Newland Group Navigator

Ten ways to make your website work harder for you

2007-07-26T20:06:19Z

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July 2007

Featured Article - websites are now a vital element of any organization's marketing mix. Whether your budget is large or small, you owe it to yourself to make your website as effective as possible.

Newland Portfolio – Each edition of Navigator will highlight a web site that we have recently completed and briefly mention its special features. In this edition we show you The Newland Group.

Useful Web Resources – Web sites that are worth a look. We bet you’ll add them to your favourites.

Privacy policy

Ten Ways to Make Your Website Work Harder for You

Internet users now visit enough websites to understand what works for them and what doesn’t. Your website competes with everything from sophisticated, highly engineered sites to the homemade variety pieced together from a template.

How well does your website work for your business?

The pros know that the effectiveness of websites depends largely on usability factors.

Use these Top Ten Usability Factors to assess where your website needs improvement.

Top Ten Usability Factors

Home Page
Relevance
Content
Visitor Expectations
Performance
Graphics & Multimedia
Page Layout
Links
Credibility
Site Organization

1: Home Page
First impressions count.
Your home page needs to appeal immediately to the visitor and to communicate clearly the purpose of the site.
Effective home pages have these common elements

Look like home pages
Visually appealing
Show all major options
Are completely visible on the screen without scrolling
Prose text is limited
Indicate “new” features on the site

Additional Tip: Visitors should always be able to reach the home page from any other page on your website.

2: Relevance
Your website should focus on the user’s goals.
Know the three main reasons visitors will come to your site. Once there, visitors should find information that is

Timely
Accurate
Easy to Find

3: Content
Content is the most important element of your website. Material should be written specifically for a web audience. That includes

Limiting sentences to 20 words
Limiting paragraphs to 6 sentences
Opening sentences that capture primary theme
Text that makes action sequences clear
Text with familiar words, jargon-free and avoids acronyms & abbreviations
Fonts with mixed cases, proper size and colour
Affirmative, active voice and verb tense
Liberal use of bulleted items and keywords

4: Visitor Expectations
Focus on user satisfaction. Visitors come to your site with certain expectations, including

Familiar fonts that are easy to read and properly sized (minimum 12 point)
Appropriate capitalization. Mixed case words are easier to read.
Black text on plain high contrast background (can be read up to 32% faster than light text on dark background)
Compliance with web conventions (blue text for hyperlinks, privacy policy, contact links)
Proper spelling
Visual consistency
Security for e-business sites

5: Performance
Visitors expect to view all elements of your site and that it will be operational at all times. Focus on performance rather than aesthetics, or more on function than flash.
Considerations should include:

User hardware, software interface issues
Load times for graphics, multi-media
Links that dead-end navigation
Consistent labeling of clickable items
Rapid vertical scrolling and no horizontal scrolling

6: Graphics & Multimedia
Used properly graphics and multimedia can add value to your website. Used improperly, graphics and multimedia can leave the user frustrated and annoyed.
Considerations should include:

Loading speed
Placement of banners and advertising
Images should appear “above the fold”
Animation, video, audio should always support website message
Images must have proper web resolution

Background images should be simple and used sparingly.

7: Page Layout
Web pages should be laid out to ease user comprehension of the contents. Visitors view pages in the following order: 1) top center 2) scans left 3) scans right 4) scans down the page
Increase user satisfaction by:

Arranging items by order of importance
Avoid clutter
Pay attention to alignment
Structure items for easy comparisons (similarities,trends,costs)
Moderate use of white space
Position clickable items in consistent locations (usually top, center)
Primary navigation on left side of page or in left panel where users expect it
Differentiate navigational elements by group in an obvious location on each page
Layout should allow users to find information efficiently.
Printable pages should fit paper prototypes

Pay attention to text appearance.

8: Links
The Internet is a hypertext medium and meaningful links add to the user experience. Local navigation and related links to external sites deserve careful consideration and preferably open in a “new window” to facilitate an easy return.
For effective links consider:

Text links work better than graphic links
Link only to related content
Match names to destination pages so user knows when they’ve reached intended page
Provide consistent clickability clues. Blue underlining signals a hyperlink to the user
Use a colour change to designate used links
Ensure important content can be accessed from more than one link
Always provide link back to Home Page from every page
Never leave user stranded by a link

Test all links and monitor to ensure external links remain relevant.

9: Credibility
A well maintained website reassures users that they are dealing with professionals.
Make sure the content on your website is:

Appropriate for the visitors you expect
Contains accurate and up to date material
Spelling, vocabulary and grammar are error free

If industry appropriate, indicate certifications, affiliations or regulatory compliance.

10: Site Organization
Navigation and site structure should reflect user needs and goals not those of your company or organization.

Search capabilities greatly enhance the user experience
Navigation should allow users to find information quickly and efficiently
Content needs to be well organized to aid navigation
Users favour minimalist navigation systems that allow free movement through your web architecture
Headings, Titles and Labels facilitate scanning and reading material
Descriptive page titles should also appear in browser bar on screen to aid user and facilitate book-marking or saving to favourites
Facilitate rapid scrolling by highlighting major items
Avoid scrolling where possible by adding shorter pagers with specific content

Changes in technology and user expectations mean companies generally need to upgrade their websites every 18-24 months while content should be updated regularly and in some cases daily.

The Newland Group is an award winning internet consulting firm specializing in strategic internet solutions for business and not-for-profit organizations.

You can email us at info@newland.com

Good websites are dynamic, characterized by change and development. Redesigns are a good way to keep websites dynamic so we took our own advice and made some changes to www.newland.com.

We’ve redesigned our own site to provide clients with easy access to our products and services. Where appropriate, parts of the site are password protected for user security.
Visitors can also preview some of the fully customized website designs The Newland Group has developed for our prestigious list of clients.

We invite you to review our new look as well as some samples of our work.

How to write for the Web
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html

Web usability from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_usability

Usability institute - User in Your Face
the student programmer's Before-and-After Guide to usability and Usable Interface Design.

Usability on the Web - from About.com
Usable Web sites are sites that work for your readers.

Web Style Guide, 2nd edition
http://www.webstyleguide.com

Economist.com - Research tools - Style Guide
http://economist.com/research/StyleGuide/

Ten Tips to Control Your Email

2004-12-15T21:29:48Z

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December 2004

Featured Article - Email has changed all our lives but not always for the better. Read how you can win the battle with junk mail.

Newland Portfolio – Each edition of Navigator will highlight a web site that we have recently completed and briefly mention its special features. In this edition we show you AAA Hudson Valley.

Useful Web Resources – Web sites that are worth a look. We bet you’ll add them to your favourites.

Privacy policy

Ten tips to control your email (so it doesn’t control you!)

While we all consider email a valuable tool, the rapid growth of spam and viruses arriving in our inboxes every day is a major headache. According to spamfilterreview.com, 40% of all email is spam and 16% of email users have changed their email address to avoid spam. Yet 28% of people reply to spam and 8% of users have actually bought something they saw in a spam message.

Governments legislate against it and software companies propose solutions but the problem seems to get worse every day.

While there’s no way to eliminate junk messages entirely, there are many things you can do to control them.

Keep your email address confidential so people can’t send you spam

Tip#1: Use “throw-away” email addresses where appropriate.
If you need an email address to register on a web site, or to sign up for a newsletter, consider getting a free email address from Yahoo, Hot Mail or a similar service. Not only do these have good spam and virus filtering, but if you still get deluged with spam, you can always abandon that email address and get another.

Tip#2: Don’t open spam messages
Spammers send out millions of emails and have no idea whether the addresses they are sending to are valid or not. They often include a link to an image within the message as a trick to validate the address. If you open the mail (or even preview it), then your computer will identify itself when it follows the link to get the image. Now they know the email address is valid and you will get even more junk email.

Tip #3: Ignore Unsubscribe links in junk mails.
Many junk mails invite you to click a link to “unsubscribe”. This is another trick to get you to identify yourself. Note that legitimate newsletters such as this one will always include an unsubscribe link and you should use it if you don’t want to receive future issues.

Tip#4: Encrypt your email address in web pages.
Spammers have programs that scan every web page they can find looking for email addresses. They copy every address they find and add them to the spam lists. It’s so easy but you can easily prevent this. There are ways to encode the email address within the web page so that the harvesters don’t even recognize it as an address. It displays correctly on the screen, and if you click it, the email you send is properly addressed, so the only loser is the spammer.

Tip #5: Opt out.
When you are buying something online, signing up for a service or special offer, or just registering on a web site, look closely for places where you agree to receive more information, sign up for a newsletter, etc. Make sure you opt out unless you really want the extra mail in your inbox.

Block the Spam before you see it

If you can’t stop people addressing spam to you, you can at least try to catch it before you see it.

Tip #6: See what your Internet Service Provider can do.
Ask your Internet Service Provider if they provide a spam filtering service. Most do. For every spam filter, there’s a way to get round it, but every roadblock you erect makes it more difficult for the spammer and so less cost-effective to send spam. Spam filtering isn’t perfect and if you set it to be very aggressive, you risk losing valid mail.

Tip #7: Create filters in your email program
If you can’t keep the spam away from your computer, then at least you can filter it once it arrives. All the email programs which run on your computer (e.g. Outlook, Netscape) can scan all incoming mail and either delete what it thinks is spam, or move it to another folder where you can check it later. Web-based mail services such as Hotmail, Yahoo and gmail do the same.

Don’t send spam

Tip #8: Keep your PC and email account both secure.
Most spam is sent from computers that have been infected by a virus and turned into spam generators. Keep your anti-virus program up to date and never open email attachments unless you are expecting them. It doesn’t matter if they come from someone you trust implicitly – that address may have been forged. Spammers recently hijacked one of the Newland Group mail servers and were sending out hundreds of emails every minute until we figured out how to stop them. Our mistake? One email account had a simple password that anyone could guess.

Tip #9: Don’t forward hoax messages.
Don’t EVER forward emails you might receive saying that there’s a particular virus going around and you should forward the email to everyone you know to warn them. If you really think the email is genuine, check it out first at the Symantec hoaxes web page. The address is in the Useful Web Resources section below.

Tip #10: Don’t buy from Spammers
Perhaps you need a cheap mortgage or some prescription medication from Canada. Don’t even THINK of responding to a spam message. If nobody ever responded to them, they would become extinct in days.

A bonus tip:

Tip #11: Why is it called spam?
The name comes from a Monty Python comedy sketch. See w3.informatik.gu.se/~dixi/spam.htm.

Finally, please don’t be tempted to reply to spam with a thousand emails or a huge attached file. Virtually every junk email today comes with a forged “from:” address. Most of these are invalid, but some are real addresses belonging to some unsuspecting victim. He’s the one who will receive your revenge.

Based in Albany, New York, AAA Hudson Valley is one of the smaller auto clubs that make up the American Automobile Association. Even though their budget was limited, they still wanted all the interactive features found in the larger clubs’ web sites. And with a smaller budget, every dollar must count. “We have been extremely pleased with the resulting web site.” comments Tim Griswold, AAA Hudson Valley’s Manager of Technical Services, “Many of our members have commented on the site's clean layout and easy to navigate pages. We have been impressed with its robust capabilities. And most importantly for any business, the resulting revenue attributed to the web site upgrade has vastly exceeded the initial costs of implementation.”

Continuing our theme, this edition’s featured web sites help you understand and manage junk mail.

Death to Spam is at http://www.mindworkshop.com/alchemy/nospam.html. It describes itself as “an objective overview of unsolicited e-mail and the techniques available to defend your IN box. Learn about tracing mail, message filters, legal issues and more.” It’s the most complete yet readable page on the subject.

If all this junk mail is driving you insane and you want to do something about it, visit SpamCop at www.spamcop.net. To quote the home page: “SpamCop determines the origin of unwanted email and reports it to the relevant Internet service providers. By reporting spam, you have a positive impact on the problem. Reporting unsolicited email also helps feed spam filtering systems, including, but not limited to, SpamCop's own service.”

Symantec has a very good complete and informative web site covering all aspects of computer security. Their list of all known hoax virus messages is at http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/hoax.html.

Finally, don’t forget www.spam.com, the official web site of Spam the luncheon meat we all grew up with.

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Ten Tips to Ensure your Web Site complies with Canadian Privacy Laws

2004-01-30T11:16:57Z

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Issue 2

Friday January 30th 2004

Featured Article - Ten Tips to ensure your web site compiles with Canadian privacy legislation.

Newland Portfolio – Each edition of Navigator highlight a web site that we have recently completed and briefly mention its special features. In this edition we show you UK Trade & Investment Canada.

Useful Web Resources - Web sites that are worth a look. We bet you’ll add them to your favourites.

Privacy policy

Ten Tips to ensure your web site complies with Canadian privacy legislation.

January 1^st 2004 brought in one of the most significant laws affecting organizations in Canada: the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Document Act (PIPEDA).

This federal law significantly impacts the way private businesses, corporations, federal agencies, not-for-profit organizations and associations handle the personal information with which they have been entrusted. While this affects almost every aspect of your business, it has particular significance if you have a web site.

Does the law apply to you? The Act extends to the collection, use or disclosure of personal information in the course of any commercial activity within Canada. There are some exceptions in Quebec.
What is personal information? Pretty much everything about an individual except an employee's name, title, business address and telephone number.
Where might you collect personal information? The most likely place is a form on your web site where people contact you. Maybe you have people register for an event or sign up for a newsletter.
Explain why you are collecting personal information. If you have any page that requests “personal information” you must add an explanation about what you will use it for. If you later come up with a new use for the information, you must contact every person affected and explain your plans.
Obtain the person’s consent. Make sure the form has a way for the person to show their consent (a check box is fine) and keep a copy. This might mean keeping the email generated by the form, or backing up the database that the form updated.
Store the information safely. If you keep data on a computer, you must limit access to the computer, and be prepared to answer questions on how you are doing this. If it’s on paper, then it must be locked up and only available to people who need it for the purposes you collected it for.
Store the information only as long as necessary. You must destroy the information as soon as you no longer need it. For example, if you have a newsletter mailing list, ensure people may unsubscribe and that when they do, their information is removed from your system.
Ensure you keep the information accurate. The law requires you to minimize the possibility of using wrong information when making a decision, or disclosing wrong information to third parties.
Develop and publish your privacy policy. The law has many provisions requiring you to publish your policies and procedures. You must nominate a person to be accountable for complying with the law. You must make it easy for people to contact you and find out what information you have on them and how you use it. All this can be done in a well-crafted privacy policy
There is a silver lining! While this may appear to be nothing more than even more bureaucracy to distract you from running your business, it can also be a competitive advantage. By demonstrating to your web site visitors that you respect their privacy, you will improve their confidence in your organization and increase the likelihood that they will do business with you.

The federal government has a very good web site where you can find out more about the act. There is everything from the act itself, to a questionnaire, PowerPoint presentation, links to other resources etc. The Privacy Commissioner of Canada http://www.privcom.gc.ca/ekit/ekit_e.asp If you would like help ensuring that your web site meets the new legislations requirements, please call The Newland Group at 905 274-7100 or email navigator@newland.com

Our featured web site this edition is UK Trade & Investment Canada: http://www.uktradeinvestcanada.org/ This is an amalgamation of two sites we developed for the British government some years ago and have managed ever since. The client created a new single identity for two previously separate services, and the new site had to incorporate both of them in a structure that was easy and intuitive to navigate. With 480 pages, management must be streamlined, so we used Java Server Page technology. One feature that you cannot see is that all the email addresses on the site are encoded. While they appear normal to humans, and work correctly if you click on them, they are unintelligible to programs designed to “harvest” email addresses for sending SPAM.
If your site needs a face lift, please call us at 905 274-7100 or email navigator@newland.com

Useit.com at http://www.useit.com/. This web site is startling. It looks like no other site. If you are responsible for a web site or are thinking of creating one, you MUST visit useit.com. You will learn more about what makes a web site effective than you would anywhere else.

E-Consultancy is a UK site at http://www.e-consultancy.co.uk/ It provides a wealth of good information but the real value comes with a subscription. For around $220 a year, you get access to case studies, white papers, articles etc., on e-business. It has a UK focus of course, but much the data available is applicable anywhere.

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Ten tips for creating effective email newsletters

2003-10-01T11:48:20Z

Welcome to the first edition of Navigator, The Newland Group’s new online newsletter. We’ve sent this to you because you are a client, or have spoken with us in the past. We want this to be interesting and useful and we welcome your feedback. If you prefer not to receive Navigator four times a year, scroll down to the bottom for details on how to unsubscribe.

Contact Us

Issue 1

Tuesday September 30th 2003

Email Newsletters - are becoming the most cost-effective way to communicate with your audience. Find out why, and whether they could help you, in this edition of Navigator.

Newland Portfolio – Each edition of Navigator will highlight a web site that we have recently completed and briefly mention its special features. In this edition we show you AAA East Pennsylvania.

Useful Web Resources – Web sites that are worth a look. We bet you’ll add them to your favourites.

Privacy policy

Email newsletters

Email newsletters are everywhere; you probably subscribe to one or more yourself. If you register for a free Hotmail account from Microsoft, you have to wade through signup buttons for dozens of different newsletters before you can complete your registration. Clearly these newsletters are worthwhile for the major corporations, but are there any benefits in your creating one? The answer is almost certainly a resounding YES!

Email newsletters allow you to communicate cheaply and effectively with customers and prospects. Surveys have shown that users have a highly emotional reaction to newsletters and consider them as more personal than web sites.

Benefits of email newsletters

They get your name in front of your customers and prospects.
Done properly, they improve your image by giving you the opportunity to educate and inform your target audience.
They can build your prospect and customer databases.
They are far more cost effective and more immediate than printed/mailed newsletters.

Tips for creating an effective email newsletter

Newsletters must be useful. If they aren’t useful, then they had better be very entertaining.
Newsletters must be simple and designed so they can be scanned quickly.
They should be delivered regularly so that people come to expect them. How regularly depends on the content. If you can produce interesting content every working day, and get people to read it, then you should.
Give it a distinct style and image.
Treat your subscriber list with the utmost respect. Post a privacy policy on your web site and link to it from every newsletter and every form where people can subscribe. Do not send out to people with whom you’ve had no previous relationship. Make it very easy to subscribe and unsubscribe. Ensure there’s a contact email on every newsletter so people can request their names be removed.
Beware of all the different email programs people use. If you thought creating a web site for PCs and Macs, Netscape and Internet Explorer was tough, wait until you test your newsletter on AOL, Hotmail, Yahoo, Outlook, Eudora, Pegasus and Lotus Notes.
Test your newsletter against popular SPAM filters. You don’t want to have it discarded before it even gets delivered.
Choose a subject line for your email that makes people want to open it.
Encourage feedback by your readers. After all, you’re doing this for their benefit.
Use technology to measure your effectiveness. How many emails are getting bounced back? How many are being discarded without being opened? How many are read more than once? How many web site hits are you getting as a result of the emails?

What to expect

30-40% of your emails will be opened
4-7% of your respondents will click to your web site
Less than 1% of your recipients will opt out each time you send a mailing
80-90% of the responses will occur within 48 hours

Jacob Nielsen has a very good web page that tells you how to create effective email newsletters at http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20020930.html

A few weeks ago saw the successful launch of the AAA East Pennsylvania web site at http://www.aaaeastpenn.com. AAA East Penn is part of the American Automobile Association, which is affiliated with the CAA, the Canadian Automobile Association. We faced two particular challenges that are unique to the AAA/CAA world: The diversity of products and services, ranging from dispatching a tow truck, selling financial products like Certificates of Deposit, a full-service travel agency, to selling, renewing and managing memberships for over 250,000 members. This meant we spent a lot of time on site structure and page layout so that visitors could find what they were looking for amongst the 200 or so pages. Secondly, CAA and AAA provide many of their services in partnerships with specialist companies, who deliver the services through their own web servers. As a result we not only had to integrate multiple servers into one seamless user experience, we had to ensure that only the appropriate people had access to specific pages on the AAA East Penn web site and the partner sites, and that the data we passed between sites was secure and encrypted at all times.

SearchEngineWatch.com is at http://www.searchenginewatch.com/ and it’s the definitive web site for anything to do with search engines and how to get your site to appear in them. There is a huge free section that covers how the different search engines work, how to register your site, different advertising options etc., etc. For US$69 for six months or $99 for a year, you get access to much more detailed information, which is updated frequently. And whether or not you join, you can always sign up for the inevitable email newsletter!

Google News is at http://news.google.ca or http://news.google.com or http://news.google.co.uk, or from six other countries, depending on what flavour you like your news. What differentiates Google News from all those other web news sites, is that this one is totally automated and continually scans 4,500 news sources to provide an ever-changing page of headlines, photos and links. Well worth a look.

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