Marcia Yudkin’s Marketing Minute newsletter references Jakob Nielsen’s research that says shoppers leave 10 percent of the time because the site didn’t provide enough information. She discusses how some sites don’t make it clear whether the product is a CD, book or download.

Funny thing is that I experienced this recently. I was looking up Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter on several ecommerce sites — and it took way too much digging to find out whether I was looking at the books, DVDs or something else. This should be instantly obvious without any clicking.

This advice applies to product type, colors, sizes, and so on. This mistake can make a difference of a sale. Like Yudkin says — make a list of what people would want to know about a product and compare that to your description. Let’s say you’re selling watches… think about your own experience in looking for a watch. What did you want to know? Ask family and friends what they look for when shopping for a watch. This can be your list of things to include for every watch.

Tom Johnson offers a great writing tip especially for tech writers and others who write instructions. This method also works well with Web content and forms. Watching people use a Web site, a product, a service — anything is a superb way to get insight on how others use the product or service.

Those involved in the creation of the product or service — whether a little or a lot — see too much and know how to find what they need. So where do you find this user especially if you’re a freelancer? Ask family and friends. While they might not be the target market, they have one important thing in common with the target market: They haven’t seen or used the product or service. It’s better than nothing.

In writing the Brilliant Outlook Pocketbook, the editors assumed the role of the users. While I didn’t watch them read over the chapters — they identified areas where the instructions or tips didn’t make sense. By the time the proofs came to me giving me fresh eyes, I could see why they had questions.

I’m the lucky webmaster for three PTA web sites and spent much of the weekend converting one to Movable Type (MT) and starting a new one for Cub Scouts. Thankfully, a friend of mine stepped up to take care of the webmaster role for the latter site, but I told her she would have an easier time managing it using a blogging tool like MT.

So I spent the weekend drafting a site so the committee could discuss the new design at its meeting yesterday. These organizations consist of volunteers, so to ensure an effective web site — I follow two rules:

1. Easy to update.

2. Easy to use.

Since my friend and I make up the audience for these web sites, we ask each other questions when trying them out. Once the design is ready, we ask other friends in the organization to look at the site to see how easy (or not) they are to use.

My experience with these organizations is we don’t know what we want the design to look like, but we know what information needs to appear on the site. So that gives us free reign (not that I like that). These sites don’t have many graphics since we rely on free templates to build them. None of us has the time to design something from scratch to use with the blogging tool.

I gave my friend a choice of Blogger or Movable Type (while WordPress does great work, I find it too difficult for those not familiar with blogging or coding). This provided a good opportunity to see what others — who have never used a blogging tool — find easier to use. Although Blogger was easy, it offered little in terms of control and templates. That’s OK for a lot of people, just not for our needs. She chose MT. Here’s the formula for creating a usable, easy to maintain web site for organizations and personal use:

* Selected a free template from The Style Archive that best matched our needs.

* Installed and tweaked the template and its graphics files.

* Added Google Calendar‘s code so the calendar appears within the blog.

* Signed up for a BubbleShare account for photo albums since BubbleShare lets you display an album within the blog without going to the site (Google’s only works with Blogger and Yahoo! doesn’t let you put the album within an entry).

Typically, it takes no more than a day to follow these steps to create a full web site. However, the original design I picked for one site had messy CSS and was more trouble than it was worth. Besides, I didn’t like what I did with the header. When I switched to another design, it went much better.

Some complained the sites needed more graphics and point to another local school’s PTA web site. When I checked out the web site, I couldn’t find anything without a lot of hunting plus the design was inconsistent. From what I could tell, the site wasn’t easy to update. As volunteers, we don’t have as much time as we’d like to update the site, so the last thing we need is infrequent updates. The site is pointless as parents won’t be motivated to check the site regularly. Thus, those two rules guided the design process. Besides — it would be impossible to please everyone.

I’d love to share the sites so you could see they don’t look identical to their original templates, but the images would be full of “blacked out” content to keep the organizations under wraps and pointless to share.

Last Thanksgiving, my mother-in-law was asking about how to get a web site to get better search engine rankings. Apparently, someone she knows started a web site and talked about it with her. No way she would’ve brought it up otherwise as she and my father-in-law are semi-Luddites. They have a computer for the basics and playing bridge online, nothing more.

She and Paul looked at me asking how did I get my site to rank well. Honestly, I don’t think about search engines when I work on my site or create blog entries. I told them that my site has been around since the mid-’90s and that getting decent search rankings took a long time. I started blogging in 2000, about three to four years before it went mainstream. This site stays fresh as I try to update it about four to five times a week.

That’s it. No magic formula. No studying articles, studying blog entries revealing search engine secrets or anything else. Just keep trucking and updating. Of course, if I try to start a new web site, it’ll be difficult for it to achieve half the results of this one because it will never have what this has: Longevity.

It’s frustrating to land on many sites obviously trying hard to optimize their sites for search engines by using keywords everywhere… repeating key words… putting “navigation” at the bottom with at least four rows of links and keywords. As soon as see this, I leave the site. It isn’t illegal to do this, but I don’t want to associate with someone or a business that does such tactics.

What do you think?

“Forgot password?” should be instant. The site should simply request the user to enter the email address and immediately let the user know if the email address is in the system or not. Otherwise, you could lose out on ordering opportunities.

We tried to order dinner online and Paul (SO) forgot his password. He entered the email address and the response page said it was mailed. Nothing came in after 10 minutes of checking. He tried a second time and still no avail. The place’s competitor also has online ordering and we could easily switch our plans.

Another time I was trying to order an item. I registered and tried to purchase the item. But when I signed back in (after not receiving an email within ten minutes), my account didn’t exist. The site would not accept any of the information I entered.

The next time, I registered and confirmed it worked by logging out and back in. Then I tried to order the item again… no luck. Moral: Make sure your order forms and forget password process work.

Giving up, I emailed the company (it had the best deal) and got a reply a few days later suggesting I call. I wrote back saying I prefer to order online because I’m hard of hearing. No reply yet. Another lesson: Reply to customer emails within 24 hours with the only exception being when the office isn’t open. Lesson #2: Offer the customer multiple ways to contact your company.

Customers drive marketing, not the other way around. No longer do customers accept products as designed. They expect and demand products to be molded to their needs. Just like you can’t turn a cat into a dog; marketers can’t turn a customer into a buyer by convincing them that they need product or service ‘as is.’

“Waiting for Your Cat to Bark” is a fitting title for this book. Cats tend to see the world revolve around them while dogs are eager to please their masters by doing whatever they want. Today’s customers are in charge–much like cats.

“As is” might work in the bargain bin, but not in the majority of today’s markets. The authors guide the reader in reaching the audience, persuading them to take the right action and feeling confident about that action, and giving the audience results that match their demanding expectations.

Those growing expectations come from the Web reaching new levels. You may have heard a lot of talk about Web 2.0. No matter how anyone feels about the term, one thing it is clear — the Web has reached a new stage: interactivity. Users do something, and the Web page immediately reacts to the user’s commands. It’s also about creating online experiences, which often represent site’s brand. All of this together adds to users’ increasing expectations when they’re online.

Marketers can lend a hand to their sites’ visitors with persuasion architecture, a concept the Eisenbergs developed. Fancy words, perhaps, but the only words that will do. Before starting any marketing effort, the authors recommend asking three questions:

• who is it you want to persuade?
• what action do we want them to take?
• what information is needed to motivate them to take that action?

Building effective persuasion architecture requires more than knowing who your audience is –- but who they represent. The authors show how to create audience personas and weave the persuasion architecture to satisfy the different personas’ needs.

The first chapters dig into the changes in the marketing world; how and why marketing has changed. The middle chapters uncover the minds of customers and why they’ve changed as they respond to products and services. The latter part the book enlightens the reader on persuasion architecture and how to use it to influence customers. The book closes with a chapter on getting started with persuasion architecture, which, in practice, shrinks the gap between customer and marketer.

What differentiates the authors and the book from others is their treatment of marketing and the Web as one. Too often, marketing and Web design teams don’t work as a unified group and end up banging their heads. Organizations that plan to use the Web to market products or services stand to reap rewards in terms of user actions and higher profits with the advice from the book.

The book comes with a CD containing 80 minutes of the authors in a question and answer session (here’s a clip), the full-text of the book in PDF format, online sales and marketing reports from Shop.org and the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA), and a $50 credit on Yahoo! Sponsored Search (for new users only). You can read an excerpt from the book.

Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? is the right length (240 pages) and avoids heavy-duty or textbook language, which makes for a smooth and easy read. The authors have hit their stride with this one. Those who haven’t read any of the Eisenbergs’ books should start with this one and if there’s room for another, check out Call to Action.

Title: Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? Persuading Customers When They Ignore Marketing
Author: Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg with Lisa T. Davis
Publisher: Nelson Business
ISBN: 0785218971
Date: June 2006
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 240
Cover Price: USD: $19.99 Amazon: $12.99

3rd edition update: The third edition took a bigger leap from the second than the second took from the first. Web Design in a Nutshell, 3rd ed., comes with a greater focus on Web standards and cascading style sheets (CSS). In fact, the book opens with a chapter on Web standards, whereas it was merely a footnote in the previous edition.

Rather than a sole chapter on HTML, the markup chapter blends HTML and XHTML. The chapter comes with notes explaining the major differences between HTML and XHTML. The greater emphasis on XHTML ensures newer designers dive right into XHTML and improve their chances of designing standards compliant Web pages. Furthermore, the appendix includes HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.0 and 1.1, and CSS 2.1 references.

Ajax and WCAG 2.0 have barely been around in terms of publishing time. While the Ajax process isn’t new, but its terminology and popularity are recent. Both items are covered, albeit briefly. Had Robbins wrote the book now, Ajax would not likely get huge coverage as it’s a little advanced for the book’s purposes and target market.

Accessible forms, mobile devices, internationalization, JavaScript with document object model (DOM), and document structure also gain more attention in the third edition. On the same token, the book reduces coverage of concepts that have gotten less attention such as the Web palette (Web safe colors), SMIL (synchronized multimedia integration language), frames, and DHTML.

Part III is devoted to CSS, which contains 10 new chapters — a must as CSS becomes a design standard not something to play with. The third edition superbly reflects today’s Web development environment and still sticks to its main purpose — helping new and intermediate designers get up to speed on Web design. The book continues its role as a valuable reference.

Title: Web Design in a Nutshell, 3rd Ed.
Author: Jennifer Niederst Robbins
Publisher: O’Reilly
ISBN: 0596009879
Date: February 2006
Format: Paperback
Pages: 826
Cover Price: USD: $34.99 Amazon: $22.04

No matter what business a company is in, it can make its site useful for its visitors and turn them into eventual buyers. Cashing In with Content shows how to do that with 20 case studies of types businesses — ecommerce, business-to-business, nonprofits, healthcare, education and politics.

Every case study includes an interview with an employee who played a large role in the Web site’s direction. Also, the case studies have the following sections:

* What’s for sale
* What’s so interesting
* Why you should care
* Cashing in

This set up makes it easy to reference and find what you need.

The case studies are extra useful because they’re based on lesser-known sites rather than the biggies like eBay, Amazon, and others whose names often crop up. These are sites that businesses can follow as examples instead of seeing them as pricey or impossible to do like the biggies.

Scott closes the book with the 12 best practices and shows how each practice gets applied by using examples from the case studies. While “best practices” sounds like it’s full of theory and jargon, it’s not and that’s what makes the book successful. It’s about normal challenges with realistic and doable solutions. The book offers many solutions so businesses don’t have to worry about getting stuck with one that doesn’t suit them.

The book should be on the reading list of anyone involved with a business Web site.

Title: Cashing In with Content: How Innovative Marketers Use Digital Information to Turn Browsers into Buyers
Author: David Meerman Scott
Publisher: Information Today, Inc.
ISBN: 0910965714
Date: October 2005
Format: Paperback
Pages: 280
Cover Price: USD: $24.95 Amazon: $16.47

When we design Web sites, we often overlook the simplest things because we’re too wrapped up in the design. After working on Web sites for a while, some of us have slowly moved away from what we know is usable to adding or removing elements that may enhance the ‘look’ — and also break a site’s usability.

Steer back on track with the new edition of Krug’s highly referenced book. Novice, intermediate, expert. No matter where you are on the scale, the book provides value to everyone — even managers, testers and project managers. Management likes to get their hands a little dirty when it comes to Web design projects and sharing this book may make the team’s life easier.

Anyone involved with Web design or usability will recognize most, if not all, of the concepts covered in the book. What makes Don’t Make Me Think usable is that it’s a great checklist to ensure you’ve covered all the basics.

Krug provides many before and after examples to show how a few changes can enhance a Web site’s usability. The illustrations reinforce the concepts covered as well as how visitors use and read a Web site.

As for the differences between the first and second editions, the second addition has three new chapters while usability testing shrinks from two chapters to one and with good reason.

The testing chapter breaks down the testing process into digestible steps; complete with a script between the tester (user) and the person watching the tester. Too often, we’ve seen testing get mangled or ignored. With this chapter, teams might find themselves empowered and eager to do testing.

The chapter on “Usability as common courtesy” explores how a site can make or break the “reservoir of goodwill” as Krug puts it. We arrive at a Web site with some goodwill and depending on how well the site meets or misses our needs; the goodwill level goes up or down. It may only take one mistake to propel visitors to flee.

Another new and short chapter is “Accessibility, Cascading Style Sheets and you.” Krug captures what developers and designers hear when it comes to accessibility and addresses what they fear. He lists five things designers and developers can do make a site accessible without a lot of effort.

Finally, the book closes with “Help! My boss wants me to…” Krug has received plenty emails and questions on the topic to identify two questions that repeatedly come up. He provides email examples for free re-use, so no one has to explain it to the boss.

It only takes about two hours or a plane trip to read. The writing is conversational, clear and packs a punch with a dash of humor thrown in. Reading the book is not much different than reading fiction because it flows well and the information sinks in without much effort.

Title: Don’t Make Me Think : A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability (2nd Edition)
Author: Steve Krug
Publisher: New Riders
ISBN: 0321344758
Date: February 2005
Format: Paperback
Pages: 224
Cover Price: USD: $35.00 Amazon: $23.10

But you have to register first …

I found a great article and forwarded it to a colleague who might benefit from it. The colleague emailed me and said he couldn’t access it because he didn’t have a login ID. He didn’t want to mess with registration, even though it was free.

My list of IDs and passwords is huge. When I open the list, its contents take several screens to view, with each screen having multiple columns. I bought software to help me manage this giant mess. Some sites require email as an ID while others use a name of your choice as long as it has the minimum number of characters required, and someone else hasn’t already claimed it.

With each site having varying rules, it’s impossible to limit my choices to two or three login IDs. Microsoft works around this with its Passport, but many sites don’t use it, and people don’t trust having one login for multiple sites. It’s funny how some people don’t want one global login account, considering many use the same password for everything.

Why torture with registration?

If many people dislike memberships, even when it’s free, and won’t sign up unless it’s information they need, then why bother? For one, it provides the company with your information. Any shared information is gold to a business and its marketing department. The more they have, the better they know you and your needs so they can provide them through paid products and services.

Sign-ins also help businesses track their membership activities to determine what works and what doesn’t work, which articles are popular and which stink. On the plus side, it ensures the members get content they want and keeps out the topics that are “bad apples.”

For one of my columns, I studied the statistics to see which articles did well and which fell flat. I also reviewed the best articles on the site. Using the data I collected, I modified my column, and the first one after that received the best results ever.

On the other hand, how effective are these registration-required sites? Many users have gotten wise to the registration process and enter phony information along with a BugMeNot entry or a junk email address, which users enter whenever a site asks for an email address that they don’t want to provide (typically free accounts like Yahoo and Hotmail or IDs like Mickey Mouse and Charlie Brown).

The frustration of teasers

Once a person enters a site and clicks on a link to an article that sounds interesting, three things often happen:

1. The site indicates membership is required, so the visitor must sign in or register for a free account.

2. The site provides a paragraph of the article and says, “Want more? Sign up or log in.”

3. The article appears in its full glory without the user having to do anything.

Obviously, number three would be the best choice, as it has no barriers stopping the reader from accessing the content. Number one is upfront about requiring membership and gets right to the point. Number two is obviously a teaser, and those don’t go over well with many users. Number two wastes more time than number one because of the time you spend reading the partial content (if it’s not immediately obvious that the complete article isn’t available).

When referencing an article requiring sign up, providing that information with the reference saves the user time. For example:

Watch Me Do That Online [Free sign-in required]
Vlogs struggle to come up with fresh programming
by Sarah Boxer, The New York Times

This tells the reader that the article requires registration to view it, and it’s from The New York Times. So, based on whether or not the user is registered on the site or takes the BugMeNot approach, it’s easy to make a quick decision about whether or not to bother. However, not everyone takes this approach. I sent an article from a registration-required site thinking it didn’t require sign-in because not all content on the site requires signing in; however, I was mistaken.

Preventing “walk aways”

When newsletter publishers like InternetVIZ select “Best of Web” articles for a newsletter, we avoid pointing to sites requiring registration. Some sites don’t require it when an article comes out, but after a certain amount of time has passed, it requests your login ID. We avoid those, too, because they may not be registration-free by the time the newsletter goes out, or they won’t be accessible from the archives.

Sites that charge for content, on the other hand, are not typically an issue. Subscribers of fee-based content know the content is not likely to be accessible and wouldn’t post such references in their newsletters, blogs or Web sites.

The Internet has miles of information free for the reading. We’re overwhelmed and overloaded. So whatever barriers get in the way are likely to incite more “walk aways” than new members.

A few smart e-commerce sites, aware of this barrier, don’t require the user to register to add things into the cart. Some offer the option of signing up with the benefit of remembering your information the next time you visit, or you can check all the way out by providing the basic data of shipping, billing and email addresses (sometimes optional).

Putting it in their hands

With registration sites receiving phony information or BugMeNot IDs, will the trend change either way? Not likely. Even if all the publishers in the world teamed up and said, “We’re going to create a law that registration shall be required on every site so we’re all on equal ground” — an utterly ridiculous idea — there will be many who refuse to implement the barrier.

The least we can do is let people know when an article requires registration. That way, the decision about whether to sign up or not is in our readers’ hands.

Meryl K. Evans is the Content Maven behind meryl.net, helping companies by massaging words into content that inspires action. Contact her to discuss how your business can boost its profits.