I’ve been feeling extra generous of late so I decided to give away the tempest wordpress theme to the first few people who donated to comic relief.
Many thanks to those who did, your money is on its way to doing good for those less privileged than ourselves. I hope the winners enjoy the theme, and I also hope you pat yourself on the bag for supporting a great cause. So without further a do, cue the fanfare and start the drums rolling:
The winners are
Al Garnsworthy
Matt Jukes
Stuart Connellan
Congratulations guys, I’ll be in touch with your winnings shortly, thanks once again.
If you’re reading this please add a comment with a valid email address to this post (below) so I can send you a copy of the theme. Also, as promised, if you’d like me to add your logo into your copy of the theme for you please let me know (and also tell me where I can find a copy of it).
To be honest, I’m not surprised to see you at all. See, there’s a belief in certain circles that most web users are plonkers, but here’s the inside scoop, the majority of them aren’t at all.
I’d had a sneaking suspicion too, that by and large, web users could actually find they’re way around a website most of the time. So why do the consumers of our content get such a bad wrap? Here’s a few suggestions:
New technology, new problems
Eye-tracking software, UX testing and A/B splits all have their merits, but paradoxically, they all have their problems too. Sometimes having too much information can be counter productive if used in the wrong way.
Just because it hasn’t been seen doesn’t mean it hasn’t been noticed… The work I’ve been doing with eye-tracking has shown that the users may look at something but they don’t focus on it or indeed talk about it but they keep it in their head until they do need it – Joe Leech
We as designers, businesses and high-end users can get so obsessed with making everything stand-out and glimmer that we forget that the whisper is often louder than the shout. Ask yourself, is a bigger search bar better than a well designed one & do we need that many ajax effects?
As the baddy in the Incredibles said ‘When eveyone’s super, no-one will be’, and that seems a very apt quote when applied to noisy web elements. In short then, decide what is important on a sliding scale. If your site is search driven then provide the emphasis on search, if it’s RSS Subscribers, then make dam sure they can find how to subscribe. Targeting the core action rather than every possible action will result in a better experience all round.
Put down the mouse
There are some users who will keyboard navigate your site; some partially & some fully. It’s easy to write off these users in a sweeping statement such as ‘They only make up 3% of my user base’ etc… but in essence, these users get a bad wrap for not having a mouse, how’s that fair?
It’s fairy easy to rectify too. Basic Tab-Key navigation uses :focus, or in IE’s case :active to display a changed state of an object. As we usually give links a :hover state, lets also apply a :focus and an :active state. That way users can see where they are by tabbing through the site too if the wish.
a:hover, a:focus, a:active { your styles;}
Just for good measure, apply that to form fields too:
input:focus, input:active { your styles; }
Suddenly your site is on it’s way to being much more accessible with just a few extra bits of code.
Hey where’d ya go?
When it comes to our users the goal seems clear, we must keep them on our website at all costs. There is a belief that opening an external link in a new window will keep a user on your siteand if that means altering that user’s expectation of their web experience, then so be it.
… the links open in a new window. I’m not okay with that. I trust my readers to come back to my website, and I strongly believe I shouldn’t hinder their ability to navigate away from my website, and I see it as an insult to their intelligence, and breaks a bond of trust to modify their browser’s behaviour – Cameron Hunt (via Sam Brown)
It seems to me it comes down to trust & transparency. By trusting your users to return to your site by themselves you’re telling them that you believe your content is strong enough in itself for them to warrant a return visit without being reminded of where they were. If they don’t return (and some won’t) then maybe it’s down to the ‘stickyness-less’ of your content and not dependent of which window the site opened in.
At the end of the day (sorry for the footballers analogy) it’s about control, and ultimately the user has it.
On a personal note, I’ll often skim read the first few paragraphs of an article such as this lengthy beauty early in the day, follow a few referenced links and come back to read the rest in full detail some hours later; or at several points during the day. Just because I followed a link out and didn’t immediatly return doesn’t mean I won’t, because I will, if the contents good.
Fans of twitter will know that there are certain things that shouldn’t be ‘tweeted’. Not necessarily because they are in bad-taste per-say, but because twitter does, or at least should have it’s own social etiquette. After pondering this idea around for a few days, I got to thinking as to what that would entail.
In the spirit of ‘the social web’ please leave your comments on what you believe to be, or should be, a rule of ‘twittequette’. I’ll give it a week or two and put a ‘suggested’ list together. Here are a few of my ideas:
Tweet often but not too often. Yes, if you’re on my tweet list I’m interested in you and in what you’re doing. I’m less interested however, in getting a live feed of your lunchtime activity every few minutes, about how much of your sandwich you’ve eaten.
Found something interesting posted by one of the people you’re following? If you want to re-tweet that link then it’s common courtesy to tell people who you heard it from. If your followers find it interesting they may very well find the original poster interesting too.
Keep text slang to a minimum if your tweets are aimed at people who are not well versed. ‘R u’, ‘u r’ etc are generally o.k as they are commonly accepted short-hand and read phonetically. Not everyone understands ROTFLMAO and LQTM however.
Follow people you know, respect or find interesting. Don’t follow anyone with the intent to sell them something, spam or hassle them. You’ll look stupid, you’ll be blocked and people will go out of their way to make sure their friends know to block you too. It’s a social network for gods sake.
Keep a lid on promotional tweets and mix them up with different stuff too. If all you use twitter for is to bring traffic to your site or promote a product people will get bored of you. Be personable, friendly and interesting. People respond to people in this environment, not corporations and sales-reps.
Remember this is all opinion, feel free to discuss, debate and contribute if you feel the need.