Posts Tagged ‘ usability ’

Site review: Virgin Holidays ‘Weddings’ section

Hello! I’ve not written a scathing review of a website for a while, so I thought I’d drop this little gem on you. For one reason and another, I was recently forced inclined to look for more information regarding weddings abroad – specifically in the Caribbean. Drop ‘caribbean wedding‘ into Google, and the Virgin Holidays (www.virginholidays.co.uk) [ READ MORE ]

Review of National Rail (www.nationalrail.co.uk)

Travelling a fair distance (120+ miles) each day getting to and from work means the train is really the only method of transport that works for me. As such, I am a regular visitor to the National Rail site (www.nationalrail.co.uk), and have been for a number of years. Predictably (why else would I be mentioning it?), [ READ MORE ]

Review of Associated Press (www.ap.org) site

Whilst looking for some news story providers, I decided to check out the AP (Associated Press) site, www.ap.org. I was after some quick info about news story feeds/aggregation, and possibly some stock imagery. What happened on my thrilling journey? What was their site like? I know you can’t wait to find out, really. It’s the only [ READ MORE ]

www.apple.com – more usability annoyances.

Merry Christmas! Hope you had a good one. As a result of a faulty laptop purchase, I’ve been looking at the rather splendid, but horrifically-priced, Mac Book Air. It’s perfect for my commuting requirements (i.e it’s lightweight and has a good battery life), but I wanted to find out how much it’d be on finance. How [ READ MORE ]

An SEO & web best practice guide: part 2

If you missed part 1 of this guide, it’s here. Having looked at the first three things on the list, here’re the next three: Imagery (relevancy, contrasts, copy-as-images, alt tags) Flash (why/why not, navigation) Technical (301 redirects, non-www domains, keywords in domain names, mod-rewrite for search friendly pages, meta content) Read on! [ READ MORE ]

TV Licensing (www.tvlicensing.co.uk) site review

Everyone hates paying their TV license. There’s no escaping it, and it’s annoying to think we’re being made to fund the likes of Eastenders and other such guff. So how do they go about achieving this feat online? I am writing this whilst on the train, so here we have… A (short) review of www.tvlicensing.co.uk As mentioned already, [ READ MORE ]

Usability, loyalty and ‘Cognitive Lock In’

On the train into work this morning, I read this article at humanfactors.com (via @userfocus on Twitter) about ‘Cognitive Lock-In’, and how it can help create web loyalty among your visitors. What is ‘Cognitive Lock-In’? Unfortunately for all involved, it’s not an intellectual’s drinking session…the synopsis is thus: Cognitive lock-in represents consumers whose shopping habits bring them [ READ MORE ]

An SEO & web best practice guide: part 1

Here’s a hopefully quite well-rounded and all-encompassing-yet-succinct guide to all that SEO and web usability stuff you keep reading about but would like to see in one place. In this 2-part thingy I’ll be covering the following topics at a high level: Links (equity, inbound link importance, writing/colours/format/titles/targets, link buying) Headings (H1, H2, sizes, colours, keywords) Content (relevancy, not [ READ MORE ]

Usability failure for Apple.com, and the power of brands.

Inflammatory headlines aside, I’m focussing on the Account section of the Apple.com/uk site. This is a slightly biased rant, because I’m the one being put through this pain. Here’re the issues I have with this part of the site: Let’s face it: the opening page for the account section of the site is, comparatively speaking, shite. It [ READ MORE ]

Firefox web development & usability tools

Firefox has become largely synonymous with web-savvy users and web developers as the browser to use: its combination of speed and expandability via the raft of addons make it perfect for getting the most out of your web experience. I thought I’d share with you the various Firefox addons I’m using, and why I think they’re [ READ MORE ]