Usable content for Blog & Websites

Most important thing apart from design, navigation, and interaction is "Content ". For a successful blog or website proper content is the primary key. Which is the appropriate content for the readers and customers?

Product: Coppertone is a very famous UVA/UVB protection for kids.



Lets take a scenario: On Sunday morning Kathy (mom of 3 years) is helping his son tom to get prepare for swimming lessons. And accidentally tom sprays Coppertone into his eyes and he started crying & screaming. Immediately mom understands the situation and reads the instruction provided over the spray and it says, "Rinse the eyes thoroughly". And now mom faces the problem, his son is so young and he doesn't allow her to rinse the eyes. Since its Sunday morning her pediatrician is not reachable over phone. Now she immediately login to internet and looks at the Coppertone website to find what needs to be done.

Now with this scenario, what type of content does a user needs? Coppertone Website says "Rinse the eyes immediately". But situation is different for the mom.

One of the most efficient ways to write content should be Scenario Based. Apart from the technicalities, it’s also very important to understand what exactly user wants from a website. It’s always very important to write down different scenarios of the specific persona of the product. And validate the content with the listed Scenario. Scenario based content & being honest with customers real time issues with improve the loyalty over the product.

Now, you can do a task analysis of yourself with this scenario in http://www.coppertone.com/

Response blog - Bad Thinking: Web redesign is bad strategy

This is the response blog to Gerry McGovern's Blog on Web redesign is bad strategy

My views are little different from Mr.Gerry McGovern blog on web redesign. To begin with Google homepage is not the relavant example to showcase in this scenario. First of all, what we see in google home page is only search. In many interviews Merrisa has mentioned that, Sergy has end up designing this Google UI because he was not expert of design & HTML. And we should not take google home page Except Google & Ask all other website in the world has bucket full of content & channels in the home page.

Lets take the example of Yahoo! or msn or aol's home page or any site in www. As web evolved these design of these websites matured & interaction changed. Check the Yahoo! home page screenshots taken from webarchive.org and look at the design transition from 1998 to 2007. Most of us would have seen this. Still have a look at the design change below. And we can't expect the Yahoo to retain the same design of 1998 till date.

Yahoo website in 1996.

Yahoo website in the year 1998

Yahoo website in the year 2000

Yahoo website in the year 2002

Yahoo website in the year 2005

And today's Yahoo website - 2007

Nice redesign, some nice new graphics and colors alone are not part of the redesign of the webpage. Most of the redesign is the result of customers feedback, sales result, business conversion rate and sticking with latest technology. Redesign always shows the healthy sign of the business and the brand. Look at sony, Nike, Coke or any websites. Its like automobile manufacturers coming up with new design of cars every year. Its like evolution of man from ape.

Redesigning is nothing but its repainting and fixing/changing furnitures once in 5 years. Since the technology grows faster and customer needs more changes, the websites are redesigned once in every year or two. Martin Ringlein's comment is good.

Also Read:

• Chat integration in E-Mail: Google Vs. Yahoo
• Yahoo! Mail : Unlimited storage - thoughts !!!
• Froogle: Now called as Google Product Search?
• Google Maps: Draggable Driving Directions ?
• Firebug 1.05 for Mozilla
• Yahoo maps is also the phone book
• Crop, sharpen, make pictures pop. Get the free Google Pack
• Adobe Dreamweaver cs3 - Review
  

New York times & Hindustan Times similarities.

Home page of Hindustan Times & Newyork Times:


Thinking aloud:

1. Can same agency sell the same design for two different companies? Legalities??? (For sure Razor Fish won't do it, not talking on this scenario though)
2. Does company sues agency or the one who copies?
3. Will there be a new trend? Where all site look same in a stream of domain?
   

For Point 1, My say is "Same agency can't sell the design to others, each and every web site design represents the style and nature of companies business and also their unique customers".

Point 2 - I dont have any answers at this point.

Point 3 - Look & feel can't be the same for a all news website or all movies website. Because I feel that, there is a life to each and every business. Its livings. So it should be unique in its own identity.

What is Design Life: Design Life is not the similarity of look and feel, But the similarities in interaction.

Thanks Vinay for mentioning about the design similarities of NY & HT.

Also Read:

• Frustrating User Experience = Loosing Customers
  

Frustrating user experience = Loosing Customers

International calls has become cheaper these days from USA. Usually, when ever I call India, I use Reliance's service ( reliance is India's largest private information and communication services provider). Reliance charges 12.99 cents for a minute. And every month I spend average of $70 to $90.

Yesterday I wanted to call someone who are in India & my friends told me about the Airtel's Deal. Airtel (India's leading provider of telecommunications services) has recently started long distance telephone services. Their rates are 7.99 cents and also their deals are "Get double talktime on sign up and first recharge". so charge for $50 and you will get $50 free. So Its 3.99 cents a minute. Airtel is much cheaper rate than competitor Reliance. I had to call some body in another 10 minutes of time in India. So in the mean time I wanted to check Airtel India call plan in their website www.airtel.co.in . And I logged into Airtels website and tried registering. It was very difficult to register and got frustated and decided to call India through Reliance service (even though charges are 75% more) and recharged for $10.

Why do I pay more for the same service and why did I got frustated in registering in airtel site. Since I browse lots of webstis and I register in most of the site I visit, I have never read the password guidelines. So I Keep on tried register 5 times, and error message showed as password do not match. Then clicked at the password help & it was much more confusing.

This is the best example of how the user gets frustated with a bad password guidelines. It took nearly 12 minutes for the incomplete registration. Below shown screenshot is the confusing password guidelines in airtel site.

Yahoo!, Google, MSN, ebay, citibank, aol - also provide secured websites. None of these sites force any password guidelines to users. Guidelines no.1 says 8 is the minimum character, but generally 6 is the common across many sites. 3-4-5-6 are totally strange.

Airtel's phone service is targeted to NRI and who mostly live in USA. And most of them are computer, bank and medical professions. They type of users has set of browsing patterns. All these users will have access common websites like yahoo, msn, google, ebay, hotmail etc login.

• So all users have behaviour of having 6 or more characters in passwords.


• These users generally use alpha numeric.


• Some people use special characters


• These users will have multiple accounts and they have to manage n number of passwords.


• Most of the accounts will have same passwords


• Its important to have commonly used guidelines to remember the passwords.

New methods & innovations should gel with the user behaviour and it should have life to it.