Focus on the user — This is possibly the single most important thing for entrepreneurs to remember. “Every startup that dies fails to do this,” Graham says. “A lot of startups focus on their competitors or lawsuits, but what really kills startups is if users think it’s boring. It’s a much quieter and dangerous reason, but if users don’t care about your product, that will just kill a company.”
I LOVE this tag line: Compete On Usability
Users Strike Back Against Corporate Customer Service — “Creative consumers have found plenty of ways to get some personal attention from faceless corporations. No longer content to sit back and abide by the whims of fate (or customer service), empowered consumers have been on a rampage this month; let’s take a look.”
Nielsen Being Nielsen — “Humans change slower – much slower – than technology. That’s the guiding conclusion of usability guru Jakob Nielsen, who notes that 80% of Web usability guidelines from the Nineties still hold today.”
Steve Krugs Speaks – “As a designer you know too much about the site. You have to bring in people who don’t know anything about the site and have them try and use it. That’s my single best practice.”
Steve rocks.
I’ll get to marketing with RSS in just a moment. I’m going to give you a little background first. The context is useful.
Many readers have been asking why WebWord hasn’t been updated regularly. The biggest reason is that I’ve been working like a dog with my brother on our marketing web site. Let me explain…
More than two years ago, I said that marketing and usability go hand-in-hand. Nothing happened. So, instead of complaining, I took action. I’ve been doing enormous amounts of research and writing, just not in usability (except for Apogee).
Enough background. Time to talk about marketing with RSS!
After spending hours and hours of research on the topic of RSS, I wrote up a report especially for internet marketers. The result was RSS Super Glue which explains how to combine, filter, and exploit RSS for marketing puposes.
Most internet marketers don’t care about technology itself. Instead, they care how they can use it for financial gain. What I’ve done in my RSS marketing report is clearly show how to publish articles (e.g., on a blog or EzineArticles) and have them “magically” transported to a Squidoo lens. I also demonstrate how to set up a blog to automatically feed an autoresponder, with virtually no effort. I even show how to multi-purpose and re-distribute your eBay listings in just a few minutes.
The RSS Super Glue has sold really well because of one thing. I’ve focused on the wants and needs of my customers. I didn’t waste any time explaining RSS or any other technology, except where absolutely needed. Instead, I explained how to get the job in simple terms. I provide recipes and steps that anyone can follow.
Without my usability background I would have buried my customers with jargon and useless technical trivia. That would have been a major mistake. For internet marketers, the serious firepower of RSS isn’t what it is, but what it can do.
Users won’t care about iPhone keyboard usability (Adrian Kingsley-Hughes) — “As much as I think that the glass-topped software-powered keyboard on the iPhone looks cool, I keep coming back the one thing that’s important about a keyboard to me – usability. Do I think that the iPhone’s keyboard is going to be an efficient input device? No. Is this going to mean that Apple is going to have a hard time selling iPhones? Probably not.”
I agree. This is a case where usability won’t matter too much, at least for the first few million people. The launch of the iPhone is all about the Cult of the iPhone, simply meaning that “sleek and sexy” will sell this phone. If the interface is too hard for users, then either sales will slow down (duh!) or Apple will make updates and upgrades. My prediction is the latter of the two. Time will tell…
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