addi+ions blog: Insights from the Internet Obsessed

Ahh yes, easy data portability. What a pain in the arse. Moving data between multiple locations and keeping it synced is such a hassle. There’s lots of ways you can do it - email it to yourself, burn it to a CD, put it on a thumb drive, even using Microsoft Briefcase (if even you remember its still there in Windows XP). Any way you cut it, its a pain to move files easily and keep it synced up at all your locations - until now. Continue reading

I recently decided that I want to start blogging again, not just here at the dt blog, but personal stuff. I wanted something really simple that I could throw stuff up on even if it’s just a photo or a link. Ayush (our GUI gladiator) pointed me in the direction of Tumblr. As its name states, it’s a tumble blog so its perfect for quick posts with little or no commentary at all. You can literally post in 10 seconds. It has a really simple UI with nice big icons for text, photo, quote, link, chat, audio and video. You just click on the appropriate icon, embed or browse for the content, and add text(or not).

It also lets you follow(just like twitter) other bloggers. Another awesome feature is the “share” ad-on you can add to your browser. If you are watching a funny video or come across a cool photo, you can add the content to your blog without even going to your tumblr dashboard.

It has lots of customization options, you can change the themes/colors and tweak the css if you desire. The site looks and functions awesome, the design is done by guys over at Pixel Implosion. It has nice minimalism design with big clean elements. If you’re looking for a theme with water droplets or lighthouses, look somewhere else, the focus is on the content. Overall, I give Tumblr a big 2 thumbs up. Here’s mine. dan’s blog. (watch the steve brule video, you’ll pee yourself)

We received great feedback from our first UX review spotlighting SignOnSanDiego and are really looking to keep the momentum rolling. At dt we are focused on bringing the community together and highlighting the companies and the people that make them up. So for this edition we’re staying local and taking you on a ride through PETCO.com…

PETCO is one of the most recognizable brands in San Diego, and really across the country. As they say on their website “With over 850 stores in 49 states and the District of Columbia, chances are there’s a PETCO store in your neighborhood.” Besides having a large presence in San Diego county, including 22 retail stores, they have their name on one of MLBs most beautiful ballparks.

Design: PETCO very recently did a design facelift so the site has a fresh look and feel. There were a few confusing elements we ran across related to the homepage design and the promotional boxes that we wanted to highlight.

1. The border design on the large promo box makes it look out of place, like it doesn’t belong with the site. It could also serve it’s purpose if it were smaller, a bit too big for the page. The calls to action aren’t clear on these promos. Users may stare at them, but what are they supposed to DO? Nothing looks like a button to click. The blue text on the bottom right should be click-able and it would help if it had an arrow or was a button, so it looked click-able.
2. The links under the promo box all look like gift cards. Their style and shape make them all look like gift cards even though only one of the link takes you to the gift cards.

Style: While the style is not going to win any awards it isn’t terribly bad either. The style is a little bland but consistent with most ecommerce sites - the point is to get you quickly to the product or page you are looking for in the least number of steps. Some of the styles are a little conflicting as in the case of the DIV containers which go from (rounded corners) to [square corners] to (rounded corners) to [square corners].

Quality of Material: The site has been well planned out and has a wealth of information. PETCO has a lot of products and they have done a good job organizing most of that information for their users to find. It takes a few steps to find it but sections like The Answers Den has specific questions and answers from the community which really add value to overall experience. There are numerous product reviews and general comments on the site that help you make informed purchasing decisions.

3 design recommendations

• Update the border design of the promo box to be consitent with the style of the site
• Add in calls to action and click-able looking links to encourage flow
• Promote The Answers Den more to curious shoppers through the large promo box

While the website is far from a social network, there is a very social (and viral) aspect to the site because of the customer interaction through product reviews and question and answer sections - much like an Amazon. The loyal customer base has created a wealth of content for visitors to read before they buy pet-related products.

Community: PETCO ’s The Answer Den offers a community aspect similar to what you see with Yahoo Answers - post a question about your dog, cat or ferret and chances are somebody in the community has an answer. Note: I noticed that there are prizes given away for people that contribute the most content in form of answers. Since they are doing this transparently it does not feel as forced as if they were secretively paying people to generate content for the site.

Viral Components: PETCO does a great job implementing many of todays most popular viral and social networking components. See a great cat tree that you think your friend might like who is also on Facebook? You can post it to them through the system. There are links for del.icio.us and digg.com as well as a forward to a friend link to facilitate both push and pull marketing.

Blog: PETCO has a company blog although its not easily found. Can you find it? The name isn’t exactly descriptive but if you do a little searching you’ll find a link called “PETCONews.com” -That’s it! This takes you to their separate domain where they update you on what’s going on in the community. Its not a very good blog though, no comments, no RSS and seems like a half-baked idea - especially the minimal design and lack of functionality.

Email Sign Up: Wording here should be changed to emphasize the benefit instead of the feature. No one really wants more email. I’m turned off by “Sign up for emails” but rather I might be interested in “Exclusive Online Discounts, Pet Tips & More!”

4 Social Media Recommendations:

• Update the blog with RSS
• Add the ability to click and read individual posts and subscribe via email
• Change/test the wording “sign up for emails” CTA - explain the benefits of getting another email in your inbox
• Post the blog feed to areas of the site including the homepage

XML/RSS Feeds: Good implementation for RSS feeds. Most of the target audience visiting this website is not going to be familiar with RSS. The addition of an interim page to explain what RSS is, how to use it, how to sign up for it, and what applications to read it in is a good ramp for un-informed users to get into using the technology.

Code: Strange that PETCO is still using the HTML 4.01 Transitional DOCTYPE, but at least they aren’t using a <table> layout! While this is odd, it may actually increase accessibility for more browser types, especially mobile browsers, which (with the exception of the iPhone) usually don’t read the newer XHTML DOCTYPE specification. Coding methods and standards are very antiquated and mixed. Tons of deprecated implementations, but modern DIV based layout - either the time was not taken or even worse, the victim of computer generated development.

URL Structure: Ugly urls - these are not human friendly at all. From the look of things everything is being tracked in the URLs for analytics purposes - here’s an example of one for the homepage: http://www.petco.com/petco_Page_PC_home_nav_1.aspx? cm_sp=hdr-_-logo-_-050208

Web Standards: The site is not valid HTML or CSS. More of the benefits of Web Standards can be read here.

Load Time: Site speed on database heavy pages could be a little quicker. Pages are very heavy code wise.

Analytics: Using Google Analytics to track visitor behavior on the site which is great. I know they also do a bit of landing page testing to improve conversion rates.

SEO: PETCO has done a pretty good job with search engine optimization. They rank in very high for the keywords in their title tag but could improve with making more of their website and blog search-able.

Browser Compatibility: Good cross browser compatibility for Firefox and IE7.

4 Technology Recommendations:

• Updating the site using current WC3 web standards depending on objectives
• Make the Answers Den indexable by the search engines
• Use search engine, and user friendly URLs
• Lighten up the page code and speed up database times

The site navigation and functionality performed well overall. We liked the search result screen when searching by a particular pet type. Most likely you are visiting the site because you already have a specific pet. You should be able to search a pet type and find everything you need for that pet. PETCO.com supports this mentality with the way they organize the search result screen. What would be great which you see has worked so well with other ecommerce giants like Amazon is the similar products suggestion. If I am looking at particular dog bed it would be nice to have a link that says: Want to see more products like this?

Site Search: Like most ecommerce sites they’ve got it and it works ok, but not amazingly - My search for “cat tree” (yes those hideous and expensive pieces of feline furniture) didn’t turn up a lot of results for the products I know they stock. Either fix the database querying to be able to get more concise results or use third party software - like that offered from Google to power your search features- See Google Appliance

Navigation: Good main navigation organization and logical categorization - easy to find what you’re looking for but a few things stuck out. - The top navigation doesn’t really look like a button until you hover over them. The red text links are misleading. Sometimes red text is a link but sometimes it’s not. Switching to a consistent blue text link would be helpful. The breadcrumbs that are on the page are helpful, but only if they work. I found myself on a page for cat trees but the breadcrumbs were all messed up.

Sitemap: An HTML sitemap exists in the footer but I couldn’t find a Google Webmasters XML file which helps in identifying dead links and 404s as well as telling the search engines when you update specific pages.

Security: Certifications from Hackersafe and Goodmail

Features: PETCO’s Bottomless bowls is a really neat feature for those of you who are very busy and sometimes return home to your anxiously awaiting pet forgetting to pick up the cat litter, dog food or chew toys!

6 Funtionality Recommendations:

• Improve search functionality
• Give the top main navigation a tab style for clarity
• Update link colors for consistency
• Need to have a link on an individual product page. Want to see more products like this?
• If missing, add a Google Webmasters XML sitemap
• Fix breadcrumb issues when browsing

Overall Score - 3 Stars out of 5

Brand Strategy - 3 Stars
Social - 3 Stars
Technology- 3 Stars
Functionality - 4 Stars

Overall PETCO.com has done a great job implementing the latest web technology into their site and have also kept it clear and relatively easy to navigate for such a large ecommerce site. Acting on many of these recommendations will do small but effective things to improve user experience as well as generate additional traffic through Search’s Long Tail. We welcome comments and additional questions into our review of the site and any information listed here.

Welcome to digital-telepathy’s newest section of our blog where we take well known brands and startups and put them through a User Experience (UX) review. We do these reviews as a way to promote untapped opportunities that these company’s have that seem to be just beyond their view of sight. We look at 4 main areas for our audit including their online brand strategy, social aspects, implementation of technology and functionality. All in all we hope the companies read our reviews, ask questions, comment and make changes to create a more enriching experience for their web community.

SignOnSanDiego.com is the digital sister of the San Diego Union Tribune. Since its launch almost 11 years ago, SignOnSanDiego.com has been through many redesigns – in fact almost every single year the design was changed completely. But is the functionality and UX farther along today than from their first version launched 11 years ago? Something tells me I’m headed for an interesting review…

Overall the brand is powerful. The Union Tribune has a very strong resonance with the community of San Diego which infiltrates over to SignOnSanDiego’s (SOSD) brand and credibility. SOSD has a lot of brand recognition as a reputable news source because of the UT.

Messaging: The SignOnSanDiego brand is not as prominent as it could be – especially on the homepage. The brand should be recognized as the most important part of the site – since it is powered by the UT. Elevate the brand to the level it truly is.

Engagement Value: The Street Blog has a decent brand identity - the posts are light and easy to read. Some other things I noticed were the missing archive area (how do I access a post from last year?), no working RSS feeds for the blogs and a massive form I have to fill out before I can sign up for a site RSS feed.

Fun: All of the interactive and community based features on the site are half way down the page and beneath the fold - it’s hard to find these features they’re the ones I want to see right away. If I don’t see these right away I am not going to spend a lot of time looking for them – ‘buh bye’.

Quality of Material: The material is informative and high quality. In my opinion the organization of the homepage makes the quality seem much lower than it really is.

Style: The style blows. The site is pushed over to the left side of the browser - not centered or clean. Tons of ads plastered on the homepage which dilutes the brand. Change the Entertainment Guide to look like SOSD content not an ad!

7 Site Fixes to Do Now:

1. Enlarge the logo and push to left margin.
2. Do not allow ads and other brands in header space that “sandwich” the logo. That space should be reserved for your brand only.
3. Include archive section on the weblog
4. Create a one click process to sign up for the RSS reader. Get rid of the damn form!
5. Rename the “forum” tab in the navigation to “blogs”
6. Center the page with the browser
7. Make sure content boxes do not resemble ads

Overall, the social aspects of SignOnSanDiego need a face lift. There are hardly any viral components and little to no community management. Here is my review of the social side of SignOnSanDiego…

Viral Components: None of the multimedia blogs and videos (besides The Street Blog) has viral features/components available. Ie: digg, stumble, send to friend, etc. There’s no rating system for users to rate videos or blogs. There is a commenting system on blogs – but there is no conversation on these posts. How can we attract readers to comment and generate some rich content on these blogs? I looked at each post and there is no “leave a comment” button. This could be a reason why there is little to no activity on these posts.

Community: The Spanish site www.mienlace.com looks nice! The continuity and organization of content is much more inviting than SOSD. The fact that SOSD has included the Hispanic population in their efforts is significant and I’m very happy to see the commitment to this community. The newsletter offers the option to personalize which is a plus for the choosy reader. SignonRadio offers the ability for live streaming. There’s also weekly sports, politics chats which is an interactive way to keep the community engaged and coming back.

Other Social Features: Wiki access - San Diego bands is a really great way for local musicians to keep in touch, promote their tours and answer community questions. The only problem is that NOBODY is using it. There are NO tags listed, no entries, no comments, etc. This area could be a really great resource for locals & bands if it was actually leveraged. Why is nobody editing this?

Side Note: A funny (yet frustrating) note was after I wrote this section’s review I realized a day later that I wanted to include a screenshot of the page. Little did I know this would be no simple task. To my surprise I couldn’t find the damn wiki for the life of me. Where is this wiki? Why is it so hard to locate? How did this happen? So many unanswered questions… maybe this is why nobody is contributing content to the wiki section. Needless to say, you all don’t get a screenshot in this section.

4 Site Fixes to Do Now:

1. Add in viral components for videos and blogs (Street blog does include social bookmarks) like digg, stumbleupon, reddit, del.icio.us, and facebook
2. Include text or button under each post to “leave a comment” – make it obvious for the reader
3. If you truly want to stay on MySpace – nurture and grow the community a bit more. Answer comments & messages immediately. Provide some REAL value and uniqueness on this page with an events calendar, VIP announcements, underground band tours, etc.
4. Make the wiki an obvious feature on the site. This could take off and become a very important lead generation, seo tactic & community element – but it’ll never get there if nobody can find it.

Web Standards: No. If you validate your code it will make it easier for:

• Search engines to index your web pages
• Pages to load faster
• Make your pages accessible for other devices that surf
  the Web
• Checking coding errors by running your pages through a
  validator

XML/RSS Feeds: No.As stated above you have to fill out a massive form before subscribing to the RSS feed.I’ve never heard of such a thing and the reader needs to be fixed. And once it is I can bet the RSS subscription conversions will increase substantially.

Analytics: Yes. SignOnSanDiego is using Google Analytics. This is a great way to keep track of who your visitors are, where they’re coming from, what pages they access the most, how long they’re staying on the site, where the drop off pages are and what conversion points are failing or thriving.

SEO: SignOnSanDiego has title/meta data but there are way too many keywords. WTF? Keyword tags should contain less than 250 characters. UT is using: 2,300!!! The meta keywords tag allows you to provide additional text for crawler-based search engines to index along with your body copy. However most crawlers now ignore the tag. This means there is no reason to have that many keywords. It’s wasted space in your code.

Browser Compatibility: Mobile, Firefox, IE

Site Search: SignOnSanDiego offers on-site search which can be categorized into businesses, web, entertainment, etc. - if you spell the keyword wrong UT offers suggestions for the correct spelling, which is nice.

3 Site Fixes to Do Now:

1. Correct errors listed on XHTML and CSS errors
2. W3schools & W3C are great resources for proper code standards
3. Compress the meta data to 6 -10 page specific keywords. Keep it short and get rid of misspelled words

Design: The design looks like a patch work of different styles and is a bit choppy because the background color blends in with the topics – very hard to differentiate the transitions between content, ads and blank space.

Navigation: There are 3 navigation points above the fold of the homepage…three!? So many navigation points make it extremely confusing for the visitor to figure out the flow & focus of the page (especially first time visitors). Also across various sections of the site there are several different navigation points. I have four shown below. This needs to be cleaned up from a usability standpoint.

Entertainment Navigation

Homepage Navigation

Jobs Navigation

Today’s Paper Navigation

Sitemap: SignonSanDiego has a site map. One of the oldest hypertext usability principles is to visualize the structure of the information space to help users understand where they can go. On today’s Web, site maps are a common approach to facilitating navigation.

Features: There are so many sections and features on the homepage - I am so confused when I get to the site…what am I supposed to do first? Nothing is obvious to me.

6 Site Fixes to Do Now:

1. Prominently show the user what to do on the homepage (newsletter, rss feed sign up, commenting). These features would also offer a great conversion point which gets a user to an ultimate end goal on the site.
2. Create highly visible buttons and points on the site that users automatically know to click
3. Darken the background color with lighter boxes to break up the spaces for each topic. This will help create a more stylized and organized feel to the page.
4. Update the weblog page to the newest design! The logo/style/template of the site changes from homepage to weblog.signonsandiego.com. The weblog page still uses the old template from 2005! Eek!
5. Differentiate between content and ads
6. Provide consistent navigation throughout the site. Condense the extra navigation points into one focused navigation. What’s the differentiation for the various colors of the navigation?

Overall Score - 2 Stars out of 5

Brand Strategy - 3 Stars
Social - 2 Stars
Technology- 1 Star
Functionality - 1 Stars

Overall the site needs a face-life. It’s great that the site offers content for all varieties of readers - entertainment, blogs, news, sports, etc. However there’s a lot happening on that first page - which is a bit overwhelming! I would recommend cleaning up the space by creating sections for related content. Take a look at CNN.com - even just a simple blocked off section/box on the site for related content keeps it clean and organized. They even have room for ads that aren’t obtrusive or annoying. I can scroll through the homepage and can find, for example, the blog section very easily. Even though it’s below the fold - that’s ok - it’s about keeping these features prominent and cleaned up so anybody can find them.

Another huge issue is the number of varying navigation points the site has. It looks like as SignOnSanDiego.com grew they hired different designers to work on the different sections. This creates a varying design across the site. There is no continuity between pages - a well designed template that can be used site-wide would create a much richer user experience and make many designers happier.

I was lucky enough to be interviewed by Andrew Warner of Mixergy.com last week.  Andrew is responsible for many local web mixer events such as Lunch 2.0 and Happy Hour 2.0 in both San Diego and LA.  He’s been a great support to our community and someone that I highly respect.

Here’s the write up and phone interview.