Organisational silos impede user experience - Microsoft in 2003

A fascinating article which discusses an email sent by Bill Gates to senior Microsoft staff about the poor state of the user experience in 2003.

Mapping customer journeys

An interesting approach and tutorial on defining the customer journey from the Cusomer Experience Academy. I'm currently working on a project exploring the prospective postgraduate student experience online, so a lot this resonated with me.

Web project roles

An interesting matrix of roles that work together in a web project. It's prompted me to think how many boxes we tick at the University and where the balance of influence lies.

Content strategy & CMS development

I've been reading some great stuff on a site called CMS Myths. It's reassuring to me that most organisations seem to experience the same frustrations and pain with their content management system. And it's ironic that content and content strategy is so often the poor relation when it comes to planning the procurement or development of the tool.

Link writing advice

A couple of articles offering some very good advice on what makes effective link text.

Links are at the core of what the web is about. When I observe website visitors in user testing sessions, they're often the root cause of the problems they encounter.

Well written links are critical for good usability, accessibility and search engine optimisation.

If you write web content, you should have most of these points at the forefront of your mind.

The only point I'd disagree with is Trenton Moss's "limit links to four words". I've seen research from Jared Spool which suggests the most effective link text is typically longer than this. And I've seen first hand how poorly one- and two-word link text can perform.

While I think it always depends, for me four words would usually be the minimum for in-page link text and a few more words will generally bring more clarity. So long as the most important words are the first two or three.

Editorial Style for Inline Links - article for meetcontent.com by Rick Allen

Writing effective link text - artilce for webcredible by Trenton Moss

Copywriting tips for SEO

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is often a big issue for website owners at the University of Edinburgh. This article covers some excellent advice that every copywriter should put into practice.Most will have a positive impact on your content's usability and accessibility too.

Despite what you may suspect or have heard, there is no magic wand or secret tricks to improve your web pages' ranking. It really is down to your content - how useful it is to your readers and how well you structure it.

This meetcontent.com article distills this into 9 top tips.

SEO Copywriting for Content Contributors - article by Rick Allen

Remote user testing tips

12 useful titbits from usertesting.com. Many of these apply to in-person testing too.

usertesting.com have offered me a free trial code to pass to friends, so if you work at the University of Edinburgh and want to try out a $39 test for free, email me by 15 November. Has to be worth a try!

Practical user research guidelines

3 top tips on conducting user research which the author feels you're more likely to pick up as you go along rather than get from a text book. All good points and worth a read.

Importance of your users first click

An interesting article from Jeff Sauro in which he talks about how important the first click is. His research indicates that when the users' first click is down the right path, 87% eventually succeed. When they click down an incorrect path, only 46% eventually succeed.

Advertising banner blindness

A recent psychologist's eyetracking study considered whether banner blindness was real and whether there were any techniques advertisers could employ to get their ads noticed by more website visitors.

Free usability & accessibility event at Uservision in Edinburgh

Edinburgh usability company Uservision are celebrating World Usability Day on 10 November with a free open house event, which features a talk on website accessibility from Jonathan Hassell from the BBC.

Scottish UPA HTML5 session

This month's Scottish Usability Professionals Association (SUPA) session is on HTML5 and its impact on accessibility. It's being held in central Edinburgh on Tuesday 25 October.

User testing & focus groups

Steve Krug covers the fundamental misunderstanding some managers have about usability testing with a funny animated vid and blog article.

Usability testing forum

I mentioned Steve Krug's new blog a little while ago. Hanging off that is a forum for people to share their usability testing experiences. You may even get a response from Steve if you pose a question...

Or failing that, from one of the many eager usability testers contributing.

The current categories:

• Questions?
• Testing success stories
• Testing horror stories
• Polls

Steve Krug's usability testing discussion forum

Steve Krug interviews

A couple of interviews in which Steve talks about his approach to usability testing, with lots of hints and tips. The biggest area of interest to me was around raising awareness, buy in and support for this kind of activity.

Getting real - a new way to think about development

'Getting real' is an online publication - a collection of essays by developers 37 Signals - that outlines their philosophy and methodology for applications development. I haven't read it all yet, but the concepts covered so far have great resonance for me and apply just as well I think to website content development.

Avoiding your next site redesign - Lou Rosenfeld

I attended a seminar by Lou Rosenfeld last week - "Adaptable Information Architecture; How to say no to your next website redesign". It was a great session, and his slides are available online.

Search site analytics - Lou Rosenfeld interviews

A collection of recent interviews with Lou Rosenfeld who this year wrote an excellent, must-read book - Search Site Analyitcs.

Form design crib sheet

A great reference sheet for designers of online forms. Download in multiple formats, with lots of examples and guidance.

Search engine ranking factors

A fantastic visual representation of the things you need to think about if you're keen to see your web pages perform well in search engine results pages.