Aspects of Design Quality

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox for November 3 is now online at:
  > http://www.useit.com/alertbox/quality-correlations.html

Summary:
Usability scores for 51 websites shows some correlation between
navigation, content, and feature quality, but no connections to other
usability areas.
		
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User Experience 2008 conference

  > Chicago, November 2-7
  > Amsterdam, November 16-21

In-depth training:
  > 31 full-day tutorials

Keynote presentations:
  > Don Norman: Sociable Design
  > Chris Nodder: Usability for Evil

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

DEADLINE to save €150 on Amsterdam registration: NEXT FRIDAY, Nov. 14

The Chicago conference is now in full swing: we kicked it off to a
rousing start yesterday. A big crowd with a lot of questions, that's
for sure, so I finished my first presentation 8 minutes late (sorry).

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VALUE OF TARGETING NEWSLETETRS	

At the recent Gomez Web Experience conference, I heard an interesting
presentation by Zach Zimet (manager of email marketing at a major consumer
electronics retailer) about the benefits of targeting email newsletters
more closely than sending the same to all subscribers.

In his case study, business metrics improved by 31% by targeting the email
to focus on a topic that the subscriber had been browsing intensely on the
website during recent visits. This, of course, proves the value of an
integrated approach to the two media, which was the point of the
presentation.

The 31% improvement definitely produces high ROI from a fairly small
effort, but it's in line with what we expect from our other research, so
that's not the reason I report on Zimet's talk. An issue that he raised as
a sidebar is of deeper importance:

He could as well have reported a 500% improvement in business metrics,
because that's the difference between customers getting the targeted
newsletter and customers getting the generic newsletter. But there's a
hidden covariant - something that people with poor statistics skills often
overlook.

Here, the hidden variable is whether the customer had been visiting the
website recently. All the subscribers who received targeted newsletters
fall into this category, whereas most of the other subscribers would not
have been on the site for some time (after all, the main purpose of an
email newsletter is to keep in touch with customers between their visits
to your site).

Resuming heavy browsing of a company's website is a major buying signal,
so *of course* people who start engaging intensely with a specific area of
the site will be more likely to generate positive metrics - whether or not
you send them a special newsletter. This is the stronger of the two
effects, so when you parcel out the relative contribution of recent heavy
browsing vs. targeted newsletters, the benefit of the targeted newsletter
turns out to be "only" 31%.

Design guidelines for email newsletters:
  > http://www.nngroup.com/reports/newsletters
	
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MULTI-TASKING = LOSING FOCUS

Nice New York Times summary of the research on what happens when users
switch their attention between different applications and tasks:
   > http://tinyurl.com/multitask

As I have said before, the best way to boost your productivity is to
switch off IM, Twitter, and the like and refrain from checking your email
more than once per hour.

Even the shortest interruption costs you several minutes of productivity
as you switch your brain back into gear for your main task, particularly
if you have a knowledge-intensive job.

10 Steps for Cleaning Up Information Pollution:
  > http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20040105.html