xiik - Interactive Marketing » usability

Internet Speed Greed

Josh Corken — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 19:44:17 +0000

I think it’s safe to say that we are pretty greedy when it comes to our internet speed. A recent post by CNN got me thinking about how my personal views on the internet have completely shifted in the last 5 years. What used to be “fast” is now considered practically idle; even having today’s version of high speed internet myself, I am always wanting it to be faster. I have internet speed greed. And I know I’m not alone!

This particular article discusses Google’s desire for a faster internet nationwide to keep up with consumer appetite for rich media. But we aren’t talking a few more megabytes per second (MBps) faster. Oh, no: “It would be a blazing-fast upgrade, capable of downloading a full-length HD movie in under 90 seconds,” says CNN. Now that’s what I’d call fast! Since Google can pretty much do anything it wants, this initiative will bring fiber-optic internet connections to as many as 500,000 people in a small number of local areas. It will be capable of one gigabit per second (Gbps), more than 100 times faster than the typical U.S. broadband connection speed today.

You have to hand it to Google for pushing the limits. CEO Eric Schmidt put things into perspective a bit: he plans to completely revolutionize internet connection speed “as a way of narrowing America’s innovation deficit.” Truth be told, we are not the only nations addressing internet speed greed ahead of time. Korea plans to roll out a 1-Gbps countrywide connection by 2012. Unfortunately for us, to bring Google’s plan nationwide in the U.S. would involve so much capital investment that even Google themselves could not fund it. For now, it will remain a research project and hopefully global greed will spark other American companies, like Verizon or AT&T, to innovate further when enhancing their own lagging networks.

To compare your speed to others around you, check out Google’s Speed Dashboard.

Cooking in Cyberspace

xiiksarah — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 19:21:21 +0000

As one of xiik’s resident foodies, I’m always on the hunt for the next perfect recipe. I subscribed to Gourmet Magazine (RIP) and Bon Appetit and always scoured the Web looking for the next meal to try. My bookmarks are a litany of foodie sites like Serious Eats, The Kitchn and, of course, Epicurious. While Mastering the Art of French Cooking is displayed proudly on my bookshelf, I still find myself resorting to the Web to find tips and reviews of recipes. I like knowing what other amateur cooks think of a recipe. Which is why I am excited about the latest offering from Bing.com

Bing is offering a tab in their searches for users who type in a food, such as chicken. Clicking on this tab will pull up an array of recipes pulled from recipe sites and databases all over the Web. Not only do the recipes pop up, but the search also allows you to sort by ratings, cuisine and convenience.

I’m not deleting my bookmarks quite yet, but I think searches like Bing can really help the everyday cook have a little more fun in the kitchen.

For more information, visit here.

Flash Corporate Sites Dead?

Topher Overstreet — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 00:00:54 +0000

We highly respect both the comment presented by ickydime and the incredible work that The Basement produces (so much so that we gave them our very first bold link in our blog). Thank you for your comment. Readers, if you haven’t taken the time to read their comment to our blog, please check it out. It’s a great rebuttal.

There are a few disagreements that I’ve still got. First, in addition to the iPhone not displaying Flash, other popular phones including Windows Mobile Devices and Palm also will not display properly either. Second, while iPhone controls only 1.1% of the total market share for ALL cellular devices, depending on who you ask, it controls 16-30% of the market for SmartPhones, meaning that as many as 1 in 3 of the phones built for browsing can’t see your Flash-based website.

Nike.com is a great site. You could not have accomplished the same WOW factor in HTML. However, Endless.com is also an amazing e-commerce shoe site. My personal opinion is that Endless is easier to use. The navigation is immediate, the interface is familiar and the back button takes me back one page, rather than back to the beginning.

I’d also say that if you’re going to use Flash, use it! Why can I zoom in on the details of the shoe on Endless, a non-Flash site, and not on Nike? As I said in the previous posting, use Flash to add value, not just for kicks. It’s definitely slower to load and usually less intuitive than HTML counterparts, so make sure that you are adding value other than just ”pretty”.

Before finishing with Nike, I’d also say that this site would fall more into the Portfolio category that I mentioned was still okay for Flash sites. It is, afterall, a portfolio of their shoes, in the same way that we produced several all-flash art/exhibit portfolios for the Indiana State Museum. Notice that when you go to Nike’s Corporate Site (also an awesome site), you can do a quick run-through without finding a stitch of Flash.

It’s a disagreement between several developers and the conversation will likely go on. From our viewpoint, Flash is becoming more popular, but as an element, rather than the entire site. I don’t see a day soon when we’ll see a significant percentage of corporate sites moving to all-Flash. However, we’ll keep our ears and eyes out and if that’s what their users demand, we xiik geeks will be among the first agencies to change course and lead our clients that way. I think that the overall lesson is “know thy audience.”

Thank you again, Mark, for sparking such an interesting discussion!

Flash Corporate Websites are Dead…Oh…and Intros Too

Topher Overstreet — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 09:00:10 +0000

Flash is an awesome technology. We at xiik use it all the time, in fact. You’ll notice that about half of our sites have a Flash element somewhere. Flash components, integrated into a webpage, are great for displaying several pictures in a rotation, showing video or playing audio. That doesn’t give you a lisence to use it for your whole site.

There was a period of time when Flash first came out that everybody jumped on the bandwagon and decided to (over)use it. Similar to how frames and blinking text could be found on every site built in 1998, Flash was huge soon thereafter. Then came the sudden slowdown as people realized incompatability issues – your users had to download a Flash Player to display Flash on your site – and that the load times were really bad for dialup users. Unfortunately, this only slowed the overabundance of Flash sites briefly, as the newest versions of each browser came with Flash pre-installed and cable modems/DSL became more prevalent.

Fast-forward 8-10 years. Now Flash is everywhere, again. The trendiest places, especially restaurants, bars and music venues want to go all-Flash because things move and there are pictures and it’s interactive and it’s just…”wow”. Somewhere along the way web designers united in giving up function for form.

What’s wrong with Flash sites? Well, picture yourself at a social event (as I was last Thursday) at 10pm, trying to decide if you are going to walk 3 blocks down the street in negative temperatures to grab food at the hot new restaurant, Forty-Five Degrees. Unfortunately, you can’t remember if they stop serving at 10 or 11pm. Never fear – you pull out your trusty iPhone, type in the URL (http://www.fortyfiveindy.com). To your surprise, you don’t pull up a hot and trendy website but, instead, receive dreaded blue box, indicating that the site is in Flash and cannot be viewed on mobile devices. The owner of this establishment would not be delighted to know that he has now paid a lot for a site that has not reached his prospective customer – whom I’m sure would think it was lovely if they could actually see it – but, instead, has annoyed said customer to the point of PG-13 language.

Besides being completely unusable on most mobile devices, many find the sites annoying even on PCs. Most users want to go to a site, find what they are looking for and move on. This becomes difficult when they have to watch the site animate into a pretty picture, as I did this afternoon while waiting for http://www.scholarsinn.com/ to draw itself, wondering why they decided it was okay to waste my time. Not to mention the near heart-attack it gave me when the music started playing (but we’ll save that for another blog).

Flash can still be used for portfolio sites, sites for kids or sites that should be interactive. But if you’re trying to give people information like, say, your hours of operations, DON’T USE FLASH! Already got a Flash site? Simple fix – add your phone number, address and hours of operation to the bottom of every page of your website in HTML. That way, even if they can’t see the pretty site you built for them, you at least won’t lose the customer.

And while the soapbox is still planted firmly beneath my feet, I’d also like to say that Flash intros are a HUGE no-no. Nobody has the time or desire to wait for an intro to play. In fact, every client we’ve worked with who requested it admitted that they always click the “Skip” button. Don’t waste your money. Spend it on things that the customer will appreciate and use.

Got questions? Give us a call – 888.900.XIIK or visit us online at http://www.xiik.com

UPDATE: Since the initial posting, 45 Degrees has changed their website from full-Flash to a hybrid (HTML with a really cool Flash component). I doubt that this blog posting had anything to do with that, nor do I know what the reasons were behind the change. However, I wanted to make sure that was clear that I was referring to their old site. Not the new one.