How a site presents its links is one easiest things to get right on a website, but also one of the most important! If a user can’t find the links on your site, how are they ever going to use your site? How are they going to browse, or buy, your products and services if…
Usability testing is the practice of sitting real users down in front of a website (or a prototype of a website) and trying to identify the problems they experience in trying to use it. There are a number of issues to consider when commissioning a usability testing session, here are 2 of the most important:…
There is always the temptation in life to pretend to know things we don’t. Most of the time we do it to look big and clever, especially in the workplace. The problem with doing this, however, is that when you are called on it in the workplace you’re likely to be left looking and feeling,…
Designing error-messages is easy. So many sites make a dog’s dinner of it, that people think it must be brain surgery to get it right. It isn’t. Error messages need to do 3 things – tell the user: something has gone wrong what has gone wrong what to do about it It’s really that simple.…
There’s a perennial debate about how design and usability can co-exist. The theory is that design is all about making things pretty, usability is all about making things usable and that the two are inherently at odds with each other. Now, some people try and cop out of the debate by arguing for co-operation and…
A lot of people wonder why websites are so expensive. “All I need is a small website to tell people what I sell and let them put in an order online – how come it’s going to cost me this much?!” Well, here’s a tip to any business looking to get online for the first time…
There’s nothing tougher than staring at a blank piece of paper – Hemingway called it the ‘White Bull’. Suddenly, you forget what it was you wanted to write – and can only vaguely remember an outline of what you wanted to do. It’s like that with a Homepage So, the important thing to do when…
Work smart, not hard. Do not do unnecessary work. Do not re-invent the wheel. These are mottos to live by. So, how do we apply them to a website? Well, if you’ve got an e-commerce site, look at Amazon. Look at what they’re doing and the way they are doing it. Look at other big,…
In my role as CommerceTuned UI lead, an essential part of the development process of our CSS/XHTML overhauls has been to validate all my CSS and XHTML code using the various W3C validation tools available. At first this was chiefly for debugging purposes – if the page looks strange then it could be as a result of mistakes in hand-coded XHTML or CSS – but…
The optimisation scorecard is an holistic methodology required for benchmarking and goal-setting in both your external search engine optimisation campaign and your internal enterprise search across your website, portal, or Intranet. The success of an optimisation campaign cannot simply be judged on the number of well placed phrases your website has, or the speed and presentation of…
What is Web Metrics? Web Metrics is a business practice that concentrates on capturing as much data about a business’ online interaction with its customers as possible. Once we have captured data on these interactions, we can analyse them and begin to consider ways in which they might be improved to the benefit of the business. Measuring, analysing and…
The explosive growth of Internet usage in the past few years has led to an ever-increasing investment from vendors trying to tap into online consumer spending which, according to Forrester Research, will exceed US$100 billion by the end of 2003. In parallel with this increase in retail spending, companies are also investing heavily on internal,…
I frequently get asked whether someone can have their website specifically optimised to achieve high rankings in Google. Not, MSN, not Yahoo, specifically just optimisation for Google. Are they correct to be focusing so intently on this single engine? Is optimisation work for Google so much different from optimising for any of the other major…
In the past few years a semi-mythical beast has reared it’s head in the world of search engine optimisation and the building of new web sites, it’s referred to as the Google Sandbox effect. The principle behind this theory is that new web sites can be penalised – or rather prevented from achieving the same success…
The google update – where to begin? A joy to some, the bane of the earth to others… For those with their head in a hole, approximately every 3 months Google updates their search algorithm as they always find new ways to improve the search results and also to fight off devious search engine optimisation…
External search engine optimisation Millions of searches are conducted each day on search engines as more and more internet users turn to them to help find information about topics of interest. The majority of searches are conducted across a few search engines, namely Google, MSN, and Yahoo. Being well placed on these search engines for…
First off, welcome again to the CommerceTuned Newsletter. This month I’ll be looking at the latest Google Page Rank shift, what it could mean, and what actually happened. For those not yet in the now, Page Rank is Google’s method of evaluating the importance of a website. Their search algorithm involves a mix of various factors such…
Introduction When people set out to design a web site, be it knowledge based intranet or a commerce based internet site, search strategy isn’t always on the top of the priority list. This is understandable; the bigger goal is in sight, the detail of the user experience hasn’t yet been explored, but experience dictates that…
Depending on who’s statistics you believe, Google deals with anything from 60% to 90%+ of all search engine traffic, so whichever way you look at it getting high rankings in the Google listings for important, relevant and searched on phrases will generate a great deal of traffic – and hopefully business – for you. However,…
Pretty much anyone concerned with how well their website ranks in Google has heard of Page Rank. Page Rank is defined as the degree of importance or value that Google has for a specific web page. If you want to find out what the Page Rank of your website is then try our free online tool that will…
