The Do's and Don'ts of Modern Web Design
Great resource for new web designers and best practices for established ones from: The Do's and Don'ts of Web Design
http://webdosanddonts.com/
project management + sharepoint + web
I'm a Project Team Lead working in Chicago IL interested in project management's day-to-day challenges and enjoy technology. http://twitter.com/germanflores
Disclaimer
The words and opinions expressed here are my own, and do not, in any way, represent the views of my employers. This statement applies to all online presences I have.
Hacker News | What database would you use to store (min) 10 billion objects?
What database would you use to store (min) 10 billion objects? I'm building something that's going to store 2 billion media objects in the short term, with each object having 10+ related objects on top. Think crawler with some interesting extrapolations/filters/etc applied.
This Is Broken By Seth Godin
Wonderful insight by Seth Godin on things we experience everyday that are broken. Seth notes seven kinds of broken that I think can also apply to the web.
- Not My Job
- Selfish Jerks
- The World Changed
- I Didn't Know
- I'm Not a Fish
- Contradictions
- Broken on Purpose
Not My Job
Someone manages the website but it not responsible for the content or vice-versa.
Selfish Jerks
Making a purchase on any website does not entitle them to send you spam email.
The World Changed
The requirements changed between the time the website was designed and the time people were using it.
I Didn't Know
I'm Not a Fish
Contradictions
Broken on Purpose
Can't find the unsubscribe button on a website or a contact number, Netflix tried this.
Resources:
http://goodexperience.com/
http://www.sensible.com/
Seth's Blog: A million blind squirrels
My dad likes to say, "even a blind squirrel finds an acorn now and then.
It reminds me of companies that stay in business not because they are the best in their field but because one customer supports them.
Randy Drisgill - SharePoint Branding and UI - Using the XML Web Part to show your Twitter feed in SharePoint
Using the XML Web Part to show your Twitter feed in SharePoint
Chris Woodill: Why SharePoint Projects Fail
No governance model to set expectations on how MOSS will be operated, changed and maintained.
Web Design Reading Found
Some good reading on web design practices.
10 Common Typography Mistakes
9 Common Usability Mistakes In Web Design
Top 5 Home Page Mistakes
Flow Interactive :: The Think blog. » £250,000 from better error messages
Return on investment
Within a month the percentage of completed purchase journeys increased a modest 0.5%. Putting it in some perspective that 0.5% was worth £27,000 a month on average - or over £250,000 per year.
Return on Investment for Error Messages doesn't take much time and money but you have to be able to measure: issue and success after implementing change. It's also about finding opportunities.
Online Survey Questionnaire Product Review
Today I'm working on a creating a survey/Questionnaire to get feedback on a service we are running a trial on. The survey solution I'm using is Qualtrics Survey Software. I'm in the survey creation phase this product and it's looking very good.
I have taken surveys before with Zoomerang and SurveyMonkey but haven't had the experience of creating the actual surveys. The Qualtrics Survey Software is an externally hosted web application, allows for member accounts, contributors, and more.
Cost
I did not participate in the purchasing so I don't have any information on cost.
Look and feel
The design is modern and graphics are contemporary (web 2.0 like). The site allows for company branding graphics. Attention to UX has been placed when designing the site, it has no blatant usability issues.
Functionality
Creating the surveys is easy and intuitive. There's a survey library and a question library from Qualtrics that can be re-used or questions can be created (and your company can create it's own libraries). I was impressed with is the ability to create a question and then choose the question type e.g. multiple choice, matrix table, rank order, etc. The question creation process is so easy and intuitive that it allowed me to create a survey in minutes.
The site is all JavaScript no Flash to be found which is great. There where issues were some of the text boxes displayed improperly in FireFox 3.0.8 but it didn't prevent me from using the product.
Sending the surveys was also easy, there are lists (which Qualtrics calls panels) that can be reused by all users and also the ability to upload your own lists. It creates individual links for the surveys and also gives you one unique URL option. A great feature from a panel is the ability to send reminders to users that have not responded to the surveys.
It also allows for your users to self-register and create their own surveys, in a big organization this becomes required functionality.
Issues
Some of the survey respondents reported that once they changed the focus of the browser window the survey was gone, this was not a big issue so no research was done on the validity.
Resources
Below are some resource links for writing surveys, for those of us who don't have marketing background asking the right questions is paramount.
Questionnaire - From Wikipedia
14 Tips for Writing an Effective Online Survey - From Syberworks
Writing Survey Questions: Tips for effective and relevant questions - From SurveyMonkey
Survey Tips - From Zoomerang
Survey Webinars - From Zoomerang
Top Ten Survey Writing Pitfalls - From Qualtrics
Survey Design - From Qualtrics
How to Increase Survey Response - From Qualtrics
Survey Research Articles - From Qualtrics
