Web Industry
Today, Google unveiled Real-Time Google Analytics and released it to a handful of accounts. You could request to have it turned on for your account, and within a couple of hours of making that request they turned it on for me.
September 29, 2011 — 2 Comments
There are over 4000 higher ed institutions in the United States. With largely similar audiences (prospective students, current students, parents, faculty, alumni, donors, etc.) and goals (recruitment, retention, donations, etc.) we’re certainly not alone in our challenges. Thus, when faced the same problems we come up with the same solutions. This is what I call design convergence.
September 02, 2011 — 2 Comments
On July 1, we launched ND.edu 4.0. This was a new look and feel for the site, as well as a conceptually different approach to the homepage and navigation. But the biggest change was a fundamental shift in who our audiences were. I’ll elaborate on these later, but that’s not the point of this post. The point? Every time we make a major change to the design of the ND.edu homepage, we get feedback. And it’s overwhelmingly negative.
August 16, 2011 — 5 Comments
Last year during a higher ed panel discussion, I mentioned that most of my team works from home several days a week. In fact, sometimes an employee is only in the office one or two days a week.
This immediately generated questions about productivity, how I keep tabs on their work, and whether HR ...
August 09, 2011 — 6 Comments
If Google does something, we all notice. If a hot, new social network hits, we all notice. So this week, the world is a-buzz with the latest social network, Google+. And if you’re a cynic, like me, you’re thinking, “Great! Another social network. What makes this special?” Here’s the thing: it’s ok to be intrigued or cynical.
July 06, 2011 — 2 Comments
New term, you heard it here first.
SMASS: Social-Media-as-Savior Syndrome.
A few weeks ago I wrote about a return to business fundamentals and away from the eager puppy focus that many of our colleagues have to social media.
Then I presented to a group of marketing professionals at “social ...
June 09, 2011 — 2 Comments
Yesterday I taught a workshop on social media to a group of small business owners. Halfway through the session, I realized that teaching these folks about social media was all wrong. They didn’t need to learn about making friends on Facebook or video blogging on YouTube. Half the room didn&...
May 16, 2011 — 6 Comments
I spend a lot of time looking at other higher ed websites. Knowing what’s out there is part of our job. Last week, a few colleagues and I spent some time sharing our favorite sites and looking at what others are doing out there. And something strange happened: we became critics.
If you have...
April 11, 2011 — 0 Comments
Every website has a consistent look and feel, one that clearly identifies itself as part of the institution. The overarching themes and messages come through loud and clear, never varying. Every sentence has a common voice. Everything is completely up to date. And the site goals get measured and ...
March 17, 2011 — 0 Comments
In Part 1: The Dangers of Letting Your Website Stagnate, I argued that a website project never really ends – that the risks of leaving a website alone can actually cost you money, and not just from missed opportunities.
So what do you do after launch? The answer to that begins before launc...
March 10, 2011 — 0 Comments
We all know the feelings of a major web project – the rush leading up to the launch, the last-minute jitters, the discovery of problems, and the relief of finally going “live.” Websites are long projects. But unlike many other marketing materials, launching a website isn’t...
February 25, 2011 — 0 Comments
When I joined higher ed in 2005, marketing seemed to be a dirty word. Web designers were starting to add reflections and big rounded corners. Many developers were still building with tables and font tags ran rampant. To many, terms like “information architecture” and “content st...
February 10, 2011 — 0 Comments
My inbox is full. My feed reader is full. Twitter is overflowing with links, articles, blog posts, and other great content that I just can’t miss.
But I do miss it. The signal-to-noise ratio is low, and I need help. In the last five minutes, I’ve seen 11 articles roll by on my twitter...
January 17, 2011 — 5 Comments
I’ve spent some time thinking about where we need to go next with mobile. Our websites are mobile-friendly (it’s just part of our process) and we have a pretty good mobile website at m.nd.edu. But we’re not done. We don’t have an app. There’s more to develop. And the...
October 24, 2010 — 1 Comment
Last week I had the opportunity to attend the HighEdWeb 2010 conference in Cincinnati. This was a wonderful conference and I highly recommend it to anyone in our industry. Because I went on Notre Dame’s dime, I had to present something from my trip there. I gathered together a few reflectio...
October 20, 2010 — 0 Comments
In 2009 I wrote about cognitive load and asked the question, “If users have a working memory limit of approximately seven items, how can you justify twelve global navigation options?”
I’ve been meaning to revisit this, almost since I wrote it. Because I was wrong.
I’ve re...
September 24, 2010 — 2 Comments
Yesterday, our team debated the right UX approach to a search field. Should the button say “Search?” Or is it ok to say “Go?” Text in the field or not? A separate label or no?
I searched online for definitive study results, but got nothing substantial. What I found, howeve...
September 21, 2010 — 3 Comments
Josh Stowe posted a series of tweets today about the Notre Dame Alumni Association implementing a central editing and approval process for all of their website content:
Excited about switching to a centralized content approval process. Anyone can draft, my team approves/publishes, and thereR...
September 16, 2010 — 0 Comments
Ever since we launched blogs.nd.edu, we’ve had a slew of new signups. Many of these are new bloggers, and they’re eager to get going. But they don’t always know the tips and tricks that can help a new blog gain traction amongst the millions of other blogs in the world.
Here are ...
August 30, 2010 — 0 Comments
Years ago, when I was running my own little web business, one of my clients was a car insurance company. We designed their website, but had inherited an online quoting system written in approximately 100,000 lines of terrible Perl code.
Every few months, my client would send me updates that requ...
June 03, 2010 — 0 Comments
Leading up to my two-part Usability Testing 360 webinar series, I bring you a handful of resources, articles, tools, and tips on Usability Testing.
Learn some of the terms, definitions, buzzwords, and otherwise confusing jargon related to usability with this handy usability glossary.
CollegeWebEd...
June 03, 2010 — 0 Comments
In February, Notre Dame’s Alumni Association did something remarkable: it launched an interactive television program entirely online.
The program is called Tender, Strong, and True: Living the Gospel Daily. It’s a panel-format show discussing a topic of faith with academics and spiri...
March 30, 2010 — 2 Comments
ND is rolling out Blogs at Notre Dame, a blogging platform using WordPress MU. We’re hoping to get some of our brilliant and interesting faculty members blogging. This raises a lot of questions:
There’s been a lot of talk about blogging for admissions and student recruitment, but sho...
March 18, 2010 — 1 Comment
The web profession is a client-driven one, even when we don’t technically have clients. We’re always teaching, educating the various stakeholders as to best practices, how to use new technologies, and why they shouldn’t waste their time on the flashy buzzword-du-jour.
If youR...
March 09, 2010 — 4 Comments
Like many higher ed web professionals, my team is caught in the middle.
On one hand, we have clients and want to help them get their projects done, make them happy, and accomplish their goals.
On the other, we have the institution. Even if we’re entirely client-driven and can run like a bus...
March 03, 2010 — 1 Comment
Note: I know very well that the word is spelled résumé but for whatever reason my blog won’t display the é character unless I explicitly state it with an HTML entity code . Argh.
I’ve been doing a lot of hiring lately. This time around, I took careful note of the ...
February 26, 2010 — 0 Comments
A recent question on our internal campus communicators network prompted a question about Google’s social networking entrant, Buzz. There’s been plenty of chatter about it, so I don’t feel the need to summarize what Buzz is.
As @donschindler pointed out, Jeremiah Owyang has a gre...
February 11, 2010 — 0 Comments
Take this brief quiz and make a mental note of your responses:
Have you and your boss (or client) agreed on the important metrics for your website’s success?
That’s it. If the answer is yes, you’re on the road to being an analytics superhero. But if you don’t know the a...
January 09, 2010 — 1 Comment
In software, an API is a way to get data into or out of a system. It stands for “Applicant Programming Interface” and basically allows outsiders to access or manipulate the information in the software.
The Twitter API lets you access tweets, search users, post tweets, and so on. The A...
December 03, 2009 — 0 Comments
Every project has its ups and downs. Sometimes it’s pretty predictable. This bingo kit is for any web project manager, designer, developer, writer, freelancer, or anyone else who works on website projects.
Rules
Pick a project, any project. Each team member gets a card (reload to refresh t...
November 24, 2009 — 0 Comments
In pushing social media on campus (including an institutional blogging platform to hold personal/professional blogs), the question arises: Who owns this content?
I want to explore a few scenarios. Please post to the comments and share your own opinions on these.
1. You post to your personal blog ...
November 13, 2009 — 2 Comments
This week I presented to our team at AgencyND about Mobile – what’s the deal and what’s coming. I call this the Mobile Horizon, as a nod to the Horizon Report which aims to inform higher education about the future technologies and their implications. Mobile is all the rage, and ...
November 05, 2009 — 0 Comments
I recently looked at using Ning to power a private social network, but one little red flag was a deal-breaker. From the Terms of Service:
You hereby grant Ning, during the course of your usage of the Ning Platform, a nonexclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, sublicenseable a...
October 13, 2009 — 1 Comment
I’ve written and spoken on website usability testing plenty of times. But recently, our team at Notre Dame has begun to seriously investigate other methods, tools, and concepts to improve every part of our projects.
Special thanks to Kate Russell, our information architect and usability coo...
August 29, 2009 — 8 Comments
From July 20-22, 2009 I attended (and presented at) eduWEB Conference 2009. Go check out my presentation slides on Budget Usability Testing.
Things I Noticed
There’s a wide spectrum of experience, beginner to expert. Some sessions are designed more for one or the other, and it’s not a...
July 22, 2009 — 0 Comments
Client: “I need a website in two months!”
It takes our group an average of 5 months to produce a website. Damn… clients get some serious sticker shock when they find that out.
So I share our project schedule document, which was supposed to be internal but shows exactly how we ar...
July 01, 2009 — 2 Comments
On Sunday May 17, 2009, the University of Notre Dame held its University Commencement Exercises. Unlike previous commencement events, it was surrounded by controversy and buzz. A highlight of the ceremony was the commencement address by President Barack Obama. His policies and positions on aborti...
May 18, 2009 — 0 Comments
Higher education is often a slow beast, lumbering forward amidst a fast-paced world of technology and innovation.
Karine Joly asks, Why don’t we talk more about the mobile Web and its possibilities for our field?
But it’s not just mobile Web, is it? Why is higher ed so slow to adopt n...
May 06, 2009 — 6 Comments
Why aren’t you invited as a keynote speaker at the top design conferences? Why aren’t the biggest design firms falling all over themselves to hire you at exorbitant prices? Why don’t you charge $500/hour for your time? How many interview requests do you get each week?
There̵...
April 14, 2009 — 0 Comments
I get asked this question all the time: how often should you redesign your website?
The answer? When you need to.
Recently, a client compared it to a car: sure, you can get a new car every three years, but if it’s still meeting your needs, isn’t that pretty wasteful? Then again, you c...
April 01, 2009 — 5 Comments
Notre Dame is a great place to work, and AgencyND is on the forefront of a lot of trends in both higher education and the web industry in general. We’ve won a smattering of awards and we’ve had a lot of fun doing it.
We’re hiring a web developer to help us keep moving forward. ...
March 24, 2009 — 0 Comments
According to TwitterFacts.com, the first tweets were sent March 21, 2006. Happy Birthday, Twitter!
I went back in time to find my first tweet:
Giving in to the twitter side
8:56 AM Feb 24th, 2007 from web
What (and when) was your first tweet?
March 22, 2009 — 2 Comments
On Monday March 9, 2009, I tracked every single tweet that came through my Tweetdeck. I categorized the tweets according to their use and intent and content. Nothing fancy or scientific here, just a quick label. After all, I do still have a job (until my boss reads this).
Quick notes – of c...
March 12, 2009 — 0 Comments
It’s more important that you fit into the party than it is to get in the door.
Perry Belcher uses the metaphor of social media as a series of parties. (Aside: This guy makes me want to grill some barbecue.) How to Make Money with Social Media
So social media is a big party. And at a party, ...
March 09, 2009 — 0 Comments
The How of Mobile
Mobile development in 30 seconds:
Schools create separate websites for mobile access. Some schools use special stylesheets on the same content. MIT establishes a platform-specific approach to serving content to mobile devices. Stanford students create an iPhone app suite for Sta...
March 08, 2009 — 0 Comments
We dislike HTML emails, so they must not work.
We abhor Flash on websites, so we shouldn’t use them.
Tables must never be used except for tabular data, so anyone who uses tables for layout must be the devil.
We’re so high and mighty on our self-made pedestals that we forget that nobod...
February 28, 2009 — 0 Comments
From the Chronicle of Higher Education:
A new company called Academic Earth offers free online videos of lectures from some of the world’s most renowned scholars teaching at leading universities. The company has simply grabbed the videos off the universities’ own Web sites and plans to offer too...
February 24, 2009 — 0 Comments
I’ve been mercilessly teased lately for calling myself a “social media advocate.” As oAk says, there’s no title easier to adopt than that of “social media expert.” Congratulations, you use the web.
I call myself a “social media advocate” because I e...
February 11, 2009 — 1 Comment
About three years ago, we launched a website where the main audience was ages 40-65. One of the exciting “new” features we offered was an RSS feed.
Everyone knows that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, right? Okay, that’s not fair. But RSS isn’t exactly gaining...
February 04, 2009 — 3 Comments
I’m a stats whore. There, I said it. I often check my Feedburner subscriber counts throughout the day, even though I know they are only updated once a day. Not only that, but I get really excited about finding usage stats for other sites. It’s an obsession.
Stats can help tell a story...
February 04, 2009 — 0 Comments
Yeah, you heard me. Though I often post skeptical, cynical posts about low social media adoption rates or why social media isn’t worth your time I am very much interested in (and invested in) social media.
Slate magazine points out that Facebook has passed 150 million members. TechCrunch re...
January 23, 2009 — 0 Comments
Recently, my designer friend, Oak, asked me: what’s the point? He is starting out his blog at the bottom. He’s not “Internet famous” and doesn’t have a following. And there are millions of design blogs out there that are all competing for the same visitors.
So the qu...
January 12, 2009 — 0 Comments
Nick Denardis, a top user on eduStyle and web influencer at Wayne State University, has launched what I consider a really brilliant idea. He’s doing video reviews of higher education websites. He’s basically pulling a couple of sites from the eduStyle feed and spending a few minutes c...
October 31, 2008 — 1 Comment
Budget
When referring to a budget range, the Client will only remember the low end of the range.
You will remember the high end of the range.
Fixed bid or flat rate projects always screw someone over.
It’s usually not the client.
Timing
A Client who is in a hurry will inexp...
October 28, 2008 — 5 Comments
(or How to get your clients to do what you want)
Not long ago, lawlessness ruled the land. Clients did whatever they wanted and the customer was always right. Projects often missed deadlines and the team bemoaned the dreaded “scope creep.” This was a painful time, overtime was part of...
July 07, 2008 — 0 Comments
I’ve had a lot of analytics discussions lately, with clients and colleagues, and not only are people still struggling with the terminology they’re misunderstanding the entire point.
From Online Spin:
The basic gist was this: because marketers were demanding metrics (i.e. impressions, clicks) ...
June 22, 2008 — 0 Comments
I left this comment in response to HighEdWebTech’s post, Exterminating Form Spam and decided it was worth sharing here.
In my opinion, CAPTCHAs are a “rock and a hard place” kind of idea. They can be effective against spammers, but are increasingly frustrating for real users. Bu...
June 16, 2008 — 0 Comments
Now it’s time for another Tales from a Psychologist…
“The false consensus effect is the tendency for people to project their way of thinking onto other people.”
In other words, if you believe something you’ll assume that most people would agree with you.
This has dan...
June 15, 2008 — 0 Comments
David Heinemeier Hansson misses the mark when he claims that designers should code their own XHTML/CSS templates.
I’ve worked with many web designers in the past who only did abstractions and then handed over pictures to be chopped and implemented by “HTML monkeysâ€. It never really gelled w...
June 05, 2008 — 1 Comment
I tell clients the most important thing they can put on their homepage is their elevator pitch. As most of my clients are academics with little or no business background, they usually don’t know what this means.
You’ve stepped onto an elevator and you realize there’s a potential...
April 24, 2008 — 0 Comments
I consume hundreds of articles a day for hundreds of different websites through my feed reader of choice. Today, I saw two posts that irked me. They both went something like this:
“We’re moving so please make sure you update your bookmarks and feed subscriptions!”
And these site...
April 07, 2008 — 1 Comment
Check out Here Come the Irish on the Notre Dame YouTube channel. Then go head over to nd.edu and watch the countdown to Tuesday’s new website launch.
August 25, 2007 — 1 Comment
I really wanted to go to SXSW this year. After hearing from Jim Gosz and Steve Smith how amazing it was last year, I was hoping to find the time for this year’s conference. Unfortunately, I just didn’t have the time – too much work, too many prior commitments.So instead of being...
March 12, 2007 — 1 Comment
At Notre Dame, I’ve tried out a slightly different process for a few of my smaller projects. These are just web redesign projects with, at most, 50-100 pages.We designed last. We followed this order for the project:1. Content assessment and I/A2. Build site skeleton3. Add content to site4. ...
February 24, 2007 — 1 Comment
I’m always frustrated when I see something somewhere and can’t find more information online. This happens all the time – a TV commercial, a magazine ad, a billboard – all efforts to create new business. Yet a huge opportunity is lost when they limit this information to tho...
February 03, 2007 — 0 Comments
“Don’t take away features from users. If they want to do something, even if it lets them shoot themselves in the foot, let them.” warnerja from forum.java.sun.comI’ve been playing with this article for a while now and it’s been sitting in my drafts list for nearly tw...
January 30, 2007 — 2 Comments
I wish you didn’t have to sell out to make money. Or do you?
Indexed: Thar she blows.
January 26, 2007 — 0 Comments
I work in a web factory. It’s not a real factory. It’s just a metaphor. Bear with me.In a real factory, a company develops a process for creating a product. The process helps minimize variance, establish quality controls, comply with requirements, and ensure measurability. Once you h...
January 17, 2007 — 1 Comment
From wonderland blog:
“Network programming needs to reach out and respect those people online talking about your stories. They talk about our stories, and we don’t have to pay them! The fan is happy talking because they like the product, and we’re fans of the fans.”Sounds ...
January 17, 2007 — 0 Comments
Today, the org chart is hyperlinked, not hierarchical. Respect for hands-on knowledge wins over respect for abstract authority.cluetrain.comThe web is all about hyperlinks. You know, the (often blue and underlined) thing you click on to go to another page? Companies want to use the web to make m...
January 16, 2007 — 0 Comments
Marketing, entrepreneurship, personal development, and the Internet. These are my interests and the subject of this blog. I’m also insatiable in my curiosity and learning, so I spend a good deal of time reading on these topics. Of the hundred or so RSS feeds I monitor, these are a few of my...
January 13, 2007 — 2 Comments
The Rich-Poor Gap. It’s a common topic for many economists and journalists, noting that the economic distance between the rich and poor is growing wider. There are plenty of arguments around this idea, including the notion of the middle class also growing.
I think the same is happening for ...
January 09, 2007 — 0 Comments
Many of my web projects start off the same: “We need a website.†The customer lays out the project requirements (a new design, n pages, a flash element on the homepage, and a contact form). Or, there are no requirements and they make it up as they go along. And we, the web vendor, provide our...
January 07, 2007 — 0 Comments
This is one link to bookmark. A great little utility from Conversation Marketing:What is a click worth? will help you quickly (and roughly) answer the question of Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising.One company I worked with was paying $12/click. On the face, it was worth it because their average cus...
December 14, 2006 — 0 Comments
Inspired by a similar list by Jennifer Kymin at webdesign.about.com, I decided to offer my own predictions. I’ve enjoyed watching the web over the last few years. The upswing in startups, web-based software, and smarter users has been exciting. What might 2007 hold for us?
2007 Predictions1...
December 11, 2006 — 2 Comments
An interesting post from codebetter.com started off with a great intro:
“Think about this for a minute, say your Noah, walking down the street, minding your own business, and a big voice booms out “Noah, I want you to build an Ark. When can you ship?” Here’s the proper respo...
December 06, 2006 — 0 Comments
For all the talk of social media and the strength of weak ties, there isn’t much action being taken to really try to “harness collective intelligence.”I am reviving a social network website that I built several years back. I was discussing it with my designer friend, Oak, and he
made a suggesti...
December 01, 2006 — 1 Comment
Getting traffic can be hard to do, but we know that traffic isn’t the goal. The real goal is your business objective. We measure this in conversions—visitors that become customers or perform a desired action. Often, this means making a purchase or filling out a form. Sometimes it’s as simple as c...
November 21, 2006 — 1 Comment
Google is testing a new system that could be HUGE. It’s buying ad space in newspapers and on radio stations and selling the space to its customers. Like AdWords, which lets you buy ad space on other websites, advertisers will be able to bid on (and buy) ad space through their online system...
November 08, 2006 — 1 Comment
A stupid frat-boy business idea is an idea that sounds attractive on the surface, but ignores the graveyard of failures before it.Ramit Sethi, I Will Teach You to be RichThis article was inspired by one of my favorite blogs, I Will Teach You to be Rich. The first article I ever saw there was call...
November 06, 2006 — 1 Comment
When you read blogs (including this one), do you prefer feature-length articles or short posts?I tend to be verbose and long-winded. However, I also wish to address topics which require deeper consideration. For these extended articles, I spend a few hours doing research, writing and revising, et...
November 02, 2006 — 2 Comments
“Ninety percent of RSS users opt to read the feed content entirely in the aggregator environment.†PheedoWhen I started this blog, I wanted to get people to come to my site. I figured that the RSS feed would have a teaser paragraph for each article, and readers would come to the site for the ...
November 01, 2006 — 3 Comments
CSS is the language of web design. Molly E. HolzschlagIn a typical web shop, the web designer is usually responsible for CSS and XHTML. This person then works with a developer to combine the web design with the web application portion of the project.This is part of why the web is a disgusting mes...
October 27, 2006 — 2 Comments
The project is 99% done. The design is approved. The IA is approved. The site is built and content is in the pages. You’ve tested everything. It’s ready to launch. But you don’t. The client won’t approve it.
The client has cold feet.
October 25, 2006 — 0 Comments
You have bills to pay. You’re busy with projects. Your sales guy is already talking about the next lead and the proposal you need to write. Who has time for their own website?We spend a lot of time convincing businesses to make their websites better, and yet many of us are unhappy with our own ...
October 16, 2006 — 1 Comment
Because the computer makes it easy to start programming, designing, or writing, many people jump right in and start working. This is a quick way to fail. That’s why teachers hand students a syllabus, writers often start with an outline, and I carry a shopping list to the grocery store. So how do we apply this to web projects?
October 11, 2006 — 1 Comment