Recently in Design Category

This evening I rolled out a new design for Keystone Politics. I never seem to be satisfied with the design, but this represents an improvement over the past color scheme and a professionalized look for the site. I'll roll out specific new features over the next few days. Here are a few notes on key areas where I'm either testing a new feature or looking for ideas.

• Subscriptions: For the past few years, I've focused on RSS subscriptions. With this design, I'm testing whether we'll see a better response rate from a daily headlines e-mail. Knowing the political audience, I think it will be a hit.
• Discussions: One of the biggest challenges on Keystone Politics is convincing our readers to participate in discussions on the site. I don't think we made a big improvement in this area, but I'm going to be actively seeking out ideas.
• Revenue Opportunities: I finally caved and installed a leaderboard advertisement banner at the top of the page. I've resisted it for four years, but increased server costs mean that we've got to bring in more money.
• Cleaner Sidebar: We fit a lot of information into our sidebars; I think this look is cleaner than the last one.

Overall I'm happy with the new design, but I'll be watching our analytics and metrics packages carefully over the next few days and weeks and making changes based on those measurements.

...but I like this clean, colorful look for my site. I'm going to add some flourish at some point, but I'm pretty satisfied. (Oh, and as promised, it uses YUI Grids.)

I finally found a few hours this weekend to play with YUI's CSS component, and boy does it rock. Like a lot of folks in this business, I hesitated to "outsource" some of what I consider to be my work to an external entity, but I finally realized I don't have the time or energy to neglect any tools that are already out there. If you haven't tried YUI already, you must. It handles the basics of CSS reset, layout, and positioning and lets you jump right into the project itself. YUI means less frustration and more time focusing on what's important about your site, not perfecting the basics. It took a bit of time to get used to, but once I got it down it saved me oodles of time and frustration. That said, I'll be using YUI *a lot* more in future projects and as I move forward with some ongoing work. I'm also going to evaluate using it on the official website, but that might take a bit more time and work than I've got right now. I'm also going to consider using other YUI components, but I'm a big fan of jQuery. (Hadn't had my morning coffee yet and called jQuery Prototype...I like them both, but jQuery's what I use most often.)

I'm sure Amazon knows much better than me, but I'm going to pontificate anyway. As anyone who works with me knows, I heavily subscribe to the 37signals-style simplicity movement. Every move I make at work (in product design, etc) is aimed toward simplicity. I'm also a data head (according to my fellow Web Geeks at work), so the idea of divergent data bothers me. Amazon is fantastic, but I think their Wish List system has gotten much too complicated. Surely you jest, Mr. Palmer! Hear me out. I went on Amazon today to pick out books to read while in Japan. I picked out five books, all of which I will search for at the used book store tomorrow. So I didn't want to purchase today, but found I had way too many options to defer my purchase. I could add to a Wish List (of which I can have multiples), add to my Cart (and leave it there), add to my Cart then "Save for Later" or add to a Gift List. See what I mean? Those are just the options to defer my purchase. I haven't even catalogued the methods to actually buy something. Here's my suggestion (and again, Amazon probably knows better). Pare this down to a combined "intentions" system under the "Wishlist" moniker. Save for Later probably works well because the items are still in your "Cart," so you're more likely to buy them or tack them on to a later purchase. Wish Lists work because they capture an emotional desire to own/consume something, but aren't so intimidating as to make you feel you're putting off a purchase. The "Save for Later" button in your Cart would add the item to your wish list (rather than keeping it in a separate system), but also lightly suggest it during subsequent checkouts. Why? Because you came closer to buying it, so you're more likely to do so in the future. That'd be a new feature (I think, right?) - add-on purchase suggestions during checkout. You'd be shown suggestions of items you might want to tack on to your purchase. They wouldn't show you just any items from your wish list, but those that are maybe 20% under your average item cost in addition to "Save for Later" items. If you can hit a sweet spot for add-on purchase prices, sales would increase; it might even be worth it to tie this into the Super-Saver shipping program by suggesting items that would make the transaction qualify for free shipping. As for Wish Lists, make them simpler! Wish Lists themselves are too complicated. Rate 1-5 how much you'd *really* like to receive this item. What Wish List does this belong in? How do I access my Wish List(s)? Why isn't it easy to add an item from one during checkout? If only 5% of your customers are using comments and ratings in Wish Lists, get rid of them. I can't imagine a large amount of people use either of those features, and it's usually worth making the system less intimidating for customers. Go back to having one Wish List, but perhaps make it taggable. Here's the lesson. Every time the web gets simpler, more people use it. The more people use it, the more things people buy. Amazon is the undisputed leader in online commerce, but I think they could create a more useful, but simpler "intentions" system that made customers feel less intimidated and encouraged more purchasing. But what do you think? Is Amazon too complex?

I like the Times of London's fairly recent redesign, but one thing that appears on every page of the site annoys the heck outta me. In the upper right hand corner, the Times invites you to "Send your views" and contribute to the site. Cool. Except there's no link to the article they're asking to respond to; clicking on the "Send your views" link takes you to the comment area, forcing you to scroll up to read the article. It's a small thing, but details make the difference. The quote should link to the article.

I was thinking the same thing, Jeff. With no one predicting any shortages in advance, why did people wait outside the stores? In any case, I don't plan on owning one. I may give the keyboard a spin to see how it feels, but anyone who's seen me walking down the streets/hallways around the Capitol knows I'm a BlackBerry maniac. I don't think I can give up the physical keyboard just yet.

OK, this has me laughing at 7am:

Coda, the new all-in-one web development application from Panic, promises a lot. So much, in fact, that I doubted it could deliver. Combining my text editor, file browser/organizer, terminal, SFTP, and reference all into one is a tall order. To their credit, Panic doesn’t claim to have the best of every individual function, only that they’ve combined these functions into a unified, elegant interface. And they’re right. Coda is a masterpiece. As a recent “switcher� to Mac, I’ve yet to find a coding/development style that suits me. I don’t (yet) run a local webserver, so my process was fraught with code, upload, test, repeat. I used a combination of Fetch and Textmate to accomplish the bulk of my work. Coda greatly simplifies the “code, upload, test, repeat� process by combining the upload process into the file organizer and text editor. It’s quite a simple idea – when you edit a file in Coda, it gets marked as edited and ready for upload. Clicking on an icon next to that file sends it up to your testing server. There is one workflow process that I haven’t seen anyone master either on Mac or PC. When you’re running a small or medium-size website (1-5 people involved), you’re often at the point where you are working with a testing server, but working fast enough that you want to push changes to the live server quickly after testing. Here, Coda doesn’t necessarily shine, but does perform better than traditional methods. I created two sites with nearly identical properties, save for the remote address and host. This works decently, but I have to manually mark files for upload to get them to the live site. What’s needed in this marketplace is a way to move files from “testing� to “live.� I’m sure there are better ways to do this using versioning systems and some server voodoo, but for small, growing sites with limited IT expertise (read: me and a few other DIYers.), it would be nice to be able to do this locally. But I digress. The bottom line is this – I’ve used Coda for a few days and I’m completely hooked. There wasn’t a single moment where I wanted to be back in Textmate (though I love it!). Kudos to Panic for seeing a hole in the marketplace and changing the game a bit. Bravo.

I noticed this in a bunch of places, and really don't have much to add except to confirm that the new AOL looks an awful lot like Yahoo. Explanations?

Last year about this time, when my free subscriptions to my employer's antivirus solution were going to expire (because I left!), I decided to give Microsoft OneCare a try. At the time it was $20 to protect 3 PCs for a year, which was a deal to protect both my laptop and my design/development PC.

Aside from the typical Microsoft bloatware, the program works fairly well. Within a few months I had moved a few hundred miles away, decommissioned one PC (now my media server), and purchased a Mac. My subscription to Windows Live OneCare became fairly useless, so I installed it at my parents house to protect their systems.

Now it's time for renewal so my parents are getting their own subscription and I'm looking to cancel my own. Microsoft tells me that unless I cancel by April 22nd, I'll be charged $49.95 for the next year. Here's the problem: Microsoft offers no way to cancel Windows Live OneCare. Sure, there are links that *say* you can cancel, but none of them work!

Here's what I've tried so far, though I warn you that I have yet to be successful:

1) Sign on to billing.microsoft.com. What the *$*%$ is my Windows Live ID password? I know what it is, but Microsoft doesn't agree. Reset password.

2) "Welcome to Microsoft Billing and Account Management"

3)Enter Windows Live OneCare (who names these things?) account management page. Three links:

"Cancel My Account"
"Cancel My Service"
"FAQ: How do I cancel this service?"

4) Click "Cancel My Service." Window resizes, new sidebar appears.

5) "You must contact Customer Support to cancel." Dumb, but if that's how it has to be.

6) "For Windows Live Services, go to Help Central." What? "Help Central?" Another screen? Another product? Another website? I'm so confused!

7) "Select your product from the list below." Ok, though I just came from there.

8) "Welcome to Windows Live OneCare Help Center. Click 'Launch Instant Support'." Ok.

9) "Search Instant Support." Ok. I'll type "cancel."

10) "Microsoft: Is it true you want to cancel your Windows Live OneCare subscription." Yes.

11) "To cancel your subscription, visit the Microsoft Billing and Account website." (See #2)

This is perhaps the worst user experience I've had in a long time. Companies intentionally try to make canceling a service hard in order to retain customers. Think of AOL and other subscription-based companies - they're famous for walking the fine line preventing customers from canceling.

To me, this seems wrongheaded, and Windows Live OneCare is a great example. This is a product in its relative infancy (1 year!), so it's important to understand what customers like and dislike about the product. Cancellations are an opportunity to learn from customers. Instead, I'm just telling Amex to decline the charges.

Further, canceling customers are already dissatisfied in some way. Companies have a small window here to provide a pleasant experience to an already-dissatisfied customer. Though I'm in the business, if I were a regular consumer, why would I try another Microsoft product if I can't get customer satisfaction?

Update: I was finally able to cancel my Onecare subscription.