James Royal-Lawson, webbstrateg, web manager och webbkonsultBeantin
Close
QR Code containing James Royal-Lawson's contact details as a MeCard.
RSS Feed, alternative webmaster centralSubscribe to the Beantin RSS Feed Google Profile for James Royal-Lawson View James Royal-Lawson's Google Profile+ LinkedIn Profile James Royal-Lawson, webbstrategView James Royal-Lawson's Linked in profile Twitter: web consultant James Royal-LawsonFollow James Royal-Lawson on Twitter Facebook Beantin fan pageBecome a Beantin fan on Facebook The Beantin Index, Swedish websites graded and rankedThe Beantin Index Beta blog, experiments, tests, investigationsBeantin Beta Blog YouTube Webbkommunikation videosBeantin videos on You Tube UXPodcast with James Royal-Lawson and Per AxbomUXPodcast with James Royal-Lawson and Per Axbom

Beantin

59.2799; 18.0899
Webbstrateg

Posts by James Royal-Lawson tagged with shared links

Beantin Webbkommunikation is +46735931654, Stockholm-based digital strategist and web managerwebbkonsult, webbrådgivare

On this blog you can find articles that cover web strategy webbstrategi, intranets intranät, trends (often with a Swedish twist), analytics, and running an effective web presence. Check out my most popular posts.

11 Articles worth reading… (Spotted: Week 50-52, 2010)

Generations 2010: What different generations do online

Useful chart from Pew Internet showing how the spread of Internet activities varies across six different generations. One thing I find particularly interesting (mainly as I wrote about this in my december newsletter) is how virtual worlds are the least common activity across all ages. Equally as interesting is that email and search are the top activities across the entire age span. Isn’t email supposed to be dying?

College Students on the Web

Yet another excellent Alertbox study. Myth busting or opinion confirming - for me it’s mainly confirms what I’ve seen and already believed. One of the critical things here is that this behaviour is almost certainly going to follow with them into their working lives.

Your Website Only Needs One Social Share Button

As usual, it depends on your audience. A lot of sites would benefit from having a share button for one service (eg Facebook or Twitter) rather than several. One of the more interesting points raised here is one of: above the fold or below the fold. Placing the button above the fold is an advert, placing it below the fold is a call-to-share. Having both, for one service, would a good balance.

User Expectations with Mobile Apps – Catching up with EffectiveUI

What have we let happen as an industry when 73% of mobile app users say they expect a company’s mobile app to be easier to use than its website? We’ve created a world with complicated, cluttered, unusable, inaccessable, desktop web sites. All hail the mobile web if it continues to turn that oil-tanker around.

The Anatomy of a Perfect Landing Page

Despite it’s lack of references and supporting research, this is a good guide and reminder of how you should build landing pages - dare to be focused!

Wireframes are dead, long live rapid prototyping

I’ve never been a big fan of detailed wireframes - this article gives some of the reasons - I do though like sketching (often using “wireframes”) and then prototyping (and prototyping can take a number of different forms) with functional (and design) requirements/prerequisites naturally part of that early process. One size doesn’t fit all though…

7 YouTube Marketing Facts you Need to Understand

Another great guide from Jesper - and i’m not saying that just because of number 7 on his list! This guide isn’t limited to marketing facts, it’s really an A-Z guide taking you from the initial strategy decision through to page management.

The State of the Blogosphere 2010

Brian Solis gives this year’s round up of the state of the blogosphere. Creation in the form of blogging lives on, but curation is playing an increasingly important role and expect more services catering for curators to pop up during 2011.

Industry Voices make 2011 predictions

Some content management industry expert predictions for 2011. They are spot on with most of the trends, but i’ll reserve judgement on how much those trends develop during 2011. Some of them I really do hope take off…

5 tips for a great intranet strategy

You could snobbily say that Mark is stating the obvious regarding intranet strategy - but despite many of us knowing that this is what you should be doing, it still doesn’t get done. 5 tips filled with wisdom from British Telecom’s intranet manager Mark Morrell.

Planning for Collaboration in a Growing Business

If you plan to grow, then make sure you plan for collaboration early. This is the same advice for many of the (digital) aspects of a small business. It doesn’t take much extra effort to plan things early on so that they will scale much easier if (and when) you grow.

5 Valuable takes from Airlines use of Facebook – the “snow fog story”

Second featured article from Jesper this week, who is supposed to be on his way to Texas for a Christmas break. He was mixed up in the whole pre-Christmas transport weather thing - it has though given him a great opportunity to gather some Facebook insights regarding customer service in crisis situations based on personal experience.

19 Articles worth reading… (Spotted: Weeks 46-49, 2010)

A whopping 20 article post this time covering 4 weeks of articles spotted on my web-travels. Enjoy!
Continue reading »

7 Articles worth reading… (Spotted: Week 44-45, 2010)

Photos as Web Content

Anyone who has done any eye tracking tests knows how true this Alertbox article from Nielsen is. Visitors to your site only pay attention to images that are relevant to their task, other pictures used to “make the page pretty” (and indeed banner ads) are ignored. Flash film on start page? ha!

Google Instant Previews - Eye tracking shows it’s game changing

Some eye tracking testing of Google’s new Previews feature. It basically supports what I’ve suspected. Once a user has learnt that the preview feature exists, it’s a game changer. How your site looks in this preview is going to become crucial, and another thing to check as part of your regular routines.

New data proves your mobile marketing strategy must include Android

Gone is the time when you could make an iPhone app and consider your mobile strategy done and dusted. Ignoring Android is becoming the modern-day equivalent of making a web site “Internet Explorer Only”.

Intranet strategy - planning a successful intranet

Do you have an intranet strategy? Far too few organisations actually do. Toby Ward outlines a strategy, offers a methodology and even a model. Must be Christmas!

Intranets in 2011: a turning point

Extended “highlights” by Jane McConnell from the soon to be released Global Intranet Trends 2011 report. Highlights of the highlights: Governance more important than ever, employee generated content and collaboration are essential, people focused, accessible, real-time.

Could Yammer be the death of your organisation?

An alarmist title to this article, but it does have a good message - Enterprise collaboration is here, you can’t ignore it, and you need to have suitable policies in place. What the article doesn’t do though is give you much advice regarding governence of networks like Yammer. I’ve got a blog post brewing about that.

The Art and Science of SEO Site Audits

Nice overview of SEO Audits from Search Engine Watch - Even for the non-expert this is useful to show just how many factors are involved in auditing a site, and also a reminder of how important it is to take care of your SEO (even more so during redesigns!)

12 Articles worth reading… (Spotted: Week 42-43, 2010)

Information Architecture 101: Techniques and Best Practices

A great “briefing paper” from Six Revisions, intending to raise awareness of the discipline with designers.

Mental Models

The latest Alertbox post covers what users think they know and how that affects their behaviour. Users, designers and developers all have differing mental models. You need to work with conformity not against it, and gently adjust the mental models of your visitors and users.

10 essential usability guidelines for websites

If every website followed the ten points in this list, i’d suddenly have hardly anything to complain about any more. Well, perhaps not *hardly* anything - more like “less”.

How Yammer Won Over 80% of the Fortune 500

Yammer boasts that 80% of the Fortune 500 use Yammer. I wonder how many of those 400 companies have adopted Yammer as their official, or main, collaboration platform?

How I learnt to stop worrying and love enterprise microblogging

Nice case describing how Yammer took flight at AXA Australia in just the few months since August.

Information flow part 3: Why persistent links are important

I’m really enjoying Kristian’s series of posts about aspects of his work over the last couple with the intranet at Region Västra Götland. This particular post goes into the details of how they’ve tried to deal with managing URLs and links across multiple systems.

How we improved our intranet search experience

Luke describes how they implemented and tweaked their Intranet search (using a Google Search Appliance). Some good lessons-learned and insights that anyone dealing with intranet search can make use of.

Report: iPad Is an Enterprise IT Triple-Threat

The headline talks about iPad (and thereby iSO) but the report concludes that Android and HTML5 should also be prioritised. I’m going one step further than Forrester and saying prioritise HTML5 and Android. Plan for mobile/wireless working and plan soon.

How Google tested Google Instant

An insight into how Google tests it’s products (before launch in this case). What I find interesting is that normally Google uses eye tracking whilst testing. It gives them real data to work with. In this case, Google Instant, they chose not to. Why? I suspect they did try, but realised that far too many people were spending too much time looking down at the keyboard whilst typing - and not looking at their instantly-changing search results.

How Facebook Decides What To Put In Your News Feed – These 10 Secrets Reveal All

Some useful testing into how Facebook decides what to display into your news feed. Would be interested though to know their source for saying “Top News is how a vast majority of Facebook users get their information”

20 Real Tips for Hiring a Social Media Consultant

A good list to help you separate the wheat from the chaff in the world of social media consulting. You don’t need to hold yourself religiously to all 20 points, but there is some really good, honest, to-the-point advice in Pam Moore’s post.

How Google dominates the Web

If you had any doubts about just how dominant Google are in our World of Web Stuff, then this Royal Pingdom posts shows you the stats in easy to consume pie-charts.

9 Articles worth reading… (Spotted: Week 39-41, 2010)

Implementing Yammer within Your Organization Using Twitter Best Practices

The featured tool in this article is Yammer, but the tactics and principles described are valid for whatever intranet collaboration tool you are rolling out. Three critical tactics according to Hanesbrands: Gain leadership support, Partner early with IT, Help employees use the platform & see value.

Should intranet links open in a new window?

James at Step Two Designs has written a blog post based on a lively discussion on the Intranet Professionals LinkedIn group. I’m in agreement with James on this one - try having opening links in the same window whenever possible (or practical). Let the user choose.

Culture, Contribute, Confidence – The Gateway to Intranet Success

Some concrete advice & ideas by Carolyn on how to initiate a shift in company culture towards a collaborative and sharing organisation - a social intranet.

Information flow overview

In the first of a series of blog posts, Kristian has sketched the intranet information flow at Västra Götaland Regional Council. Understanding how all the information inter-links and flows around helps you maintain the information quality and ensure users are obtaining the correct information when and where they need it.

How to measure the effectiveness of web content

Website owners generally don’t do anywhere near enough testing, and testing of content in particular is almost non-existent. This article describes a three-pronged approach for measuring the effectiveness of your content. It’s a pipe-dream, and not really practical for a major re-write; but the theory is good and useful for more contained content changes.

How to find bloggers relevant to your business

Taking the time to find, nurture, and reward relationships with bloggers is a key task in marketing (and SEO, branding, PR, etc). Not only is it effective, it can be really cost effective too.

Nokia upsets blogger due to marathon PR failure

Nokia’s PR company Mission shows you how not to engage the blogging community. They have subsequently apologised (in the blog comments of the original post). But still. Smells of time-pressure & poor project management at the very least.

SEO starter guide updated

Two years after releasing their first SEO Starter Guide, Google have updated it and released an updated version. A great handbook for web managers - it explains many best practices and recommendations for websites - but it’s not an ultimate guide to SEO (and doesn’t claim to be!)

Is hiding text with CSS to improve accessibility bad for SEO?

Will you get into trouble with Google if you do the right thing accessability wise? Basically, no. If you create valid code, your SERPs are safe…


This work by James Royal-Lawson
is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Sweden License