"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses"
If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses"
Information Architecture Basics: What is an IA?
Information Architects, or as they are more commonly known – IAs, play a crucial role in the success of any website.
User experience has become an important consideration for online businesses, with many realising the benefits of having good IA resource in the team.
For those new to the area, I will now introduce you to the basics of Information Architecture and what the role of an IA involves. Before that, lets start by explaining what is meant by Information Architecture.
… continue reading “What is an IA?”
Web Usability Basics: How usable is my website?
Having a site which is easy to use is one of the foundations of a successful website. In this article I will talk about how to audit your own website through usability testing to ascertain how usable it really is.
Before we do this, it would be a good idea to clarify what we mean by the term usability.
Web Accessibility Basics: User Groups
When working on the web it is crucial to ensure that your website is accessible to as many users as possible, including those with disabilities.
To do that you need to understand about each different type of disability and their impact on users interacting with the web. Different disability groups include those with visual impairments, hearing impairments, mobility impairments and reading difficulties. This article will introduce you to each of these groups.
Before that lets just remind ourselves of the facts. There are around 11 million disabled adults living in the UK*. This is equivalent to a stagering 20% of the population. The problem for many of those with disabilities, is their needs often get overlooked. Hear is a breakdown of the user groups and their specific needs.
Usability really just means making sure that something works well: that a person of average (or even below average) ability and experience can use the thing - whether it's a web site, remote control, or revolving door - for its intended purpose without getting hopelessly frustrated"
Top is not always the best place to be
A few years ago at the Search Engine Strategies conference (SES) in London an expert panel speaker suggested that top positions in organic search don’t always equate to top results for the website. I thought at the time that this was a very strange thing to say.
Like most web designers and SEO experts in the industry, the strategy is always to get clients websites in the top 3-5 results for their key search terms. The higher your website appears the more traffic you will receive and in turn the higher your revenue potential.
Appearing higher up on the first page of search results does indeed lead to huge increases in traffic levels but can this can come at a cost?
Information overload: Has the web got too big now?
Something for everyone
The world wide web is a diverse, never ending void. There are sites out there for almost every conceivable interest that you may have in life. Ourselves, businesses and governments worldwide are moving more of our personal details online to make completing day-to-day tasks more convenient and accessible to all.
Whilst the vast majority of content on the web isn’t that great and sometimes questionable, we are all spending more of our time online. There are so many websites that are so useful to us, some have become an important part of our life, so much so that we can start to feel like we couldn’t survive without them anymore.
Information Architecture Basics: What is an IA?
Information Architects, or as they are more commonly known – IAs, play a crucial...
Web Usability Basics: How usable is my website?
Having a site which is easy to use is one of the foundations of a successful website. In...
Web Accessibility Basics: User Groups
When working on the web it is crucial to ensure that your website is accessible to as...
"Usability really just means making sure that something works well: that a person of average (or even below average) ability and experience can use the thing - whether it's a web site, remote control, or revolving door - for its intended purpose without getting hopelessly frustrated"
Top is not always the best place to be
A few years ago at the Search Engine Strategies conference (SES) in London an expert...
Information overload: Has the web got too big now?
Something for everyone The world wide web is a diverse, never ending void. There are...