I just installed a game in russian… with no russian language support, which basically means everything looked like AEECPP CAACIVA and some other strange signs that weren’t even the cyrilic alphabet.

Now i have no idea of Russian. There not one word i know in Russian, and if there were, I wouldn’t know how it’s written. But this game is so interesting I had to try it. I’m not sure how many of you still enjoy video games but if you’ve ever played Diablo and liked it, well this is like that but better. Of course, it was in Russian and it wouldn’t start because I didn’t sheel the cash for a dell xps, but that’s not the point, this isn’t a gaming blog.

My point here is how important usability is. If you design an interface properly the text isn’t even important. Nor is the language. How did I make it through a setup interface, a hardware configuration interface and an autolauncher? Well, it’s simple really. And it’s a great study into how interfaces work.

Firstly I was completely overloaded with all the strange text because the option buttons were all in Russian too. Then, I thought for a bit, what buttons does an installer offer? Back, Next and Abort. Simple enough, let’s go So I clicked the strange button (which as a minus did not have the > symbol most english next buttons have) and it took me to the next page where I recognized the license agreement bit. How extremely interesting I clicked the top radio box and that activated the next button. I loved the idea, it was like a puzzle. Then came the tricky bit. I was presented with no buttons on the bottom, and two button options, each with a pictogram, one had a computer on it and the other a computer with something on top. I presumed this was the normal or advanced install and I clicked the simpler version of the icon and from there i just kept frantically clicking on next until it was all done.

I did get a bit of a penalty in that I installed an Aegeia PhysX driver which I don’t need but no harm done so let’s move on. I got to actually starting the game, which presented me with a plethora of choices, with tabs on top and many options in the window. I guessed at resolution (the 1280×800 format) and antialiasing (the option above 2x, 3x, etc). Then I had to guess which was save and play, and that was hard, since the configuration was two buttons stacked on a third… I miraculously picked the good one and was presented with the splash screen which was in Russian, but I immediately recognised the biggest button as being play (and the lowest one as being exit). And then the game crashed but displayed an error with Directx9 in it leaving me to understand my video card sucks and they don’t know how to program software rendering.

So what is the point here? Well, the point is that if done properly, usability can lead to people understanding your message quicker and more effectively, even if you have a problem expressing it.

So I propose to you to take the Russian Game Test from now on when designing a website. What this test is composed of is simple and is basically an applied version of prototyping. First, look at all the things you feel are important on your website, page by page. I’m referring mostly to navigation, but that’s not necessarily all. It can be the logo as well, various bits and pieces like buy now badges and so on. Turn the text on those to gibberish, and I don’t mean lorem ipsum. I mean really crazy stuff, like symbols or foreign languages, then ask a person who is a regular visitor (or actually at least 20) to do normal activities on the site with the gibberish version. Make sure all important elements are gibberish. However you are allowed, nay, encouraged to use icons and pictograms to indicate meaning. See how that works out.

Then, step two is to get rid of them altogether. Turn your website into dark rectangles on a white background. I don’t care if you have buttons shaped like cabbages, make them black rectangles. This is meant to show you that with all buttons the same size it’s hard to know your way around something…

Of course if this doesn’t trigger an instantaneous desire to redesign your website then you’re ok, but my bet is, most of you will want that… I hope you enjoyed this, and for any other questions comment or email me. If you want a website usability review that’s going to cost you, but feel free to contact me anyway

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PS: the blog is technically going to resume its normal schedule now that i’m in the clear with the exams and all that. also, i’m still working on my paper so if you feel like voting, please do…

It’s very nice to see that search engines are now thinking of incorporating ways of detecting spam by smart things such as usability criteria, thus forcing webmasters to rethink the way their site works.

And, since I’ve always been a preacher of optimizing your website for usability as well, I enjoy the fact that search engines are now pretty much forcing you to. More particularly, search engines are preparing to analyze website clutter and see whether a page is for example <strong> full of ads </strong> like a web portal, or basically optimized against ease of use.This is based on a patent application which you can find at this website and which discusses the “QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS OF WEB PAGE CLUTTER THAT ACCOUNTS FOR SUBJECTIVE PREFERENCES”.

Well, onwards. I personally feel that this is not only targeted for search engines but advertisers all around, since it addresses usability from an advertising maximization point of view:

It can be important to make web pages easy and pleasing to use, which can be particularly important for web pages it is desired to monetize. [...].

If such web pages are not easy and pleasing to use, the money-making potential of those web pages can be jeopardized. One conventional indication of whether a web page is easy and pleasing to use is called ‘clutter.’

What this means is increase the usability and you will get better conversions, and also become more valuable to the search engines themselves by serving up good content. In the patent we get an example of factors which influence this clutter and they are (in no particular order):

• Total number of links
• Total number of words
• Total number of images (non-ad images)
• Image area above the fold (non-ad images)
• Dimensions of page
• Page area (total)
• Page length
• Total number of tables
• Maximum table columns (per table)
• Maximum table rows (per table)
• Total rows
• Total columns
• Total cells
• Average cell padding (per table)
• Average cell spacing (per table)
• Dimensions of fold
• Fold area
• Location of center of fold relative to center of page
• Total number of font sizes used for links
• Total number of font sizes used for headings
• Total number of font sizes used for body text
• Total number of font sizes
• Presence of “tiny” text
• Total number of colors (excluding ads)
• Alignment of page elements
• Average page luminosity
• Fixed vs. relative page width
• Page weight (proxy for load time)
• Total number of ads
• Total ad area
• Area of individual ads
• Area of largest ad above the fold
• Largest ad area
• Total area of ads above the fold
• Page space allocated to ads
• Total number of external ads above the fold
• Total number of external ads below the fold
• Total number of external ads
• Total number of internal ads above the fold
• Total number of internal ads below the fold
• Total number of internal ads
• Number of sponsored link ads above the fold
• Number of sponsored link ads below the fold
• Total number of sponsored link ads
• Number of image ads above the fold
• Number of image ads below the fold
• Total number of image ads
• Number of text ads above the fold
• Number of text ads below the fold
• Total number of text ads
• Position of ads on page

We also find that the purpose of this algorithm is to screen websites that would require a lot of time for people to review manually and the results would be subjective anyway. There were also a few accompanying diagrams but i was unable to make them show up in my browser so here’s the link to try for yourselves. I hope you have enjoyed this, it’s a really important checklist to consider when designing (or redesigning) a web page.

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As I will explain with a future article called “why analytics is oh so important”, while looking at my stats a few days ago, I noticed a strange search term in my google search terms. I usually look into those to get new topics to write about and just for kicks sometimes.

But today it’s food for thought, as one of these search terms has given me one of the most interesting linkbuilding ideas since that ebook about linkbuilding told me how to get 2000+ links with little effort and I shared that with you for free. This one could be attributed to a visitor or perhaps some SEO smart person, but anyway, it’s such a brilliant idea… Plus, could you ever pass up the opportunity of 56 THOUSAND links?…

As before it’s a simple Google search, but then again, most brilliant things are simple eh? However, this time it’s much much easier to get them. This time it’s all based on a simple wordpress plugin called NoFollow Free which strips comments of their nofollow attribute in the hope of encouraging people to comment more, giving them an incentive. However, this plugin also adds a little text at the end of each post saying “comments links could be nofollow free”.

So, in order to harness this power and get our oh so desired links we simply tell Google to tell us where we can find these sweet blogs which provide us with our linkbuilding nectar:

"comments links could be nofollow free"

One thing to remember though, this nofollow plugin also adds a number of previously approved posts before removing the nofollow. So if you plan to hit and run, think again… And I won’t mention the number since that would just prompt spammers to hit it. And since most blogs need you to be moderated before you post this may not work unless you make your comments smart and useful.

So, before I finish, here’s a tip on how to comment on those blogs: no single word comments, no great post comments (without any reasons or followup), no obviously spammy comments and no stuffed keywords. Read the whole post, see what it tells you, and comment on that truthfully. Also, don’t post two or three comments at once, trying to bypass the nofollow limit.

As for you webmasters who get pestered by this little hack I’ve exposed, download this really useful plugin for wordpress which helps you delink the comment author, i.e. remove the link from his comment, thus making him or her fail in his spammy crap.

So use this responsibly, and both you and the bloggers will win from this. I hope you enjoyed this, so comment if you did, and add your opinions.

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It’s amazing how a partnership between giants sometimes creates wonderful things…

In a breaking news bulletin on both the Google.com and Apple.com websites, the two firms announced a new design for Google’s homepage, more human oriented and with a sleeker, neater look borrowed from Apple’s years of outstanding design work. The new design is powered by simplicity and is amusingly called Googapple. It keeps most of the Google.com functions, adding some extras and giving the whole website a different experience.

But without further ado, here’s the first official screenshot of the new website, click it to get the full high-res screenshot:

It looks great Google announced they would be rolling it out to select customers at the end of this month, with all of us getting it by the end of April 2008. Steve Jobs himself is said to do a keynote on the subject later this week, and the media will probably go beserk on this…

What do you think?

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