Business Evolutionist

HTML Emails

Both of the mail clients I use, Outlook at work and Gmail for personal, strip images out of HTML email... I think most mail clients are doing this now. So, why do people continue to send HTML emails that depend on images?

I got this today from a vendor that I've given permission to email me:

There was no text in the email, just links to pictures.

In todays world of limited attention, why assume that people are going to be able to view your communication?

Why not have some metrics in place that show who on the mailing list actually download the email - if they don't download the images, switch to a non-HTML version the next go around and offer them the ability to get the HTML version back?

Keeping Attention

Part of my post the other day, What should WSJ.com do?, included a little snippet about advertisements potentially distracting from the readability of the Wall St. Journal online.

I understand that companies need to make money, but it never ceases to amaze me how prominently some major sites feature advertisements within their pages. We use to have the "banner ad", which we all learned to ignore, so it makes sense that ads drifted down into the content - attempting to grab our attention as we're trying to focus on the content of the page.

The worst offense, however, is that some sites are still sing popup ads - those pesky small new browser windows that open up in front of the page you're trying to look at - even though almost any Usability expert you speak to would tell you how bad they are.

Modern browsers now have popup blockers, which automatically stop the popup ads from appearing. When the browser blocks a popup, the browser reveals a small banner at the top of the content of the page, offering you some options (in case you want to view the popup). The browsers use a subtle animation to reveal the popup blocker, ensuring that you see that some action was taken on your behalf and to undo the action if you so choose.

The subtle animation that browsers use is an example of great design - IMHO - the details (controls) reveal themselves only when appropriate, and, even though the animation is distracting, it accomplishes the goal in that few people will miss it.

My question is, why do sites still use popup ads?

Here are two major sites, CNN and The Weather Channel, respectively, with the popup blocker control revealed:

There are two crappy things about this:

1.) The popup blocker being revealed is distracting

2.) I have to take an action to get rid of it (well, I don't have to get rid of it, but having it in the page pushes content down, requiring more scrolling).

Knowing that most people have popup blockers, and that the both popups and blockers are distracting, why do sites still use popups??

What should WSJ.com do?

Two of my favorite bloggers recently offered up compelling, and opposing, views on what the Wall St. Journal should do with its website.

First up, Fred over at A VC, wrote:

Rupert Murdoch should make the WSJ as free to use online as Google is. And he should do that the first day he owns the paper. Why isn't the WSJ the force in the online world that is it in the offline world? Easy, because you have to pay for its content and anyone who has spent time doing business online realizes that less than 10% of anyone's audience (even if your audience are rich people) will pay for online content.

Fred seems to think that they increase the pages views enough to generate enough in advertising to make the $75 million in subscriber revenues. I think he is probably correct with this, the concern would be how many ads they'd have to place and how it might distract from the readability of the pages. I'm quite sick of animated dancing characters trying to sell me a mortgage and similar attention-spam. I think if they went to a ad-supported revenue model, they'd have to keep their audience in mind set some pretty strict guidelines as to the types and quality of ads they'd accept (just like in the paper version). Where I think Fred nails this is it that is indeed rare to see a WSJ reference on a blog, so they are sacrificing community participation.

Next up, Rob over at BusinessPundit, wrote:

First of all, yes, some free content is good. You need to prove that you have some value so that people are willing to pay for the rest of what you offer, but when you make everything free, you get the downward spiral of quality that tends to be so prevalent on the web. When you shift from paying for content to attracting eyeballs and selling ads, the value proposition changes from we have quality content to we have the attention of many people. Thus, your product decisions focus less on quality content and more on content that will attract the attention of many people.

Rob makes the assumption that if the content is ad-supported, that the quality will suffer - that they'll somehow stop producing the quality content that the WSJ is known for. It is VERY rare that I disagree with Rob, he's a very smart guy, but I think there is a touch of faulty logic in his argument. The weather channel, for instance, is ad-supported content, but that doesn't change their weather forecast: "People prefer to look at Sunny and 70, so we'll just show that all the time." or "Our traffic spikes with there is a threat of sever weather, so we'll show a chance of Tornado's every day". If the Weather Channel stopped offering accurate forecasts, they wouldn't have any viewers.

Again, I think both Rob and Fred make very compelling cases for their side of the argument... however, why not do some combination of both?

1.) Continue with subscription model, but make all the content free after 5/7/14 days. The value of their content declines over time, who wants financial news from a week ago? Subscribers could link to articles, knowing that they'll be publicly available after a few days, so the link will work for everyone eventually. This is what Wired, Fast Company, Business 2.0 and others do - you can't see the content for free until some number of days/weeks after the initial publication. Subscribers will see it right away, others will have to wait. You can maintain the exclusivity of the content with this model, because only some people will see it right away.

2.) Pay for participation. Give all the content away, but charge to participate in discussions and build a WSJ social network, where you have access to analysts, writers, editors, etc. The power behind this would be in the facilitation of developing relationships between like minded individuals. Think of this as an exclusive version of LinkedIn.

3.) Give some of the content away, charge for the premium stuff. Not all of their content relates directly to the market, they have great articles during the week about careers and travel, and so forth - why not just give that stuff away for free? Tie this to number 1 above, and they could make everything free after some number of days.

4.) Build a set of premium tools and charge for those. My guess is that people who read WSJ care about the financial markets, so why not give the articles away for free but charge for additional stuff - summaries, company and/or industry trackers, email alerts, etc. Let subscribers build a profile on the site that enables the WSJ to help them manage the complexity of the market and their investments. For instance, if someone cares about the consumer packaged goods industry - build me a custom view that includes articles about that. They could have custom Specialty Editors that could provide in-depth industry pages that would highlight all the important stories and events for that given industry. Not as many people would sign up for this, but I'm sure they could charge a premium price for it - if the tools were good enough.

5.) Make a few articles free every day, so that bloggers can link to and discuss them. The more people they expose to the quality, the more people should subscribe.

6.) Allow other sites to license their content. Imagine if some/all of the WSJ content was available on Yahoo, like Reuters and and AP stuff - WSJ would still get some money for the content and they would get increased exposure. If they also added advertising revenue, they could really increase profits.

Okay, these aren't the greatest ideas, however, I don't think this is an either / or situation. I think they can do both. I don't read the WSJ (print edition) often - mostly when I'm traveling, but I always enjoy it when I do. The quality of the content is great.

What do you think? Free? Subscription-based? Some combination of the two? Something else? What should the WSJ do?

Website value

A kind reader astutely pointed out that there are issues with one of my old articles that I linked to - some of the content of the article is missing, which makes it very odd.

Sadly, it was one of my favorite articles: "If your website doesn't add value, rethink it" (link to article).

Although it is a bit dated (Jan, 2004), and it was written at very high level (published in the local business journal), I thought I'd post a cleaned up version of it here.

[START OF ARTICLE]

Before we start, here is an exercise. First, think of two consumer product brands that you are loyal to – Pepsi over Coca-Cola, Krispy Kreme over Dunkin Donuts? Got them? Okay, now, next answer the following questions:

1.) Have you ever visited the Web site of either of your favorite brands?
2.) How frequently do you visit those Web sites?

Based on the answers that I normally get when I poll people, probably only half of you said yes to question # 1. For those who did visit the sites, most people probably answered "seldom or only once" to question # 2.

Think about it, here are brands that you are loyal to, and you don't even visit their Web site with any frequency. Let's face it. The Web is old news for most of us and no matter how flashy and pretty a site is - you won't frequent that site unless it enriches or simplifies your life in some way.

Now, before I go on, let me say that every business needs a Web site – if for no other reason than to provide contact information, product information or directions... that just makes sense. The point, however, is that the days of 'brochure-ware' are long over.

For example, I have been to the Dunkin Donuts site several times, and they have done for coffee what NetFlix.com (the Internet based DVD rental company) has done for movies – sort of. I am a member of the Dunkin Donuts 'Regular Refills' program. This program allows me to specify the amount of coffee I want delivered to my home and the frequency at which I want it delivered. Dunkin Donuts has simplified my life. I can manage the program from their easy to use Web site – add products, change the quantity, the frequency, and enjoy my favorite brand of coffee without ever having to go to a Dunkin Donuts location again. Had Dunkin Donuts not had this functionality, I would probably never have gone back to its site. The truly neat part is that I really don't have to go to the web site all that much. The program sends me an e-mail to notify me of the upcoming delivery in case I need to make a change to my standing monthly order.

Providing store inventory on a Web site is another service. A couple of national stores, Borders and Circuit City for example, have real time store inventory available from their Web sites. If I need something and I want to see if it is in stock, all I have to do is visit the store's Web site to check. In the case of both of these stores, I also can reserve the product before I leave the house.

What these companies have done is given people a reason to come to their Web sites. They have provided tools to make peoples lives just a little simpler.

When you are thinking about the purpose of your company's Web site, ask yourself some of the following questions:
1.) Why would someone visit my Web site?
2.) How can I use the site to simplify my customers' lives?
3.) Can the Web site reduce calls to the customer service or parts department?
4.) For a doctor's office or an auto repair shop, can customers schedule appointments online? Can you provide e-mail reminders of upcoming appointments?
5.) Can customers let you know when they are interested in a product or service? Can you contact them when that product or service becomes available?
6.) Can customers easily find out the status of an order?

If none of these ideas fit your business, you can still provide value to customers in other ways. The biggest magnet for visitors is content. Provide research on your industry – written by you or your staff – that is updated constantly. Let people sign up to be notified when you post new content.

[END]

Culturally Customized Website

I read a very interesting book on my flight yesterday - 'The Culturally Customized Website' (website | Amazon). I almost wanted to call the book an eye opener, however, I knew that I know very little about localization, which is why I wanted to read it, and this book reinforced that.

This is the first of 3 books that I'm reading on the subject about internationalizing websites. The other two are: Beyond Borders: Web Globalization Strategies, and International User Interfaces

The purpose of ordering these three books is so that I could gain a better understanding of some of the basic stuff like the reading patterns (left to right vs. right to left vs. vertical), color usage, etc. What I got from Culturally Customized Web Site was a little more.

A truly culturally customized web site goes beyond just the text, the color scheme or spatial orientation. A truly cultural customized web site takes into account the values of the target culture. The 5 unique values that comprise the framework:

1. Individualism-Collectivism – a belief in the importance of goals of the individual (individualism) versus the goals of the group (collectivism). This value indicates how closely or loosely a society a society is knit. In individualistic cultures, the needs, values, and goals of the individual take precedence over group goals; the opposite is true for collectivistic cultures.
2. Power Distance – a belief in authority and hierarchy (high power distance) versus the belief that power should be distributed (low power distance). Cultures high on power distance accept power and hierarchy in the society and are low on egalitarianism. In such cultures, less powerful citizens are accepting of unequal power distribution in society.
3. Uncertainty Avoidance – the importance of predictability, structure, and order (high uncertainty avoidance) versus a willingness for risk-taking and acceptance of ambiguity and limited structure (low uncertainty avoidance). People from cultures high on uncertainty avoidance tend to have low tolerance for uncertainty and avoid ambiguous situations, view conflict and competition as threatening, and value security over adventure and risk.
4. Masculinity-Femininity – a belief in achievement and ambition (masculine) versus a belief in nurturing and caring for others (feminine). Masculine cultures value assertiveness, material possessions, and success, while feminine cultures place more value on helping others, preserving the environment, quality of life, and nurturance.
5. Low-High Context – high context cultures have close connections among group members, and everybody knows what every other person knows. Thus in such cultures most of the information to function in a group in intrinsically known, and there is little information that is explicit. High context cultures use more symbols and nonverbal cues to communicate, with meanings embedded in situational context. Low context cultures are societies that are logical, linear, action-oriented, and the mass of the information is explicit and formalized. Most of the communication in such cultures takes place in a rational, verbal, and explicit way to convey concrete meanings through rationality and language.

This book seemed more strategy to me; describing which functionality should be featured prominently for different cultures. That was a nice surprise.

I still think that there is an overriding factor that we're all human beings first and regardless of your culture people are more alike than they are different - people want to feel loved, needed, attractive, special, etc. (I know I read that somewhere... )

Language was obviously a huge topic including the potential for loss of meaning during translation. I posted recently about Usability Lingusitics, and now I realize that choosing the right words is even more challenging than I had originally thought. Most marketers out there know about some of the more famous examples of corporate slogans that change meanings during translations ("finger licking good" vs. "eat your fingers off" - or something like that). Individual words, obviously, have different meanings depending upon the target language. Oddly enough we just designed a consistent "Getting Information - Please Wait" pop-up for long running transactions, and the authors spent several paragraphs on some of the localized differences of the word "wait". URGH! :-)

There was an example that the authors used to highlight the difficulty with translations... one example of vocabulary equivalence (or lack thereof) is the Japanese response to the Potsdam Declaration in July 1945, leading to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Allies, armed with the Atom Bomb, issued the Potsdam Declaration, offering an ultimatum to Japan: surrender unconditionally or face the consequences. Historians say that the Japanese clearly understood the implications of the atom bomb being used on them; their dilemma was to find a more face-saving option than unconditional surrender. The Japanese Premier Japanese Kantaro Suzuko announced that the cabinet had taken the stance of mokusatsu, which has no exact meaning in English and can be translated as “making no comment” or “ignoring”. The Japanese cabinet intended the former meaning, and not the latter, as they wanted more time to discuss and decide their response (including the possibility of getting Russia involved to broker a surrender). Instead, it was translated by the Allied world as the Japanese “ignoring” the ultimatum (some say it was translated as “rejecting” the ultimatum), leading to the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The thing that I kept thinking as I read through the book was my time in Switzerland a couple of years ago. Other than a few hotel employees, everyone spoke at least some english and nearly every sign at airport in Zurich was translated into english. I noticed the signs being in english, but it really hit me when I arrived in Dulles where not a single sign outside of customs was translated. This has always stuck with me.

I really enjoyed The Culturally Customized Web Site: Customizing Web Sites for the Global Marketplace - I'd give it a 4.5 out of 5 stars.

What do you think? Have you done any work localizing a website? What are the things that you did? What were the challenges?

Usability Linguistics

I'm in the process of doing a Heuristic Usability Evaluation of a software product for a potential client. The software product is a tool that enables non-programmers to build web applications... pretty cool stuff.

As part of the review, I'm doing a comparative study of some other sites. As I was capturing some screen shots, I realized that in addition to attractive design improving usability, so can language.

I know, obvious, right?

With the web today, it's best to make a site task-based. Navigation for a task-based system should follow the Verb-Article-Noun naming convention: e.g. Add to Cart, Proceed to Checkout, etc.

As I was capturing some of these screen shots, I noticed some good examples of that naming convention and some that were outstanding.

In the user interface of Coghead, for example, the main action is "Build an Application".

In the user interface of Typepad, one of the main actions is "Create a Post". They could have named it "Write a Post", but "Create" is better, isn't it? Writing is work. Creating is expressing. It's a subtle (semantic) difference that I think makes all the difference in the world.

I'm not picking on Coghead here, please don't think that or flame me... but they should rename "Build..." to "Create...". Building is hard work, what frame of mind am I going to be in when I know I've got to Build something vs. Create something?

Another example I like is "Discover" instead of "Learn". Discover implies being first to find something, learning requires effort.

What do you think? Do you think that language improves the usability of things? What are some examples you can think of?

Great Bloglines message...

Okay, I picked on bloglines for the bad error message... sorry! So I have to applaud them for the "Plumber"... just great!

Bad error message

First, let me state that I love Bloglines. Love. The recent improvements are great. Which is why it surprised me when I saw the above message - notice the text:

Please contact the server administrator, webmaster@bloglines.com and inform them of the time the error occured, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

This is a great example of what NOT to say in an error message.

Writely Review

Just started using Writely a couple of days ago and I have to tell you that I really like it.

For those of you not familiar with it, Writely is an online word processor (think Microsoft Word on the web). It has all the basic functionality you'd expect... and it's free (does anyone know if it is to remain free?). One of the really cool things is that Google purchased them so I didn't have to jump through hoops to set up my account, it recognized my gmail account and I was in and writing in seconds flat (bravo!).

My only negative feeedback, and this is minor, is the "New" link located at the top left... I didn't notice it at first. I didn't know how to create a new document, and it took me a second or two to find it. I would say that creating a new document is probably one of the top two or three tasks people will have, so it should be featured a little more prominently.

Other than that I think it is great. You can save documents in various formats (Word, PDF, HTML, etc), you can collaborate, view revision history, check your spelling, etc.

I wrote the last post (Culture Code) and this one in Writely!

I highly suggest checking it out.

What do you think? Have you tried Writely? What are your favorite features?

The Future of Web Apps Conference

I spent part of last week in San Francisco at The Future of Web Apps conference - it was great! I really had a great time and learned quite a few things.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, I got to hang out with Marc Orchant - who has a good summary of the conference on his ZDNet blog - which made the whole experience even better.

For me, the best presentation was a two-way tie between Carl Sjogreen (How We Built Google Calendar) and Tom Coates (Social Change on the Web).

Carl did a wonderful job of describing the process that they used to develop the Google Calendar (good notes here, h/t to Marc for pointing to them). Tom spoke about Polyphony (where many voices make lots of data comprehensible) vs. Consensus (many contributors make one voice, e.g. Wikipedia) as well as a lot of other really great stuff.

My next favorite presentation was Ted Rheingold (The state, future and business of passion-centric communities), Ted runs Dogster & Catster - this guy gets it, clearly. He was smart and articulate and he totally understands "community".

Rounding out my Top 5 is Mike Davidson of Newsvine and last, but not least, was Tantek Celik who spoke about Microformats.

I took really good notes, but since they technically belong to my employer - who paid for me to go to the conference - I kind of feel strange sharing them.

That having been said, if you want to chat about The Future of Web Apps, I'm all for it! Comment or email me. I totally dig this subject!

Did you go to the conference? What did you think? If you didn't go but have an opinion about where Web Apps are headed, leave a comment or point me to your blog!

UPDATE: Whoops - forgot to include the fuzzy cell-phone pic of Alcatrazz that I took down at Fishermans Wharf.

Click for larger view