Web 2.0 Blog

As someone who has studied usability analysis, I’ve come up with 10 usability guideline which all new bloggers should abide by to help generate subscribers and interest in their site.

1. Clean, simple design - With the hundreds of widgets and scripts now available, a lot of bloggers clutter up their sidebar with numerous bits of functionality, which is fine as long as you don’t go over the top. The user is most likely reading your blog to find information which is written in the posts - not the sidebar.
2. Linking - You should insert many links across your posts to encourage users to go and see what you’re talking about. For example, if I mention Techcrunch, the link will allow users who don’t know what I’m referring to, to go and find out. Links should also be blue and underlined as this is generally regarded as the default way of linking text. Users who see blue, underlined text will most likely assume it is anchored.
3. Descriptive titles - Blog post titles are also page titles, so make your page title descriptive but not too long. Imagine you want to search for the content of your post in Google, what type of words would you search for? Try to get them in, but don’t turn it into a SERP.
4. Use readable text - Using poor text is a usability problem that many bloggers get wrong. You should use a clear font like Arial or Verdana (which was designed for optimum Internet readability) and it should be at least size 11px. I’d recommend size 12px, which is what this blog uses. Make headings large and clear, even differ the font slightly from the main text if you want to, as this causes a greater division of content.
5. Make content clear to users - When making a post you should use short paragraphs of about 5-6 sentences so that it is more readable.You shouldn’t be writing a thesis within a blog post, keep them short but relevant. Try to use black text against a white background to make it stand out more, and break up paragraphs by adding bulleted lists or pictures to demonstrate your points. Put wide enough margins around your posts so the text doesn’t run into the sidebar, and the general text area width shouldn’t exceed about 2/3 of the width of the page.
6. Post finding & navigation - On sites with hundreds of posts it can take a long time to find what you’re looking for. You need to have a navigation of your posts preferably separated into categories, this way people can find your posts by looking in the right place. You should also include a search bar in case your users want to find something specific. Finally including an archives page on your site allows your users to browse your entire back catalogue. Some people include archive dates on their sidebar, but I think this uses up unnecessary space. Having a list of between 5-10 of your latest and most popular posts is a much more useful solution as it should stay automatically up-to-date.
7. Frequent usage - A successful blogger would look to add at least one post per day to their blog to keep interest and activity in the blog going. However it is also easy to post too many in posts in one day, some of which will be irrelevant to the context of your blog, which will begin to deter users from reading your posts. Keep on=topic, relevant and try to be unique as duplicate or copied content can work against you in Google’s rankings.
8. Author biography - You needn’t tell your life story, but a brief overview of who you are, what you do and why you are qualified to write your blog will go a long way towards validating your opinions and comments in the eyes of the user. Providing users with your credentials and experience will give them reason to trust what you say, and this will result in more users linking to and visiting your site.
9. Clear blog title & purpose - To make sure you and your users know what you’re writing about you should aim to make it very clear what topic areas your blog. Keep the subject range quite narrow as users want to be reading about a particular subject. I used to have a blog about Science, Technology and Multimedia which was too broad so I narrowed it down to Web 2.0 & Usability, which I can focus more clearly on. Come up with a good title for your blog and make a nice clear heading so people can tell instantly where they are. Add this title to your <title> tag and make sure this is written into any links coming into your blog.
10. Clear RSS feed - If you want more subscribers, there should be a prominent and explanatory RSS button, ideally situated in your header or near the top of your sidebar. Some users will not realize that there’s an RSS feed in the address bar, so you must make it easy for them to subscribe. You can create multiple RSS feeds by using applications such as MultiRSS, Feedburner, RSS Mixer, Yahoo! Pipes and many more.

I hope these blog usability guidelines were useful and appropriate to you. If I’ve missed anything out or you have an comments on the guidelines I’ve written, please leave a comment. I guess encouraging users to leave a comment as I’m doing now should also be a usability guideline. Well, I’ve done it now anyway…

by Adam Moss 

It has been rumoured that image-sharing Internet giant Flickr will soon be launching a user video-uploading service that could rival YouTube’s monopoly on the current market. This type of diversification isn’t unknown for Web 2.0 companies as we’ve often seen expansion into other market areas as part of their natural progression and the strengthening of their userbase. Google has already made a head start with its purchase of YouTube and companies such as Yahoo! are losing ground. Despite Flickr having the advantage of a huge userbase to get off the ground with, I can’t believe all of its users will be satisfied with unrelated additions being made to its service which could result in less development time spent improving its existing service.

Could Yahoo! find a way of integrating the two mediums, giving it a unique selling point or two over its rivals. Perhaps video-editing options or an online slideshow creation tool which is simple to use but offers variety and depth would set it apart. Whatever happens, I’m sure that a much-needed injection of creativity into video-sharing websites is the next step in teh evolution of this sector of Web 2.0 and maybe stronger competition in the market could fuel innovation.

Read a news article from PC Pro for more.

Including Gestalt laws of user psychology can go a long way towards ensuring that your website caters for your user’s usability needs as they navigate through it. Psychologists have determined that the brain acts in a certain way when perceiving objects on a computer screen, and knowing this can help ensure your site is more concerned about the user’s needs than your own.

In the next few days I’ll go through each gestalt law; Proximity, Similarity, Continuity and Closure, one by one to show how they can be advantageous to website design. I’ll start with proximity.

Proximity

This law refers to the observation that objects appearing close together in space or time are perceived to be together. So basically the rule should be to group related items together so that related items are seen as one cohesive group rather than a bunch of unrelated elements. The dots below should demonstrate the point.The dots in the group on the left would be considered a ‘group’ rather than being individual dots that happen to be near. The ones on the right would be considered as three lines of horizontal dots due to the larger gap between rows than the columns. We can apply this process to web design.

In the case of navigation, proximity can be used to very subtlety, but effectively, distinguish different parts of the navigation. For example, Technorati separates parts of its navigation by splitting the row of links into two groups. The group on the left allows you to search through different blog topics, whereas the group on the left allows you to browse more content-driven topics. The administration and technical sections are kept seperate altogether from the main navigation as they wouldn’t be perceived as being part of the same ‘group’.

Another website I was impressed with is Hitflip.co.uk. This is a technique I have noticed a lot of news sites do also. There’s a column of boxed areas down the left side of the page, all with headings related to different product areas. Those categories are further categorized within each box. You know exactly what type of product you’ll find when you click on these links and they’re available from the homepage. Excellent use of proximity and usability, although the fact that the user must scroll down the page to reach them reduces the impact slightly, I feel.

Sticking with Hitflip, proximity comes into play again on the site footer. The screen shot below firstly shows a ‘greyed-out’ area which usefully separates it from the main content. Despite all the links inside this grey box being ‘boxed-off’ together, we don’t interpret them to all have the same meaning, simply due to how they are arranged. Nor do we see the links as individual elements, as we can clearly see there are five columns all offering administrative and support topics of different types. The footer links are then cleverly categorized into five groups and are placed under simple headings offering varying methods of user service.

These are just a few example of proximity on the Internet offering more usable website design. If you have any other examples or comments on the ones I’ve shown, please leave a comment and let me know.

A lot of people want to know what’s the point in Feedburner? Why use Feedburner? And what does Feedburner do? I attempted to find out…

Feedburner is a feed management system that was launched in 2004 and has now recently been acquired by Internet colossal Google. I’ve been trying to figure out what the point in Feedburner is for a while now and this is what I’ve come up with. Basically if you own any type of RSS feed whether it’s from a weblog or a Podcast or otherwise, Feedburner is a service that consolidates that feed so that a much wider variety of feed readers are capable of receiving it. The free service, which I have tested also comes with a control panel, which allows you to monitor how many people have subscribed to your feed and allows you to further optimise and publicise your feed.

PingShot, FeedFlare & BuzzBoost

One useful item I did notice is the PingShot feature, which automatically notifies Web 2.0 giants such as Technorati, Yahoo! and Bloglines when you’ve added new content to your feed. Another of the potentially constructive features on Feedburner is the inclusion of an HTML feed generator, which provides a more readable version of your RSS feed with the option to modify the styles. You can also transfer this straight to Blogger or TypePad.

Feedburner’s self-proclaimed biggest asset is the ability for you to include advertisements within your RSS feed – something that is only worth embarking upon if your feed is a receiver of a large amount of subscribers. You may notice that at the bottom of this article there are a few options allowing you to add this post to a number of Web 2.0’s biggest players. This is another example of Web 2.0’s capability of linking communities from rival sites into one. This feature again was made simple to implement by Feedburner’s FeedFlare element and allows further interactivity between readers and publishers. FeedFlare is one of a number of optimisation services offered by the Feedburner control panel, which can help but I cannot see any huge significance of its use at this time.

Feedburner is like many other of today’s Web 2.0 technologies as it integrates other Web 2.0 apps into one big mixing bowl, but I’m not so sure about the idea of Google having complete control of my feed. It’s likely that Feedburner will be tied into Google Reader, which could mean Google dropping support for non-Feedburner feeds. I’d say it’s better to be part of Feedburner than not part of it. If your blog is successful it lets you understand your audience better, or otherwise that you need an audience in the first place.

By Adam Moss

I was browsing Web 2.0 news on May 8^th when I found out about a recent study by Princeton University, which discovered that only 8% of US adults are users of Web 2.0 technologies despite 73% of them have Internet connections. Why is there a disinterest in Web 2.0 among adults? The survey didn’t include teenagers, though I’m sure if it did we’d be looking at a higher percentage as it does seem to be that generation that dominates discussion boards and data sharing sites such as YouTube. On CRN Australia it was reported that “the report doesn’t offer much to console sellers of PCs, mobile phones, iPods, and the like about their future prospects except to say the young represent a more receptive set of potential customers. ‘Two of the four tech-oriented groups have a higher-than average percentage of members who are full- or part-time students,’ the report says.”

My theory is that it is simply down to time and place. Students and teenagers have more time in their lives for web Surfing and wasting hours talking to people online about a selected interest, whereas adults are more concerned with work and looking after the house. Also, many students today do their research online, they have broadband connections in their schools and universities and quite often their work requires online access. Therefore, they’re much more likely to come across these technologies and use them before adults even become aware of their existence.

InternetNews.com says: “While most Americans are comfortable using the Internet, far fewer are ready to dive into Web 2.0 - such as creating blogs and posting personal videos.” As well as time and place, perhaps the reason for this can also be attributed to absence of naivety towards the risks of exposing personal data in an online environment. Adults are usually much more cautious than younger people when it comes to making their existence public knowledge. Silicon.com says, “The study found, though many US adults do own the gadgets that enable those functions and use the devices to express themselves privately.” Perhaps, then it is a case of privacy and the thickening air of distrust of this online world is preventing them from contributing their own data. I believe the reason most people contribute to Web 2.0 technologies is through a combination of altruism and belonging. It provides self-satisfaction to the individual and a sense of belonging to a community when you contribute to a discussion board, or post a video to a group, or submit a review of a book, something that isn’t always attainable in the real world. The low percentage of Web 2.0 users may well be down to both distrust & privacy and inconveniences such as time& place, and if it is the case, the companies need to make their services more accessible to adult life. This may be through more reassuring promotion campaigns or simply better incentives for joining other than being labelled an ‘Internet geek’ amongst friends. Perhaps it’s large young audience means it is perceived predominantly as a kid’s technology. In that case, companies need to re-brand to appeal more to adults. Ultimately, I can’t see Web 2.0 sustaining such poor performances in the future, and I’m sure it will only be improved to attract everyone.

By Adam Moss