Note to Next: don't make visitors listen to music
Chris Lake wrote about 50 ways to annoy web users on Monday, which included things like pop-up ads, slow loading pages, unreadable text, and other terrible crimes against usability.
One of the biggest offences for me is the automatic playing of audio when you arrive at a webpage, and I've found a pretty sorry example of this on the Next homepage today.
Should more etailers be using video?
According to new stats from comScore, the number of US web shoppers watching videos on e-commerce sites has grown by 40% in a single year, as more retailers have started to use them as a sales tool.
A number of UK e-commerce sites are already using video on their product pages to promote items, but should more be doing this? And which sites are using product videos effectively?
Mobile app review: Truveo video search for iPhone
Video search engine Truveo has released an updated version of its iPhone app with new features and 'Intelligent Query Completion' to improve the search functionality.
Since iPhones are sold with YouTube pre-installed, the app already has some strong competition to overcome, though users have viewed some 3m videos through the app since it launched in July last year. I've been trying out the updated version of Truveo's app and seeing how it compares to YouTube.
ITV updates its video player
ITV has been tweaking its online catch up TV service, and has introduced a few improvements for customers viewing video on its website, using Microsoft Silverlight.
The service is going to be rebranded as the 'ITV Player', which is at least a bit more distinctive than 'catch up'. As well as a new name, ITV needs to be improve the usability of its online video, so what difference has Silverlight made to this?
The Web Week in Review
In a week that that saw a rally in global stock markets and is seeing some of the best Black Friday deals in recent memory, it seems like the world has been able to recapture some sense of normalcy.
Here's the news that caught my attention this week.
BBC launches live streaming TV
Today sees the start of the BBC's online live streaming of BBC1 and BBC2, though this is something ITV has been doing for a while with its four channels.
I've been watching BBC2 through the iPlayer to see how well it works online, and whether the BBC does it better than ITV...
The information overload threat and opportunity
According to a study recently released by Yahoo, UK internet users are suffering from information overload.
As reported by the Association of Online Publishers UK, the study, which is entitled "Return on Attention," found that 70% of users "admitted to spending hours sifting through unwanted or irrelevant information."
A beginner's guide to optimising video content
It is becoming increasingly important to consider search engine optimisation (SEO) tactics when creating video or any non-text content.
As the web becomes an increasingly competitive marketplace, companies are striving to build dynamic, exciting, thrilling pages to capture their consumers' confidence.
Has YouTube discovered the solution to its monetization woes?
Google's challenges in monetizing the world's most popular online video service, YouTube, are well-known.
Adobe CS4 is out - what's new?
Chances are that if you're a web designer or developer, you use one or more Adobe products.
Adobe's Creative Suite, which includes programs like Photoshop, Flash and Dreamweaver, is one of the most popular software suites known to web professionals because of this.
Social media: the best and worst of 2009
Email marketing: six steps to improving customer engagement in 2010
Web 2.0
Graham Charlton
Strategy & Planning
