I was at a friend's place for a pot-luck dinner last weekend. We were all hanging around in the kitchen and I happened to be standing by the microwave. The host handed me a gravy boat and asked, "Hey, can you nuke this for a minute?"

"Sure, no problem," I said confidently. I put the gravy boat in the microwave and closed the door. My eyes then searched for the "Min Plus" button. After all, that's how my microwave works. Aren't they all the same?

Nope. This one was littered with unfamiliar controls. Some obviously dealt with power levels, some set a timer. There were other controls for defrost functions, a cluster of specialized "one touch" buttons for Popcorn, Baked Potato, etc. But there was no "Min Plus" button to be found...

How do I just turn the damned thing ON??

Taking a guess, I pressed 6-0-Start, assuming that would give me 60 seconds. It works on my microwave - and my sister's too. Surely it must work on all of them?

Nope. The panel beeped with every press of a button, but beyond the beeping, the microwave stayed dark and silent.

Hmmm. Maybe I have to enter a power level first? So I pressed the "Power Level", then 9 (figuring 9 would be highish). Then I pushed "Time" and 6-0. THEN I pushed "Start". This has GOT to work, right?

Nope. By now, the other party guests had noticed the long series of unproductive beeps coming from the microwave, and they started to snicker. "Hey Straker, how many years did you spend in university?" one asked sarcastically. The kitchen exploded with laughter, and everyone's attention turned to the moron who couldn't figure out how to use the microwave.

To the amusement of all, the scene continued for another agonizing minute or so, as I tried any number of pushbutton combinations in a futile attempt to bring that dead hunk of metal and plastic to life.

I eventually bluffed my way through with a cheat. I pressed "Popcorn" figuring that would at least turn the stupid thing on. It did, and a round of well-deserved applause erupted. I bowed in triumphant victory.

So... what's going on here? Am I really a hopeless techno-peasant? Well perhaps that's part of it. But I like to think there's another reason I looked like such a fool: when it comes to microwave operations, there's no established standard. Every manufacturer uses a different scheme, so you can't transfer what you've learned from using your microwave and apply it to using someone else's. You're left feeling - and looking - stupid.

And what has any of this got to do with web design? Easy. If you don't want to make your visitors feel stupid - if you want them to be able to accomplish their tasks easily - stick with established conventions. Sure, it's nice to break new ground with a new and "better" navigational system or whatever. But think twice before taking such chances. Remember yours truly at the helm of a microwave. Don't make me use the "Popcorn" button to reheat the gravy. Trust me, it doesn't work well...

"My name is Michael and I am a web analytics... oholic?"

Yes, I'll admit it: I find my self logging into Google Website Optimizer at all hours - day and night, weekends included - to ensure our freshly-optimized pages are reaching their goals.

I also place bets with co-workers. We'll try to predict which version of a page will perform best, and by what margin it will beat the existing page.

It's embarrassing sometimes:

• Excusing myself from a dinner date, so I can log in to see whether my revised "buy now" button is outperforming the old one.
• Being caught squealing with joy because I've correctly predicted the lift a revised headline will make.
• Predicting a revised photo will improve conversions by 20%... only to find it reduces them by 23%. The agony of defeat!

No, this isn't a cry for help. Please, no interventions. I just wanted come clean and admit I have a new addiction.

Anyone else suffering similar symptoms?

I was recently handed a copy of Seth Godin's book, The Big Red Fez: How to Make Any Web Site Better. I thought I'd share my impressions.

On the downside, the book is now six years old. That's a long time in Internetville; some of the ideas no longer seem ground-breaking. And all of the websites he critiques have been updated since the book was written.

Still, the book's main points - if no longer revolutionary - are sound. I'm going by memory here, as I've since passed the book along to coworker. But my main takeaways were:

• Don't assume your visitors are patient, focused and intensely interested what you're offering. More likely, they're distracted and impatient.
• Think of a web page as a direct marketing piece: each page should have ONE main objective.
• If you try to please everybody, you end up with a mishmash that pleases nobody. Focus on pleasing those who matter most.
• Each page's primary objective should be crystal clear. Think of your visitors as monkeys... and make sure they can find the banana!

Much of the above sounds obvious, but clearly it's not obvious enough: most websites still don't pass the "monkey looking for a banana" test. So it's good to be reminded of these fundamentals.

Big Red Fez, is a quick and compelling read, written in a lively style with a healthy sprinkling of humor.

Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think is the ideal book for 5-hour flight. Big Red Fez, at just over 100 short pages with plenty of screen shots, is ideal for a 1-hour flight. Recommended.

Attention Ecommerce site owners!

A U.S. District Court ruled yesterday that:

• The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) applies to the Internet: Ecommerce websites must be accessible to the blind.
• The class-action lawsuit launched against Target by the National Federation for the Blind (NFB) may proceed to trial.

The NFB claimed that Target's website is not properly accessible to the blind, in violation of the ADA (as well as two California statutes). Yesterday's ruling was a huge step forward in their case.

This should serve as a wake-up call to Ecommerce site owners: make your sites accessible to the blind, or face expensive consequences.

What's a site owner to do?

The good news (to site owners) is that making sites accessible is something they should be doing anyway. The simple fact is, many features that make websites accessible to the blind also make them more accessible to sighted users. For example:

• Proper use of alt tags to describe images
• Simple layout, easy to use navigation
• Direct and concise copywriting
• Minimal forced device switching (keyboard/mouse)

Also, in the long-term, it's now more cost effective develop an accessible, properly built-site. Inaccessible sites using spacer gifs and clumsy table layouts end up being enormous headaches for developers, and get progressively worse with updates.

In comparison, accessible sites that separate code and design into different HTML and CSS files are much easier to update and redesign.

The bottom line?

The latest Target ruling makes it clear: website accessibility to the blind is not just "the right thing to do". It's a legal requirement.

However, making websites accessible is not as onerous as it sounds. It's something you should be doing anyway, for reasons beyond accessibility to the blind.

Previous post about Google's My Maps explained new online tool to create personalized or customized maps.

Google is still updating this My Maps tool. There is a new great feature that allows you to embed your custom or personal maps into your website. You can just copy/paste a string of HTML code to have your map on webpage. And this map will be totally interactive with zoom in/zoom out, different views, etc.

Google provides HTML code that shows map in iframe. That means you can customize of the embedded Google Map such as size, frame border, scrolling, etc.

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At the end of July Google announced that "Supplemental Results" labels will not longer appear. Basically, supplemental pages still exist as before. We just can't see the status of pages using command 'site:example.com'. Label "Supplemental Results" helped many webmasters and SEO specialists improve the quality of websites.

Fortunately, there is a way to determine if page is in supplemental results. There are a couple of useful commands below:

site:example.com/& - will show a list of pages in supplemental results

site:example.com/* - will show a list of non-supplemental pages

Hopefully, this information will help you find low quality web-pages that stay in supplemental results to improve them. Diagnosis is the first and most important step for improvement.

When using a multi variable testing application like Google's new Website Optimizer there are a number of different page segments and/or pages you cant test.

First you should select what type of page you want to test. You could choose to test a campaign landing page, your home page, a lead generation form or a page in your check out process. When trying to determine where you should start looking for your low hanging fruit take a quick look at your web site's analytics.

You web analytics software (such as Google Analytics or Omniture's SiteCatalyst) will be able to point you in the right direction with respect to identifying pages that are causing your users the most difficulty.

Use your analytics software to determine which pages have the highest bounce rate (defined as pages that a user enters and exits from without visiting any other pages on your website), or highest exit rate, or pages that you feel are key to your business (these could be homepage, lead generation form or pages in your checkout process).

Once you have identified which page you want to test you then need to determine what it is that you are going to test. When you look at your page you need to view it as if it was created in segments. These segments are areas of the page that you would like to try alternative creatives or text in.

Try thinking of your page as consisting of the follow types of segments: Headlines, body content, images (both product and banner), calls to action, trust builders (privacy and return policies as well as logos like BBB online or Hacker Safe),...

You can also look at testing elements where the content or creative stays the same but you change the font size or color, bold, italics, underline,...

You can even test adding new elements to the page, not just changing elements that are already there. An example of this would be to add case studies or testimonials to your pages to try and increase the level of trust that you are creating with your users. Other new elements that an ecommerce site could test would be merchandising or cross selling. In this case you would like to find out if your new cross selling efforts helped increase you average order size.

Certain multi variable tests that you will want to run will require more data tracking than you will find from using Google's website optimizer alone. If you were to test the impact of making your telephone number larger you would need to be able to measure the impact this has on your phone orders. This is something that Web Optimizer on its own won't measure. If running a test like this you would also want to compare what happens to your online orders. If the larger telephone number leads to an increase in phone orders and an equivalent decrease in online orders then all you've likely done is increase your operating costs for the same sales volume.

If you are a lead generating site you would likely want to test your lead generation forms. How does the quantity and quality of your leads vary when you ask for more or less information?

So many questions and so many things to improve upon. Now with analytics and multi variable testing you have the ability to continually test and improve your online presence.

Coming soon from VKI Studios - Hippo Tango - the total website optimization service. Challenge the status quo and strive for continuous improvement of you web property with the help of analytics, multi variable testing, web usability, design/branding and integrated online marketing campaigns.

Adobe has recently released their new Creative Suite CS3.

As a part of this release they have included an application called Device Central.

This application allows developers to test their content, including Flash Lite applications, on a broad range of mobile phones and electronic devices and should help increase the number of developers creating pertinent content for mobile devices.

Device Central will also be able to download updated device profiles on a regular basis so that developers can stay up to date with the devices they are developing their content for.

Internet marketing is a very broad subject. In my opinion at its simplest level it is about: -campaigns that drive visitors to your web site -how well your web site does in terms of conversions & user experience -your ability to measure & analyses your performance so that you can improve both your campaigns and your web site

To date many consultants and service providers focus on one particular aspect of internet marketing. Either driving traffic, or improving conversion rates, or helping you measure and track visitors to your web site or blog. To effectively manage the internet marketing of your web site I believe that one needs to take a more holistic and iterative approach. This is not a simple task; it requires a host of skill sets and tools.

One need would need to have analytics set up on their site (like www.omniture.com) so that they can measure and analyses the current performance of their website and campaigns. Then you will need to have someone who can review the data to determine the ROI that is being achieved by your marketing efforts, the conversion rates of your different success events and where you are losing visitors.

This analyst should have knowledge of marketing and usability, or be a part of a multi functional team who can come up with alternatives to try and improve the current marketing efforts and the user experience of the site.

These strategies will then be handed off to a design and development team or provide to the agency who implements the campaigns or manages the site.

To properly measure the impact of the changes you should take advantage of multivariate or A/B testing so that you can clearly identify the impact of the changes that you have made.

Then the process starts all over again with review the results...

This is an area that I am currently working on. I'm trying to tie together our current service offerings into one holistic internet marketing service. It will take me some time to solidify how we will offer the service, how we will position it... but it is an area that I see huge potential for people to see measured improvements and know what is happening with the money they are spending.

At VKI Studios we are very excited about our upcoming attendance and sponsorship of the National Association of Realtors conference in New Orleans (NARdi Gras). What makes this even more exciting for us is the fact that we will be launching and demonstrating our new mobile web sites for realtors and real estate agents.

These new websites will be specifically created and formatted to be displayed on mobile devices such as, cell phones and smart phones, mobile PDAs, Blackberries,...

The benefit for realtors of having a mobile version of their website occurs when a potential buyer is sitting in front of one of your listings, and they want to learn more about it. All they will have to do is navigate to the realtor's website that is posted on their sign, and then they will be automatically directed to the mobile version of their website via a device detection script.

Once on the mobile site the potential buyer will find the realtors contact information, and information on all of the real estate agents listings. They will then navigate to the listing that they are interested in and then follow the link for full property details.

If they are interested in learning more they will be able to contact the agent immediately on their mobile phone.

These new sites will be created so that they are optimized for search engine compatibility, and so that they don't suffer from usability issues that plague most mobile websites.

To learn more about this new service call us today or come visit us during NARdi Gras at booth 2375.