Blog

March 28th, 2012

Marketing, Usability

Back in early 2001, when I was trying to explain the web to my bosses at a financial services firm, I came up with three principles:  Instantaneous Gratification, Convenience, and Control. These are the fundamental principles of the social contract of the web — they define what we expect and have come to rely on when we travel the web. Consequently, any behavior that violates these principles breaks the social contract and drives users away.

It was with this in mind that I recently read some of the commentary on Google’s change to its privacy policy. (more…)

Jim Keeney

August 8th, 2011

UX Design

As I wheeled my heaping grocery cart to the checkout stand, the cashier cheerfully asked me “Did you find everything you were looking for today?”  Most weeks I answer the question automatically – “Yes, thanks”.  But yesterday, glancing at my full cart, the question broke through into my conscious thoughts.  Even as I was walking out the door, the grocery store was taking advantage of one last touch point with their customer (and also taking one last shot at increasing their sale).

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Kris Delta

April 6th, 2011

Internet Strategy, Social Networking, Webinar

The evolving digital landscape is constantly changing the way we consume and process information. NavigationArts’ Senior Consultant, Mark Davenport, helps us understand how we can move sales and marketing efforts into the digital age, leveraging websites, social media, SEO and much more to attract and convert prospects into valued customers online.  In this webinar you will learn about: (more…)

Mark Davenport

March 30th, 2011

User Experience Design, Visual Design

I recently came across Hipmunk, just one more site to search for flights, right?  Actually, the ability to visualize search results on a familiar calendar spreadsheet instantly sets this site apart.

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Shivani Aneja

March 8th, 2011

Internet Strategy

Believe it or not, the Internet is not always clear.  Take a simple thing like the keyword meta tag: does it or does it not influence page rank?  Well, that depends on the search engine, right?  While exploring this for a client, I realized that what I originally thought about meta tags was true, but barely.  Google, Yahoo, and Bing do not look at the keyword meta tag for page rank. 

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Dustin Collis

February 10th, 2011

Usability, User Research

Yes, search before Google actually existed and took many different forms.  A few that come to mind are HotBot, Excite, WebCrawler, Ask Jeeves, Ask.com, Yahoo, Dogpile, AltaVista, Lycos,  AOL Search, Netscape…the list goes on.

These days, most people regard Google as the defacto standard for searching.  In the user research I’ve conducted over the last few years, research participants even use Google as a verb.

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Heather Hogue

November 19th, 2009

Social Networking

Through social media, we’re becoming more and more connected than ever before. We’re sharing opinions, posting links that we find important, and holding conversations in social spaces. Many of us consider our friends and social networks as a primary source for information, and especially trust their opinion over a stranger’s. For example, if I become a fan of a company and join their group or if I give a restaurant a rating, my friends are likely to take note

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Nikki Pampalone