E-Mail Newsletters - Increasing Usability

New research finds improved usability metrics for subscribing to
newsletters, but problems with reading them on mobile devices.
	
Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox for November 16:
  > http://www.useit.com/alertbox/newsletters.html

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Usability Week 2010/2011 conference

  * Las Vegas: December 5-10
  * Dubai: January 16-20
  * New York City: February 7-11
  * Hong Kong: February 28-March 4
  * Melbourne: March 7-11
  * London: April 3-8

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

VEGAS DEADLINE

Deadline to save $200 by advance registration for Las Vegas:
  * THIS FRIDAY, December 3
  > http://www.nngroup.com/events/las_vegas

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ANNOUNCING MELBOURNE AND LONDON CONFERENCES

Returning to two wonderful cities: Melbourne and London. While we usually
get to London every year, the 2011 conference will our first trip to
Melbourne since 2008. (Purely due to budgetary constraints. I love it once
I step off the plane after the 16-hour flight.)

73% of the seminars in this new Melbourne conference were not on the
program when we were there 3 years ago.

  > http://www.nngroup.com/events/melbourne/agenda.html

Usability guidelines change fairly slowly, so almost everything we told
people in Melbourne in 2008 remains true: what troubled users in years
past still troubles them as new sites make old mistakes. But the emphasis
on what's the most important to present does change, as indicated by the
change in conference programs.

I also compared the London conference programs: the 2011 agenda includes
16 full-day seminars that were not there in 2008, though they are not all
new for London because some were presented last year. Still, 33% of the
2011 seminars were not on the 2010 London program.

  > http://www.nngroup.com/events/london/agenda.html

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USABILITY INVESTMENT UP 46% SINCE 2009

Comparing this year's Las Vegas registrations with last year's: average
seminar attendance is 46% higher for topics on both year's conference
programs.

46% more people at usability seminars is a great leading indicator that
the recession is winding down, because companies would only invest in
usability now if they're planning some new initiatives for their websites
next year.

Or planning to ramp up their intranets – attendance is up 160% at the
intranet seminar:
  > http://www.nngroup.com/events/tutorials/intranet.html

The biggest growth compared with 2009 is for the 2-day Content Strategy
seminar:
  > http://www.nngroup.com/events/tutorials/content_strategy.html

However it's partly cheating to say that Content Strategy has grown,
because the seminar title didn't include the phrase "content strategy"
last year. It's sad, but true, that it's not enough to present material
that will vastly increase the business value of a company's site. We also
have to use a buzzword-compliant seminar title, and we didn't last year.
We have seen in several studies that changing a few words in a headline
can double sales, and I think that's what happened here. Quite appropriate
for a seminar on content :-)

Of seminars with basically the same title, Mobile User Experience grew the
most since 2009: it's up 173%, really showing how companies have started
taking their sites mobile seriously:
  > http://www.nngroup.com/events/tutorials/mobile.html