User Skills Improving, But Only Slightly

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox for February 4 is now online at:
  > http://www.useit.com/alertbox/user-skills.html
		
Summary:
Users now do basic operations with confidence and perform with skill on
sites they use often. But when users try new sites, well-known usability
problems still cause failures.
				
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Usability Week 2008 conference

  > New York, April 7-12
  > London, May 19-24
  > San Francisco, June 16-21
  > Melbourne, July 21-26

In-depth training:
  > 3-day Intensive Camp: Usability in Practice
  > 3-day Immersion: Tog on Interaction Design

Specialized full-day tutorials:

  > Fundamental Guidelines for Web Usability
  > Application Usability (2 days)
  > Intranet Usability (2 days)
  > Websites That Sell
  > E-Mail Newsletter Usability
  > Writing for the Web
  > B2B

Full program:
  > http://www.nngroup.com/events

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APPLICATION DESIGN AWARD: CALL FOR ENTRIES

The application design contest will award the 10 best functionality-driven
user experiences of the year. Think you designed a good application UI?
Submit it for the award!

Submission rules:

  > http://www.nngroup.com/reports/applications/design

Deadline: February 29

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MICROSOFT-YAHOO MERGER

I have been puzzling over why Microsoft would pay so much for Yahoo, given
that display advertising has very low value because of banner blindness.
(Sure, it has *some* value, which is why Yahoo can rack in good dough
across its huge number of pageviews - good enough to be worth maybe $5B,
not $45B. The remaining $40B has to come from search.)

The study we are currently running (discussed in today's Alertbox)
provides some of the answer:

When they want to search, a lot of users go for the nearest "type-in
place" they can find. So if a search box is visible on the current page,
that site will often get the query, and the ensuing bountiful revenues.
Many users don't even know how to get to the homepage of their favorite
search engine.

Thus, if Microsoft took over the email accounts currently served by Yahoo,
it would get many of the searches done after people check their email
(something that's very sticky - users are reluctant to abandon their email
addresses).
	
The question, of course, is whether such accidental use of a search engine
is as valuable as searches by more-determined users who go straight to
their favorite search engine. Yahoo would know, since they serve both
kinds of searches, but the numbers are surely kept as a state secret.

A second value from merging MS and Y comes from having a single UI for
placing search ads. Right now, you have to use two services and learn two
user interfaces if you want to advertise to searchers on both engines.
This overhead is too much for many small advertisers, who often provide
the best deals and most interesting ads on the leading search engine.

A single UI for placing search ads would lower the overhead and thus get
more companies to advertise. Not only would this generate more income, but
it would also improve searchers' user experience, since keyword-driven ads
are useful content on search results pages. This would increase usage, and
thus income. (Of course, a UI to place one ad on two sites can be built
without merging the companies - all it takes is an agreement, which ought
to be much easier than a merger.)

Honestly, I would rather have seen Microsoft spend its $45B on improving
the quality of its own search results and search UI: that's what we need
to restore long-term competitiveness to the field, which I think is vital
for democracy (see the Alertbox for details). But I can see ways it may
make sense for MS to spend its money on Yahoo. Only people with inside
knowledge of the monetization of different aspects the service can tell
for sure. And remember that Ballmer has very similar inside data (from
MSN) which you can be sure was analyzed to death before making the offer.