JOHN SUMSER,
S P O N S O R S Find out more
Hall Of Fame8 Corners of ECommerceTypes
of Links
H
C I Readlist
The advertising industry is on the verge of being shattered into a thousand fragments due to the knowledge explosion and the proliferation of new technologies. There are no more grand theories that hold sway over the entire industry. Michael Strangelove
Advertising is
Reality
The System
It's better to
All material on this
|
... |
Navigation DesignWebmaster magazine remains on our list of treasured resources. Be sure to give a good look at Finding The Way. The article is a discussion between three webmasters about maximizing site navigability. International Web UsabilityAs Sun Microsystems' usability guru, Jakob Nielsen tirelessly beats the user interface design drum in his monthly column, Alertbox and in a variety of other books and publications. This month's article talks about some of the minor details to watch in making your site usable for International Audiences. Letters, We Get LettersStaying adaptive means finding a way to flush your assumptions from time to time. It's no mean feat, particularly in the heart of the info-glut. We hesitate before suggesting yet another mailing list. Our inbasket fills daily with unread gems that simply exceed our ability to absorb. We're sure that yours does too. New Thinking is a weekly essay from an Irishman that attempts to help you reframe your assumptions. The distinct cultural perspective is coupled with a hard working attempt to break new ground. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. We purge our mailboxes often and there are many pieces that go directly into the trash without a reading. New Thinking seems to hover close to the edge without quite making it into the trash pile. In one of those increasingly infrequent quiet moments, we open it and are often delighted. The New Thinking archives will give you a chance to evaluate this resource. Simple RichesWe've been repeatedly reminded over the past couple of days that the Web is more like a telephone system than it is like a neighborhood. The idea that the Web is a "market" has its grounding in the idea that the web is somehow equivalent to a community. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Web is a connector of people, not a gathering place. Although it's not true universally, in many cases, the "best" website gets out of the way of the relationships that build through the medium. While it's tempting to write simplicity off as a design failure, studied simplicity increases the transparency of the medium and removes place from the equation. In other words, the idea that the web is somehow a place or a market can be incredibly counter-productive. A recent visit to a website called the Global Translation Alliance has had us considering these ideas for a day or so. Take a quick look. The site has the chore of matching buyers and sellers of translation services between 46 different languages at three levels of skill. In other words, they have a product line that covers over 6,000 discrete offerings. You'd never guess that the database was so complex from using the site. Rather than overwhelm the user with layers and layers of nested menus and clever clip art, the Global Translation Alliance cuts directly to the chase. What do you want to do, at what level of sophistication and how big is the job? The result is an instant quote. We suggest that you use the Global Translation Alliance as a simplicity benchmark.
Peeking Through The KeyholeMcKinley, the Internet arm of the Robert Maxwell media empire recently purchased by Excite, offers an interesting slice of raw market research. The Search Voyeur delivers 20 randomly chosen keywords from ongoing searches every 20 seconds. The result is a mind altering stream of juxtaposed words and phrases. We'd suggest a 10 or 15 minute immersion in this slideshow. While summary statistics are far more useful for marketplace decisions, there's something very educational about a dip in the raw data stream. Alliances: |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
All material on this site is © 1995, 1996 by IBN (The Internet Business Network), Mill Valley, CA 94941