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Previous Rants August 2007 May 2007 April 2007 |
Comments from the Asylum.WE ARE A BIT TO BUSY TO HAVE OPINIONS THESE DAYS. SO WE HAVE NOT ADDED ANY OPINIONS FOR OVER A YEAR.
WHAT THE HELL IS INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE? Oz-IA/2007 - Sydney, September 22nd/23rd 2007
One of the most important disciplines to rise to prominence out of the explosion of the internet, is the science/art of Information Architecture. Now to the average business owner, this means nothing. Fear not.......!!!!! As a business owner, you will never have to worry about the detail. Information Architecture is organising the information on your web site, so that it is easily found by visitors and laid out in a meaningful accessible manner. Good design flows from good information organisation. Make sure the design of your site has a handle on this. By the way, if you are an I.A type, there is a bunch of people getting together in late September 2007 at the Mercure Hotel in Sydney. It is a conference called OZ-IA 2007 and rumour has it that there is a raft of designofiles, attending across a swathe of industries. If you are a non-internet type, I am figuring that you won't want to hang around with a bunch of information design dorks, so probably best stay away. It is likely the safest option as it might get ugly. (Beer may be consumed too) I will be there and enjoying the heck out of it as I love the detail. Some really great designers/I.A types will be there talking about their experiences and it's sure to make for great listening and learning. Anyway, until next time. Cheers Paul Ridoutt
MY COUSINS NEIGHBOUR A former rugby player I know from my early days, asked me what I was doing with myself. I told him I had a wee company that does web site design and search optimisation. "My cousins neighbour can do web sites" he told me "and he's pretty cheap too." So I thought I had better go and have a look at some of the sites that my rugby mates cousins neighbor has designed and built. I saw one of the sites he had done and had a look around inside. Now we had better get one thing straight before I go on. I am not here to talk anyone down, in fact the site probably does very well for itself given its niche nature. But it is a straight fact that the site is not visually or structurally pleasing. It's a straight fact that the site could do with a professional re-fit. It would probably benefit greatly from a re-design and some decent search engine optimisation. This approach would enhance the brand and drive up satisfaction of the business. So I rang the owner, and he paid about AUD$500.00 for the site to be designed and built and the person who built it (My rugby mates cousins neighbour) was a 2nd year I.T University Student. Everyone has a cousins neighbors wifes gym partners second wifes uncles mechanics son, who "does" web sites. (and their cheap) But plain as day, If your going to invest any money with anyone to design and build anything, you want to make sure they are trained in the right discipline (I.T. is not Web Design and Develoment), have a good grasp on editorial, usability, functionality, accessibility and.........a fairly OK presence in the market. Because like anything in life......you get what you pay for. This is not a "Get us to build your site" rant. Use whoever you please, but watch out for what you get. Cheers Paul Ridoutt HITS JUST DONT CUT IT It's hard to fight against an instituted term like "hits". But boy does it frustrate me when someone talks about "hits" on their website. Of course I know what they are talking about and actually, so do they. What they mean is "visitors to my website". The internet industry calls it "unique visitors" and I prefer to describe it as "visits to a website by individual human beings with different DNA". But I am a details man. So the origin of "hits" came out of the early internet where sophisticated traffic measuring tools were not common place. Website owners used the term "hits" because in many cases, it was the only measurement metric available and it often came from the server activity log - fairly raw. They thought it meant "unique visitors" (the DNA thing) but it actually meant how many times the server was accessed by a web browser. If a webpage has 10 images, 4 text files, 3 java scripts, 2 anchor points and a style sheet, then when 1 person visited the page, the report would show 20 hits. It would actually be, 20 hits, 1 x page impression and 1 unique visitor. So actually when the person was quoting 1 Million "hits" to their website, they actually may have only had 50,000 unique visitors. I am fairly sure that they were not using the term fraudulently, but they may have set incorrect expectations for investors, advertisers and the like. So anyway, today, the term "Unique Visitors" has been adopted by those who work in and around the industry. For those that don't, the term "hits" is the one that will likely hang around for a long long time. It's the un-intentional misuse of a word widely accepted as the right word. mmmmmm..........I hope this makes sense. Cheers Paul Ridoutt
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