Jason Unger

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If there's one big thing I took away from Usability Week, it's that you are not your users.

It's a mantra every Web publisher should repeat constantly — in fact, you might want to even write it on a Post-It note and leave it in plain sight.

I run into this problem a lot with people who come from the print media world. The old school of thought is that you put out your product, take a survey or two of your audience, and make a change when necessary. But for the most part, your product is your product — you get to define it as you want.

When it comes to Web publishing (especially in the B2B world), your definitions are not always the same as your users. From Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox:

A simple example: Many sites use segmentation, in which users must click through to the appropriate site segment. Unfortunately, these segments often don't match the way customers think of themselves, and thus require them to peek through multiple site areas to find the right one. Even a simple segmentation such as company size isn't obvious. What counts as small? Better sites will annotate their choices with a definition (stating, for example, that their small business segment targets companies with less than 100 employees).

Your users come to you for a specific piece of information — the sooner you give it to them (and the easier it is for them to find it), the more likely they will come back to you.

Real estate sites are horrible at this. We've been looking for a bit now, and are generally annoyed at the lack of information (pictures, etc.) given on realtors' Web sites.

From their viewpoint, they want you to give them a call to find out more. But as a user, you want to gather as much information as possible before making that call. It's frustrasting when you can't.

The next time you think about re-organizing your site or restricting the amount of information you present, remember: you are not your users.

One of the problems I have when coming up with topics for this blog and for the Online Savings Blog is choosing subjects to speak authoritatively about.

It's not that I can't or that I won't — it's just that I don't get that much enjoyment from it.

When I'm blogging, I'd rather share my experiences and stories living life than try and provide "useful" and informative content. It's a lot more fun to just shoot the breeze and post funny links and insights.

Every day, I read a number of amazing blogs like Copyblogger, Penelope Trunk and Get Rich Slowly, who are there to provide compelling and timely content. This is what I do every day at CE Pro — but it's not what I want to do when I write here.

Bloggers have been getting a bad rap lately, but a lot of that has to do with the different expectations and meanings that term has to people. Engadget might be a blog, but they are much better tech journalists than anyone in the mainstream media. Top it off with a strict policies regarding relationships with who they're covering and they've got a much cleaner rap sheet than many "professional" journalists.

But because anyone can start a blog, "bloggers" all get lumped together — the ones redefining journalism and the ones simply telling you about their day. But does that mean you should only start a blog if you really have something useful and informative to say? Of course not.

When you come to CE Pro, you get the informative content and breaking news. On this site, I get to talk about whatever the hell I want.

So what's the take away from this? You always have something to say — and you can speak authoritatively about it: you. As Gary Vaynerchuk recently laid out, you have to look inside yourself to find happiness.

I don't pretend to bring you compelling content with every blog post on this site — I only post things that I find interesting and want to share. That's our agreement.

Thanks for being a part of it.