Michaela Cernescu’s Blog

It is about the right time for Dec. Newsletter that I pledge to get it out around 15th of each month. This is special because is the last newsletter of the year and we are close to special Holidays and the challenges of a new year.

My mini talking points are:
1. Website design – Find out if your Website is meeting its usability requirements!
2. The faster growing Web 2.0 Application – Twitter
3. Holidays and 2009 expectations

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1. Website design – Find out if your Website is meeting its usability requirements!

Website Design is a subject dear to my heart. I have started creating Websites from the scratch long time ago, and I have been a stanch believer on the concept of combining a good looking Site with a useful content. I don’t believe in ugly Websites, even when the content is good. Make sense as I am a fun of Seth Godine’s school of the 3 Rs:

useful  –  unique  -  up-to-date

We always create our Sites with a purpose in mind. We never create a Site for just one time visit, using websites we want to create lists of potential customers, a community of friendly people that coming back again and again to visit out site, and this is the most powerful way to transform potential customers in customers. 

The first impression: unique, pleasant, a warm feeling is what makes me look closer and discover the content. The first 5 seconds of exposure are very important to determine a visitor to stay longer or go away. If the visitor starts browsing your site, the other characteristics are important: easy navigation, clarity, quality content.

The truth of the matter is, after so many years of Website design, we have now good guidelines for website usability, accessibility, and we have a lot of tools to measure those characteristics. The bad news is not everybody follow the guidelines.

The general wisdom is that a Website must have:

• Easy Navigation, and map side for large WS
• Functionality, Clarity, and Consistency
• User Control, everything a user wants to do, must be available: search, cancel, sign-in, read more, contact us, about us. Don’t leave the impression that you have something to hide, put your picture, address, email, your Twitter count, Alexa count. This is the way you will build trust
• Content of high relevance presented in simple language, avoid jargon, well structure info: clear links, paragraphs, bullets. This is very important that a lot of people first scan and second read or go away
• Content is the king, but don’t hype, be as honest as you can, at this point in history people are sick and tired of hype and sophisticated enough to discover what is hype and what is not
• On-line help and instructions available for sign-in, for download
• An efficient System of User Feedback
• An efficient System of Error Prevention with visible error messages and concise instructions for correction

We have a lot of sources, but for more details, I redirect you to the best source available that also contain learning sites, checklist and guidelines:
http://web.mit.edu/is/usability/usability-guidelines.html

I give you same tools to measure your site usability and accessibility:
http://fivesecondtest.com/   this is a site which will run a quick usability poll for you

http://www.feng-gui.com/  this site shows you the heat map of any image you put in your site, it effectively analyze attention and attraction in visuals (this is important for “5 seconds first impression” I talk about)

To lean more about Usability and Accessibility you can go in forums:
http://www.cre8asiteforums.com/forums

Hang on in forums is always a time well spend, you can learn from others, find best advice, and best people interested in your niche, new ideas, and is fun as well.

If you enjoy this post, let me know, drop a line or two. I’ll come back to this subject, because I believe in the power of “well done” Websites.

2. The faster growing Web 2.0 Application – Twitter

Not all Web 2.0 Applications are equal, and Twitter is really the fastest growing Application.
It is build around a simple question: What are you doing now? And you can respond only in 140 characters or less. Initially I was skeptical but after I tried I discovered why people get into it:

• It  is very simple and easy to communicate, a lot of people is using it as a mini blog
• A perfect way of picking up useful information
• Easy way to find new customers, business partners, pears, friends 
• Excellent opportunity to advertise yourself, your work, services, blogs
• A powerful networking tool, put questions, give answers
• It is addicted and fun 
• You can build a following crowd in a short period of time, anyway quicker then an opt-in list in a website

All I said is valuable but the best profit of Tweeting is build a team of followers, create a community that like you, communicate with you, pay attention to you, get closer to you daily. In time you can brand your business, doing this you make people know you, remember you and finally trust you. 

I don’t advise you to put in front of your follower offers all day long, this will be considered same sort of spam and the people will go away, but if you build correctly the relationship, and brand correctly your business, when you will advertise something this community will pay attention to you, because the felling of knowing you was created, and you will have customers.

In summary: The numbers of so many applications that have been created and are related with Twitter are definitely the proof and the recognition of the value of Twitter. I list just a couple of them:
http://twitter.grader.com
http://tweetdeck.com
http://twittAd.com
http://tweetMyBlog.com
http://TwitWall.com
http://search.twitter.com
http://TwitPWR.com
http://TwitPic.com
The latest I found is: http://itweet.net  it built-in auto-refresh, search and hashtags, full follow, block, notifications features, view user bio, location, URL inline with tweets, and watch conversations with “in reply to” links, awesome!

Play with all of them and you will find something you like it for sure.

3. Holidays and 2009 expectations 

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