Non-Profit Organization Websites

Giving money on charity websites is 7% harder than spending money
on e-commerce sites. Donating physical items is even harder.
For non-profit websites, social media is secondary;
the top priority is to write clearer content.
		
Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox for February 16:
  > http://www.useit.com/alertbox/nonprofit-donations.html
	
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Usability Week 2011 conference

  * Hong Kong: February 28-March 4
  * Melbourne: March 7-11
  * London: April 3-8
  * Washington, DC: April 18-22
  * Minneapolis: May 9-13

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

DEADLINE: 
  * Next Friday, February 25
  * save $136 on advance registration for HONG KONG

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MINNEAPOLIS CONFERENCE

Announcing the Usability Week Minneapolis conference:
  > http://www.nngroup.com/events/minneapolis/agenda.html

First-time ever event in Minnesota.

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HUFFINGTON POST TRAFFIC VALUE

The New York Times calculated that The Huffington Post made 0.6 cents
per page view in 2010:
  > http://bit.ly/eOnESz

By comparison, in 1998, I calculated that Yahoo made 0.4 cents
per page view:
  > http://www.useit.com/alertbox/981101.html

It might seem that HuffPost is 50% better than Yahoo at monetizing
low-value generic content. But cumulative inflation from 1998-2010 was
34%. So in fact they are only 16% better than Yahoo was in 1998.

These numbers indicate that we are in a second bubble, with a new
generation of clueless marketing managers overpaying for non-niche
traffic.

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CASE STUDIES WANTED: MEASURABLE IMPACT OF DESIGN CHANGES

Please share your improved usability examples, and get a free NN/g report:

 > http://www.nngroup.com/reports/roi/metrics.html

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EUROPE'S MOBILE PLATFORMS: the mighty have fallen

In 2001, I wrote a column titled "Mobile Phones: Europe's Next Minitel?"

  > http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20010107.html

My main points were:

  * Telephones are ill suited for mobile Internet access 
  * A deck-of-cards form factor is superior
  * It's OK to lose the tactile aspect of pushing keypad buttons

At the time, most "analysts" expected Europe to be the leader in inventing
and implementing the mobile Internet. Based on the above points, I
predicted that Europe's advantages in mobile telephony (at the time) would
lead innovation astray, causing companies to miss the bigger opportunities
provided by more suitable devices.

10 years later, this prediction has finally played out, as Nokia hoisted
the white flag and switched to the Windows Mobile platform instead of
designing its own.

Ericsson gave up on its own platform some time ago.

I am a bit sad that my 10-year old prediction was proven right, since
Ericsson was one of my first consulting clients, back in the 1980s. They
had pretty good human factors people at the time. Nokia has a great
usability team, and was one of the very few companies (if not the only
one) to conduct field studies on mobile design for third world countries.

Apparently, management didn't listen to their UX people.

Is all lost for mobile in Europe? Maybe not.

Traditionally, I would say that an integrated approach to the design of
the user experience is superior, especially when the UI is as limited as
it has to be on mobile devices. The more constraints, the more important
to make everything work tightly together.

This analysis favors mobile platform companies like Apple, HP (Palm), and
RIM (BlackBerry) that develop both software, hardware, and mobile services
within a single design.

In contrast, divorcing hardware, software, and services by placing them in
different companies risks creating a less refined total user experience
because the three won't be as tightly integrated.

Disadvantage Microsoft/Nokia and Google/Motorola/Ericsson.

However, despite this theory, recent Android devices tested almost as good
as iPhone in the usability studies we conducted recently, after I decided
to broaden our course on touchscreen usability to cover devices beyond
Apple's:
  > http://www.nngroup.com/events/tutorials/mobile_apps.html

Android mobiles have gained very fast. Who knows, next year they may even
be better than Apple. Microsoft and Nokia can do the same. But they have
to focus on tight integration of the total user experience.