May, 2010
User-engagement (magic first 30 seconds of user experience)
Customer engagement (CE) refers to the engagement of customers with one another, with a company or a brand. The initiative for engagement can be either consumer- or company-led and the medium of engagement can be on or offline.
This design has many interpretation. Basicaly desire of every person to “personalize” their partners for their own needs, and control them. It is based on that scenery for a reason. Awaking basic instincts like desire is “the motivator” used by people of certain sex in particular.
Analogicaly connecting those two, we getting conclussion:
Same way as women use sex to control and infuance man, online marketing specialists can use internet to engage, “control” or infuance people.
User generated content (UGC)
User generated content (consumer-generated media or user-created content)
Different types of user generated content
* Discussion boards
* Blogs
* Wikis
* Social networking sites
* Customer review sites
Modern life cycle (Google – Parisian Love)
Modern life – Google – Parisian Love
Nicholas Christakis: The hidden influence of social networks
We’re all embedded in vast social networks of friends, family, co-workers and more. Nicholas Christakis tracks how a wide variety of traits — from happiness to obesity — can spread from person to person, showing how your location in the network might impact your life in ways you don’t even know.
New Google
As you have noticed google has changed general feel of their search page to more modern, web 2.0-looking. Click on the image below to see old and new version compared.
No big deal you might say, were actually it is. I have seen portals noticing magnificent differences in number number of visitors after such changes. changes not always beneficial. Even one portal which gave the position of leader on account of competition for that reason.
As simple research of website eye tracking (available here) in slightly different area shown it is not all random and just to look nice. Just something to be aware of.
More you can find on Official Google Blog.
anArtificial – design
Artificial Iintelligence wiki
K.I.S.S. – first of 10 commandments for web designers
I was watching one of my favorite shows this weekend, one of the survivor shows on discovery channel. The presenter highlighted something what he was told in military school – something called K.I.S.S. principle – Keep It Stupid Simple. It does exactly what it says. Keep everything simple and easy.
And then I realized this technique can be perfectly adopted by web designers and web developers. And it is one of the biggest mistakes web masters have to confess. How many times did you look for simple ‘log off’ button etc? Bare in mind that average page view is less then 30 seconds, what that means? That means web pages should be purpose-built with clear navigation. How important it is?
On one of the lectures about web development I’ve noted this example of two airlines. Back in time when online booking was coming to play leading airlines trusted internet marketing professionals with doing research and building their online booking system. The other airlines decided to give that task to students.
Well both teams stud up with their task, first ending up with major system, with all carefully planned structure. Second one doing its job, basic, clear and very much purpose build. Now important fact here is the price. I will not bring the names here, but overall cost of leading airlines professional project reached about 10 times more then cheap and simple students version.
Well everything looks ok up till now. No charm in having advanced online booking system if you have money to pay for it. But the judgment day arrived year or few years later, when this smaller airlines started to seriously compete with the leader. The results of research were quite a shocker. What customers of leading airlines found difficult is this very same polished online booking system. It was too complicated with functionality which customers didn’t found helpful. Resulting with moving to the other airlines website to book their tickets online. It is shining example how simplicity and purpose-build websites are important for your business.

So my advice is, on the end of your web development process, sit down on your home computers, open your new website and look on it as you will see it first time, as ordinary internet user. It is difficult to spot sometimes everything, especially if you saw this site thousand time, then maybe ask on of your friends, or even do simple research withing your customers how they finding usability of your new site.
Such obvious and simple fact. But wasn’t that quality of geniuses to find simplest and clearest solutions for the most complex tasks? The solution which seems was there all the time, on the front of out eyes.
It does require deep knowledge and understanding of particular subject and all its processes to came up with one simple solution, understandable and clear to everyone.
More about K.I.S.S. idea in web design can be found on great website use it dot com which. You can read more about it here.
Socialnomics – what is Social Media
Social Media in Plain English
Social Media ROI: Socialnomics coming soon
Google Webmasters Tool
Step 1
Google for Webmasters Tutorial: Intro to Webmaster Central
Step 2
How Google discovers your site
Step 3
Google for Webmasters Tutorial: Crawling and Indexing
Find more on Google’s Official YouTube Channel.














