When choosing a product I believe our decision is largely based on price, whereas with a service location is a bigger deciding factor. Which is where GeoTagging could prove a big benefit to business and users alike. GeoTagging is when geographical information is added to metadata in websites, RSS feeds or images. This can be in the form of latitude and longitude coordinates, altitude, bearings or place names.

For example, I’m looking for a nearby Italian restaurant. I search for “Italian restaurants in Oxfordshire” and I’m given hundreds of results. I don’t want to travel the length of the county for a restaurant, I want the closest. I would therefore filter the results by nearby GeoTags.

As internet-enabled mobile devices become more widespread the potential for GeoTagging location-specific content is greater still. To change my example, I’m walking down the street with my iPhone and looking for a nearby Italian restaurant. I search for “Italian restaurant” and my results show the closest restaurant with directions generated by GoogleMaps. Firstly, my search criteria are sent with my location from my iPhone to a search engine. It is queried against GeoTagged data and the results are shown as directions from my current location generated in GoogleMaps. In the same way this could be applied to nearby “Tourist attractions”, specifying the location of where a photo was taken or finding concerts, shows or just about anything.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

I was listening to John Oxton speak on the Rissington podcast about his preferred method of usability testing for improving the design of his websites. He suggested using the User Story technique.

This involves thinking about scenarios of how people will use your website. For example, “David comes onto the site and wants to make contact with the company”. Then your challenge, as web designer, is to make this as easy as possible for the user. Probably by putting contact information or a link to your contact page somewhere prominent on your website and not hidden away.

Although this might sound obvious, I’m sure everyone can thing of a time when they’ve been left feeling frustrated by a website because they couldn’t easily find what they wanted. I have experienced this type of situation before when I wanted to phone a company to find out about postage before buying a product. I didn’t want to step through the entire ordering process and be surprised by the cost right at the end! I just wanted to call the company and have someone give me a straight answer on the price. So what did I need? The telephone number! Which was hidden deep in the ‘about us’ section. Perhaps this was an after thought, or maybe the telephone number just looked ugly and wasn’t aesthetically pleasing to include in the design! Whatever the reason, my frustration could have been avoided by the web designer considering a few User Stories. 

They’re very simply to implement – a few logical thoughts before and during the design process on how you think people will want to use the site – and the benefit to the user and success of your site, priceless.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Jeffrey Zeldmen says that the content is the most important aspect of any site. He has a point – we don’t go to websites to enjoy the design or appreciate the usability of the navigation.

I agree with Zeldmen in part, I don’t believe that websites need to “wow” you with their design. I mean, if I wanted to look at great design I would visit a gallery! I think a design should be seen and not heard – it should support the content and not take your attention away from its message.

In truth, most people go online with a purpose. They may search or return to their favourite websites because they want to find something specific. And they want to find it as quickly and effortlessly as possible – without thinking almost.

A poorly designed website will make you think so much it will probably give you a headache! Design is therefore critical and in my opinion, has equal importance to the content. I don’t mean beautiful, artistic design but good structure, layout and navigation.

If a website fails on any of these three things, I might as well be looking at a page of gobbledegook because I won’t be able to find what I am looking for!

Permalink | Leave a comment  »