Senior Usability Analyst, Editor-At-Large, Mequoda Group, LLC
Roxanne O’Connell is Assistant Professor of Visual Communication at Roger Williams University where her area of research is the design of information. She is also Research Director for the Mequoda Group, specializing in website usability, site prototyping and audience research.
Roxanne is currently consulting in … Continue Reading »
Senior Partner, Mequoda Group, LLC
Aimee Graeber brings more than 11 years experience to her position as Senior Partner. She is the Principal Information Architect and Design Team Leader for the Mequoda Group. She is an expert in project management, information architecture, website usability, Internet marketing and system development. Aimee … Continue Reading »
Internet marketing encompasses a wide range of methods including search engine marketing, email marketing, viral marketing, affiliate marketing, display advertising, interactive ads and others. The nature of the Internet causes rapid and constant change in marketing, and new methods are always emerging. Internet marketers frequently combine several methods, such as … Continue Reading »
Multiple Business Models are Required to Maximize Online Revenue
In session three, entitled Generating Website Revenue, Don revealed that there are the 12 different types of business models, or “archetypes” that a publisher uses to make money online. … Continue Reading »
The web is quickly becoming an on-demand source at the fingertips of all of our users. While users without SmartPhones or PDAs might rarely see the benefit in surfing the web within an un-optimized environment, it’s plainly obvious to see that technology is escalating to this new on-demand standard, and … Continue Reading »
How to keep smart shoppers happy and provide them with a thorough, yet user-friendly online shopping experience. Normally, we don’t recommend shopping carts to our users, because we see the highest conversion rate on sales letter landing pages. However, we realize that many publishers have too large of an … Continue Reading »
These internet marketing tips can help your website’s ads generate more revenue
Banner blindness is a real problem for publishers and advertisers. Banners that are not seen are not clicked, lowering the sponsor’s ROI and the publisher’s revenue. But how do we make online ads that capture more attention? … Continue Reading »
Valuable information without premium prices
“Knowledge is power.”
The more research you conduct, the stronger your online business will be.
You should learn about search engines, your customers, landing pages, website usability, online publishing—everything about business online. … Continue Reading »
Websurfers are not getting any more patient.
More people are installing broadband connections in their homes, and more than 80 percent of all active Internet users in the US now access the net with broadband, according to Website Optimization’s March 2007 Bandwidth Report. The pokey 56K connection is becoming too slow … Continue Reading »
TMZ’s constantly updated celebrity news draws more unique users by a wide margin.
Entertainment news hub TMZ dominated the Mequoda Blog 100 this month, generating more unique visitors during January than the two closest contenders combined. … Continue Reading »
Capitalize on these frequently overlooked opportunities to sell more products from your website and increase your average dollar amount per sale.
If you’ve ever bought a product in direct response to a TV commercial, you’ve experienced the “upsell.” The operator always has a special, “today only” opportunity to increase your order … Continue Reading »
The Mequoda Research Team has made a list of the top 100 media blogs in the country based on unique page visitors per month.
In the sprawling and volatile blogosphere, mining for a gem of a site is hard work. That’s why the Mequoda Research Team created the free Mequoda Blog … Continue Reading »
If there’s a new blog born every half second, how will yours get noticed?
The average blog reader views 77% more pages than an average user, and believe it or not, those blog readers are 11% more likely to have an average income of $75,000 or more, according to Clickz. Well … Continue Reading »
Looking back on an expert’s claim that website usability testing proved promotional language imposes a cognitive burden
It’s nearly a decade now since website usability expert Dr. Jakob Nielsen proclaimed that “that 79 percent of our test users always scanned any new page they came across; only 16 percent read word-by-word.”
“Users … Continue Reading »
The Internet is a constantly evolving medium. Websites get redesigned, either owing to new graphics, new content, or because the essential architecture is inadequate to serve the site visitors.
If the human factors haven’t been properly addressed — if visitors can’t easily find what they’re looking for or can’t order your … Continue Reading »
U.S. Government Creates Guidelines
If the target market for your email newsletter or membership website is older Americans, you might want to heed this advice on senior-friendly websites from the National Institute on Aging. If fact, you might find these suggestions are worthwhile for any group squinting at the computer screen.
“Plain … Continue Reading »
Experts on Website Design and Website Usability Testing Can Disagree
“Never redesign your website,” says one of my esteemed mentors and colleagues.
Disturbing words, especially because, as a website design expert and information architect, I spend 50+ hours a week explaining to clients why and how they must redesign their websites. … Continue Reading »
Earlier this week, I got my annual physical (the doc says I’m in good shape for an old guy). My new MD looks to be about 35 making me about 15 years his senior—me having just turned 50 last December.
While waiting in various states of dress and undress, I found … Continue Reading »
Having just conducted a mini-usability test this week with a very confused customer, I have website usability on the brain. We have some tests scheduled for the end of September that I just cannot wait another second for!
As many of you know, website usability is a hot issue in Web … Continue Reading »
Perhaps you’re confident of the words you must use on your website but not how they should be organized. Our usability expert, Roxanne O’Connell, likes to make that a job for a Card Sort Test. This test is especially helpful if you have a lot of categories or sections and … Continue Reading »
As our usability guru, Roxanne O’Connell is fond of saying, the cardinal rule when deciding on which words to use to describe the various departments, sections and categories on your website is to ask, “What would a user call this?”
Not “What do the business people call this?” or “What does … Continue Reading »
Usability and design are two key factors in publishing great websites. You can have a clear strategy and great content, but if your site is unusable and unattractive, it will be difficult for users to find what they’re looking for, difficult for you to get users to do what you … Continue Reading »
Getting the design of your website right often proves to be a daunting task. The development costs alone for creating a website with a unique value proposition can be staggering. Our inside joke on that is, “How do you create a $10 million Web business? Start with $38 million and … Continue Reading »
There is no mistaking the current success of Craigslist with their extremely basic website design.
Craigslist (CL) was a simple community classified site started in 1995 by Craig Newmark. The originally-non-profit site was incorporated in 1999. There are 190 versions of the website—localized by city—throughout the world, featuring free classified advertisements … Continue Reading »
The Incredible Website Usability of Craigslist.org is a Key Component in the Success of this Community Phenomenon.
Craigslist.org (CL) was a simple online community classified site started in 1995 by Craig Newmark (yes, Virginia, there is a Craig). The originally-non-profit site was incorporated in 1999. There are 190 versions of the … Continue Reading »
The Mequoda Internet Hub is the heart of a high-performance Internet Marketing System that is fueling extreme growth for the handful of savvy information marketers that have one. Here are some lessons learned from analyzing more than 20 existing Internet Hubs and then designing and building six Mequoda Internet Hubs … Continue Reading »
While humans are humans, age is a major consideration in designing usable websites that will allow the targeted users to have an efficient and fulfilling user experience. … Continue Reading »
In the past few months, I’ve seen results from three different magazine publishers that have each literally turned their source mix on its head. For each of them, a simple online order form that costs them almost nothing has rocketed their website to the top of their print publication’s source … Continue Reading »
Webpage path analysis for a large advertising-driven consumer website revealed that there was a problem with website usability. Users were bypassing the “browse by category” website navigation in 85 percent of user sessions. Website usability testing revealed that the users were using search to look for reports and articles, instead … Continue Reading »
We are still in the dawn of the Internet age and Morningstar.com is one of the early lights in the crowded online investment information sky. A well-designed site with a Milky Way of investment tools, Morningstar.com earns a glowing A on the Mequoda Website Scorecard. … Continue Reading »
Successful website publishing in 2005 means creating happy users and healthy profits. Without both, no website will exist for long. All of the successful website publishers we’ve studied have one thing in common: a consistent management system for achieving success that includes a number of key behaviors that are repeated … Continue Reading »
What should you consider when starting a subscription-driven or membership website?
The answers are not always obvious, even to a seasoned print or electronic publisher. Starting a new website is very different from running an existing property. Over the past 10 years, my partners and I have worked on over 100 … Continue Reading »
Bristol, RI – September 23, 2004 – With larger magazine publishing companies falling to the wayside, the Imagineers at Disney Publishing’s Discover.com have been awarded the IMR Usability Excellence Award 2004 for Best Consumer Magazine Website. … Continue Reading »
Consumer magazine websites are as diverse in content and execution as the magazines they represent. Some offer robust content and interactive functionality that begin to take advantage of the promise of online publishing, while some… do not. … Continue Reading »
