Pure Visibility is an Apple shop. When I came to Pure Visibility and got my MacBook, it was the first time that I had worked with a Mac all day long, every day. It took a while to get used to this new environment and separate the aspects of OS X that I didn’t like [...]
Author Archives: Mike Beasley
High Bounce Rate May be Good
July 8, 2008 – 9:45 am
You may find that a high bounce rate on your website is no problem at all. Bounce rate measures how many people come to your website and then immediately leave. Jakob Nielsen, noted usability expert, has written about using bounce rate as a metric for measuring usability improvements in his June 30th, 2008 Alertbox column.
He [...]
Cool Colors Boost Website Attractiveness
June 9, 2008 – 4:58 pm
Color Bars uploaded to Flickr by jigpu
The colors you choose for your website affect how much your visitors like your website. You probably could have guessed that, though. It turns out that cooler primary colors make websites appear more orderly to users, which in turn can lead to users thinking that your site is more [...]
Can Borders contend with Amazon’s awesome network effect?
June 4, 2008 – 9:00 am
Can Borders take on Amazon? Borders recently parted ways with Amazon and started their own online store. This move allows Borders to shape their own online identity and to stop enriching their competitor. However, can Borders be successful on their own?
Amazon is not successful only because they sell a whole lot of stuff. Certainly, they [...]
Jumpstart Your Business with Pure Visibility
May 23, 2008 – 8:53 am
“This was awesome,” said a client at the end of our jump start internet marketing audit session last week. We had just spent the last few hours talking about how he can use Internet marketing to grow his business. We touched on search engine optimization, paid search advertising, social media, and usability. Most importantly for [...]
Is Facebook a Walled Garden?
May 7, 2008 – 4:29 pm
In his March 31st Alertbox newsletter, Jakob Nielsen wrote that “Facebook and the current generation of social networks are trying to replicate the walled garden strategy that failed ten years ago. It’ll fail again.” He points to an article he wrote 9 years ago, “Metcalfe’s Law In Reverse,” about the futility of trying to achieve [...]
Control Your Message By Keeping Web Copy Brief
May 6, 2008 – 10:27 am
On average, users read fewer than 28% of the words on a web page, according to Jakob Nielsen. How do you make those 28% of words count?
In his May 6, 2008 Alertbox, How Little Do Users Read, Nielsen writes about calculations he did based on research on how people behave online. He calculated that [...]
Reconciling Calls to Action with What the User Wants to Do
April 28, 2008 – 9:57 am
When writing copy for your website, good calls to action matter. These are the links (or even navigation items) that steer your users toward what you want them to do. It’s important, though, to not lose sight of what your website’s users may actually want to do.
Just because you want your website’s users to buy [...]
Tell Your Potential Customers Why You’re the Right Choice
March 26, 2008 – 6:55 pm
Why does your business exist? Why should your potential customers choose you over anyone else? What differentiates you from the competition? The people coming to your site may not even know who you are. You’ve got to get this all across to the user immediately, before he or she decides to pass your site by.
After [...]
Good Link Text Matters
March 12, 2008 – 11:13 am
Why do users click on links? Because they think there will be something good on the other side. Putting it like that makes the answer sound trivial, but that makes it no less true.
Good link text–when a link concisely and accurately describes the destination page–is good for everyone. From a usability perspective, it’s a no-brainer. [...]
