Pixel Liberation Front

It's hard for clients to understand the true value of user experience research. As much as you'd like to tell your clients to go read The Elements of User Experience and call you back when they’re done, that won’t cut it in a professional services environment. David Sherwin creates a cheat sheet to help you pitch UX research using plain, client-friendly language that focuses on the business value of each exercise.

"Content-rich" is not enough. Most websites are not learner-friendly. As an industry, we haven’t done our best to make our content-rich websites suitable for learning and exploration. Learners require more from us than keywords and killer headlines. They need an environment that is narrative, interactive, and discoverable. Amber Simmons tells how to begin creating rich content sites that invite and repay exploration and discovery.

A bad client relationship is like a bad marriage without the benefits. To avoid such relationships, or to fix the one you’re in, learn the five classic signs of trouble. Recognizing the never-ending contract revisionist, the giant project team, the vanishing boss and other warning signs can help you run successful, angst-free projects.

Usability evaluations are good for many things, but determining a team’s priorities is not one of them. The Molich experiment proves a single usability team can’t discover all or even most major problems on a site. But usability testing does have value as a shock treatment, trust builder, and part of a triangulation process. Test for the right reasons and achieve a positive outcome.

Wouldn’t it be a little magical if, when you signed up for a new site, it said something like, “We notice you have a profile photo on Flickr and Twitter, would you like to use one of those or upload a new one?” Glenn Jones created a JavaScript library called Ident Engine that can help you do just that.

The value in usability testing comes from the magic of observing and listening as people use a design. The things you see and the things you hear are often surprising, illuminating, and unpredictable. This unpredictability is tough to capture in any other way. Dana Chisnell shows you how.

Your search and clickstream data is missing a key ingredient: customer intent. You have all the clicks, the pages people viewed, and where they bailed, but not why they came to the site. Your internal site-search data contains that missing ingredient: intent. Learn five ways to analyze your internal site-search data—data that’s easy to get, to understand, and to act on.

Top-down analytics are great for creating measurable goals you can use to benchmark and evaluate the performance of your content and designs. But bottom-up analysis teaches you something new and unexpected about your customers—something goal-driven analysis can't show you. Discover the kinds of information users want, and identify your site's most urgent mistakes.

Despite the fact that site search often receives the most traffic, it’s also the place where the user experience designer bears the least influence. Few tools exist to appraise the quality of the search experience, much less strategize ways to improve it. But relevancy testing and precision testing offer hope. These are two tools you can use to analyze and improve the search user experience.

Web forms don’t have to be irritating, and your inline validation choices don't have to be based on wild guesses. In his examination of inline form validation options, Luke Wroblewski offers that rarest of beasts: actual data about which things make people smile and which make them want to stab your website with a fork.

It's the end of the year; a time for nostalgia and looking back on the past year. Nick Finck, Digital Web Magazine's founder and publisher, recalls where we've been, what we've achieved, and discusses the potential for dramatic change in where we are going as a publication. This is your chance to influence the future structure and focus of Digital Web.

With exactly one month to go until Christmas, Digital Web Magazine is changing pace for our last article of 2008. Tempers have flared in recent weeks over our coverage of idiosyncratic CSS techniques, so we thought we’d look at something completely different—finding new music online. For many developers, their passion for great music runs nearly as high as their passion for semantic code; Chris Wright takes a look at how the current crop of online music tools might be failing us. This article also marks something of an experiment for Digital Web: opinion-driven editorial content, rather than our normal expert advice-led columns. Let us know what you think of our first, an editorial on the value of editorial…

With every web developer or agency worth their salt releasing a web application these days, it was inevitable that attention would eventually turn to how best to manage CSS within a modern MVC framework. Steve Heffernan pairs stylesheets with REST principles to present a new approach to CSS architecture.

Leona Tomlinson is back for a second article, detailing where accessibility statements fit into Web sites today.

Is your website firing on all cylinders? We take a look at a book that has a little something for everyone, from marketers to developers, to help you polish your pages. Andrew Stevens returns to Digital Web to review Website Optimization.

In this extract from his forthcoming book, the Website Owner’s Manual, Paul Boag takes a look at some of the simple things you can do to gain a fuller understanding of how your website is performing, both for your users and in a broader sense.

This week, Digital Web’s own Nick Finck sat down with the Web Standards Project’s Aarron Walter, to talk education, findability, and the path to lasting happiness.

Digital Web running a provocative article on CSS techniques? Shurely shome mishtake! In this extract from the forthcoming Sitepoint book of the same name, Rachel Andrew explains how you can use tables for layout in modern web design with a clean conscience.

Aral Balkan talks to Digital Web about the conference: an experiment in online communities. Bringing a collection of varied and insightful speakers from around the globe to thousands of attendees without even stepping outside.

Does your creative process start with the same sketch of a web page every time? Or even the same Photoshop template? You could be missing out on the most innovative solutions by not putting enough thought into the concept, says Victor Lombardi. Here he outlines three methods for pulling apart a brief to tackle the underlying concept design.

Many companies and small businesses have a Website that is reasonably non-functional. The Websites just do not attract visitors, let alone customers or bring about sales – and a fantastic marketing opportunity goes to waste. With Internet competition on the increase, more and more Websites are being left out in the cold. So before creating a new Website, it is essential to do some preliminary research. Identifying the Target Market and the resulting Keyword Research are necessary precursors to Website implementation.

Google Caffeine was big news when first announced back in August. No doubt it's going to be even bigger news when the update goes live. The question is whether this is going to be good news for your site?

A lot of us work hard to promote our online business but one thing we might forget is that we can get a lot of traffic by promoting offline as well. Following is a list of ideas you can use to promote your online business, offline.

Inflated income claims are everywhere over the internet casting a dark shadow over the legitimate business opportunities which can be found online. When you consider participating in any type of network marketing company, remember if earning claims seem too good to be true, they are just that: too good to be true.

A quick tutorial on how to embed your affiliate links into YouTube videos.

In this article, we'll explain why you should integrate video SEO into your current search marketing strategy. We'll also provide a few key ingredients that will help you avoid potential pitfalls along the way. Lastly, you'll learn what to look for when choosing a video SEO company that can drive more traffic and higher conversions

14-Points checkList of backlinking practices you must avoid in order to ensure a healthy start and ongoing positive results in your off-page factors optimization campaign.

Sometimes choosing which company to buy from is about like deciding which brand of canned peas is the best. To make matters worse, the copy on most websites doesn't offer any help, By keeping the focus of your copy on your company, you prevent your target customer from knowing the benefits they'll reap after working with you.

Sponsored conversation has become a potent tool for brands that want to reach new markets or increase their exposure. You can use this marketing strategy to leverage blogs, which continue to gain momentum in the media, within the search engines, and among a growing audience of loyal readers. Like any tool, sponsored conversations can be as damaging as they are effective. The key to using them effectively is in your approach.

Social media can help increase your profits. Get a better understanding of how these sites correspond to your offline activities, and you'll have better insight into how to use them to grow your business.

Being Australian, I just wanted to share with you European techies how we do it Down Under…

To promote the Flip camera, who are also our lovely sponsors, hundreds of Aussies gather at Bondi Beach in Sydney to part take in a little ‘towel surfing’ and dance the day away! Enjoy!

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A couple of week’s ago we were at the PayPal offices at Launch48 2009-An event where over 100 people got together to build and launch a web app in 48 hours. The UK’s answer to Ycombinator.

About 30 people pitched their ideas to the group on the Friday night. The group voted for the six best by a show of hands- They then divided the group into six teams to work on building the web apps over 48 hours.

You can see read about the six finalists over on Techcrunch and here’s Techfluff.tv’s video:

Thanks to business social network Viadeo for sponsoring the video -Interestingly  Viadeo has more members than LinkedIn in China – emerging market – win win-  Check out their site for more info!

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After seeing this post in the Huffington Post of the geekiest Halloween costumes, I was determined to go to Halloween as either an iPod advert or a YouTube video – I decided on the former because Alex Tew of Popjam had already gone to a party as a YouTube video a few months before.

The whole outfit cost £10 and consisted of a peice of card and two bits of flourecent paper – bargin!

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The Techfluff.tv team were at the Internet Retailing Conference 2009 where some of the biggest players in the industry got together to talk about the challenges and issues facing the industry.

One thing I found particularly interesting was the notion of cross-channel marketing – So basically retailers online strategy  in sync with with their off line strategy giving consumers a more coherent shopping experience.

One guy I interviewed said that in future you will be able to buy something online and if it doesn’t fit take it back offline to the shop -another example he made was browsing online and picking purchases up in the store – saving the time it takes to deliver.

For me that’s the main problem with shopping online – I live such a fast paced life I can’t wait for the item to be delivered – If i go shopping its usually for an occasion that day or week so I need to be able to have the item straight away- If I could browse online with an avatar shaped like me to see how the clothes fit,  and then,  pick it up straight away from the store- I would do more shopping online.

Oh and John Lewis was a name that kept cropping up as doing things right. Check out the event’s site for more up to date news in the online retailing sector.

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Hello TF readers! Our lovely Techfluff.tv correspondent, Isabelle O’Kane, attended the eComm conference in Amsterdam last week and wanted to share with you all her interview with Claire Boonstra from Layar. Claire discussed the latest developments in augmented reality and even gave Isabelle a quick demo. This is what she had to say…

Hey guys, it’s Isabelle reporting from Amsterdam and as promised I have the interview with Layar for you. For those of you unfamiliar with Layar they develop augmented reality browsers for mobile. The technology uses GPS to understand where the camera is pointing and then overlays graphics within the phone’s camera viewfinder to enable the user to receive geo-specific information, a simple example – where is the nearest restaurant or petrol station. The user is then given further options such as to call the restaurant or car dealer or petrol station or to review more information etc.

Soon to be released is Layar 3.0 – which is a 3D version – as Claire talks about in this clip below.

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The Next Bill Gates search is being launched by IT provider, XMA who currently supply IT solutions and systems to Higher Education institutions and public sector organisations in the UK. With sponsorship from their partner Toshiba, the company has launched a new nationwide competition open to anyone, of any age, who is starting University in 2010 and considers themselves to be an IT pro – is that you? Or someone you know?

If you think you have what it takes or know someone who does, make sure to get you entries in fast by visiting www.thenextbillgates.co.uk and submitting your 100 word application. You can also upload a video entry! Here’s a little promo we made for the comp:

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Posted via web from Hermione’s posterous

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Those of you lucky enough to be able to visit the url http://www.slapnickgriffin.co.uk/ yesterday would have been able to play a flash game where you could give the BNP leader a good slapping, today however a quick visit to the site leads to this:

What ever happened to freedom of speech …or freedom of slapping?!

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You might have noticed we’ve started doing weekly elevator pitches and posting them on TechCrunch Europe. This is a fantastic opportunity to give your startup some publicity – TechCrunch Europe goes out to a high caliber network of entrepreneurs, investors and tech industry professional all over Europe and beyond and gets thousands of hits a week.

Why do we do an elevator pitch? Well the whole idea behind it is that an an entrepreneur you should be able to clearly and consisly communicate what your company does in 30 seconds- any longer and the idea is too complex or you’re in danger of trying to do too many things.

The term is typically used in the context of an entrepreneur pitching an idea to a venture capitalist or angel investor to receive funding. Venture capitalists often judge the quality of an idea and team on the basis of the quality of its elevator pitch, and will ask entrepreneurs for the elevator pitches to quickly weed out bad ideas and weak teams.

Basically if you got in an elevator and realised there was a big wig investor standing next to you with a big wad of cash would you be able to persuade him your idea was shit hot and get him to hand over the cash?

If the asnwer is yes and you wanna have a pop, comment and leave your company name or mail me: hermioneway@newspepper.com

Here’s the competition so far:

Winkball.com

and last week’s JobFact.com

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Remember 10 years ago when the web didn’t really exist? Remember 10 years ago when the mobile web definitely didn’t’ exist?! Right- well that’s when Bango.com started making mobile software for the web. And now they’ve grown into a company of 40 employees with clients all over the world! Bango.com currently make analytic and mobile billing systems for their clients. Last week we were at Bango’s 10 year-old birthday party- here’s the results and a word from Ray Anderson- CEO and  big cheese -one of the founders who is still at the company now.

Who said web companies couldn’t have longevity?! Bango not only for-sore the web would go mobile all those years ago but they are also still big players in the game.

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