A quick check of Svenska Lottakåren’s new web site (released May 2010) against a handful of best-practices and web standards.
Amongst the things I babble about this time are the start page banner, the drop-down menus, and calls to action.
By an interesting co-incidence Econsultancy publish this article the same week as I publish my SEO Checklist for content writers. It’s got some points, but to be honest I think it’s way too technical to be really useful for content writers.
Good tip: Perform a simple, bulleted-list one-page cultural audit as part of your analysis before taking on a social business strategy – applies also to enterprise collaboration initiatives.
Some good points – including skipping pilots and jumping straight to full implementation, and – yet again – keep barriers to use to a minimum.
Some interesting analysis of Twitter and it’s behaviour as a information distribution medium. Apparently Twitter betters the well-known 6 degrees of separation by 2 hops. Most people on Twtter are only separated by 4 degrees.
We’re not in Kansas anymore Toto. OK, it’s the IE gang’s own selection of tests, but still – that’s a lot of 100% scores. Is Internet Explorer 9 to be the most standards-compliant of all browsers?
A little bit of an insight into how Google ranks tweets on Twitter from a Google Engineer.
Yet another detailed and well argued article from Smashing Magazine. This time covering the use of (left hand side) vertical navigation menus on web sites, and arguing the case for horizontal menus instead.
A request to have pages opening up in new windows (or tabs) came up yet again this week from a client. This is a useful page covering many arguments – not all of them against. Although in almost all situations, I am.
A clearly written guide to how you can do almost the same job as a CAPTCHA, but without using a CAPTCHA and all of the problems it causes people.
Bill Ives gives a summary of Nielsen’s latest Intranet report. The tipping point for mobile web, could tip over into Intranets too during 2010.
Niklas Lindh explains why you should use SEO consultants rather than throw money at pre-packaged SEO services./
UX Booth provide us with a nice read about the history of eye tracking, without getting to the whole love/hate eye tracking debate.
A quick check of National Rail Enquiries’ new web site (released 2009-12-15) against a handful of best-practices and web standards.
The site was heralded as being made “more user-friendly after sophisticated consumer research techniques” in ATOC’s press release.
Although redesigns of websites (especially prominent ones) almost always throw up a fair few negative comments. There have been quite a number of complaints.
This Nielsen Alterbox article from February 2009 is worth re-reading. There’s a lot of talk about the mobile web right now, including my own babblings about 2010 being the tipping point. I don’t agree with all of Nielsen’s recommendations, but don’t let that get in your way.
Still, after all these years, “making it easier to find information” is still right up there on the intranet wish-list.
In short, the corporate intranet (and use of the Internet for activities such as research) can be a tremendous productivity gain, not a drain.
Another article, rightly, arguing against organisations blocking websites.
Low levels of accessibility creates a needless block to the possibility of doing business with a sizeable group of people. This article gives an overview of a recent report as well as giving 6 concrete bits of advice to make your site more accessible.
Another year-old article, but a lot of people out there publishing content still have very poor understanding of these two attributes and how to use them.
Jesper Åström publishes a series of three articles covering one of my pet issues – redirecting pages.