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New content that you add to your website may not adhere to accessibility best practices. Perhaps content authors forget, lack proper training or oversight, or don’t realize its importance. Either way, a segment of your visitors may suffer because of an inconsistent—and a downright frustrating—website experience. Here’s how to fix it.
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A few weeks ago, I wrote about the need for judicious consideration of whether to embark on an app-building journey or build a mobile-friendly website. A couple of days later, Buzz Andersen at Tumblr said something in an interview that rings true for most of us not profoundly drunk on the Kool Aid of the so-called app economy: Really since the introduction of the iPhone, but particularly after the advent iPad, this concept of “apps as content” has gained a lot of currency, and now every media company in the world feels compelled to be in the business of developing native software as a distribution channel. Despite the press’s tendency to portray this trend as futuristic, I actually think of it as a bit retrograde—particularly since we’ve actually been evolving an incredibly sophisticated medium for content presentation and distribution for over 15 years now: the web. – Buzz Andersen, Director of Mobile Development at Tumblr Good lord, is “retrograde” ever … Continue reading
Posted in: digital communication, mobile, user experience, ux
Best practices for linking to your mobile site from your full site, and from your full desktop site to your mobile website.
Once upon a time, a project (the making of, let’s call it, “The Product”) would go like this: Having finished discovery, the project lead, an information architect, and a content strategist would articulate the site’s purpose, structure, content strategy, and page requirements. This would take the form of a package of deliverables including spreadsheets, site maps, and wireframes – henceforth called “The Package”. Next, one or more visual designers – now invited into the project for the first time – would review the The Package, ask questions about The Package, reinvent parts of The Package, discard parts of The Package, and produce a proposed design based on the modified Package. Naturally, the designers’ renovations called for the re-entry of the information architect and content strategist, despite the fact that our process frequently made such re-entries inconvenient if not unfeasible. The project lead, information architect, content strategist, visual designer, and project manager would now enter into the cavernous stomach of a … Continue reading
The Internet has evolved precisely at the same time in history as an evolution in the treatment and integration of people with disabilities. In recent years, cognitive and physical handicaps have become better understood and diagnosed, and growing fields like occupational therapy and mental health have revolutionized the concept of what it means to be “disabled.”. Society is more educated and tolerant of handicaps than it was even twenty years ago, and the Internet has played a major role, even enabling disabled people to interact with others and find new comfort and purpose in their communities. But as a Search Marketer, I can’t help but wonder: is SEO keeping up? All too often, websites with poor accessibility are given prominence in Google’s search results. Sites which misuse image alt tags, for example, or mislabel their title or headers to pack in keywords, can trick Google’s robotic crawlers into ranking a page highly — but also trip up people with visual … Continue reading
In my last post, I talked about how to use analytics to research your mobile website visitors so that you can make an informed decision about your future mobile projects. This time, we’ll look at how surveys and interviews can help you glean insights about your mobile presence (or lack of) from your site’s visitors. Why surveys and interviews? While site analytics gather quantitative behavioral data, online surveys and interviews can also collect more qualitative data, like opinions and self-reported preferences. Though self-reported anecdotes should always be taken with a grain of salt, survey and interview responses can be very helpful for prioritizing ideas, uncovering new insights, and giving a voice to your site’s visitors. Surveys Conducting an online survey is a great way to gain insights about your visitors because you can easily collect data and opinions from a large group of people. Surveys can be structured to gather both qualitative and quantitative data. For example, say that you … Continue reading
Posted in: Marketing Strategy, mobile, user experience
By now, you’ve realized you need a mobile presence. Or maybe you already have one, or are trying to figure out whether it’s really working for you. Is it time for phase two? Your current state aside, chances are you’ve got mobile on the mind. But how do you know what your visitors want? It’s not rocket science. In fact, you have a lot of data and insights stockpiled already. Over the next few weeks, I’ll share some details with you about how to conduct your own DIY user research to better plan for your next mobile venture. This week, we’ll start by using website analytics. After that, we’ll explore interviews and surveys…you know, talking to real people. Why use analytics? Almost everyone has Google Analytics or some other web analytics package installed. Even if you haven’t been actively using it, the tool has. It’s been busy collecting valuable usage data. There are a few benefits to using web analytics … Continue reading
Posted in: Analytics and Metrics, mobile, user experience
It’s a scene as familiar as your drive to work. The conversation is marked mainly by questions. A 17-y.o. high school senior and his parents discuss college as they clear the family dinner table. What are his options? Why isn’t he interested in business? “Artists starve… how many times do I have to tell you?” Tonight’s conversation lasts longer than most: all of ten minutes before the son withdraws to his room. He knows his parents are right. He doesn’t want to let them down, but plenty of people manage to make a living in the arts. He just needs to figure out how. He reaches for his iPhone and launches Safari. In the Google search field, he types, “art and business dual degree,” and waits for answers to appear. And appear they do – an entire page of options. Schools he’s heard of, schools he hasn’t. Choices. Possibilities. Potential. He closes Safari, swipes twice, taps the App Store icon, … Continue reading
Posted in: mobile, user experience
We are full-on into what Joseph Pine and James Gilmore dubbed “The Experience Economy” in their 1999 book of the same name. No news to marketers, right? Well, maybe. Although Amazon comes up with 48 books in the immediate neighborhood of “experiential marketing,” and Google weighs in with 495,000 hits, do you really treat marketing as an experience? Do the shops, suppliers, partners, and vendors that you’re a customer of treat you to an experience (and is it a good one? Merely good? Awesome? Nonpareilled? Un-be-freakin’-lievable?) For many customers, the prelude to any “user experience” with you is going to be an electronic engagement, usually though the web site or an email. And while designers and programmers (good ones, anyway) worry a lot about the “user interface,” do marketers worry nearly as much about “user engagement?” Because before you can have a “user experience” you have to have user engagement, and while user engagement may start with the user interface, … Continue reading
Posted in: digital communication, digital life, user experience