allows you to mount your iPhone as wireless drive on your Mac, Windows or Linux computer, all over Wi-Fi. You can also access you iPhone using your computers browser. This makes it very simple to move files between you desktop and phone so you can view your files on the go.

Typing Genius

Typing Genius has over 50 exercises for improving speed and accuracy of typing on the iPhone. Most iPhone and iPod Touch users type 30-50 characters per minute, Typing Genius claims to be able to teach you to treble your speed, up to 150 cpm.

mSecure

mSecure is a password and data manager that offers an easy and secure way to store sensitive data on your iPhone. mSecure works as a stand alone application and only generates revenue from its sticker price, eliminating the need for any external connections, which could make it less secure.

LogMeIn Ignition

LogMeIn Ignition is a really powerful piece of software, it lets you remote control PC’s and Macs with just one click. You can now use any program remotely from you iPhone on multiple machines and platforms.

Analytics App

If you use Google Analytics this application is hard to resist. It works with multiple sites and accounts and lets you change date ranges easily. You can create unlimited custom reports making pretty much all your analytics data accessible from anywhere.

Wordpress

If you run a blog using Wordpress this is a must. You can create and edit content on multiple Wordpress blogs, it uses an embeded version of Safari so you can see true previews of your posts. Wordpress on the iPhone also has full support both camera and photo library images and the ability to password protect posts, save as draft or mark for later review.

OneDisk

Onedisk allows you to access a variety of cloud storage services, such as MobileMe’s iDisk, Box.net and MyDisk.se. OneDisk has its own built-in viewer capable of opening Office, iWork, TXT, PDF and HTML file formats

Equivalence

Equivalence is a powerful conversion tool which boasts some really advanced features. Equivalence has over 600 units of conversion which include over 150 currencies.

Like this post? – Subscribe to my RSS feed or follow me on Twitter.

17 Reasons Why Your Mac Runs Slower Than it Should

Chris — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 19:01:11 +0000

Day by day, bit by bit your Mac has got slower and slower. You don’t really notice because it has happened so gradually.

Until one day you have a chance to use another machine, that’s when you realize what your beloved Mac has become, as slow as an asthmatic ant carrying some heavy shopping.

Well all is not lost, while this list is unlikely to make you mac into a speed demon overnight, one of the following suggestions may just help.

Cluttered Desktop

Having too many files and folders on your desktop can slowdown your machine. Put these files into folders in your home directory and create aliases to them on the desktop.

Corrupt Preference Files

Preference files can easily become corrupt and can make programs act weird or run slowly. If your Mac is slow using a particular application you can try deleting its preference file and relaunching he app (applications create a new file when they are relaunched if they can’t find an existing one). It’s worth making a backup of the old file just i case you lose some settings that are hard to replicate.

Smart Playlists on iTunes

Smart playlists can make iTunes slower as they have to reload every time iTunes is launched. Disable live updating by going to File, Edit Smart Playlist and untick Live Updating.

Too Many Widgets on Dashboard

Each Widget on your Dashboard uses memory, again you can check the memory usage of your widgets by using the Activity Monitor. Remove any used or memory hogging widgets using the Dashboard control panel.

Caches, Log files and Temporary Items

It doesn’t hurt to regularly clear out built up Caches, Log files and Temporary Items an easy way to do this is to use an application like OnyX. If you prefer you can delete Caches manually, they can be found in Home/Library/Cache.

Wrong Firmware

Using the wrong Firmware can cause all sorts of problems, keeping your software up to date on a Mac is so easy there is really no excuse. Just click on Software Update in the Apple menu. You can also schedule your Mac to automatically check for updates, go to System Preferences and Software Update and tick Check for updates. You can change the frequency of the checks using the drop down menu.

Not Enough RAM

Software can only take you so far. Upgrading your RAM will probably give you the biggest speed increase out of any of these tips. You can use the Activity Monitor application (under Utilities in the Application folder) to check if your Mac would benefit from more RAM. Click on System Memory tab and have a look at the pie chart at the bottom. If the chart is largely red or orange you are running out of RAM. Also take a look at the Page Ins and Outs numbers, if these are continually increasing, its time to upgrade your RAM.

Permission Conflicts

Some issues with applications loading slowly or acting weird can be remedied by repairing permissions. All files in Mac Os X have a set of permissions, these determine which users or applications can have access to them. Sometimes permissions are incorrect and not what the operating system expects. To repair disk permissions you can use the Disk Utility app (in /Applications/Utilities). Select your startup disk and click th First Aid tab, then click the Repair Disk Permissions button.

Hard Disk Is Nearly Full

Your Mac automatically utilizes free space on your Hard drive as Virtual Memory to free up the RAM. Try to make sure you have 10% free space available for this task.

Lots of Login Items

Removing unwanted or little used programs from your login items. To change your login items go to System Preferences then Accounts and click the Login Items tab.

Unused System Preference Panes

Clearing out unused preference panes can help free up memory and disk space, check under Other in System Preferences to see what you can remove. You can either disable it in its menu or delete it entirely by removing it from ~/Library/PreferencePanes.

Unused Applications Left Running

All running applications use up your memory and CPU resources, quit applications if you are not going to use them for a while. Some programs have memory leakage issues which means they tend to consume more and more memory the longer they are running (again you can spot these in the Activity Monitor) it a a good idea to quit and relaunch these every so often.

Animated Wallpapers

Animated or slide show wallpaper can really impact the performance of your machine so its a good idea to turn this off.

Firefox Overloaded With Extensions

There are loads of awesome Firefox extensions so its easy to get carried away and add too many. Take a few moments to go through your Add-ons (open Firefox and go to tools then Add-ons) and uninstall any you no longer use.

Internet Settings

If you are finding your browser slow try clearing the cache and deleting your history. In Safari you do this by going to the main menu and clicking Reset Safari, tick Clear History and Empty the Cache then Reset. In Firefox go to Preferences, Privacy and click the Clear Now button.

Favicons in Safari or Firefox

You may see an improvement in your browsers performance by deleting your cached Favicons, for Safari just delete the files in /Library/Safari/Icons. If you use Firefox 3 read this useful tutorial on macosxhints.

Massive Mailboxes

If you have a massive mailbox with thousands of messages it’s going to take longer to load. Try to delete messages you no longer need and split larger mailboxes into folders.

If you have any tips for speeding up your Mac, please leave a comment below.

Ask a question on ChrisWrites Q&A

43 Excellent Usability and Interface Design Books

Chris — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 19:13:18 +0000

If you want your site to reach its full potential it’s important that you have an understanding of how your visitors interact with it. Making your site easy to use can have a massive effect on conversions, sales or whatever goals you may have.

Here are a selection of excellent books covering the subject of usability and interaction design to get you started: