If you work in a shared office I’m sure at some stage you’ve come to a website where the music or narration started playing automatically and never gave you a choice?

If HP have put this level of thought into my online experience then I’m interested
in exploring their actual physical MediaSmart Server. Poor usability and design is the bain of my tech life so here’s a few free links for making such a thoughtful gesture.

HP MediaSmart Server
Use it to back up your files, remotely access your PC, share and stream digital media

Custom illustrations are a great way to bring something unique to your web site and can really enhance content heavy websites.

I’ll upload the other illustrations later in the week and possibly a screen grab of the new website which is being designed by EdenWeb. The other illustrations in the series are for

• Coastal
• Wetlands & river corridors
• Gardens
• Woodlands, trees & hedgerows
• and Grasslands habitats.

Contact me directly for more information. All work is copyright EdenWeb>Peter Knight.

On Friday I spent a few hours at Microsoft’s European Product Development Centre in Dublin with Reeves Little previewing project Gatineau and running through some of the new features being built into their upcoming website Analytics program.

I’d been a fan (and customer) of analytics company and product, DeepMetrix for several years and was interested to see how the product had evolved since the technology was bought by Microsoft in 2006 and what exactly Microsoft had brought to the analytics mix. Reeves is part of the team in Dublin that are building some new components into the product and was kind enough to ask me over and get involved in some user testing and sign up for the upcoming BETA programme.

I have to say, it’s looking really good for Microsoft’s foray into the web analytics arena.

The Gatineau user interface is looking fantastic and detailed levels of reporting now include info on visitor age and gender and will be invaluable for anyone selling goods or services across the web particularly those operating within specific demographics and eCommerce clients. Reeves pointed out that all of the age and gender info is pulled anonymously from Live ID to help avoid privacy issues.

An NDA prevents me from saying too much but I also got to play with several new modules that are being integrated into the BETA. Microsoft have created some very interesting ways to view visitor paths, funnel data , keyword and page view information.

Gatineau is planned to hit the web in late summer ‘07 and we’re looking forward to being involved in the Beta programme and doing some tyre kicking across our own sites.

More screenshots and info on Microsoft Analytics available over at the following websites.

• http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/want-to-see-gatineau.html
• http://www.liesdamnedlies.com/2007/07/microsoft-gatin.html
• http://microsoft.blognewschannel.com/archives/2007/07/23/gatineau-finally-revealed-with-screenshots/
• http://www.liveside.net/blogs/main/archive/2007/07/23/a-sneak-peek-at-gatineau-microsoft-s-web-analytics-tool.aspx

Reeves’s den over at Microsoft Ireland!

I’ve seen this technique appear now across several web sites from DELL to RTE to CNET.

1. Do a search for the item and choose 6 sites from the hundreds available. All 6 are from the first search results page.
2. I have a quick browse through each site and choose the 3 sites that are actually usable, well designed, have relevant information and appear trustworthy.
   Side note: I don’t consciously ‘choose’ these – the sites are just effortless to use and a natural choice.
3. I drop a site because they don’t have my item in stock.
4. I drop another site because because the ‘view larger image’ opens a pop-up window that is the same size as the thumbnail (how annoying is that!)
5. I do an ‘add to basket’ on the final site and fill out my details.
6. The ‘Add your details’ is insisting on some information I just can’t give (details below) and because it’s a ‘mandatory field’ the cart is refusing my order.
7. I leave the site and give up.

In fact, I’d say about 25% of all my online purchases fail because the form fields on eCommerce sites are badly configured, broken or have shopping cart systems thats just plain confusing. And I work in the field as a Web Designer so I’m comfortable with eCommerce and having to ‘work around’ usability flaws.

And it’s not just “Sheila’s flower shop” or your local DVD store with the tiny web presence and some technically brilliant but unusable e-Cart software that is losing them customers at the last step of a purchase. Larger companies that spend massive amounts of money on R&D, Compliance, Strategy and User Experience can get it wrong too and here’s a nice example of that in action.

I’ve seen a product that I want to buy and the site is integrated with Google’s new Checkout shopping cart.

I add my details to the payment form. Name, email, phone and country are all fine.

The postal code field (high lighted above in red) is mandatory and insists that I add it here. My address (and most addresses in Ireland outside of Dublin city) doesn’t have a postal code so I usually add ‘NA’ or ‘NONE’ when shopping online to circumvent this. That won’t work here because not only is the postal code required but the web site thinks that a postal code is a certain amount of letters or numbers long and is trying to shoe horn my details through their mandatory fields.

Thinking that the tiny question mark icon beside the Postal Code field will tell me how to get round this issue and allow me to order my product, I click on it. This opens a new window at the An Post web site.

It looks promising and someone is thinking in the right direction but this site just helps me locate my local post office. It doesn’t help me find my postcode and even if I had one, it doesn’t help me find it. I eventually go back to the check out page and try a few more hacks and give up. I was only shopping for a Letterbox but now I think I’ll just drive into town and buy one in a real shop.

So in closing, I understand that certain fields are consistent and can be made mandatory across most sites on the web.
For example

• All credit cards are 16 digits long and have an expiry date
• All credit cards have a 6 digit Card Verification Value on the back
• All credit cards have a name or company name and associated address

but other details which we take for granted or assume are global often just don’t translate to a one-size-fits-all format. Worse still, some details are driven by user preferences. IE an email address may not match my company domain name because I don’t want to be spammed at work.

So, when it comes to mandatory form field Vs user preference or regional fromatting, the retailer will loose but the consumer won’t win either. The biggest wastage for both in the example above is that it took me hours of searching for this product and dismissing several other sites to get to that particular website. With the average website losing 9 out of every 10 customers, its a real pity that the final site fell at the last hurdle.

Incidentally, doing a quick Google on the whole mandatory fields issue has brought me to this post from Tom Raftery who is having similar postcode trouble with Yahoo.

I’ve always found Google Analytics to be really unusable and the interface was overly complicated but these are probably legacy issues that Google inherited when they bought Urchin. I’m looking forward to this upgrade based on the following statement from Trevor over at Google’s Inside Adwords blog.

The new version of Google Analytics has a more intuitive look and feel, with greater clarity in the navigation between reports. In addition to the new interface, we’ve added many new features including a customizable reports dashboard, scheduled emailing of reports, improved geographic map view, and over-time graphs for at-a-glance analysis.

There’s an updated Interactive demo available too.

]]> http://www.edenweb.co.uk/blog/2007/05/google-analytics-gets-an-upgrade/feed/ 3 http://www.edenweb.co.uk/blog/2007/05/on-the-way-up/ http://www.edenweb.co.uk/blog/2007/05/on-the-way-up/#comments Tue, 08 May 2007 10:19:28 +0000 peter http://www.edenweb.co.uk/blog/2007/05/08/on-the-way-up/ What could a site redesign do for your business? All numbers are going in the right direction for this client after their site was relaunched by EdenWeb in early December 2006.

We took this screenshot of their website statistics in the first week of May and expect May, June, July and August to be even busier.
A fuller post and case study are in the works.

It’s not without it’s problems as obviated by some of the comments on his blog, but this is the start of a better Captcha solution and Nicolas has done a great job. Some of those CAPTCHAs are not even readable by humans!

By the way – you probably encounter CAPTCHAs all the time and just didn’t know what they were called. Visit Wikipedia for more.

The EdenWeb homepage has been updated with a new top banner and an updated value proposition. I’ve also added a new Company and Design Services page which I’ll be updating over time (some services are not yet listed). Interestingly enough, the ‘holding page’ we had for several months (even a year) hasn’t really had a huge effect on new work coming in. My biggest regret to scrapping the old site is the obvious effect that removing all that content has had on certain Search Engine rankings.
In hindsight, if I was to do this again, I’d probably take the following approach instead of just replacing all content with a holding page…

1. Keep outdated content online
   The long term vaue of your search engine visbility may be more important than the relevance of your content!If your site has good Search Engine visibility, is ’spidered’ successfully by Google and Co. and is bringing in decent volumes of tracffic then keep it live until you’re ready to do an intelligent modular update or a complete redesign. Furthermore, if you’ve got a good Page Rank then you’ll want a miminum disruption to the value of a good PR.Obviously, if that content in question is pricing or product information then you have to make your own call. In my case, the content ‘missing’ was more a lack of a current gallery, outdated date design services info and a new logo design and strapline that were all in the works.
2. Add newer design work in the form of an updated gallery/portfolio
   If you don’t have time to update descriptions of your design services, then at least update the actual design examples. In our case, our design services are obviously visual. People come to the site looking for visuals. Even if the design services page doesn’t have any information on Presentation , Icon and Diagram design, they’ll get the idea once they see the updated gallery.
3. Start blogging
   Instead of culling the News, add a blog to your site and keep people informed of company developments. It’s the easiest way to add relevant industry and company news to your site and a few montly updates can keep the site fresh while the main content is static.There’s a good PDF on the subject at Tom Raferty’s post on Business Benefits of Blogging
   • Word Press – http://wordpress.org/
   • Blogger – http://www.blogger.com/start
4. Ask permission!
   Add a newletter signup and start building your contact list. If you’re concerened that your site is out of date, can see passing traffic through your stats and want to at least catch some details, you will find that interested parties are only too happy to add themselves to your contact database.
   This way, you can keep people informed of the new launch even inform them of your updates along the way.
   • Campaign Monitor – http://www.campaignmonitor.com/
   • Vertical Response (now with a Salesforce plugin) – http://www.verticalresponse.com/
5. Rewire the site
   Turn the navigation into PHP includes (is your hosting plan supports this). Keep the same navigation and the same links but do some rewiring here in anticiaption of all links and navigation items changing with the new design. PHP includes will allow you to rapidly update the site with newer navigation later on as multiple pages can be updated instantly. Introduce CSS into the pages (yes, my site was really that old!) so the overall changes to the look and feel are again easier (and quicker) to roll out.
   • Blacknight Hosting – http://www.blacknight.ie/
   • Hosting 365 – http://www.hosting365.com/
6. Start updating the content gradually and pushing it out live
   Obvious enough. Even one page at a time can make a big difference. In our own case, I introduced some simple content changes that made a massive difference to the overall feedback we were getting and a jump in enquiries from the contact page.
7. Rework the overall template and introduce a new homepage
   Thats a whole different can of worms. Talk to a design expert :O)
   

So thats basically what I would do now instead of replacing everything with a holding page.
Apart from suffering a slip in visibility on search engines for key services, we didn’t do too badly. Each company is a different case and we had the benefit of most of our work being word of mouth/referrals. You may want to try the above approach or even try a blended approach (holding page and link to old site).

Whichever method you choose, I can recommend the blog, newsletter signup and newsletter/blog updates as the best way to keep your site current until you launch your new site.

]]> http://www.edenweb.co.uk/blog/2006/10/updated_edenweb_web_site/feed/ 4 http://www.edenweb.co.uk/blog/2006/10/podcasting-for-housing-development/ http://www.edenweb.co.uk/blog/2006/10/podcasting-for-housing-development/#comments Sun, 22 Oct 2006 13:38:02 +0000 peter http://www.edenweb.co.uk/blog/2006/10/22/podcasting-for-housing-development/ I was pleasantly suprised to see some signage in Liffey Valley last week for the St Edmunds development that promoted a PodCast for the Apartments. It’s great to see some new marketing techniques being pioneered by the Irish estate agents.

Now if they’d just organise some decent Virtual Tours :O)

The Podcast is available over at stedmunds.ie. I wonder what the response has been to the Podcast. How many downloads etc.


*Added* Bernie has picked up the Podcast over at his IrishEyes Blog

]]> http://www.edenweb.co.uk/blog/2006/10/podcasting-for-housing-development/feed/ 0 http://www.edenweb.co.uk/blog/2006/10/bootcamp-2006/ http://www.edenweb.co.uk/blog/2006/10/bootcamp-2006/#comments Thu, 12 Oct 2006 16:53:01 +0000 peter http://www.edenweb.co.uk/blog/2006/10/12/bootcamp-2006/

I’ve been meaning to post about the iQ 2006 Boot Camp for a while and since we’ve been invited to speak in the GURU slot, now seems like as good a time as ever.

If you haven’t yet registered, you can hear the guys present, educate, inform and charm over 9 x 1/2 day workshops from October 17th to 19th in Dublin’s Morrison Hotel.
This year’s Boot Camp is focused on helping you to understand your customers better so that you can drive action and deliver measurably better online results.
Workshops include

• Better usability and interactivity with Ajax
• Get into the minds of your users: Profiling your audience with personas
• Accessibility 2.0: How the new guidelines affect you and your website
• Writing for the web: The essential techniques
• Getting more from your intranet
• Web analytics: Learn how to measure your website’s success (or failure)
• Rapid-fire user-testing
• Write to sell and persuade online
• Drive more traffic to your website

Register on the iQ Content site.

]]> http://www.edenweb.co.uk/blog/2006/10/bootcamp-2006/feed/ 1 http://www.edenweb.co.uk/blog/2006/09/web-analytics/ http://www.edenweb.co.uk/blog/2006/09/web-analytics/#comments Tue, 19 Sep 2006 08:35:34 +0000 peter http://www.edenweb.co.uk/blog/2006/09/19/web-analytics/ One of our favourite web stats providers has been bought by Microsoft and are no longer taking new signups. It’s a real shame because we have several new clients who we were ready to sign up to DeepMetrix and their excellent visitor tracking service.

While researching alternatives, I notice that CrazyEgg has just done a softlaunch and has started to take signups. One of the more interesting features that a lot of Web Analytics developers are pushing out are the use of ‘Heat Maps’ which display the ‘hot’ areas on your page by recording mouse movements and clicks etc.



]]> http://www.edenweb.co.uk/blog/2006/09/web-analytics/feed/ 7 http://www.edenweb.co.uk/blog/2006/08/new-design-portfolio/ http://www.edenweb.co.uk/blog/2006/08/new-design-portfolio/#comments Thu, 10 Aug 2006 08:51:18 +0000 peter http://www.edenweb.co.uk/blog/2006/08/10/new-design-portfolio/ While we’re in the process of redesigning our site and bringing it up to date with our new Design and Marketing services, we’ve added some recent design work to our temp holding page.

Visit www.edenweb.ie and click on the Portfolio link on the top right of the page. Believe it or not, in the last 5/6 years we’ve never had our own design work on our site.

Anyway, please take a look and I’d love to hear your feedback.

P

]]> http://www.edenweb.co.uk/blog/2006/08/new-design-portfolio/feed/ 0 http://www.edenweb.co.uk/blog/2006/08/search-engine-strategies-2006/ http://www.edenweb.co.uk/blog/2006/08/search-engine-strategies-2006/#comments Tue, 08 Aug 2006 10:22:18 +0000 peter http://www.edenweb.co.uk/blog/2006/08/08/search-engine-strategies-2006/ SES 2006 is currently kicking off in San Jose, California.

Billed as ‘The Premier Event for Search Engine Marketing & Optimization’, attendees will learn


• how search engines list Web sites for free and through paid placements
• how to get free “organic” traffic by building a site that pleases search engines and your visitors
• how to efficiently purchase listings guaranteed to rank your company at the top of search engine results.
• how to calculate the ROI of your search marketing efforts by tracking your visitors from the time they hit your site until they buy—and get tips on improving conversion if they don’t!
• how to build links that generate traffic to your Web site, and how to avoid the penalties of “spamming” the search engines
• what’s coming next in the constantly evolving world of Web search, and how you can profit from those changes
]]> http://www.edenweb.co.uk/blog/2006/08/search-engine-strategies-2006/feed/ 0 http://www.edenweb.co.uk/blog/2006/07/how-to-live-happily-with-a-great-designer/ http://www.edenweb.co.uk/blog/2006/07/how-to-live-happily-with-a-great-designer/#comments Sun, 23 Jul 2006 16:29:01 +0000 peter http://www.edenweb.co.uk/blog/2006/07/23/how-to-live-happily-with-a-great-designer/ Why do some organizations look great… and get great results from their design efforts and ads… while others languish in mediocrity? I think it has little to do with who they hire and a lot to do with how they work with their agencies and designers.

Here are the things your design team wishes you would know:

1. If you want average (mediocre) work, ask for it. Be really clear up front that you want something beyond reproach, that’s in the middle of the road, that will cause no controversy and will echo your competition. It’ll save everyone a lot of time.

Seth Godin hits the spot with his post – How to live happily with a great designer

]]> http://www.edenweb.co.uk/blog/2006/07/how-to-live-happily-with-a-great-designer/feed/ 0 http://www.edenweb.co.uk/blog/2006/07/challenger-brands-understanding-the-technology-customer/ http://www.edenweb.co.uk/blog/2006/07/challenger-brands-understanding-the-technology-customer/#comments Tue, 18 Jul 2006 10:54:09 +0000 peter http://www.edenweb.co.uk/blog/2006/07/18/challenger-brands-understanding-the-technology-customer/ As the technology industry matures, marketers need to get closer to their customers. Marketing is becoming a key differentiator for startups and multinationals alike. Connect, learn and update your marketing toolbox.

RedHerring 2006
http://herringevents.com/CMO/index.html

]]> http://www.edenweb.co.uk/blog/2006/07/challenger-brands-understanding-the-technology-customer/feed/ 0 http://www.edenweb.co.uk/blog/2006/06/54/ http://www.edenweb.co.uk/blog/2006/06/54/#comments Tue, 27 Jun 2006 08:40:24 +0000 peter http://www.edenweb.co.uk/blog/2006/06/27/54/ Last week I was pleasantly suprised to encounter some great marketing/sales ideas in the Lake District from 2 small businesses who were obviously very web-aware.

The first was a small interiors/furniture shop in Keswick. After casually browsing for several minutes it was time to leave. As we were passing the checkout the owner/manager thanked us for coming in and asked us if we’d like details of their web site. She pulled 2 business cards from a big bowl on the counter and wished us a good day.
Really nice touch there. So very obvious and effective yet I’ve actually never encountered this before. And yes I did visit her web site and it does have eCommerce facilities and now her ’shop’ is open to me 24/7 as opposed to just walking out and possibly never being in that shop again. I’d love to see more retail outfits doing this.

The other business was a camping/outdoors shop. More about that later.

]]> http://www.edenweb.co.uk/blog/2006/06/54/feed/ 0 http://www.edenweb.co.uk/blog/2006/06/seo-1st-place-guaranteed/ http://www.edenweb.co.uk/blog/2006/06/seo-1st-place-guaranteed/#comments Fri, 16 Jun 2006 09:18:35 +0000 peter http://www.edenweb.co.uk/blog/2006/06/16/seo-1st-place-guaranteed/ Some Search Engine Marketing firm has been spamming us with ‘compelling’ offers such as

First place guaranteed in Google
Get listed in under a week on page one of all the major search engines

etc etc

If this caught your attention and seems like an attractive, quick and easy way to remedy low search engine positions, then you need to be aware of something very simple. Nobody can guarantee you a no. 1 ranking in Google, Yahoo or any of the other Search Engines for anything. Read the spam again and you’ll find the offer is vague and scant on the specifics on what they will get you to no.1 for..
What they probably can get you high (even 1st place) listings for is your company name.

Thats fair enough. I know quite a few companies that would love to be more visible on search engines for their company name and it wouldn’t be a huge challenge to get them there either. You see, chances are your company name is quite unique and there are not a huge amount of other firms competing to be at no. 1 position for that name. However, Keywords that people use to find your business are another matter entirely and it’s here that you really want to be visible.

Example: Imagine your family business makes hand-made Greenhouses and your company name is Adamsons. Yes, you want to be found for people searching for ‘Adamsons’ but you definitely want to be found for the relevant real-world keywords and phrases that people are using to find your services.

• Hand made greenhouses
• Greenhouse europe
• Red cedar greenhouse
  etc etc

Getting to number 1 in any search engine for those particualr phrases could be extremley difficult depending on the amount of competitors you have who are jostling for the same space. Without knowing specifics and doing a genuine levels of detailed research on your industry, customers and competitors there is no way any Marketing company could presume to guarantee you a 1st place listing anywhere except probably your mail’s spam-folder!

]]> http://www.edenweb.co.uk/blog/2006/06/seo-1st-place-guaranteed/feed/ 0 http://www.edenweb.co.uk/blog/2006/05/edenweb-newsletter-free-design-and-marketing-tips/ http://www.edenweb.co.uk/blog/2006/05/edenweb-newsletter-free-design-and-marketing-tips/#comments Tue, 09 May 2006 15:01:49 +0000 peter http://www.edenweb.co.uk/blog/2006/05/09/edenweb-newsletter-free-design-and-marketing-tips/ We’re kicking off the EdenWeb Design and Marketing newsletter this summer.

Written exclusively for Marketing Executives, Entrepreneurs and Business Managers, our newsletter will give you FREE leading-edge Design and Marketing tips that will help you grow your business successfully Design for Digital Marketing.

There’s nothing like being in the Design and Marketing engine room of a large hi-tech company. These guys have serious ambition, knowledge and experience in the global Marketing arena. We’ve been privileged to work alongside several of the finest UK and Irish companies over the past 6 years and are now bringing this ambition, knowledge and experience to you!

If you have a business or look after the marketing of a company web site, then you’re about to receive some truly great FREE Design and Marketing tips that will significantly increase the value of your web site.
Anyone can sign up. Look for the form at the bottom of edenweb.ie

]]> http://www.edenweb.co.uk/blog/2006/05/edenweb-newsletter-free-design-and-marketing-tips/feed/ 3 http://www.edenweb.co.uk/blog/2006/04/personas-and-scenarios-for-better-web-sites/ http://www.edenweb.co.uk/blog/2006/04/personas-and-scenarios-for-better-web-sites/#comments Fri, 21 Apr 2006 09:22:10 +0000 peter http://www.edenweb.co.uk/blog/2006/04/21/personas-and-scenarios-for-better-web-sites/ EdenWeb met a client recently that expressed an interest in redevloping their web site. It’s a fairly large corporate web site and these guys are industry leaders with a name that is internationally recognised. In light of this, the focus of our efforts would not necessarily be to educate people that they exist, but rather, to get a better picture of the type of people that are using their site. When we have a more thorough understanding of the WHO (type of people using their site) and an expanded view of the WHY (what these people require from the web site) then we can end up with a web site that is
• easier to use
• meets user requirements more effectively
• increases the repeat visitors
  etc etc

If we fail to get a better understanding of the type of visitors the site has and the requirements these users have then redeveloping the site would simply be an ‘event’ – an exercise that has happened for no real purpose. The client might end of with a nicer site but not necessarily a better site.

If you’re interested in reading more, then the guys at iQ Content have added great article called
How personas and scenarios can change your website for the better.

Happy reading.

]]> http://www.edenweb.co.uk/blog/2006/04/personas-and-scenarios-for-better-web-sites/feed/ 0