Jason Unger

5 Things You Care About That Your Users Don't

Posted by junger - 07/29/07 at 03:07:09 pm

Web publishing is almost the exact opposite of traditional print publishing.

On the Web, everything is connected. Your users are going from your site to other sites all the time. They haven't opened up your magazine and suddenly you have their full attention.

You don't.

So when it comes to publishing your Web site, you can't have an old media mindset about organization and presentation. Your audience certainly doesn't.

Here are five things you might care about but your users don't.

1. Date-based archives
   Unless you're running a news site where the date really matters, your users aren't going to care when a piece of content was written. Don't bury your content behind a timeline that means nothing to them.
2. Categories
   Your users are not going to always see eye-to-eye with you when it comes to categorization. You think a story should go in one category, while your users may not. Do you really want to lose customers because they can't figure out your organization system?
3. Navigation
   Navigation is a lot like categories. It doesn't mean much to users because it requires them to figure out how your organization scheme works. It isn't worth the time to them — they'd rather click directly on content.
4. Where your content comes from
   Again, the way you internally organize content should not affect the way your users find it. They want content, not drilldown menus or the life story of the content.
5. Your index page
   Google. RSS. Newsletters. Technorati. Digg. Other bloggers. Rarely do these massive traffic outlets link directly to the front page of your site; rather, they link to a specific piece of useful information. Your home page isn't useful at all to a growing number of Web users.

That doesn't mean that you should completely forget about optimizing your home page, but it does mean that you shouldn't spend the majority of your time worrying about it. Your story pages are much more important than your index page will ever be.

Think Like a User

You surf the Web. You know what you like and you don't like. Take that thought-process into your next re-design or site launch.

The easier your users can get to content, the better off everyone is.

Alaska Pictures and Video Now Online

Posted by junger - 07/25/07 at 04:07:33 pm

We just spent two and a half weeks in Alaska on an amazing trip. I'll recap the trip in a separate post, but here are our pictures and one of the videos we shot.

I've got about two and a half hours of video I need to edit for the complete trip video — watch for that soon.

Video of us dogsledding on the Punchbowl glacier:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKQEzBTPemU

Debbie's pictures:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/debbieunger/sets/72157600859734676/

Jason's pictures:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jungerpants/sets/72157600884116515/

Two Words Are All You Have to Grab Readers

Posted by junger - 07/19/07 at 09:07:35 pm

Two words.

When writing Web headlines, you have two words to tell the reader what the story is about.

That's according to Web guru Jakob Nielsen, and it's not new. He's performed eye-tracking tests for both newsletters and RSS news feeds and found that Web surfers scan headlines — they don't read them.

The next time you're writing a Web headline, you must begin with the two most specific and descriptive words of your story.

Don't try and be fancy — get to the core of your story, and tell your readers right away what the post is about.

Is This the End of the Internet?

Posted by junger - 07/18/07 at 10:07:30 pm