| LED Digest 2501: Site Usability Mistakes |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom www.GetWebContent.com/LED : the LED's Key Sponsor The Web's Most Experienced SEO Content Providers. www.SEOToolSet.com/training/ : the LED's Premier Sponsor Bruce Clay's Search Engine Optimization Training & Certification ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. September 27, 2007 Issue no. 2501 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ====================== --== Recommend Me Pages ==-- ~ John Barendrecht "...my 'Recommend Page' emails are no longer delivered to hotmail." ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Web Stats ==-- ~ Tom Anson "Right now, my tracking is a totally pathetic system..." --== Site Usability Mistakes ==-- ~ Lorelle Smith "My pet peeve is when websites underline text that isn't a link." ~ Michael Linehan "I've had numbers of clients say, 'Some of the links are a different colour'." --== Customer Responsibility ==-- ~ John Smart "I love to do business on a handshake, but that is not the world we live in..." ~ Mark Rogers "I was looking at the web logs and noticed a huge amount of traffic..." =========== NEW ================================== From: John Barendrecht Subject: Recommend Me - Hotmail I noticed that my "Recommend Page" emails are no longer delivered to hotmail. The form asks you for your email and your friends email. The problem arises when a person wants to "bookmark" and sends a recommendation to him / herself. If the from address is at hotmail, the SMTP server logs the following error: soft+failed+sender+ID+check.+Please+ensure+this+IP+is+authorized+to+ send+mail+on+behalf+of+[hotmail.com] We do have Sender ID on our mail server but these "Recommends" are sent via SMTP not our mail server. Even if we set up Sender ID, we are not hotmail. Should we set the "From" to <> or is there a better way around this? A throw away gmail account? Even though you can "bookmark" our pages using bookmark service, we still have 20 people a day using this service - 10 hackers trying to hijack the form and 10 legitimate users. Best regards, John Barendrecht Centralhome.com Company Inc. http://www.centralhome.com ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Tom Anson Subject: Stats > We use the expensive version of a subscription based > web analytic called "Freestats." Their code appears on > every page of our web site... but recently has had lots of > outages that reduce our web site to a crawl. - Sandy Galvin, LED Digest 2499 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1911/190/ Hi fellow LEDers, While we're on the subject of web stats, I'd appreciate your opinions on the value / benefits of different options. Right now, my tracking is a totally pathetic system that tells me only the number of times a page was served up. Totally worthless, except to tell me if a page is getting essentially no traffic. I've heard about Google's web analytics, John Smart just mentioned WebTrends, my old techie suggested WebStat. A quick Google search shows more options than I could sort through in five lifetimes -- even if I had nothing else to do. So, I'd like to hear what you think the best options are, and why. What I'm looking for is something that is free or very inexpensive. I'd like it to distinguish between unique visitors and returning visitors. If it could tell me referring page and keyword choice, that would also be good. If it tracked how long a visitor stayed on the page and where he/she went, that might also be good. I'm pretty unsophisticated, so I wouldn't have a clue what to do with all the information that is available today. But, your thoughts on what I need to track, the analytics that would track that and how I'm supposed to make sense of any of it would be much appreciated. Thanks. Tom Anson Anson Aromatic Essentials http://www.therapeutic-grade.com -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Lorelle Smith Subject: Usability My pet peeve is when websites underline text that isn't a link. Yes, underlines are / were used in the print world for emphasis, but it doesn't work on the Web. I do realize that links are not *always* underlined anymore, but there's still an expectation that anything that is underlined will be a link. Drives me crazy. (Not that that's a very long trip! :-) And what about websites that are too cheap to hire a proofreader? On her blog at BruceClay.com Lisa says it best: "If your site is filled with typos, I'm going to assume you'd take the same care with my order that you did with your copywriting. See ya!" Lorelle Smith, The Keywordsmith Professional Keyword Research & Analysis Consultant http://www.Keywordsmith.com -------- new post - same topic --------- From: Michael Linehan Subject: Usability - Link colour > Good, user-friendly, accessible Web sites tell > their users where they are, where they've been > and where's left to go. They don't keep them > in an endless cycle of 'Did I click on this yet?'" - Lisa Barone > This is a great point -- yet many sites > don't follow the rule. - Adam Audette This *may* be a great point - depending on how many people actually understand the convention. As more and more people have flocked to the Web, I am constantly staggered at the numbers of people who: 1. Put the url that they already know in the search box - go to Google - and then click through to the site - IF it has come up in the results!!! 2. Don't know how to do an exact phrase search. 3. And yes, don't know that the changing colours date from the beginning of the Web and signify, "You have already clicked on this link." And many other points that the readers here probably consider utterly basic and on a level of 1+1=2. I've had numbers of clients say, "Just one last thing to fix before we put it up. Some of the links are a different colour." And these are educated, capable businesspeople, who I certainly expected to be fairly knowledgeable. Perhaps there are so many who will just be confused by the changing colours that it is actually better to rely on viewers to know what they've already read. (Radical idea!) I would be very interested to know if anyone has hard numbers on how many Web users actually know this convention, today. Michael Linehan, Marketing Alchemy www.marketing-alchemy.com ========= Begin Sponsor Message ========= 2007 Is Aging Fast, So Is Your Content! Remember when search bots visited every four or five months? Now their noses are in your tent constantly. Weekly. Maybe even daily. What's a webmaster to do? Give 'em what they want! Fresh copy. Great copy. Relevant copy. http://www.GetWebContent.com/LED copy. ========== End Sponsor Message ========== -------- new post - new topic --------- From: John Smart Subject: Customer service > ... on occasions one has to just tell the > customer they are wrong, even if you risk > losing them. - Martyn Gay, LED Digest 2498 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1910/190/ The fact is that the customer usually thinks they are right. I (like most of the readers here) spend a lot of time educating my customers, to the best of my ability (and theirs!) But there are times when you have to stand up. I love to do business on a handshake, but that is not the world we live in, and (having learned the very hard way) I will now only work on a project when the exacting specifications are written out in front of me. Our sister company (mousestuff.com - go buy a mouse, you know you want to!) operates in the same way. We have a wealth or drop shippers and resellers, all of them know our acceptable policy on returns. Which is why when the mouse has clearly used a jam sandwich as a mouse pad, we will not replace it. When one got broken in shipping, we sent the replacement out the same day the broken one came back. I saw a sign in a gift shop that I still regret not buying: The customer is always right. Sometimes misguided, confused, belligerent, bad-tempered and aggressive. But always right! John Smart InternetDesign.com A Human Touch in a Digital world. -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Mark Rogers Subject: Customer Service in Marketing It was my company's fault that we were unable to ship one of our customer's orders at the expected time. I notified my customer about this and he mentioned he needed the picture frames for a show. It was too late to ship ground but Fedex was still accepting Express shipments so I gave a free upgrade to 3-Day express on his order. Later that evening I was looking at the web logs and noticed a huge amount of traffic (nearly 100 visitors) coming from an Internet forum. That customer had placed a message on a forum giving us a glowing recommendation. I try not to focus too much on customer service or profits. My primary focus is on helping my customers and helping my employees. It is how I try to run my entire life, not just my business. What goes around comes around. It is a basic law of the universe that has hundreds of different names but it is just as reliable as gravity. I use it for SEO also. I try to listen as much as possible to my customer's questions and issues. Then I look for solutions to help them, and answers to their questions and place that written content on the web. If it is useful and helpful, people link to it and then I have content and links. Cheers, Mark Rogers Frame Destination, Inc. http://www.framedestination.com ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by: GetWebContent.com The Web's Most Experienced SEO Content Providers. Free no-obligation proposal: http://GetWebContent.com/LED SEOToolSet.com Bruce Clay's Search Engine Optimization Training & Certification Join the certified SEO directory: www.SEOToolSet.com/training/ The Archives: http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/126/189/ Subscribe: http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/52/187/ Unsubscribe, Change Email, or Hold / Resume Delivery: http://www.led-digest.com/content/category/4/17/201/ (c) Copyright 1995-2007 Orange Wheel, LLC. 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