PR on Websites: Increasing Usability

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox for March 10 is now online at:
   http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030310.html

Summary:
Compared with a similar 2001 study, a new study of journalists as they
looked for information on corporate websites' PR areas showed significant
usability improvements: a 5% higher success rate and 15% increased
guidelines compliance.
	
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Usability Week 2003

   > New York City, March 17-21
   > London, March 24-28
   > San Francisco, May 12-16

New York advance registration deadline:
   Friday March 14 is the last day to save $200 by registering in advance

More info and full program:	
   http://www.nngroup.com/events

The conference includes a tutorial on "Search Engine Visibility" and after
I wrote about ethics in my last column, some people have been asking
whether search engine optimization is ethical.

There was a time when people tried to get traffic to their site by
stuffing the keywords with phrases that can't be repeated in polite
company. But people looking for certain pictures are not going to buy your
expensive B2B products, so that's not the approach we are recommending.

Our seminar is about two things that are both ethical and useful:

   * how to improve your face to the world in search engines so that
potential customers will find you when they go looking

   * how to run search engine ads, which are a completely ethical way to
pay for placement and one of the few types of advertising that works on
the Web (my own Google ads for our usability research report have an ROI
of 650%.)