Charles Wiedenhoft on Digital Design and Experience Strategy

A few bullets for best practices in the realm of “help me choose” and “I need other people help me decide what I should do” from Neuro Web Design.

• Display # of reviews on product category landing pages inline with merchandise - expose sooner in the purchase path rather than later
• Sort by most poplular, or “what people ended up buying”
• Add statistics and bar charts to support “rational” decision making (e.g., 6 of 9, 67%, said they’d purchase this product again)
• Complement product ratings with customer stories/testimonials
• Extend reviewer profiles with more than just name and location (e.g., type of user: business, frequency: use everyday, occupation: accountant)
• Call all of this “social validation”

Today’s Alertbox covers a lot of topics discussed around the office recently. Good tips about displaying login forms, search fields and other UI widgets within menus. I think we may be in violation of a few, but for good reasons. The brave souls at Novell hid their global navigation entirely. I suppose it simplifies the interface on secondary pages. 

After a year’s hiatus, regular posts resume today. WP updated and Tweetme plug-in installed.

The 2008 survey is now available for people who make Web sites. I suppose it’s interesting to see trends in job titles, salaries, etc. - so I took it, and so should you?

It’s time for Barcamp in San Diego. This will be my first time attending. I’m sure the event will fulfill my expectations as a single Chumby workshop would be enough for me.

Ask.com’s Director of Marketing pushes “immersive” microsite tactics against the ropes in an iMedia piece published today. He argues that microsites waste agency resources, typically fall short on expected returns (margin), and are often the result of broken internal process stemmed from the limited support of IT departments and misdirected strategy from the traditional ad agency side.

I’d say that microsites aren’t entirely evil if they are paired with a holistic marketing strategy (a component of a larger campaign). Fragmentation of media and consumer reach, and attention span, has resulted in campaigns with much shorter shelf life than ever before. Typically, microsites live and die with these campaigns.

It’s an interesting argument. The article concludes with a tout for rich media banners as a better investment and a solution for pacifying the “it’s about branding” sect.

Eddie Bauer unveils a site redesign and I like it. Lots of DHTML AJAX lightbox action makes for a pleasant shopping experience. The notion of a product detail page really has changed because they only exist in lightboxes on this site. First it was the Gap, then Cingular and now Eddie. Although, those sites still had traditional detail pages for individual products, Eddie Bauer has gotten rid of them entirely.

There can be usability issues with lightboxes, most notably the browsers ‘Back’ button not functionality properly; however, Fry Inc. solved this on the rebuild (as well as clicking outside the lightbox to close it). URLs can be sent as emails and printing works decently. Oh, the home page Flash Ken Burns mouseovers are also a nice surprise.

Interesting to see Core Metrics installed for analytics. I thought Omniture was running them all.

Red Door crew buys shoes on Friday at Blends.

Many good things on the Web this week. A few stand-outs below.

Avenue A Razorfish 2008 Digital Outlook Report [Guy Kawasaki:]

Guy Kawasaki has written up a summary and posted a “no registration required” download link. I haven’t had a chance to read this yet, but the 2007 report produced some good insight. Hat tip Jason Van Cleave.

37 Signals Seeks an Ad Agency [37 Signals]

I wonder what kind of client 37 Signals would be? After all, these guys got their start being an agency themselves, although one of a digital variety. After being disenfranchised by clients who didn’t see the light, they set out on their own. I guess that move paid off. I would think agencies who can deliver on both “usability” and “breakthrough creative” fronts will get a leg up. Otherwise, how could this relationship ever work out?

The adventures of Marissa [San Francisco Magazine]
“The serious power and glam passions of Marissa Mayer, the gorgeously geeky Googler who’s generating a new kind of Silicon Valley notoriety…”

Wonderful expose. What more can you say? (Note that paging links are Firefox-only)

Lack Management Support or Buy-in? Embarrass Them! [Occam's Razor]

Avinash continues to provide solid guidance to the Web analytics community on making a business case for getting real with data.

Bar Camp San Diego 

I didn’t know about Bar Camp until this week, but will definitely attend the next event. Looks like a mix of SXSW and E-tech. Donate a keg.

Brand-Driven Traffic Converts Best For Online Retailers [Media Post]

Doesn’t seem terribly surprising. Brand aware consumers most likely have established relationships and are more qualified than general because of this. Presumably, trust and credibility barriers aren’t so dubious for this segment.

KEXP Spring Pledge Drive

You’ve got to give to receive. The best streaming radio bar none (John In the Morning Rocks).

A good Web Analyst will tell you behavioral data can only go so far. When paired with qualitative and competitive data, big improvements can happen. We’ve been looking at new ways to collect qualitative data recently. There are a lot of tools available, including: Foresee Results, OpinionLab, Island Data, and the list goes on.

I’m a big fan of keeping things simple, so I like a custom implementation like you’ll see on Cooking.com. It’s a simple form with just a single field. It doesn’t disrupt users, but does get visibility on all pages. Evidently, it has been working well.