Conversion means your website users doing whatever it is you want them to do.  For example, you might want your website visitors to

• purchase a product
• fill out an RFI (request for information) form
• subscribe to mailing list
• drive to your retail store
• find the info they were looking for
• contribute to your cause (charity, political website)

He comments on Flickr.com user experience as “open, encouraging, happy, and excited”. He relates too how he was won over by Photojojo.com ‘s “contagious excitement” that results him in subscribing their newsletter.

He also makes a great point that the choice of word in every button, every link and every title designer should be concerned with as much as the colors, the pixels.

Derek even went as far as to suggest that clients who have a designer who says they’re not a writer should look elsewhere and “find one who is.”

Text is the interface that your user look at and act upon it – whether to subscribe to a newsletter, commit themselves to a cause, getting to open their wallet or just to assure them.

My years of web design and development, I have learned that: when companies plan on building a website, they always underestimate the job of writing and editing its words. They usually delegate the task to an over-work admin staff who merely copy and paste what in their Word or PowerPoint files.

Professional writer are seldom or in fact never on the team when the web project kicks off.

A web designer worth their gold should be comfortable in not just color, graphics, layout, client-side coding but also writing as well!

It can no longer be consider a softskill any more. It a core skill.

Users have highly emotional reactions to them because they arrive in users’ inboxes.

Users will often avoid signing up for newsletters because they feel crushed by information overload. It is the job of the newsletter publisher to convince users that the newsletter will be simple, useful, and easy to deal with.

Why users liked email newsletters, more than one-third highlighted the following three benefits:

* Email newsletters are informative and keep users up-to-date (mentioned by two-thirds of the users).
* Email newsletters are convenient and are delivered straight to the user’s information central; they then require no further action beyond a simple click.
* Email newsletters have timely information and real-time delivery.

Designers
This is nothing new for professional like us but good to know if you are relatively new

“Each email platform has a different way of displaying the From line, the Subject line, and the newsletter content. They also have different approaches to spam filtering and other things that influence the subscriber’s user experience.This diversity makes it crucial that newsletter designers test their subscribe and unsubscribe processes—as well as the actual newsletter delivery and display—on all major email platforms.”

Content Provider/Client

Most frequent advice our study participants had for newsletter creators was to “keep it brief.”

Writing good subject lines is crucial, both in encouraging users to open the newsletter and helping them distinguish the newsletter from spam. We recommend including content from the issue in each subject line, even though it’s a difficult job to write good microcontent within the fifty- to sixty-character limit that many email services impose.

Read the full detail of the report

huddle_landingpage, originally uploaded by S S YAP.

Clear Call to Action Landing Page

Benefits illustrated with simple graphic reinforces the message you read in the email newsletter

Options with key features highlight and radio button for immediate selection

2. Types of usability testing
Heuristics Evaluation or Expert Review involve assessing a websites or application usability against a set of principles or best practice guidelines.

Beside Jakob Nielsen Ten Usability Heuristics, ISO 9241 is also an alternative usability heuristics

Gold standard of usability testing is user testing.

3. Who to test?
It important to get the actual or intended user to do testing. Not designer or developers or even user representative. (manager of a call-centre)

4. What to test?
Usability test should focus

• Can people complete the task?
• How long do they take?
• How many errors do they make on the way?

Focus on what people do, rather than what people say.

5. How many people to test?
Most usability problems can be detected by testing with very few participants. With 5 participants, you can catch 80% of usability problem.

If your website (i.e. a university library website) caters to diverse audience – undergraduate student, faculty staff, postgraduate student. You better off gather 5 participants from each group.

blue prints that allow designer & developer to communicate a Web page’s content and functionality to everyone involve in building websites/web applications

Wireframe

do not usually convey the look & feel of the websites/web applications.

Wireframe

is a evolving detail sketch

is a project, communication & documentation tool

Fortunately, you can submit your own reading at www.esb.ie. The website has a page on “How to read your meter” to assist you.(http://bit.ly/Kvj3D).

I was expecting a link to a from to submit my meter reading. The link is not there and you have to hit the “Back button” on your browser to find it.

Finally, you came to this page and are advise to get ready:

• Name on account
• Your account number
• MPRN
• Meter number
• Meter reading

Then you have to go in front of the meter which is away from your study desk and take down

• Meter number
• Meter reading

For a moment, you might struggle to tell what the different between Meter Point Reference Number (MPRN) and Meter Number. I thought they refer the same thing. In fact, it not.

Once you manage to find the Meter Number , (which is not easy for me) you go back to your PC and put in

• Name (found on Customer Supply bill)
• Account number (found on Customer Supply bill)
• MPRN (found on ESB Customer Supply bill)

Of course, you lucky if your neatly filled bill is beside your study desk all the time.

What they can do to make it easy

ESB would make it easier if they just ask three information found on the Customer Supply bill

• Name
• Account number
• MPRN

and do away the Meter Number.

I doubt anyone will be generous to input other people meter reading on your own account.

One more thing

After the whole process, you have this lingering feeling whether you have do it correctly. I suppose next time I going to make sure we do not miss the meter reading.

Most common words I use when I post on twitter.com/mryap