IT'S BROKEN

Convince me first

nospam@example.com (Adriana Beal) — Sun, 17 May 2009 18:23:00 -0500

How many times have you seen a link to an online resource that seemed interesting, and clicked on the link only to be taken to a form saying "Please sign up or log in to your account to access this page"?

This happens frequently with me, always with the same result: bouncing.

What is going to take to get people to understand that this model is broken?

Please go read Sign Up Forms Must Die, by Luke Wroblewski, and learn how smart web services use the process of gradual engagement, letting users learn first what you have to offer, before asking them to provide an email address, select a password, tell you their name, their location, verify this strange word and agree to your terms of service.

One of Wroblewski's examples, Geni (a website that allow users to build a family tree), has produced five million profiles in five months with their gradual engagement approach. Do you really think your "register first" approach is better?

Update:

I started reading Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition by Guy Kawasaki right after writing this post, and was happy to see the author offer a similar advice:

In: Chapter 32, "Stupid Ways to Hinder Market Adoption"

1. Enforced, immediate registration. Requiring a new user to register and provide a modicum of information is a reasonable request--just do it after you've sucked the person in. Most sites require registration as the first step, and this puts a barrier in front of adoption. At the very least, companies could ask for name and e-mail addres but not require it until a later time.

Kawasaki's book was included in Amazon's Top 10 Editors' Pick in Business & Investing for 2008, and there wouldn't be so many broken interactions in the Internet if more web designers and online content owners read it. Buy it following the link on this post and using Amazon's one-click checkout, and you will be also helping a charitable cause.

Funny and interesting analytics results

nospam@example.com (Adriana Beal) — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 13:22:38 -0500

Many bloggers write about the strange and surprising ways they get traffic from search engines. Google Analytics lets bloggers see which search terms are bringing traffic to their websites, and how many visitors these search terms are producing.

Boing Boing recently published a sampling of interesting search terms that people typed into Google as an immediate prelude to visiting their website. Their #41 most popular recent search term is what english sounds like to foreigners.

Jodi from Fix your Broken Marketing asks:

What is Google “thinking” when it sent people here who typed “free construction contractor letterhead template with a hammer” or “how to stop brain thieves.”

One was almost like blank verse, “appreciate beauty with others affection/resist domination by others/emulate the admirable/acquire or collect things.”

The Bloggess is not happy with Google sending her visitors searching for "I'm awesome" related terms:

Okay, first of all? I’ve never said “I’m awesome. What should I do” in my entire life and secondly, WHY IS IT MISSPELLED SO MANY TIMES? If you can’t spell “I’m” correctly then you probably aren’t that awesome. Just a thought. And I don’t know what you should do or why you would even ask me. Maybe invest in spellcheck. It couldn’t hurt.

What are YOUR strangest analytics results?

It's all about the experience

nospam@example.com (Adriana Beal) — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 21:39:39 -0500

Don Norman, author of the excellent The Design of Everyday Things, explains why you have to design products for how your customers are, and not how you want them to be.

Complexity is OK. It's complicated that is bad.

Built to Spill

nospam@example.com (Admin - It's broken blog) — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 13:20:38 -0500

Graphic designer Justin LaFontaine created this witty concert poster to promote a show of indie rock band Built To Spill at Sled Island 2010 in Calgary.

HT: Alltop

Boring is not necessarily bad

nospam@example.com (Admin - It's broken blog) — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 00:04:58 -0500

Having a radically creative mentality sure has its value, but in the design of everyday things, doing the typical boring things that everybody expects typically works best.

Use well established conventions so people don't have to think for even a millisecond: Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition

Photo credit: Wonderlane

The curse of knowledge, con queso

nospam@example.com (Adriana Beal) — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 13:52:58 -0500

(Photo credit: B Tal)

In their book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die the Heath brothers explain the concept of the "curse of knowledge": once we know something, it becomes incredibly difficult to imagine not knowing it, and consequently teach others the same thing.

I was just invited to join a party having dinner at this restaurant. If you are a web designer, I'd like you to visit the link, and find the address of the restaurant for me.

Edited to add: the people responsible for the website were contacted and said they would be fixing the problem, so your experience may be different now with this particular website.

Continue reading "The curse of knowledge, con queso"

How to fix your digital camera so you can take better pictures

nospam@example.com (Admin - It's broken blog) — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 11:58:09 -0500

In 1888, an inventor named George Eastman designed, manufactured and marketed a camera that forever changed photography, and also consumer products as a whole. Had Eastman taken a typical engineering approach to designing his roll-film camera, he would have copied the complexity of the camera that came before, which required the photographer to understand 19 separate elements to use. Instead, he focused on the experience he wanted to deliver, an experience captured in his advertising slogan, "You press the button, we do the rest."

(Source: Subject To Change: Creating Great Products & Services for an Uncertain World: Adaptive Path on Design.)

Well! Apparently Eastman's way isn't enough for taking nice digital pictures after all. In this guest post, Marlene Hielema, specialist in digital photography, explains to the laymen among us how to use other buttons to take better pictures.

Continue reading "How to fix your digital camera so you can take better pictures"

When mistakes in technology amplify the mistakes in marketing

nospam@example.com (Adriana Beal) — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 10:45:40 -0500

Another day I received a small, uninteresting newsletter I never signed up for, from a new company I never heard of. At the bottom of the message was a link to unsubscribe. I clicked, and was taken to a page saying this:

(The email supposedly unsubscribed wasn't mine.)

Let's count the ways this company damaged its reputation with this newsletter:

They didn't use permission marketing

Permission marketing is a term coined by Seth Godin to designate a form of marketing in which prospective customers first have to give explicit permission before they are sent a promotional message. This type of marketing allows advertisers to reach a more specific audience that may be more receptive to their product or service.

"By talking only to volunteers, Permission Marketing guarantees that consumers pay more attention to the marketing message" Godin writes. "It serves both customers and marketers in a symbiotic exchange."

They didn't take the time to write a compelling message

The newsletter they sent merely included an excerpt from a PR announcement. To read the rest, I would have to click the link provided in the message. No motivation whatsoever for people to actually care enough to click and read more.

They didn't test the unsubscribe option

What kind of reputation will be associated with a company that tells people that they can unsubscribe by clicking a link, only to take them to a page where they are told that another person has been "successfully unsubscribed"?

They didn't use security measures to protect subscribers from email harvesting

The unsubscribe routine not only wasn't working, but it also allowed me to repeatedly click the same link and see other people's emails addresses, one at a time, along with the message that the address was "successfully unsubscribed". If the unsubscription process is working, I must have unsubscribed 30 people before I finally reached my own email so I could get out of that list.

I'm sending the link to this post to the company that sent me the newsletter. Hopefully they will learn from their mistakes and do a better job in the future so people will actually enjoy receiving correspondence from them.

What really motivates people

nospam@example.com (Admin - It's broken blog) — Sat, 29 May 2010 22:53:06 -0500

1. Pay enough so people so they are not thinking about the money, they are thinking about the work.
2. Give people autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

This lively RSA Animate, adapted from Dan Pink's talk at the RSA, illustrates the hidden truths behind what really motivates us at home and in the workplace.

theRSA.org

Do you trick people into subscribing to your newsletters?

nospam@example.com (Adriana Beal) — Sat, 15 May 2010 18:10:30 -0500

The method described below is used by many content-driven websites, and is completely disrespectful to users. It may be very effective to increase your subscription rate, but not without damaging your business reputation with many visitors unhappy with the number of unsolicited email messages now flooding their inbox.

(Photo credit: Mzelle Biscotte)

1. Ask for an email address in exchange to access to a seemingly useful article or free resource.

2. Automatically subscribe the person to one or more spam email newsletters.

3. Include an option to unsubscribe at the end of each newsletter, requiring the victims to fill out a ludicrous user profile form asking for name, address, phone number, etc. before they can complete the request.

The system will not let users unsubscribe until their personal data is filled out. This is the type of traffic-building move that will work in the short-term, but is likely to make potential customers irritated – so frustrated, in fact, that many will now go out of their way to avoid doing business with the perpetrator in the future.

Convince me first

How to annoy users during sign-up in two easy steps

Software development, QA and QC

nospam@example.com (Jeff Howell) — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 09:24:49 -0500

I’ve been working in software development for a while, but I’m still getting used to the usage of the term QA. The activities of the software QA groups that I have seen are centered around proving, with some level of confidence, that a software works, where works means it-does-what-the-requirement-says-it-should-do.

While this is important, it does not embrace the more important aspects in my understanding of Quality Assurance. So here’s my take on defining QA & QC based on experience in Software & Hardware development as well as Manufacturing management and engineering:

QA - Provides information to upper management regarding the likelihood that the marketplace will accept (buy) the product; and analyzes and improves the process that produce the products.

QC - Measures the outcomes of the process through testing and inspection and passes the results to QA for analysis.

To give this some practical sense, consider a company which designs and manufactures bicycle sprockets. At a high level the product life cycle follows a path like:

Continue reading "Software development, QA and QC"

Pull To Open

nospam@example.com (Jeff Howell) — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 09:40:40 -0600

Perhaps this has happened to you. I went to the store and got a package of X. When back at home I wanted to use the X. The packaging was beautiful. Obviously someone had spent some time on the design of every aspect, especially the self-promoting advertising that covered the whole package. My puzzle was about how to get the X out of the beautiful package. Upon careful examination I found (in 8 point type, 25% gray printing over top of a giant image of a happy, beautiful person enjoying X) the word “Open” and a little tab of packaging. I puled the tab. It came off in my hand without altering the beautiful package in any other way.

So I attacked the beautiful package with a knife, making it impossible to reseal. I put the whole beautiful mess in a zip lock bag after extracting my portion of X.

I thought this may be a case of function being subverted by form. Not really. The package is a billboard designed to make you buy X. That is it’s function. Once bought, the job is done and you’re on your own.

OK, so the purveyors of X are capitalists and selling X is their goal. That’s all fine.

I will even go so far as to say that I got a tiny bit of enjoyment from the game of finding the “Open”. Then it all went badly. Don’t tease me like that, it infuriates!

Why can’t they get it right? Just make it obvious and easy to enjoy a fresh portion of X.

“Open” sets an expectation in my mind that isn’t fulfilled. Worse, I feel cheated, double crossed when it goes wrong. My experience of X becomes negative before even getting to the main attraction.

____________

Jeff Howell has thirty years experience in computer industry, spanning hardware, manufacturing, QA and software in engineering, management and consulting.

Two annoying things about blogs and social media

nospam@example.com (Adriana Beal) — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 18:10:04 -0500

1) Not the right time to ask

I've already complained about sites that ask users to sign up before they can do anything, and mentioned how gradual engagement is a much better approach to attract readers and customers. Now I'm noticing more and more blogs displaying the following invitation at the top of their pages:

Hello there! If you are new here, you might want to subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on this topic.

If I'm a new visitor, don't you think I will want first to take a look around to see if I like what you have to offer, before subscribing? If the invitation was placed on a sidebar or at the bottom of the page, instead of interrupting the flow of the article, I would be would be much more tempted to subscribe, after confirming that your content is relevant to me. Apparently the strategy works, as more and more bloggers are using it to bring in new subscribers. Well, spam messages also work (there is always a percentage of people who will fall for it), but it doesn't mean you would need to follow their lead. There are nicer ways to increase your subscriber base.

2) Not the right way to ask

Adriana,

I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.

If you are a complete stranger interested in growing YOUR network, please take the time to write a customized message to introduce yourself. I can assure you that will substantially increase the probability of your invitation being accepted.

What are your pet peeves in Web 2.0?

(Photo by ankel wart)

Best of IT'S BROKEN

nospam@example.com (Admin - It's broken blog) — Mon, 10 May 2010 13:50:52 -0500

New here?

These are some of our favorite posts to get you started:

Typos in Graffiti
Most graffiti is just dumb and ugly.

Pul to Open
Nearly impossible to open packaging is broken.

Thankfully, bears don't need the Shift Key to hibernate
Designers: stop making users work hard to perform what should be a simple task.

Thankfully, bears don't need the Shift Key to hibernate

nospam@example.com (Adriana Beal) — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 13:12:08 -0600

Microsoft products are known to defy user interface standards of comfort and friendliness, so there isn't any novelty in complaining about its products, but here is an annoying feature that I use every day when switching from Windows to Ubuntu in my dual boot netbook that makes me question the sanity of the person in charge of defining the user interface for this feature.

On Ubuntu, when you want to go to the Hibernate state, you click on the "Shut down the computer" button, and this is what you see:

Pretty easy to choose "Hibernate", right?

On Windows XP, when you select "Turn Off Computer", you see 3 buttons: Stand By, Turn Off and Restart. To see the option "Hibernate", you need to press the Shift Key so the Stand By button changes into Hibernate.

You need to press Shift Key to see the Hibernate button

Will someone from Microsoft please explain why would you make something as basic as choosing to "hibernate" more complicated than necessary?

I am sure no UX designer was involved in the creation of this "Turn Off Computer" feature. Requiring the user to press Shift Key to have access to a fourth option that could very easily fit within the options menu only makes sense if The Inmates Are Running the Asylum.

Related article:
In the age of rapid cycles and connected data, how long are we going to have to settle for dumb software?

Evil interfaces

nospam@example.com (Admin - It's broken blog) — Wed, 05 May 2010 01:03:01 -0500

Good interfaces help users achieve their goals as easily as possible. "Evil interfaces", on the other hand, are meant to trick users into doing things they don't want to.

Professor of Computer Science Greg Conti offers serveral examples in the video below:

"You may also like..." NOT

nospam@example.com (Admin - It's broken blog) — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 17:49:56 -0500

Giving people the gift of discovery is a noble pursuit, but clearly there’s room for improvement in recommendation engines.

Nick Cernis watched a video about Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in YouTube, only to be recommended this video.

Why YouTube recommends heroin

Reza Behforooz was looking for a metronome in Amazon. Apparently their recommendation engine was at loss at what to suggest as a cross-selling item:

Better Together: white & red!

Read also: Tapping the Power of Recommendation Systems to Build a Broader Web 2.0 Audience

This ATM machine needs a better interface

nospam@example.com (Admin - It's broken blog) — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 23:04:13 -0500

Another great (and funny) example of how just adding new features without proper user interface considerations can cause user frustration:

We're talking money here and all of a sudden my ATM is giving me practice questions for the SAT. If all men eat turnips and John is a man, does John eat turnips?

Read the article at The Humane Experience.