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I bookmark a lot of pages and sites which I find interesting, inspirational and informative every day! I’d like to share some of them with you here. In general they are about user experience, usability, UCD, accessbility and design. In general, but not always!!

• eCommerce ROI: Why Usability ALWAYS Beats Advertising | Useful Usability
  The Return On Investment for eCommerce Usability Will Always Beat Online Advertising, Because of the Principle of Amortized Improved Conversion
• 4 ways to combat usability testing avoidance
  Working with users during the design process will untie project knots and boost team productivity and focus. But there always seems to be an excuse for not testing. Here are 4 ways to counter the excuses and make usability testing happen.
• UX ROI: User Experience Return on Investment
  Calculating and even trying to understand what all adds up to the UX ROI is difficult task. When we are faced with clients and investors – ROI is something they often ask for. How to even start thinking about return on investment in the field of user experience? Here I’m talking about UX ROI discussion tool and other metrics.
• Bloug: Site search best practices
  A client recently asked me to help come up with a list of "world-class" implementations of site search. "World-class" is always a red flag term for me, because it's a crutch term that suggests that there isn't a clear idea of what constitutes actual quality.
• Prototyping: Types of Prototypes
  Based on key factors, such as the problem to be solved or the mandate of the customer, determine the purpose of the prototype. Select the type of prototype that best satisfies the purpose.

Please do feel free to suggest other related (and unrelated ones)!

Seth Godin (you can see his excellent blog here) was recently asked if social networking was important to business, and if so why. His answer is great, I especially liked what he says about networking (and I paraphrase somewhat):

Networking is only important when it’s real; it’s a useless distraction when it’s fake

I bookmark a lot of pages and sites which I find interesting, inspirational and informative every day! I’d like to share some of them with you here. In general they are about user experience, usability, UCD, accessbility and design. In general, but not always!!

• Why your conversion rates no longer matter – iMediaConnection.com
  The ultimate measure of a website's success is its conversion rate — the percentage of visits that resulted in a sale or an inquiry. It is supposed to measure the degree to which the site converts visitors into customers. As such, it is deemed to provide the ultimate assessment of whether a site is successful or not. In a single number, it captures the appeal of the design, the ease (or otherwise) of navigation, the effectiveness of the sales pitch, and all the other factors that affect a visitor's willingness to buy from you.
• iPhone UX Reviews » Blog Archive » iPhone App Usability Heuristics
  Heuristic evaluations involve systematically inspecting a user-interface and judging its compliance with a set of heuristics. This method is a fast and effective way to identify usability flaws, however, the widely used heuristics put forth by Jakob Nielsen were originally created for desktop software. As a result the language and examples are not always appropriate for other platforms. Over the years, researchers and practitioners have evolved and expanded the heuristics to meet their needs. While there are many noteworthy efforts, nearly all of them were created before the iPhone was developed. With that in mind, I attempted to adapt Nielsen’s heuristics for the iPhone.
• How do you find usability testing participants? « Product Management Tips by Gopal Shenoy
• Facial Avoidance in Page Design « People & Technology
  The Fidelity studies show that not only were users disinclined to look at facial images of the type shown in Figure 1, but that a significant number of users were unable to find the text immediately adjacent when given a task requiring that information.
• Screening out liars from your user research- 90 Percent of Everything
  The whole point of user research is that you get to observe real members of your target user group interacting with your product. However, the cash incentive that you offer – typically £50 for an hour – is compelling enough to make some people bend the truth, and this is compounded by the chain of people involved in the recruitment. For example, if you outsource a research project to a UX consultancy, they will probably outsource the recruitment to a specialist agency, who in turn will may outsource to a number of independent freelancers. As the client sitting on the receiving end, you have to be confident that it’s being carried out in a rigorous way.

Please do feel free to suggest other related (and unrelated ones)!

I saw this quote on the October edition of the Userfocus Usability newsletter, and it really resonated!

Your customers are not you. They don’t look like you, they don’t think like you, they don’t do the things that you do, they don’t have your expectations or assumptions. If they did, they wouldn’t be your customers; they’d be your competitors. — Mike Kuniavsky.

I you haven’t read it, his book “Observing the User Experience” is a must read for any UX/Usability practitioner.

I bookmark a lot of pages and sites which I find interesting, inspirational and informative every day! I’d like to share some of them with you here. In general they are about user experience, usability, UCD, accessbility and design. In general, but not always!!

Here is a selection of bookmarks for May 12th:

• How To: Prepare For A Pitch Over The Phone | Matt Singley | Social Media Optimization
  I advise companies about how to optimize social media for brand exposure, adoption and support. Because of this I am constantly talking to potential clients on the phone, discussing their goals and desires for an effective online campaign. If you are in the business of consulting or are thinking about moving in that direction I’ve put together a short list of tips and tricks for preparing for that phone call, because as I’ve learned the hard way, if you aren’t prepared you’re not going to get the job. With the economy in the condition it is, every call is critical.
• Refactoring the User Experience :: UXmatters
  The ability to take a broad view of the world and incorporate lessons learned from other disciplines distinguishes the best practitioners in any field. As UX professionals, there is much we can learn from good software engineering practice, which maps a team’s understanding of a problem at a human level onto the implementation of a technical solution. The essence of good software engineering practice is effective user experience—from developing the high-level design documentation that describes how the main elements of a system interact to its implementation in clearly written code. Though the relationship between software engineering and user experience is not always an easy one, software engineers and UX professionals share some common goals. Both have a vested interest in producing systems that are useful and usable.
• Making $10,000 a Pixel: Optimizing Thumbnail Images in Search Results :: UXmatters
  In search results, the old adage a picture is worth a thousand words rings true. When it comes to making your search results more efficient to use, more relevant, and more attractive, images reign supreme. There is simply nothing else on your search results pages that can come close to offering the same potential as thumbnail images for dramatically increasing your conversion rates and revenues.
• Ten inexpensive tips to improve user experience | Blog | Econsultancy
  At TechCrunch’s Geek ‘n Rolla event last week, I managed to have a quick chat with Leisa Reichelt from Disambiguity, following her great presentation about “Why you can’t NOT afford good user experience”.
• The Value of User Experience (from Web 2.0 Expo Berlin 2008)
  Companies and brands should think about (user) experience to find new competitive edge for their business. Better experiences create more value for users, which can be in turn transformed into business value for the company.

Please do feel free to suggest other related (and unrelated ones)!