If you think the flash menus and moving messages and clever blobs of information and color are helping your users navigate your web site. Think again. A recent study on Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox shows that over one-quarter of the users who wanted to perform a search can’t get to Google to find anything!

This is a “frame of reference issue”. Users who are new to computing have no idea what the web is about, how to navigate using URL’s, and are mostly lost unless they have an icon to push.

Simple, clear and concise lables and navigation tabs should be the order of the day. Here’s what Mr. Nielsen’s group has discovered.

Getting to Google is Hard

I’m not talking about the challenge of formulating a good query, interpreting the results, or revising your search strategy to reap better results. Those are all very complicated research skills, and few people excel at them.

I’m talking only about the very first step in searching the Web: Getting to your favorite search engine so that you can run a search there.

Would you say this is easy or difficult? Think a bit before reading on.

Just call me a softie  (as in soft-in-the-head.)  I was browsing thru Liz Strauss’ blog “Successful and Outstanding Bloggers” (SOB’s for short) and ran across her 2006 article “10 Skills Critical …” and thought to myself, no way. 

I don’t think I could muster all those skills in a lifetime.  It would be nice, but my brain would have a functional and personality meltdown!  My choice — have Scottie beam me back to 2002 or earlier when I at least thought I knew what was going on.

Take a gander at her list of “required” skills:

1. Deep independent thinking and problem solving.
2. Mental flexibility
3. Fluency with ideas
4. Proficiency with processes and process models
5. Originality of contributions
6. A habit of finding hidden assumptions and niches
7. A bias toward opportunity and action
8. Use all available tools, including the five senses and intuitive perceptions in data collection
9. Energy, enthusiasm and positivity about decision making
10. Self-sustaining productivity

These are the skills she says we’ll need going into the 21st century. 

Ouch!  I knew I had a long way to go, but now I have to get out my dictionary and hit a few wiki’s just to figure out what I don’t know.

Now before you assume this is going to be a bashing article, keep a few things in mind. 

• First, I think Liz is an excellent author and communicator.  I don’t know her personally, but I’ve been reading her blog for the past few months.  And have enjoyed her insights and viewpoints.
• Second, I do NOT consider myself an author, or a writer, and I’m probably a lot less than an “average” communicator.  My claim to fame is being able to use spell check most of the time, and I can fix complicated equipment - usually.  So you have to realize I’m speaking from a “shaky” personality base and working with a really limited skill set.

Here’s my problem.  That list of traits seems like an impossibility.  I don’t know if I would ever be able to conjure up the fortitude I’d need to start developing the skills on the list.  I guess this is really a case of being out gunned when it comes to having a large collection of “mental marbles.”  My sack feels half-empty compared to Liz’s 2-1/2 sacks!

I do know one thing.  If you’re going to accomplish anything, no matter what the area, you have to stay focussed.  So, instead of figuring out what I can do to develop the traits listed above, I’ll stay glued to the projects at hand.  At least that way I won’t feel so out-classed.

This is from Jack Humphy at Jack Humphrey’s Friday Traffic Report

I’ve spent many frustrating minutes trying to figure out why my embeds to YouTube were getting trashed. I could tell that it occurred within the editor, but I thought the problem might be related to the themes I was using.

Turns out that it’s a simple fix!

With all the hype surrounding how to use email for internet business, I was pleasantly surprised to find someone who believes in doing the research and formulating conservative, realistic conclusions.

Jakob Nielsen and Amy Schade of the Nielsen-Norman Group (nngroup.com) spearheaded some very enlightening research about how users view and handle email. It’s the most impressive work on the subject I’ve encountered. One of the major points that supports the advice from experts in the email marketing arena is that the average user spends less than 52 seconds scanning an email before deciding whether to read it.

That means … you need to capture your reader with the headline and a couple of sub-heads or your email hits the bit-bucket!

Here are some excerpts from the executive summary:

The most significant finding from our usability research on email newsletters is that users have highly emotional reactions to them …

To assess how people use email newsletters, we conducted three rounds of user studies.

Sixty-nine percent of users said that they look forward to receiving at least one newsletter, and most users said a newsletter had become part of their routine. Very few other promotional efforts can claim this degree of customer buy-in.

The first study focused on testing newsletter usability in terms of subscribing, unsubscribing, and maintaining the user’s account.

We conducted our second study remotely, using a diary methodology …

We conducted the third study using an eyetracker.

You can find the executive summary on the Nielsen Norman Group Web Site.