Posts Tagged ‘usability’

A skeptic’s guide to marketing with “social media” feeds

Posted on Tuesday, October 27th, 2009 at 1:03 PM by Simon Smith  |  Comments (0)

Some tips for individuals considering social media for business use.

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How to write content for Amazon Kindle

Posted on Friday, March 20th, 2009 at 3:19 PM by Simon Smith  |  Comments (0)

If you plan to port your content to Amazon’s popular reader, read this guide to writing for Kindle by Jakob Nielsen.

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Soda or pop? Language choice essential to content optimization

Posted on Monday, January 5th, 2009 at 3:59 PM by Sara Chappel  |  Comments (0)

Language is a sensitive issue that carries loads of cultural baggage— something as simple as the spelling of color/colour or choosing "soda" over "pop" can create serious friction for your users. Know your audience and optimize your content by choosing spelling and terminology that won’t make them stop in their tracks and say "huh?"

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Optimize email content to strengthen service and trust

Posted on Tuesday, October 28th, 2008 at 5:27 PM by Simon Smith  |  Comments (0)

Transactional email messages, such as shipping confirmations, provide an opportunity to improve customer satisfaction and strengthen relationships. But most transactional email content is poorly optimized, leading to poor usability—and many emails incorrectly flagged as spam. Optimizing email content with a clear "from" address, a relevant "subject" line and user-focused body content can help you address many of the issues that undermine your messages.

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Write “about us” content that works

Posted on Tuesday, October 28th, 2008 at 4:01 PM by Simon Smith  |  Comments (0)

“About us” content is generally better than five years ago. But users have higher expectations, and many sites fail to describe themselves in a paragraph. Usability guru Jakob Nielsen suggests that you can optimize your “About Us” content with a clear homepage link to “About Us” pages, a clear tagline on the homepage, a summary of one to two paragraphs on the “About Us” page, a fact sheet following the summary, and detailed information in separate pages.

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Raise readership by “dumbing down”

Posted on Tuesday, May 13th, 2008 at 7:22 PM by Simon Smith  |  Comments (0)

"More visitors!" you demand. Well, before you order your three-million-dollar Super Bowl spot, here’s a simpler, cheaper solution. It won’t get you more traffic.  But it will help you capture 3 out of 10 visitors who probably bounce from your site because they can’t understand your words.

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