Usability Notes - by Chris Baker

SEO and SEM vendors and consultants appreciate me too much

I like getting comments. I don't always get around to moderating them quickly, but do like to see things that contribute to the discussion. I quickly learned that I did have to moderate the comments, because so many of them are nothing about me or my site - there is usually a lot of spam advertising to weed out.

Another thing I've noticed is that a  great way to get a lot of brief, generic statements of thanks is to post something about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or Search Engine marketing (SEM), or about social media strategy. Its nice to see an industry that is so eager to educate the public about how to do this yourself (at least at a basic level), rather then to engage some of the many consultancies that can offer help. Or wait - would it be just too cynical  to think that some of these comments aren't about me at all, but are about getting a comment which bears an inbound link back to the writer's SEO or SEM site? The number of links you have into your site from relevant, reputable sources has a big effect on how you rank on search engines such as Google, Yahoo and their competitors, so the temptation is clearly there. Nah, surely not....

Let's see. From my recent comments:

"This is a good post. This post gives truly quality information. I’m definitely going to look into it. Really very useful tips are provided here. thank you so much. Keep up the good works..."

This exact quote is found 186,000 times by Google, with the same author. "Allen", you are one generous guy. OK, let's face it, you're a robot, aren't you...

Now of course, lets not damn everyone - the SEO and SEM industry has very professional and honourable people in it. But it's not necessarily easy for clients to sort the sheep from the goats. I'm very glad to publish comments from SEO, SEM and social media consultants, if I feel it's intended as a contribution to my site, not just to yours.

It will be interesting to see what, if any, comments this post gets...

Pet hates - automated jollity

One for the Pet Hates series. It's become fashionable to be a bit wacky or  matey in marketing communications to customers. But this is a bit risky, as you don't know what mood thery're in.

So in this example, the response email to an order I placed tells me how excited the autoresponder is to get my business (blue ring in the image below). "It's all rather exciting, isn't it?", burbles the autoresponder. Thrilled to the core of its little processors, it is, no doubt. So obviously very false. Harmless enough, perhaps, but I'm really not in the mood for this kind of thing right now, so it comes over  irritating.

In an "oops - it could so easily happen to you" item, I'm addressed as "Dear Other Baker" (arrowed red  in the image). Probably not because they have a customer called Baker already. More likely because the puldown for the title field did not have the choice of "Dr". (I applied for a credit card when I'd recently got my PhD, put "Dr" onthe form thinking that might help, and am stuck with it now...) A bit surprising perhaps that the Title pulldown does not accommodate "Dr", but it's not a design failure: the "Other" value in that title  pulldown opens up a field in which unanticipated titles can be entered. There are of course very many possible titles that humans adopt (Brigadeer, Captain, Princess, Guru...), and some people are very particular about being allowed to use the correct title.  So a free text field is arguably better than some humungous pulldown of all known options: if you truly wish to be addressed as "Jedi Master" on the delivery  label of your goods, then the free text field can accommodate your wish. So the design is sensible, but it looks like something went wrong in populating the field from the value I gave.

Alternatively the company thinks I am one of the Others, a race of creatures from the "Song of Fire and Ice" fantasy series by George R R Martin (appeared on TV as "Game of Thrones". But this seems unlikely, as I have never knowingly killed anyone with a crystal sword and then magically re-animated them as zombie servants.

Usability pet hates - secret password rules

Pet usability hate number one - sites that have restrictions on password choice, but don't tell you what the restrictions are. In this case I invented a nice secure password, entered it twice and then was told on submission that the site only does weaker passwords. I don't believe that using special characters is so outrageously unusual as to be something the designers shouldn't have anticipated! Sometime you also see secret rules that passwords must be a minimum length. I think it would be better if any such rules were either unnecessary (so that customers can be protected by the strongest passwords that would work for them), or at least explained before data entry!

Can't say this is the number one hate in terms of things I hate MOST, it's just the first one to come along. Maybe I'll find more "Pet hates" over time. I'm not going to provide links to the sites in question - I don't want to join the "nyah, nyah, ne nyah, nyah your site is rubbish" school of usability writing.