Social media and social networking sites offer new opportunities for organizations to publish content and interact with their customers. So just what the heck is Facebook? Why would I upload video to YouTube? Who stole the “e” from Flickr? Answers to these questions and more in this post. Read the rest of this entry »
Social networking sites are incredibly popular, particularly with college students. In particular, Facebook stands out as having the most penetration into this demographic. So, from a marketing perspective, it only makes sense that Facebook is the perfect place for universities to focus their social marketing strategies.
Not so fast.
I get a lot of questions about how to make email newsletters visually appealing. While I understand the desire for adding some sizzle to your communications, This entry from design standards champion, Jeffrey Zeldman, outlines the pitfalls that await the HTML emailer.
The article, When is e-mail like a bad website?, deconstructs an HTML email sent from a major cell phone manufacturer, presumably with plenty of resources to perform usability testing (Be sure to look at the screenshots to see how mangled the messge gets). Read the rest of this entry »
Take a look at the following collection of New York City subway maps.
The maps on the left are very precise. They are geographically pure. This would be great if they were intended for geographers or anyone else who needs a precise map.
However, these are graphics to inform people who ride the subway. They could care less about the surrounding landscape. They just need to find the right transfer, to get in the right tube. The information and clarity of the subway lines themselves is what’s most important.
The maps on the right are redesigned with the user in mind. They clarify the relationship of the subway lines to one another. Geographical purity is sacrificed, but the result (in theory) is a happier and more civil subway commuter.
Who is your audience? Do they need every tiny detail? What can you remove to provide more clarity to the message.
Remember, design and communication is the practice of subtraction.
I get this question a lot: “how do I track how many people click through from my newsletter/ad/flux capacitor?” The best way to do it is to use Google’s URL Builder
What it does is tack on extra information to the URL for analytics tools (like Google Analytics and LiveStats) to chew on.
Here’s an example:
Eyetracking points the way to effective news article design is a fascinating article. The first two case studies in the article offer strong scientific evidence that a picture is not always worth a thousand words. The third case study has some disturbing insight into the male psyche.
People read faster and retain more if copy is formatted in a manner that is easily scanned, easy to read from top to bottom. That means subheads, bullets and good use of whitespace. This approach allows readers to answer the questions “where am I?”, “what am I reading?” and “do I want to be here?”
The bottom line is that good, clean text formatting is far more important than a random pretty picture. So be sure to ask yourself if the images you’re using are vital to the page you’re publishing.
Remember: good design is the practice of subtraction, not addition.
It’s been a long time since I’ve posted, but this topic has drawn me out from underneath my teetering inbox: electronic newsletters. Everybody’s doing them, or wants to. Why? We’re getting lean and mean. High-gloss print pieces are expensive and require longer lead times. Often we don’t have time to think past the next cup of coffee that will sustain us through the next sprint to the end of the next project.
So, are we spinning our wheels? What are the best practices? Are people even reading these things?
Well, because your Webmaster loves you, I went to great lengths to type “e-newsletter best practice” into Google. I found this gem: It’s time to raise the bar on e-newsletter best practices.
The best advice is item #1: Content is King. Seriously folks, this is 80% of the battle. Content trumps fancy design every time. If you’re pressed for time, groom the content. Get an editor to look at it. See if you can take out words. Make it punchy. Make it lean. Design is the art of subtraction and good writing is the art of reducing the number of words and making each word carry its weight.
This article is rich with good advice and required reading whether you’re thinking about doing a newsletter or want to improve your current newsletter.
Okay, I’m still reading How Google Finds Your Needle in the Web’s Haystack, but this much is clear:
PageRank is complicated.
My motivation for posting this is entirely selfish. Next time someone asks “can you tell Google to put my page at the top?” I can reply “that all depends on your eigenvalues, here’s a link.”
I don’t know about you, but in my experience, using the word eigenvalue usually puts an end to any conversation. 
I haven’t posted in awhile, and in the spirit of today’s link, I’m just going to post on something.
Here’s a interesting 37signals article on building and maintaining momentum on your Web site (amongst other things). Sometimes, when you don’t know what to do, work on the things that are easy to fix. Clean up the dusty corners of your site. Go ahead and fix that weird line break. Find out why that photo looks a tad wonky.
Now, whether or not you think that this approach is what helped clean up New York City is a whole other discussion. Bottom line, make it look like someone cares.
So sayeth Nielsen Media in a recent study.
Some quick numbers from the article:
Unfortunately, the article doesn’t talk much about the demographics of the 400 iPod users they sampled. It would be interesting to run a similar study of college student iPod use where lecture videos were available via iTunes.