How Green are Your Affiliations and What Does It Reflect

Nov 022009
 

Doing a little digging around on McAfee’s website today, I came across a pretty cool feature they have for website owners. It can also be used by anyone if you simply curious of how safe a website is.

The service is McAfee’s SiteAdvisor. The service basically reports if the site analyzed has any known problems or complaints. It shows how many times a site has been reported for spam, if it has adware, if it has popups, and items of that nature. What I really found interesting though, was it Green Affiliation report. Continue reading »

Twitter Adds The Nofollow, Bad News for Client Developers

Aug 142009
 

As many of you know I developed the Twitter Toolbar for Firefox a while back. Downloads are going well, and usage just keeps going up, up, up. It also means more traffic for me. Each time someone tweets with it, I get a link to my site, and for everyone that has the toolbar, they can find bookmarks to my site. Basically, I get traffic out of it, and until just recently I got massive backlinks from it. Did Twitter make a big mistake by adding nofollow? Continue reading »

Drop Down Menus

Oct 072008
 

I’m not the worlds biggest fan of drop down or expandable menu’s, but I would not dismiss using them. They often improve navigation. My big problem with them is they are often tiny, or clumsy, and end up creating more work than they are worth.

dropdown 300x267Yesterday I was doing an analysis of this site, Spanish Courses in Argentina, and found a fantastic example on how to do one right.

Why is it Great?

First, the main menu items have drop down arrows indicating that there is more below. Many, or should I say most sites do not have that. Those sites need to get with the plan, and start including them.

Second, text and menu was large enough that it was easy to use with little chance for error.

Third, the hyperlinks were expanded beyond just the text. This makes it even easier to use without error. Notice the highlighted “Contact Us” link that I have taken in the screenshot. The entire orange space is the hyperlink, not just the text.

Fourth, clicking on the main menu buttons without expanding them still navigates you to the first page listed. It’s not just a title, it’s as it appears, a link.

Finally, the fith great technique they used was to have the main menu item change color when the visitor is anywhere within that category. This gives the same effect as breadcrumbs, but without the extra menu.

If you are considering building an expandable or drop down menu for your own site I would suggest taking lesson from this site. Their links could have used titles, and maybe it could have been coded differently, but in regards to usability I give it two thumbs up. Will I be learning Spanish in Argentina? No.

Hick’s Law

Aug 312008
 

Go to this freelance web design site, and find something on their site to click on. When you find something, click on it. Don’t forget to come back here! I forecast that it will take you about 21 seconds to click one of their links. Don’t worry, there are no ads on the site, it’s just another webmaster site like this one. It’s just a simple example for you to do. Now find out why I said it will take you 21 seconds.

It’s Hick’s Law

If you want, you can find the technical definition of Hick’s Law on Wiki, but basically it is T=hk. Time (T) equals the volume of information (h) times roughly 150 miliseconds (k). The freelance web design site I mentioned had fourteen links, all were visible on my screen at least, so 14*1.5 (I use 1.5 because it equals 150 miliseconds), and the answer is 21 seconds. This is an extremely generalized way to use this, but it will work as an example. Using Hick’s Law, I am guessing you will take about 21 seconds to click on one of their links. Try it on a site that you are not familiar with.

Best Web Image has bout 70 links on the home page. I counted my Tag Cloud as one, because I think it is seen as one option. 70*1.5=105 seconds. When I looked into my stats for August my average visitor moved on from the home page somewhere between the 1-3 minute bracket. I looked at the stats from several of my sites for August, and many of them seemed follow Hick’s Law. For those of you interested, the average visitor on this site initially spends 1-3 minutes on the home page, and spends over five minutes per session.

Keep Things Moving

So why is Hick’s Law important? You might think, hey I could put a thousand links on my site, and my visitors will stay on the site for twenty-five minutes. The longer they stay on my site, they more they must like it right? Well, obviously that doesn’t work.

Hick’s Law is important to know, because it’s a great reminder. The more stuff you have on the page, the longer it will take your visitor to figure out. The longer it takes them to figure out, the less likely they will complete that desired visitor action. You have to keep your visitors moving, and not let them die of old age on your site.

What did Freelance Web Design do? They considered that time is precious on that first visit, and made the options limited and obvious. Now I just wish they would add a little text description to those main menu buttons:)

Match Link to Page Title

May 132008
 

In the world of SEO many are trying to improve their search engine rankings, and many are buying links to do it. In the process, quality of the link sellers content often decreases if done poorly. The reason is not necessarily that the linking content is poor though. The reason it becomes poor is because the visitor is taken to a page they didn’t expect. Focus on the keyword is so high that the thought of the visitor is lost.

Here is an example. If I were to link to my road rage site, MonkeyMeter.com, and made the words “Road Rage” the link, the visitor may or may not find what they were looking for. There are many things one could be looking for in regards to road rage like, statistics, safety tips, or maybe videos. MonkeyMeter.com is about rating your road rage, and though you can find those other items on the site it is not what the home page is about. So using the phrase road rage, though a good initial idea, is probably a poor choice.

Now, what if I match the link using the page title to where I am linking? “Do you hate tailgaters? Rate your road rage”. I think you would know exactly what to expect, and when you land on the page you will see the primary content/form dead center as the main content.

monkeymeterform2

You can’t always link they way you want though, for instance, when it is in context. This is when you can put the title tag to work. The title tag creates a small pop up text when hovering over the link. Using the link example above you will see the pop up text will say “Rate your road rage”. To include the title just use this as an example: <a title=”Rate your road rage” href=”http://www.monkeymeter.com”>Rate your road rage”</a>. When making a graphic link, use the graphics alternate text to display the pop up text content, and not the title tag in the link. The graphic alt text will override the title in the link.

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