From Amazon.com's early days, founder Jeff Bezos' vision was to create the world's most customer-centric company. He is driven by the belief that what's good for the customer will ultimately turn out to be good for the company. This is the reason why you can find negative customers' reviews on products at Amazon - something that would be inconceivable in most other companies. Bezos is convinced that Amazon will sell more if they help people make purchasing decisions.

One of the keys to the success of Amazon.com lies in their fact-based approach. Some ideas are too complex to try out in small-scale tests, but Amazon will make an extraordinary effort to study customer behaviour rather than rely on their best instincts and judgments.

Links:

• The article Insinde the Mind of Jeff Bezos 

Henrik Olsen - November 14, 2004

See also: E-commerce (27)  Interviews (30) 

Since many customers research online and buy offline, there's big money in using the internet to harvest leads for offline sales. According to Bryan Eisenberg, retail sites should account for the different needs that customers have in the buying decision cycle to qualify, persuade, and eventually turn them into offline buyers.

Links:

• The article Optimize Your Site for Lead Generation 

Henrik Olsen - October 23, 2004

See also: Persuasive design (21)  E-commerce (27) 

According to a survey, 65% of online US consumers come in to a retailer already knowing exactly what they want because they've done their product research online. The phenomenon, called cross-channel shopping, shows how important online merchandising is.

Additional findings from the survey:
- 51% of cross-channel customers are active shoppers who made at least one purchase in the past three months
- Cross-channel shoppers are comprised of wealthier, younger and more experienced online customers
- When cross-channel shoppers go to the offline retail, 47% end up spending more for additional products ($154 in average)
- 48% noted that the reason for buying offline is that they want to see the item before purchasing it
- 16% noted that the reason for buying offline was the need to talk with a salesperson before buying

The survey is based on 8,000 online customers and was conducted in 2004.

Links:

• The article Majority of US Consumers Research Online, Buy Offline 

Henrik Olsen - October 18, 2004

See also: E-commerce (27)  Research (129) 

Pop-up windows are prohibited by the WCAG accessibility standards. To quote:

"Until user agents allow users to turn off spawned windows, do not cause pop-ups or other windows to appear

Links:

• The article Accessible Pop-up Links 

Henrik Olsen - June 15, 2004

See also: Accessibility (13)  Javascript (3) 

Faceted classifications are increasingly common on the web, especially on commercial web sites. In this article Willian Denton suggests a seven-step model for the creation of a faceted classification, and gives advice on when to use one, how to make it, how to store it on a computer, and how to design the web interface.

Links:

• How to Make a Faceted Classification and Put It On the Web 

Henrik Olsen - March 20, 2004

See also: Information architecture (15) 

The Q1 2004 issue of GUUUI is about accessibility. The article is motivated by an evaluation of a governmental health care project, where we had both an accessibility consultant and a blind tester to evaluate a website. The outcomes of the two test where disturbingly different. While our blind tester was fairly content with the site, the accessibility consultant judged the site "A bad site in terms of accessibility." Conclusion: Official accessibility requirements might not be the most important thing when designing accessible sites. Instead, accessibility should be approached from a user-centred perspective.

Links:

• The GUUUI issue Accessibility humanized  

Henrik Olsen - February 03, 2004

See also: Accessibility (13) 

During the summer of 2003 Birmingham Institute of Art and Design ran an online questionnaire, conducted interviews and carried out a literature review on web accessibility.

Some key findings from the questionnaire:
- 86% of respondents agreed that "Developers do not have adequate training" in Web accessibility.
- A "lack of expertise" was given as "the main barrier to developing accessible Web sites".
- 48% disagreed that "most development lifecycles are too short to incorporate accessibility".
- 64% of respondents agreed that "management is unaware of the importance of Web accessibility".
- 94% thought that "clients ask for their sites to be accessible".
- 67% of respondents agreed that "some WAI guidelines are difficult to implement".

In the article, the survey findings are discussed on the background of the interviews and literature reviews that were conducted during the research.

Links:

• The article Attitudes to Web Accessibility 

Henrik Olsen - January 17, 2004

See also: Research (129)  Accessibility (13) 

Mark Pilgrim's online book Dive Into Accessibility answers the why and how of website accessibility. It starts out with a presentation of five fictitious internet users with different kinds of disabilities and presents 25 tips on how to make their online life less tedious.

The book is focused on how to make popular weblogging tools more accessible, but the tips apply to all types of websites.

Links:

• The online book Dive Into Accessibility 

Henrik Olsen - January 04, 2004

See also: Books (47)  Accessibility (13) 

With his book Building Accessible Websites, Joe Clark has done an amazing job in explaining how disabled people experience the web and how we can improve their online life. The book is a thorough, practical and pragmatic guide, with a mission to teach us to do accessibility the right way - opposed to the "correct" way.

Clark's book is engaging, informative, amusing, frequently provocative and available online for free. But you should consider buying it, since Clark deserves every penny he gets from it.

Links:

• The book at joeclark.org 
• The book at amazon.com 
• The book at amazon.co.uk 

Henrik Olsen - December 20, 2003

See also: Books (47)  Accessibility (13) 

Ever wanted to know how blind and visual impaired people surf the web with their screen readers. Here's your chance. WebAIM has designed a screen reader simulation of a fictional web site, which includes a few tasks that you can try out. It's designed with some common accessibility errors to illustrate what users of screen readers have to put up with.

Links:

• The screen reader simulation 

Henrik Olsen - December 16, 2003

See also: Tools (106)  Accessibility (13)