Another Reason to Avoid Adobe Flash
The Apple iPad was announced this week and the biggest news from the device is that it will use the iPhone OS, which means Safari won't have Adobe Flash. While Flash has it's place, it shouldn't be the main navigation, or even worse, your entire web site.
Music Experience on the Web
Vanessa Fox wrote an article about automatically playing music on your web site. This is something many small business owners ask me about and most think it will make their site be nicer. I’m not sure why. Here is the take away:
“… the easiest way for me to get the music to stop is to leave your site.”
Don’t make the user fix the problem
I was going through updating my profile at SEOMoz and I realized I had an old profile picture. First off, you can’t just update it, you have to check Delete, press Save, press Edit Profie and THEN you can select a new one.
Below the choose file button there is this message:
Please try and upload a photo with square proportions. Rectangular photos will be stretched.
REALLY? I don’t expect you to do the cool Facebook thing where you can crop and resize on the fly, but at least just handle this nicely so I dont need to edit it on my end. You can crop it to be square on the center if it has to be square or you can just resize things proportionally.
I realize you think your audience is smart, but you’re being lazy. Rand Fishkin please fix this!
The $300 Million Button
The easier you make it for user to do something, the more likely they will be willing to do it.
We were wrong about the first-time shoppers. They did mind registering. They resented having to register when they encountered the page. As one shopper told us, “I’m not here to enter into a relationship. I just want to buy something.”