The site's going to be undergoing some incremental changes over the next few days as I migrate to a new design. There might be a few hiccups, but bear with me ;)

Thanks for visiting, and thanks to Alex for the super work on the site!

The mother load of links on this subject.

"Poll: What web stats service do you use?"
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum39/905.htm

Right now it's 10 pages and 136 messages. Then there are all these related threads and probably lots more:

"Page based stats vs.log stats"
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum39/598.htm

"Log Analysis vs. Outsourced (3rd Party)"
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum39/1023.htm

One of the most actionable manifestos yet to come out of the ChangeThis project is this latest one by Oliva&Toscani. Whether you agree or disagree with the One-Minute Site Manifesto, there is some compelling advice here. Find out more at http://www.oneminutesite.com.

This manifesto fits squarely into the way bloggers have treated their home pages for some time now. The home page is meant to 'engage your visitors personally - something that a blog is born to do! So many sites have brochure-ware remnants on their sites that are no longer applicable in today's web environment.

Read, enjoy!

So, I'm running down my checklist of website 'to do's' for BlogSavant when Toby kindly reminds me that I've forgotten the privacy policy. Thanks Toby!

In an effort to make this as painless as possible, I sought out expert resources. Thanks Google!

Here's a few links that might be of value if you're working on a Privacy Policy for you, your company, or your client.

• Privacy policy, a chapter from Hot Text, Web Writing that Works (PDF, 255K, or about 5 minutes at 56K)
  
• The DMA's Privacy Policy Generator
  
• OECD Privacy Statement Generator
  
• Sample Privacy Policy
  
• Privacy Policy Analysis
  
• Another Sample Privacy Policy

Bryan Eisenberg wrote an insightful article on making the pages of your website into "resolving doors." In essence, what you're trying to do is get your visitors to meet your objectives by helping them achieve theirs. Sounds simple, right? Well, in reality, it's pretty damn hard to weave together a website based on what you think your customers might need in order to get to the decision you want them to make (i.e., convert at your site).

In writing my site plan for BlogSavant, I've been working with my able bodied web designer on just that. How do we weave together a 'story' for the visitor to get them through the decision cycle. I know, none of this is rocket science, and academically, it's not hard to comprehend. But when you get down to the gnat's ass detail of it all, there's really a lot of hard work that goes into trying to get it right.

Bryan highlights an example from the diamond world that we're trying to do with weblogs:

David will spend time reading the page and getting an overview about diamonds. He needs all the facts and details. Notice there are quite a few links on the page. Most are points of resolution for David. He may want to dig deeper and learn about the four Cs, diamond certification, or diamond shapes.

None of these links are actually related to the sales process Leo Schachter wants David to engage in. Yet these links, and the information on the pages, are intended to give David confidence and move him closer to a purchase decision in the buying process.

A Web site's strength is in its interactivity. Interactivity is best utilized when it provides visitors with both call-to-action and point-of-resolution hyperlinks.

Gerry McGovern brings up an important point this week on the issue facing many web dev departments tasked with maintaining large websites on a razor thin staff.

Attention to content is typically very episodic. Departments get together, decide what will go on the website, pick, pull and drag content from all areas of the company, and maybe even write some original stuff if there's any time, and throw it on the website in a hurculean effort to get it launched. Then it sits. Then more content is added, and it too sits. Why? Because no one has time to review it or update it or remove it because they're so focused on creating more never-to-be-reviewed-again content.

A couple of ideas that you can use...

1. Create a standing web content committee and segment out the content for review at individual times
   
2. Keep detailed analytics on how much the 'fresh content' vs. the 'stale content' are contributing to the goals of the site (i.e. new product information generating the most leads...)
   
3. Track each and every piece of added content, it's author, and the experation date. If there's no expiration date, per se, consider putting a review date on the content to ensure that you review it for terms and concepts that might be relevant at publish time, but will change in the next few months.
   
4. This problem has been solved by many content management software packages such as Hannon Hill who offers powerful content management solutions which provide workflow and time based publishing rules for website content. If you're not using a CMS, consider investing in at least a low level system for high-churn areas of the site.

Skillset, the Sector Skills Council for the Audio Visual Industries (broadcast, film, video, interactive media and photo imaging), is currently conducting a national research project looking into the roles, functions and skills of people working in all aspects of the interactive media sector. We need to know the skills and qualifications that are needed in order to produce innovative, high quality, interactive products.

The initial considerations and results from this research have been compiled and are available here. They are also interested in your feedback and comments. Keep in mind that this is a UK based project, but it's merits and ultimate results could be very influential if not decisive as interactive media companies struggle to find qualified talent and adequately develop the talent that exists in their four walls.

In particular, the Interactive Media Skills Group wants to know if people agree with the 'Solutions and Recommendations' section and ideas on how industry could implement them.

Now, given that things change quickly, how are they going to make recommendations that aren't immediately dated, I hear you ask?

The problem is that a lot of the research, as they admit, "pre-dates the dot-com crash and can therefore no longer be considered reliable". You can say that again.

However, what research they have points to broadly the same trends and issues. Which are:

1. The industry has a requirement for a broad range of hybrid specialist and general skills and functional flexibility
   
2. New entrants are not fully equipped to meet the needs of the industry (read "it's easier to start them off making the tea")
   
3. Post-entry skills acquisition is primarily through self-directed learning, coaching and mentoring (read "fire-fighting like crazy")
   
4. Experience is valued more than vocational qualifications (though most practitioners have degrees)
   
5. There are shortages of experienced practitioners and of individuals with the right combinations of skills
   
6. There are gaps in general transferable life, work and business skills
   
7. Traditional 'training solutions' are unlikely to work - flexibility and modularity are key

Found this nifty little resource for evaluating websites today. Simple, but effective. There are more validators and auto-reviewers at this Web Pro World post that are just as interesting.

SiteReportCard provides free website analysis, optimization and promotion reports. Our tools offer valuable information to help improve your web pages and increase your search engine ranking. We provide detailed reports on various aspects of your web pages including:

• Broken Links
  
• Misspelled Words
  
• HTML Validation
  
• Load Time Analysis
  
• Meta Tag Optimization
  
• Image Optimization
  
• Search Engine Inclusion
  
• Site Popularity
  
• Keyword Analysis

Troy Janisch wrote a quick and interesting piece on the subject of Paper Prototyping for websites. In spite of all the great tech-tools available for wireframing, flowcharting, process mapping, and the like, nothing beats a good whiteboard and notebook for getting things off the ground!

Paper prototyping is a fast, low-cost method of testing web site designs. It involves creating rough sketches of a web site design and inviting some of your users to take the design for a test drive using their pen, instead of a mouse, to complete important tasks.

There is even a book on the subject! Paper Prototyping: The Fast and Easy Way to Design and Refine User Interfaces

[via Wisconsin Technology Network - How Good Does Your Web Site Look on Paper?]

I really do love web programming, but do so little of it now, compared to the mid 90's when I was in school and working on the St. Norbert site, among others. Back then, having a copy of HomeSite was a godsend, and I was a TA teaching web-dev classes at school and encouraging the students to hand code in Notepad. I really do miss it, which is why I keep up this site and take on pro-bono projects that I have a passion for.

My latest stab at web design & coding is for the SNC SIFE group. I'm working on this site, which has some unique constraints.
- I can't use any type of CMS because the server doesn't support any scripting (college warehouse space basically)
- I can't really use forms (I don't think??) due to the aforementioned.
- I have 3 days to do the entire site
- I don't know how to use Photoshop very well (look at the site, you can tell I'm learning as I go!)

Nevertheless, I love doing this stuff. As much as I move further away from being "hands on" with technology in my career roles, I still keep coming back to it because it's just such a great challenge and is so much fun!

Hey, if you have any ideas for improvement on the site, I'm open to suggestions!

I was just pondering a discussion this morning about website CMS tools when this article from EContentMag came through, discussing how great dynamic content sites are. Mike Maziarka, director at Cap Ventures, with whom I spoke on a panel at Seybold last year, is quoted extensively throughout the article.

Dynamic website content, tailored to the visitor, is one of the holy grails of the personalized site experience. Just when you thought you were cool because your site was database driven and could be easily updated by your marketing admin through a great CMS tool - imagine now having that person updating several databases, all feeding the same site, based on user profiling performed at the site, dynamically of course, as the user interacts w/ the site.

Of course this is expensive, but if you can generate leads/sales & ROI from it, then the sales & marketing teams that feed sites will come to justify this type of system in the near future, for those sites that warrant such interactivity.

For most sites, their primary purpose is to provide content to visitors, but the real trick is presenting the most relevant content for any given visitor at any particular moment in time. If a site suffers from "static cling", as they call it, the content is essentially hard coded, rarely changes and can only be altered by a webmaster making manual revisions. Although products like Macromedia Contribute and Atomz Site-Centered Content Management provide ways to make quick site changes without affecting the underlying design or code, these solutions only simplify manual updates, doing nothing to drive content that's based on variable conditions. Vastly more desirable is the ability to have content appear on the site in a dynamic fashion. Often, this means leveraging data learned about the visitor on the fly—like where they navigate, what they read, and how long they spend in a given area—then pulling information and images from a central content repository so that only the most appropriate (or at least somewhat more appropriate) content appears. Ultimately, dynamic content translates into return visits because your content is fresh and meaningful to the visitor each and every time.

[via EContent Magazine]

Cade came across a "new-to-me" HTML feature today on ForgetFoo.com called the "acronym" tag. Pretty good tidbit to know...

You should define an acronym whenever you use it, or at least once per post. Who benefits?

1. Michael benefits. When Michael hovers his cursor over an acronym, Opera displays the acronym title as a tooltip.
2. Bill benefits. Mozilla goes even further, automatically rendering acronyms with a dotted underline. When Bill hovers his cursor over the acronym, Mozilla changes the cursor to a cursor + question mark, and then displays the acronym title as a tooltip. (You can override this default behavior with cascading style sheets, or use CSS to get a similar effect in other browsers.)
3. Google benefits. Google indexes the acronym title as well as the acronym itself, so people can find your site whether they search for the acronym or the spelled-out description.
4. I wish I could say that Jackie benefits, but she doesn't. Neither JAWS nor any of the other screen readers on the market currently support reading the titles of acronyms. I hope some day they will, and then you'll be ahead of the game.

How to do it

The first time you use an acronym, mark it up with an tag, like this:
CSS

No, this is not BS

While I'm not always a fan of Jakob Nielsen, I agree with what he has to say about making your B2B site help your fans convince their bosses.

What web companies sometimes forget when they are designing clients' B2B sites is that B2B buyers go through a buying cycle and have established processes. In fact, when I was in sales, I always asked my business buyers "What do you need from me to help you sell this..."

This same thing applies with B2B websites - which is where "The Advocacy Kit" comes in.

Check out managing e-loyalty through experience design, a three-year project to test theory, review current literature and conduct research in three areas:

»trust development in e-business
»culturally sensitive interface design
»adaptive designs for mobility

Their latest work is on the localization of interface design, drawing upon limited experiments and surveys in Boston, Munich, Tokyo and Vancouver. ( Here's their latest academic paper, .pdf)

More practical details can be found in their corporate report. (you'll have to provide your name and email)

Data collection involved a survey, online task, and interviews in order to elaborate differences across cultures related to trusting online payment security preferences, degree to which a company is considered legitimate and has a solid reputation, the type of assurance in after sales attention desired, and preferences for design elements.

For the online task participants responded to a local version of the Samsung website, and a foreign version (which was the Hong Kong site in each case). When the site was activated, participants were asked to explore the site, observe its attributes, and test for navigation.

[Thanks to Colin McKay for this]

http://www.clicklab.com/cl/

So, I've had this site design up for a while, I've never swapped out the stock photos (no, that's not really me), and I'm seeking to add some new things.

So, if the 3 people that read this feed or visit this site on a regular basis could give me some feedback on what you, the regular readers would like to see, or see changed, I'm all ears and would love to hear it.

Please post your comments, questions, critiques and ideas in the comment section.

Thanks!

A class full of shy high school kids have completely re-done their school web site in Flash in Summit School District, Frisco, Colorado.

We weren't learning anything nearly this cool back in high school!

The project put the students' problem-solving abilities to the test when they realized that most people's home computer monitors had too low a resolution to handle the freshly designed site. "We had it all ready to go when we realized we had to start over," Karden said. "It took probably another week of class to get it fixed." The students have programmed the new SHS Web site entirely by hand, using HTML, JavaScript and Macromedia Flash. As project manager, Adams has learned leadership, management and organizational skills that belie her 14 years. "The hardest part was making sure sections got done when they needed to," Adams said. "It got stressful when I had to say, 'Have you gotten this done? Why not? I need you to do this.'" Adams acted as a liaison between Karden and her classmates, took responsibility for delegating sections of the project to them and navigated their work through a series of deadlines. "It's nice to learn how to be in charge and work with people's different needs and abilities," she said. "I'm really proud of how it all came out. I think we worked as a good team to make a professional-looking site."

[via Summit Daily News - STUDENTS redesign SHS Web site]

Thanks to an AMA InternetSIG member for this resource. This is another great synopsis of some research-based web design concepts.

Designing a website that takes into account the human element requires both an understanding of our nature as well as our physiological limitations. Usable websites incorporate human tendencies and limitation into its overall design.

Criteria for optimal web design (designing for usability): Software Usability Research Lab, Dept of Psychology, Wichita State University

I came across this site today, "The Unofficial Cookie FAQ".

The site is chock-full over every detail on Cookies that you never knew...such as where the name Cookie comes from.

According to an article written by Paul Bonner for Builder.Com on 11/18/1997:

"Lou Montulli, currently the protocols manager in Netscape's client product division, wrote the cookies specification for Navigator 1.0, the first browser to use the technology. Montulli says there's nothing particularly amusing about the origin of the name: 'A cookie is a well-known computer science term that is used when describing an opaque piece of data held by an intermediary. The term fits the usage precisely; it's just not a well-known term outside of computer science circles.'"

W3Schools: Browser Statistics
Browser trends is important information. What we you can read from the statistics here, is that Internet Explorer 6 is the dominating browser, XP is the most popular operating system, and most users are using a display with 800x600 pixels or more, with a color depth of at least 65K colors.

Better yet, why the hell would I want to buy the services of an Information Architect for my next web project? That is, if I even can explain to my manager what an IA is and does! I love what these guys do, but they need a better sales pitch. Ask 10 people if they know what Semiotics is. There, I've made my point.

From SellingIA, here are some approaches to consider. Frankly, these sound OK to me. I might just be interested in buying now...

* ROI - cost justifying
* shortening time to market/launch
* reducing risk through analyis and ProtoTypes
* strengthing brand communication
* innovating and establishing competitive advantages
* public relations payoffs for friendlier design & increased customer satisfaction
* reduced cost of redesign due to strategic design laid down now
* well thought out structures leads to consistency which can empower others/partners to produce synergistic products/services

Generally speaking, SellingIA has more to do with cost justifying the return on investment to internal buyers rather than direct selling to the client since most IA projects don't exist in isolation, coming part and parcel with the actual development.

To me, one of the most challenging things of working with web developers is trying to convey the concept of 'thinking like the customer' and designing for usability, not just for the sake of technology. Oddly enough, the arguments are sometimes just as tough when facing the CEO, at least when it comes to the topic of the ROI of web site Usability.

Here's is Rashmi Sinha's has astounding set of links to articles about the usability/ROI connection.
via Lockergnome

Many top marketers show, not tell, by using online demos to vividly illustrate the benefits and features of their products and services. This is especially true in the b-to-b world, where products and services often can’t be fully appreciated in a few lines of copy on a Web site page. http://www.btobonline.com/netMarketing/index.html

OK, so this is an adaptation of Jamie Kiley's article "Top 7 Things I Wish I'd Known About Web Design," but the bottom line is, MANY web designers still don't have a grasp on these things.

1. Reading and research is incredibly valuable. Can't stress this one enough. This a truly a fast-moving medium and you need to stay on top of things.

2. It's imperative to understand the target audience and the primary goal for
every client. Really! Why else did you think you were designing it?

3. A basic understanding of copywriting and the value of CONTENT is imperative. Yeah, your little design is great. Now, how are people going to find me so I can make money?

4. It helps immensely to narrow your own target market as a designer.

5. Web designers should be marketers, first and foremost. This is my favorite one. Bottom line, you need to satisfy a need of an intended audience. You need to know how to market to that audience, and how your site supports the customer's go-to-market strategy.

6. The point of graphic design is to engage the audience and effect a desired outcome. You primary goal is NOT to just create something that looks pretty.

7. Knowing the rules is good, and knowing when to break them is better.

Related Resources: [Makiko Itoh] questions to ask your "web designer" before hiring

This has got to be the worst acquistion mechanism snafu that I've seen in some time.

So, I'm on the SPSS website looking at some web analytics products. Having been convinced that they might have something for me, I click on the well placed "Contact Sales" button at the bottom of the page I was just reading.

Upon clicking on the "Contact Sales" button, I'm asked to login. You want me to WHAT? Login? To your site? You mean, I have to get a username and password to your site just to have someone call me to try to sell me something? What the hell is this crap?

A List Apart featured a piece called "The Perfect 404." I'm a big fan of custom 404 pages, the just make sense while presenting the user with the message that you care about their site experience.

Welcome to the world of the Error 404 page. You've requested a page -- either by typing a URL directly into the address bar or clicking on an out-of-date link and you've found yourself in the middle of cyberspace nowhere. http://www.alistapart.com/articles/perfect404/

Jack Aaronson is talking about "beyond the browser" in ClickZ today. Jack. We've already moved beyond the browser. Dozens of companies are using things like Flash Remoting to extend the capabilities of their site through highly interactive rich-media pieces of their site. Many site designers realize that we've moved beyond the page-based paradigm in web design and are now breaking into more "application development." than ever before.

What I'd like to focus on is this: What does this transition mean for the small developer?

When I was in college back in 1994, I was doing small time web dev for the college and a freelance client. Many others around me were doing sites as freelance work with basic HTML skills. Up until now, you could still get away with this. Many freelancers (most from graphic design roots) have become good web designers and even picked up HTML along the way.

Enter .NET:

We experienced this little transition within my last employer when we were deciding to move to .NET while simultaneously deciding to incorporate more Flash-based rich-media into the site. Where did we draw the lines? IT wanted to do the .NET stuff, but they wouldn't touch Flash? How can you seperate the two when they are now so intertwined? Moreoever, how does this bode for the graphic designer/web developer who is NOT an application developer by nature?

I don't have any answers in this post. Stay tuned for more. However, the point is, we will get to a day when rich-media in the "application based paradigm" vs. "page based paradigm" is the way of the web, for much of the web. HTML isn't going anywhere, but it's also not growing. Everything from project management nuances to freelancer's paychecks is about to change.

Popinteractive.com, a San Francisco web design firm, has put together a nifty checklist of things that you should review on and about your website as we head into the new year.

This year's checklist covers the following items:

1. Review Your Domain Name Record
2. Check Website Email Addresses
3. Update Your Confirmation and Automated Messages
4. Test Your Forms
5. Validate Your Links
6. Check Your Site's Search Feature
7. Check Your File Sizes and Download Times
8. Review Your Stylesheets, Standards, Accessibility and Compatibility
9. Update Your Time References and Copyright
10. Check Your Search Engine Visibility
10.5 Assess Your Site's Content & Features

I agree with all of those, but there are a few more business objectives that should be reviewed in concert with the technical ones.
11. Does your site still concur with corporate sales and marketing objectives - If the site was designed as a lead generator, and you only have one acquisition point, which is hard to find, the site may need to be brought in line with objectives
12. Give customers every opportunity to communicate with you - Phone, fax, email, postal, International, branch locations around the country should all be listed on the site, and easy to find from anywhere on the site. Just because a customer is reviewing your website, doesn't mean that that's the mode of communication they'll use to contact you.
13. Newsletter subscriptions - If you offer a newsletter, offer a persistent signup form everywhere on the site.
14. Design for the "lowest common technological denominator" - Be sure to test your site on multiple computers and browsers and monitor sizes. That great new Flash 7 feature that you added may not be so hot for all of your dialup visitors who are still on Flash 5 and will require a download before reviewing your newest feature.

The full checklist is available at:
http://www.popinteractive.com/webinsights/031231.htm

Boxes & Arrows: Natural Selections: Colors Found in Nature and Interface Design.

Perhaps no other design element has as much influence on how we feel in a space (a website, a home, etc.) as color. Colors can instantaneously change our moods and alter our opinions. They can make us comfortable, put us in a state of awe, or get us excited.

Naturally occurring color combinations have the potential to:

The department of Health and Human Resources has recently released a web design and usability guide based on two years of research. Although developed to help federal government sites, the guide offers common sense insights and suggestions that can be used for commerce and private sector websites.

The most interesting thing about this document is that is is heavily research-based - the bibliography alone is 13 pages of a 128 page document. Which, in the Internet space, is delicoius and refreshing. What the hell, anything that's research-based in the sales and marketing realm is refreshing.

Doubly amusing is that the foreward is written by our own Tommy Thompson, Wisconsin's former Governor turned Secretary of Health and Human Services.

http://usability.gov/pdfs/guidelines.html

**Downloader Beware: This bad-boy PDF is 39.2MB, and takes about 20 minutes to print on your average corporate laser printer.

Related Topics
Human-Computer Interaction Resources : Guidelines for Designing User Interface Software