I was raised to be concerned about things.
First it was the ants, which marched one by one to get out of the rain, but one of them always stopped to do something, which held up the whole parade. Or, it was the sheep and whether or not it had enough wool, which my father sang to me in Swedish, as his mother did to him.
While a little girl, I not only learned to spell B.I.N.G.O., the name of a dog, but I became a bit confused and surely scared singing about ears hanging low and eyes popping out.
Now grown up, things haven't improved much.
With web sites, there's danger lurking at every turn (and click). At Cre8asiteForums, members and moderators feast daily on subjects ranging from usability to starting an online business. And, of course, figuring out what makes search engines tick. We worry about spelling, keyword placement and whether our web sites have enough wool to cover our expenses, or even better, earn a profit.
Sadly, sooner or later, it seems as though everyone's meatball falls off their plate of spaghetti and they chase down logs, analyze click paths, question their SEO/SEM and camp outside the nearest persuasive architecture guru's door, hoping for a miracle cure to raise traffic, sales and rank.
I thought, therefore, it was time to write a song.(Sung to the Tune of "On Top of Old Smokie")
On Top of Search Engines
On top of search engines, feeling so pleased, You lost your great rankings, blame that Pay Per Click squeeze.
Back into the web shop, your web site ignored, It's time to uncover, why visitors were bored.
Was it the poor content, or teeny font face? Or did your cool Navbar, drop them in the wrong place?
What the hell are Conversions, and how could you know, Web Standards and Metrics, are the smart way to go.
Branding, Desire, Persuasion, and an eye for Design, Just a few of the cool ways, to increase ROI.
So, if you own a web site, and fear it's a mess Come find help at the forums, called Measuring Your Success!
Copyright 2004 Kimberly Kopp Krause, UsabilityEffect.com/Cre8pc.com
Part I.
Next week is Part II, where you will hear:
Bryan Eisenberg quip "Yeah with the rumor that IE is being worked on again by Microsoft, maybe we'll actually see some standards compliance and not lots of hack to make things work on every browser,"
and Barry Welford ponders out loud, "Is this whole measurement thing a relic of the way we were all brought up?"
References:
Measuring Your Success - Primer
