Last Wednesday I attended a wonderful presentation of a case study that chronicled how Nokia moved away from having many separate websites for their Nseries products and consolidated them into one centralized site. Two years ago, Nokia hired the consulting firms R/GA and Sachs Insights to develop the creative approach for a new consolidated site that addressed the global marketplace.

The presentation Global Research Case Study – Nokia Nseries Website Development was presented by NYC Usability Professionals Association. The team traveled around the globe to conduct concept and usability testing. The international cities included:

• New York
• London
• Berlin
• Shanghai
• Madrid
• Istanbul
• Moscow
• New Delhi
• Jakarta

I was very interested to hear what they had to say because over the last couple of years I have gotten away from designing primarily for a global audience. During my five and a half years with IBM, the needs of the global marketplace influenced every decision I made. I designed layouts that accommodated German translations that were a third longer, focused on search engine optimization for Japanese characters, and architected forms that accounted for bidirectional languages like Arabic. But now that I work at Barnes & Noble.com, where our customer base is predominantly American, I was excited to peer over the wall to see what, if anything, had changed in the international web space.

Continue Reading “Can a Single Nokia Website Meet the Needs of Worldwide Users?”

To seek out and reward innovative small businesses for their smart use of technology, Dell and the National Federation of Independent Business founded the Dell/NFIB Small Business Excellence Award program in 2004.

The global and national awards honor small businesses that represent the spirit of innovation in applying information technology in their business practices to improve the customer experience.

Global Award Winner Receives:

• An entrepreneurs summit hosted by Dell Chairman and CEO Michael Dell
• $50,000 in Dell products & services
  
• A lifetime membership to ICSB
• Engagement with Endeavor’s network of business leaders and high-impact entrepreneur

U.S. Winner Receives:

• A day at Dell, including time with Michael Dell
• $25,000 in Dell products & services
• A lifetime membership to NFIB
• Recognition at the semi-annual NFIB National Small-Business Summit
• Nine U.S. Finalists Receive:
• Dell business-class notebook
• One-year NFIB membership

Enter to win >>

With so many web sites out there, how can your make yours stand out? One way is by adding voice to your website.

A human voice adds a personal touch to your website and allows you to connect to your customer and build trust faster. Also, according to mywebsitetalks.com, “The human voice has overwhelming sales appeal, twice as much selling power as simple text.”

Where to Add Your Voice

Homepage – As soon as someone enters your website, you can welcome them and direct them to an action….i.e. subscribe to our newsletter, try our new product, get a free sample.

Testimonials – Make your testimonials come to life! Record your customer testimonials in their own voice for greater impact.

“Action Pages” - Speaking the “call to action” items will ensure that your visitor does not leave the page without “seeing” what you wanted them to do on that page.

Blogs/Heavy Text Pages - Anywhere there is a lot of text on your page, you can offer an option for your user to listen to that information instead of reading it.

Applications you can use to add voice to your website

Continue Reading “Add voice to your website”

Why is your computer sluggish? The reasons are countless…it may be a clogged Registry or unnecessary files within your applications or your overall windows system.

Washington Post published a great article that describes free or inexpensive tools that you can download to improve your PC speed. The tools are divided into three categories, Optimize for Speed, Internet Boosters & Application Boosters.

Below I summarize the “Optimize for Speed” tools and provide links to where you can download them:

Continue Reading “Downloads That Can Improve PC Speed”

Taking a screen shot of information is no new task. We are often looking at web pages and want to share what we are looking at with our comments right on the page. Screen capturing and customizing your screen with your comments is a pretty long process and if you are on a PC, you will have to follow this process to capture and share your ideas (see instructions below). However, if you are on a Mac OS X, there is a better way…Skitch.

The Easier Way of capturing and sharing your images (Mac Only)

Skitch is a screen capture and sketching application for OS X. They’ve been in private beta for a while and have recently gone to an open beta, which means that anyone who has a Mac can sign up and start using their application.

It is pretty amazing! You can take a screen shot of ANY application on your screen simply by highlighting the area. Once you’ve grabbed the desired screen, you can then use the built in tools to write notes, highlight and circle text and pictures, save the image and share it. This would be a great tool for design/client & web/client work, or for image collaboration.

If you’d like, you can also use Skitch.com website to store and share your images.

Watch the video below for a full demo. If you are using a Mac, this application is a MUST HAVE.

Continue Reading “Capture your images and ideas and share them”