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Site Testing
UK-Netmarketing Weekly Round-up - March 09, 2001

The uk-netmarketing list can be a very useful resource if you need a quick straw poll from a bunch of industry professionals. So, when Nick Horley asked for some advice for a friend thinking of offering site testing and re-writing services, there was plenty of advice on offer.

Nick asked, "A friend of mine (former teacher) has inadvertently landed lots of work testing sites for ease of use and rewriting copy to make it easier to understand. So, oh wise ones, is there an accepted bit of new meeja jargon to describe her service? What should she charge for it? (She's a one-woman band working from home.) Finally, anyone know of other outfits, large or small, who do this?

Sally Krumholz suggested, "...call her a 'web usability examiner' :) she's essentially testing web the site's accessibility & ease of use....reading through the copy...and making suggestions. I don't know if that would qualify her as a web usability 'expert' although on this side of the pond... I've seen my share fare of persons claiming to 'know' usability..."

Leslie Bunder added, "some of the big agencies will of course 'copy taste' for clients and advise on the whole issue of presentation as part of an overall project. I've seen quite a few of these services before especially in the states where for initially a few hundred dollars someone will look at your site and make some initial comments. the key thing here is making sure the comments are valid and offer constructive and useful advice. what do you call her... 'er, 'site user consultant'... but certainly something in the 'consultant' arena...key thing is how much of her work is site testing and how much is copy checking and changing..."

James Downes, didn't quite see the need for the service, "judging by my (and I'm sure many others) experiences, the correct new media term for this activity seems to be 'unnecessary' or am I being unduly harsh?"

Sally Krumholz responded to James' criticism, "I think you are being a bit harsh. nothing wrong with having a *fresh* set of eyes to review your work. Ideally, this should be done before the final production phases and before a hard launch. I've often found that those working deep in a project are more likely to miss things. So if paying someone to take a run through doesn't hurt. It's a minor expense which can often times save you huge embarrassment later on. :) It's akin to reviewing a friend's research papers before it went to the professors for review."

Leslie Bunder, also responding to James, wrote, "... if sites and services were getting it right there would be no need for folks to come in and give these sites a lookover... Sure the actual design/layout may be right, but the process an 'end user' (really hate the word!) goes through with the site and the way that person interacts and is engaged with the site is sadly not always best thought out. This can of course be fairly simple such as the wording, 'we'll get back to you soon' the site will scream, what does soon really mean for the user... 5 minutes, an hour, next day....

Words are of course an important and integral part (stating the obvious here), but there needs to be a real element of thought going into those words. For a commercial selling services type of site, then those words really do count and should be seen as ways to engage the user so he/she interacts with the site and so eventually aims to transact with it at some point..."

uk-usability
Chinwag hosts uk-usability a moderated discussion covering all aspects of usability site testing, user interfaces and HCI. The homepage has plenty of usability resources including books, courses and list of handy links.
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Online Advertising Meltdown (contd)
see last week for part one.

Following last week's article in The Economist, which sounded the death-knell for websites relying solely on advertising and sponsorship. Needless to say, there were many who disagreed. The debate continued this week, with Ken Cowley writing, "Ad-driven websites don't make money. So by taking out the ads and removing the possibility that you might by accident click on them (presumably if you were going to intentionally click on anything you would have left them in), you are just putting the shareholders out of their misery a bit more quickly AND providing more 'rich content' for fuckedcompany. Which hence might make more money out of advertising to the people who don't filter them. Using x to represent filtered viewers, y the probability that they might have accidentally clicked one of their hated banners, z the number of new viewers attracted to fuckedcompany by each new fuck, and P the probability that they click, then if:

xy < zP

the wired world wins...(Or something like that. The maths in the Economist demonstrating that on-line advertising supported sites didn't work were even more convincing.)"

Robin Page suggested media owners look at different advertising models, "Would not a 'rational advertiser', given the choice, only pay if a banner ad can be shown to have generated an actual sale or lead? Sounds untenable? Not really. It's called pay-for-performance marketing. Dropping clickthrough rate shows that the offline model of buying, selling and targeting advertising space is not working online, except in a very few cases. Would CPM please move over and let the others come to the party?"

Andrew Goode disagreed, "...whilst in theory what you say does make some sense, it allows nothing for branding which until the idea that online advertising is only good for traffic driving is dropped will not be recognised. Brands such as Mercedes, or film advertisers to name a couple of examples will and do not advertise to drive direct sales online. In these cases CPM models at the moment provide the best solution.

In relation to TV and national press advertising, online advertising still, even with these falling clickthrough's represents better value than more traditional mediums. Add to this that many agencies although extolling the virtues of CPC (cost per click) and CPA (cost per acquisition), which is the nearest to pay-per-performance, are not using technology available to them to track the ROI on their campaigns. One further point to this is that whilst a media owner should shoulder some responsibility for the effectiveness of their campaigns, buyers too need to look at where they are advertising more closely rather than perpetuate the downward spiral in advertising rates with lazy buying (i.e. to the cheapest sites). Lastly there is one other factor which needs to be made accountable in a pay-per-performance model and that is the creative. As we all know if this is not up to scratch no matter how good the targeting is a campaign will not reach it's optimum. Until all these things are implemented properly CPM will remain in the wings.

LINKS OF NOTE:
A quick round up of interesting, funny, useful and other links gleaned from the uk-netmarketing list, office gossip and other nefarious sources...we take no responsibility should you chose to click...basically, it's not our fault. Enjoy:

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