COAP:COAP-2170/week5
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COAP 2170 Week 5 program
Monday
In this lesson we will firstly introduce some of Google's tools a webmaster should know. There exist many other alternatives, including open source toolkits and expensive commercial ones. However, Google is the easiest route for starters. We then will look at so-called landing page optimization and introduce some light-weight design & analysis methods.
= Homework feedback
- HW3 feedback
- Some advise on "writing" assignments (structure and style)
Google tools
- Analytics
- Google analytics (includes more links for those who are interested)
- Google Analytics (9 min. video at YouTube). An older version is here
- Analyzing visibility in search engines
- google webmaster tools (includes more links for those who are interested)
- Google for Webmasters Tutorial: Ranking (5 min. video). Explains relevance and importance (over 200 criteria)
- Main principle: (stable and relevant) Content
- A/B testing and multivariate tests
- Google Website Optimizer (help pages)
- Website Optimize User Guide (14 min. video at Google). Skip introduction, getting starting.
- Case Study: Universal Technical Institute Increases Application Requests Eight-fold With Website Optimizer (example)
- Adwords and AdSense
We will not cover these topics in this class (take a web marketing class).
- Advertise to people searching on Google with google adwords
- Place ads on your own website with Google adSense (and earn some money)
Designing / Analyzing home and landing pages
We shortly will present some simple general user experience design principles and analysis techniques that could apply to home and landing pages. We are interested in several factors, e.g. usability, conversion, effects of visual design...
- Guideline-based reviews and design
- (Some of) Oli Gardner's tips and examples:
- HOW TO: Create a Landing Page Design Concept in 10 Minutes
- Designing for Conversion – 8 Visual Design Techniques to Focus Attention on Your Landing Pages
- 22 Creative Landing Page Designs – A Showcase, Critique, and Optimization Discussion
- The 5 Second Rule: Critiquing the Best Websites of 2009 – Part 1 describes a very simple grid you can use to speculate whether users want to stay on the page. It's based on the idea that users create an opinion very quickly.
- Classroom activity 1
- Apply Oli Gardners tips to design a landing page of your choice. Pick something that you will want your users to do, e.g. sign up for more information, download a text, register, etc.
- Perception of designs using semantic differentials
- Presentation of Know Your Typefaces! Semantic Differential Presentation of 40 Onscreen Typefaces.
- Direct link to a screenshot of the survey
- Direct link to Typeface classes
- Clasroom activity 2
- Find semantic differentials used by other students when they compared CSS ZenGarden designs.
Wednesday
The term project
Mid-term exam
- Exam preparation: Read Important teaching materials (reading list)
- The exam will be "open documentation". You may consult the Internet. Questions will be based on homework 1-4, the reading list. If you missed classes, then you also might have a look at the videos shown.
- It will include several questions of various types: MCQ, definitions, short design and analysis tasks
- Topics tested:
- Usability guidelines
- Task-based usability testing
- Simple user satisfaction tests
- Personas and scenarios
- Prototyping with wireframes
Homework 5
- Create a semantic differential scale for analyzing user's perceptions of the home page (and other landing pages) of a university web sites or another category of websites of your choice (e.g. think about your term project). You are allowed to reuse any scale you can find under the condition that you provide a reference.
- Test the tool with at least two users and three web sites
- Present both the scale and the testing results. In particular:
- Explain the purpose of your scale, i.e. what is it supposed to measure
- Explain what kind of dimension an item is supposed to measure
- Report how well the users understood the differentials.
Tips:
- Make sure to submit a document that approximates academic standards (e.g. it should include at least a title, subtitles, name, date and references and be organized in some logical way).
- Focus on some aspects of user experience. A short scale is perfectly ok if it makes sense...
- Find another study and get inspiration
- You could use an online survey tool for this task (useful if you plan to conduct surveys sometimes later in your life)
- I suggest that those who already turned in 2-3 prior homeworks could skip this homework. I will give two additional homeworks (total of 7)