Featured
Content. Jason Fried in Why is Business Writing So Awful?, a good post on caring about the words you use to describe your product: Unfortunately, years of language dilution by lawyers, marketers, executives, and HR departments have turned the powerful, descriptive sentence into an empty vessel optimized for buzzwords, jargon, and vapid expressions. Words are treated as filler – “stuff” that takes up space on a page.
Content. What does content strategy mastery look like? As in any field, it comes down to having master skills and knowing when to apply them. While there are different styles of content strategy (from an editorial and messaging focus to a technical and structural focus), the master content strategist must work with content from all angles: messaging architecture and messaging platforms; content missions and content management.
Content. The content model is one of the most important content strategy tools at your disposal. It allows you to represent content in a way that translates the intention, stakeholder needs, and functional requirements from the user experience design into something that can be built by developers implementing a CMS. A good content model helps ensure that your content vision will become a reality.
Content. [ Transcript Available ] Content is everywhere. With the amount of content users are confronted with everyday it can be challenging to garner their attention. Compounding this problem is the fact that designers and developers are often tasked with writing content that end users see. This can be an intimidating prospect if you’re unaccustomed to crafting copy.
Content. This is without doubt the most important article I have ever published. The big question at the core of SEO is: How can I get the maximum traffic for a given amount of effort? For a while, I’ve been transfixed by the Long Tail. If you break down the inbound organic search traffic by search terms, you get the following pattern: “Head” terms, which have big numbers “Tail” terms, where the numbers of searches are much much lower.
Content. Web design is much more than just the appearance of a website. It also includes other aspects, such as the choice of content, your tone of voice, or how much fun users have on your site. In other words, the content of a website influences how we perceive the design. That’s why I consider these rather practical aspects content premises in web design.
Featured
Content. As Web designers and developers, each project we work with has a unique set of goals and requirements. But one goal we have for all of our projects is that we want them to make an impression on people — we want the websites that we create to be memorable. A fun experience is often an enjoyable one and an enjoyable experience is usually a memorable one.
Content. Have you ever had to come up with copy all on your own? It’s a nearly impossible task, often leading to content that is unfocused and lifeless. Yet everyday, copywriters, clients – and, yes, editors too – publish content without much input from their stakeholders. In many ways, this is a wasteful process. Sites like Wikipedia prove that using the web for collaboration enables people to create better content, faster.
Content. Why Target Audience Segmentation Isn’t Enough At an organizational level, content treatment, be it in print or online, has traditionally defaulted to the use of broader target audience segmentation to define messaging and distribution/dissemination.
Content. Effective search engine content can be termed as the content that appeals both to readers and search engines. It can be quite tricky as you are basically writing articles and reviews for readers, but at the same time it is search engines that take your contents to readers. It is not enough just to create a website. Its future development and visibility to search engines is much more important.
Content. Indeed it is. Every interaction people have with your website is an opportunity for your organization to improve, hurt or confirm your credibility with them. When your content doesn’t support your business/organizational goals and provides zero value to your customers, you will end up with more unpleasant conversations and missed opportunities. You need a content strategy.
Featured
Content. In The Pummeling Pages, Brent Simmons sums up the experience of reading on the web, which is something I’ve become increasingly frustrated with as well: I was there because I just wanted to read something. Words. Black text on a white background, more-or-less. And what I saw — at a professional publication, a site with the purpose of giving people something good to read — was just about the farthest thing from readable.
Content. “The problem with this is there’s too much clutter. ” That’s what the legal secretary told me when we were studying her firm’s intranet home page. In fact, the page was pretty sparse in layout. The text was nicely laid out in a readable font, with different weights given to headings and body text.
Featured
Content. When websites show content, they’ll usually use a headline and image. Headline and image quality is important in getting the user’s attention. However, the headline will always get the most attention no matter what. Here’s why.
Content. Writing for mobile readers requires even harsher editing than writing for the Web. Mobile use implies less patience for filler copy.
Content. AIDA. Attention, interest, desire, action. It’s the classic copywriting formula, studied and used by almost every copywriter on the planet. Well, I’m not a fan.
Content. 16 Pixels For Body Copy. Anything Less IsA Costly Mistake I know what you’re thinking. “Did he just say 16 pixels? For body copy? Obnoxiously big! 12 pixels is ideal for most websites. ” I’d like to persuade you otherwise.
Content. In a recent episode of The Talk Show, John Gruber and Dan Benjamin pointed out something interesting about the Windows 8 redesign of Microsoft’s well-known “blue screen of death”. First, here’s an example of what this screen currently looks like: Notice how Windows essentially accepts the blame in this situation. The title of the page says “Windows”, and they give you the cold, hard facts: An exception occurred.
Content. Des Traynor recently spoke at the Content Strategy Forum in London about the importance of which words used in an interface. The difference between Facebook’s Like and Google’s +1 seems superficial, but ends up influencing the behaviour of the users. Choosing the words you use to define actions in an interface is the most important part of interface design.
Content. Product videos are more engaging and have higher conversion rates than static images. But implementing product videos is expensive and there are many different approaches for doing it. Product videos started getting a lot of traction on large e-commerce sites in 2010 (though as I’ve already pointed out, they haven’t caught on everywhere).
Featured
Content. While reviewing UI text recently, a question arose regarding exactly which words in a sentence should be used as a hyperlink. My standard tactic to cut through this design problem is to ask: what if your user were blind? Assume they have a screen reader that, by default, is going to let them tab through just the links on the page and read the link text aloud to them.
Content. No matter how brilliant a website’s design, no matter how elegant its navigation, sooner or later visitors will decide whether to take action because of something they read. In the end, the effectiveness with which a website converts visitors hinges on words. If a new website is going to hit all the right notes, its content must be just as well crafted as its design and programming.
Content. One of the most important and difficult pages to design for web applications is the pricing table. When users get to your pricing table, they likely have a basic understanding of your web application and what you offer. Now, they want to know how much they have to pay to use your application. If your pricing table isn’t effectively designed for conversions, you are probably losing potential customers.
Content. I’ve been a fan of Kevin Larson’s writing about fonts, typography and online reading for some time. I mention him in my latest book, 100 Things Every Designer Needs To Know About People. Kevin is a reading psychologist that works with typographers at Microsoft. He’s part of a team at Microsoft with a goal to make reading online as easy and enjoyable as reading from paper.
Featured
Content. Many websites use black text on a light background to display their content because it’s easy to read. However, using white text on a dark background can also have its advantages. Knowing when to use one over the other will allow you to safely apply these techniques to your design without hurting user readability. Reading vs.
Featured
Content. Designers care about the user experience. Marketers are concerned with SEO and conversion. The reality is that both need to work hand-in-hand to make more relevant and persuasive content that turns into higher search rankings. How do you get everyone on the same page? Google comes to the rescue with their Quality Score.
Content. "Showing summaries of many articles is more likely to draw in users than providing full articles, which can quickly exhaust reader interest. " (Jakob Nielsen ~ Alertbox).
Featured
Content. Twelve tips for writing in-context UI instructions to make websites more usable. A person's behavior on the Web is highly goal-driven. People have something they want to accomplish, whether it's making a purchase, finding a recipe, or learning how to do something new. Inherent in many web page designs, therefore, is information to help a user perform an action.
Content. "Lately, everyone on the web is talking about content. Content strategy has made its way into our collective consciousness and web writing is coming into its own. " (Tiffani Jones ~ MIX Online).
Featured
Content. I’ve long been a fan of Whitney Quesenbery’s 5 Es of usability: effective, efficient, engaging, error tolerant and easy to learn. They’re a great way to explain what usability is — to make ‘easy to use’ or ‘user friendly’ more meaningful to clients, designers, developers. I think the 5 Es can also be helpful for understanding content usability.