Talk I'm Doing at SLA Seattle in June
Apr 24, 03:14 PMShopping 2.0 - A New-Old Model for Optimizing Library Web Portals
By Dan Klyn*
Information Architect, Flannel
Lecturer, Univ. of Mich. School of Information
Probably you’ve heard a colleague or a patron remark that the library should be more like Amazon.com. Or that a new public library branch is really great because they have a coffee shop and colorful end-cap displays of new and featured titles just like they do at Barnes & Noble. The extension of ideas and tactics from retail worlds into the setting of the library is nothing new. And in some ways the work of applying retail and merchandising concepts to the library has been made easier by the fact that the biggest retailer on the planet started out as a bookseller. The metaphors and models line up so nicely when we’re talking primarily about books and CDs and DVDs. Just add to cart...
From my perspective as an e-commerce information architect with a background in librarianship, I’m concerned that these tidy comparisons between bookselling and booklending have had the unintended consequence of narrowing and prefiguring our perspectives on what we might or could or should do to optimize library web portals. Instead of asking “what does Amazon.com do” when we plan our online strategy, what if we asked “what does Etsy.com do?”
In this session we’ll examine website navigation and product findability concepts from some of the most innovative and effective online retailers. Attendees will see how special libraries can look beyond the 800lb gorilla that is Amazon.com and find inspiration, ideas, features and functionality from online retailers whose tactics and techniques aren’t confined to or built primarily around books and music and films.
*Dan Klyn is an ALA-certified librarian who’s never worked in a library
New Detroit News Site - WTF URLs?
Oct 17, 08:48 AMMy friend Ed sent me a link to the newly re-launched Detroit News website, and maybe I'm just grumpy today but the first thing I noticed was the idiotic URL of the mainpage:
http://detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/frontpage
How is it possible in this so-called age of Web 2.0 that a major metropolitan area's newspaper does a total site overhaul and neglects to mind the form of their URLs? Sigh...
Death Of "The Fold"
Jul 31, 12:19 PMGood riddance! The person in charge of IA at AOL (dont laugh!) is sharing some research she's done in a new Boxes and Arrows article on the "myth" of needing all of your stuff to appear above the fold. Worth readin!
Web 2.0 Mullet Strategy
Jul 27, 09:42 AM
What's a Mullet Strategy? You know.... Business up front (web 1.0 bullhorn style on the home page and key section/category pages) and Partyaaah in the rear (web 2.0 user comments and tags and filthy chaotic "contributions" on secondary pages that're 2 clicks away from most major entry/exit points)...
Random House Widget = (Almost) Fully Baked
Jun 19, 02:32 PMWith so many half-baked widgets being developed these days, it's great to see examples of widgets done right. Behold, today's example:
Only thing I think is off-kilter here is the height and width - if you accept that most of your opportunities to use the sheeple to spread your shizzle come in the form of individual bloggers ... and if you do a quick survey of the average blog's page footrprint ... I think you'd agree with me that the large size version of the widget is way too big. And that the small version (above) is way too small. That being said, there's lots to love. Read more about Random House's widgetry here. Very nicely done. Mostly ;)
Favorite UI Views On New Rose Brand Site
Jun 14, 03:09 PMI love browsing a newly launched site... It's especially delightful to do so in the case of RoseBrand.com, as I was brought in as a smartypants-for-hire and once the IA specs were complete I hopped out of the mix and stayed out until the launch. Here's a few of my favorite UI views from the new site:
- 128" Poly-Muslin Product Details Page. Note the swatches across the top and the dynamically updating add to cart widget!
- Custom sewing quotebuilder: you need to create an account to use it... it's a step by step configurator, basically.
- Fabric Finder: parametric search to narrow the product universe quickly by product attributes/facets.
- Other Items On This Page Of The Catalog. Since so many of their customers know them as a catalogger, I developed an online cross-selling strategy to take advantage of the organization scheme in the print catalog. Strategy is expressed on each product details page behind the "Other items on this page" tab beneath the product hero shot.
- Portfolio "Stories" As Merchandising. There are so many amazing production designs that are built with materials out of the Rose Brand catalog ... providing photos of the amazing ways these products get used along with fairly long copy about the process and the products... once RB gets time to deep-link this long copy under each portfolio "story" they're gonna derive crazy search engine love from the keyword rich link text while at the same time enabling a different kind of browsing. Browse by story...
Who's Got The Scoop On MySpace Analytics
Apr 4, 01:46 PMAs with most things MySpace, the more I dig into the question of how a "regular joe" (that is, somebody that's not in an advertising relationship with MySpace) goes about tracking who's viewing a MySpace profile page ... the more filth and rottenness I discover. Here's something that says it's a tool for doing MySpace tracking that's quite likely a spyware mule. Okay... Softpedia says it's not spyware. And here's another tracking service with the stink of AdSense Farming all over it. What's a legitimate outfit like mine s'posed to do with all this? The images on our page are not used on any other site, so there's logfile stuff we can do to try and sessionize use of these images and to discover referrers. But I want more. I want user environment variables. And myspace friend IDs. And of course, I want absolute unique visits.
Earlier today I bumped into a bit of server trickery from Knowingart that I'd like to try out:
because Myspace censors HTML, (a good reason not to use it) you’ll need to get fancy if you want to take your tracking a step further. Code a script that looks like an image to Myspace, but actually it’s a PHP script with a .jpg extension.What else should I be aware of in terms of best practices for web analytics in MySpaceland? Will the Knowingart trick make the MySpace gods angry? A comment left on a blog I've been following of late was dead-on about the effects of spending alot of time and effort on things in the MySpaceOsphere: "I bet the guy who put this together took a long, long shower afterward"....
Example: http://www.knowingart.com/whatever.jpg could be a PHP script that outputs a .jpg image. But before the script displays the image, you can capture some useful server “environment” info.
Update: Some links about this matter
Tracking Clicks On PDF Links with GA
Feb 22, 12:44 PMToday I added an onClick event to one of the imagemapped links on one of my pages that points to a PDF. The goal? Get user clicks on PDFs into Google Analytics. The article whose advice I'm following is here. I'll let you know tomorrow if this tactic was successful.
Also.. here's my code:
<area shape="rect" coords="550,338,725,362" href="NOOMA®news001.pdf" onClick="javascript:urchinTracker('NOOMA®news001.pdf');" onmouseover="MM_swapImage('Image1','','images/001.png',1)" onmouseout="MM_swapImgRestore()" alt="NOOMA® Newsletter 001" />
Update: It works brilliantly, this tactic of using JavaScript to get clicks on PDFs into GA. check it out!
How Pagelevel IA Could Save Your Daughter
Feb 8, 07:00 PMHere in the lake-effect snow zone along side of Lake Michigan, we've had a string of school closings due to blizzard conditions and truly wonderful amounts of snow (measured in feet, not inches). My wife and I have yet to settle into a news media consumption groove in our new GPS coordinatespace... which is an inherently risky way to live for those of us who 1) are parents of school-aged chidren and/or 2) like to think of ourselves as information professionals. Obtaining credible and timely information about school closings before you're elbows-deep in making lunches and sending kids out the door to the schoolbus... That's crucial. And last week, the website of the ABC affiliate in Grand Rapids let me down. Big time. Which in turn caused me to let my daughter down. Big time. The poor thing stood at the corner for 10 minutes in single digits waiting for the bus until somebody drove past and yelled out their window to her your school is CLOSED today.
My little girl. The apple of my eye. Made to suffer humiliation and hypothermia because of crappy page-level IA on the local TV station's school-closings page. I can demonstrate. Exhibit 1: screenshot of the way WZZM's web page with school closing listings lays out presently. Exhibit 2: a sketch I created with pagelevel IA solutions that would have prevented all of this unpleasantness
What do you think? What are some other ways this page could be re-architected to enhance its credibility and usability?
Vander Wal On The New Pew Report on Tagging
Feb 1, 02:37 PMAt first glance, this new report about 28% of Americans who're online having created tags is amazing. IA superstar and inventor of the term folksonomy Thomas Vander Wal digs into the data and observes that non-white survey participants are tagging more than their white counterparts. What's the reason?
These higher numbers of people tagging who are not white seems to support the idea that those whose vocabulary and terminology is not represented will tag to ease their refinding the information. When things are in familiar terms they are easier to find and having the ability to tag from one's own context eases refindability. The Report does not dive into this and it is a really good subject for future research.Folksonomy as a tool for overcoming the biases in systems built by and tuned to the language of the ruling class/majority? Very very cool... Yay tagging!
Perspectives on:
Syndication:
RSS 2.0 Feed
Colophon:
My name is Dan Klyn, and I'm an information architect.
I work with amazing people at a nonprofit company called Flannel in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
I also teach IA in the library science programs at the University of Michigan and at Wayne State University.
Oh How I Love Thee:
