The reason why ad agency websites are truly awful
Advertising agencies don’t get the Web because the web is the place people go to do things.
In 2004, I wrote an article advising companies to never, ever let an advertising agency near their website. Back then, ad agency websites were a total joke. If you wanted to find out the very worst way to design […]
The need for speed on the Web
Customers crave speed on the Web, and they reward organizations that make things fast and simple.
Why is Google successful? Because it delivers better and faster results than its competitors. Google truly understands the customer’s need for speed. “At Google, we’ve gathered hard data to reinforce our intuition that “speed matters” on the Internet,” Jake Brutlag […]
Time is (still) money: Time for intranet leadership employee productivity (Part 2)
Managers need to focus on making things easy to do. If it’s not easy, it often doesn’t get done.
A couple of years ago I met a manager who had been specifically appointed by the CEO to improve employee morale. I gave him data that showed that his intranet had the lowest employee satisfaction ratings we […]
Time is (still) money: increasing employee productivity (Part 1)
Most organizations are only operating at 60 percent efficiency even though they may have the most cutting edge information technology available.
I was at a conference recently where a speaker asked an audience of some 600 intranet professionals to raise their hands if their organizations used SAP. About 60 percent of the audience put their hands […]
How to measure the success of your intranet
Focus on saving time for your employees if you want to create an intranet that delivers true value to your organization.
“The source of material civilization is developed power,” Henry Ford wrote in 1926. “If one has this developed power at hand then a use for it will easily be found … The way to liberty, […]
Navigation is more important than search
Recently, we did some extensive task testing with a technical audience. 70 percent started the task by clicking on a link, 30 percent used search.
The larger the website, the more important it becomes to have quality search. However, the foundation of all great websites is, and always will be, quality navigation. In fact, there is […]
The decline of the homepage
More and more customers are going straight to specific pages on your website, rather than the homepage.
In 2003, 39 percent of the page views for a large research website were for the homepage. By 2009, it was down to 19 percent. In one month in 2008, of the 70,000 page views a technology site received, […]
Web customers care about tasks, not goals
Talking about customer goals is the biggest mistake a website can make. That’s how you lose the impatient customer.
A couple of months ago we needed to find a new house cleaner. I went to lots and lots of house cleaner websites and became more and more frustrated. The typical website had a big silly picture […]
Customers: irrational sheep or intelligent strangers?
On the Web the best way to think of your customers is as intelligent strangers whose most precious resource is their time.
In Ireland, the Catholic Church is facing a crisis of trust and confidence. For much too long Irish people have placed a blind faith in the Church, as they have placed a blind faith […]
Web design: clarity is more important than persuasion
The most important thing a webpage can do is be crystal clear about exactly what you can do on that webpage.
The best word to describe people when they are on the Web is “impatient.” They are particularly impatient when they arrive at your website for the first time. They are asking themselves the essential […]
