heisel.org

The guns of March?

Friday | February 28, 2003 | 4:50 pm  

At my paper, we’ve begun our preparation for a possible war with Iraq.

We’ve talked with the publisher and and production folks about changes in size and organization of the paper.

I’ve been preparing new page templates, and at the copy desk we’ve assembled a war design team. City side has a war team of reporters writing stories already, and our goal is to get three pages drawn and edited before the bombs drop.

I imagine papers everywhere are putting thought, and work, into any pending conflict with Iraq, but what about Web sites.

While the big wigs like CNN and the New York Times created low-bandwith versions of their sites after the traffic associated with Sept. 11, I think every news site should be preparing something similar.

Perhaps now is the time to prepare a low-bandwith, CSS-only (or CSS-mostly), page design and get it ready to go in the event of hostilities.

For those online managers looking to make the big switch in the future, a pending war (and spike in traffic) might be the perfect “excuse” to sell to non-tech bosses. They might not care if the site will be usable in the future, but when the words “site going down” are uttered, it might get their attention.

In addittion to design templates, now is the time to start planning online-only content that might need some lead time, like interactive graphics of the region, or the weapons involved.

So what is everyone up to?

P.S. At the the Missourian, we’ve got a non-monetary pool going on the start date — my pick is March 9, what’s yours?

Permalink | Comments (0) | Categories: Journalism, Web design

Changing a site’s design, part II

Thursday | February 20, 2003 | 9:22 am  

Nathan Ashby-Kuhlman brings up a perfect example of sites changing their design to fit the content.

Of the sites I visit, the New York Times is one of the few that do these kinds of changes.

Some folks brought up issues with reader confusion during an earlier discussion but I think readers are perfectly savy enough to understand a slightly changed layout.

Permalink | Comments (0) | Categories: Web design

WashPost’s quasi-registration

Tuesday | February 18, 2003 | 1:43 pm  

I’m not sure how long The Washington Post has been doing this, but I like it.

One of the many things about Internet publishing that differentiates it from other mediums is the ability to personalize and target users with appropriate content and advertising.

Indeed, I believe the strength of newspaper Web sites is, and will be, highly targeted advertising.

The only way to achieve highly targeted advertising is by making users register and tracking their content and advertising preferences.

But, The Washington Post has achieved a happy middle-ground between total registration and willy-nilly readership.

When a non-registered user views the site, the first time they click on a story link they’re presented with a page that asks for four things: gender, birth year, ZIP code and country.

That’s great! With age and zip code, you can get an educated guess as to the demographics of your user and deliver appropriate advertising.

The data you enter is saved in a cookie, but it expires eventually. So frequent viewers will have an enticement to register, and occasional readers get access with little hassle.

Permalink | Comments (0) | Categories: Business

Thesis, ahhh!

Tuesday | February 18, 2003 | 11:42 am  

I have to have my thesis proposal ready by March 10.

I am still working on theory.

I also have a content analysis to do for my methods class.

It’s due March 11.

I will strive to keep the site up to date, but please forgive any infrequency.

Completed thesis proposals, fifths of vodka or any other care packages can be mailed to chris@heisel.org.

Permalink | Comments (0) | Categories: College life

NYTimes’ ‘wide angle targeting’ good and bad

Thursday | February 13, 2003 | 6:34 pm  

An article on CNet today focuses on, what I think, is the next logical step in online advertising.

They report that the New York Times is planning to implement a program that would track what content users access and deliver ads to them, throughout the entire site, that matches their reading habits.

With Wide Angle Targeting, NYTimes.com is putting people into contextual categories by monitoring how many times they visit certain sections of the site, including health and sports. If a visitor reads five or more health-related stories per month, for example, then he or she would be a prime target for a diet ad while visiting the entertainment front page.

I think this is a great idea. The promise, and part of what differentiates the Internet as a medium from print or online, is the ability to get to know your audience better by instant tracking of usage.

Newspapers have to rely on post-hoc readership surveys to determine what their readers like, but I’ve always held, and past research has shown, that readers lie.

Readers know they’re being studied and will often tell researchers what they think they want to hear.

With the Internet, and for the New York Times this doesn’t have to, and isn’t, the case.

There have been privacy concerns about this sort of tracking before. I’ve always contended that as long as this tracking information isn’t sold or given to other marketers in individual terms like “Joe often reads book reviews, especially if the headline has the word ’sex’ in it,” then there’s no harm

However, the Times doesn’t seem to agree with me.

For now, the company is only delivering aggregate information to advertisers, being sure not to reveal personal data. But in the future, it is looking at being able to give the marketer more personal or demographic information.

This is the sort of privacy violation that makes users wary of giving any information to sites. That means less targeted, and less profitable ads, which could lead to more paid access.

That’s bad for users, advertisers and publications.

There’s nothing wrong with the Times offering extremely targeted ads.

Everything’s wrong with giving out data on user’s surfing habits.

I can only hope they wisen up.

Permalink | Comments (0) | Categories: Business

A refreshing viewpoint

Tuesday | February 11, 2003 | 1:30 pm  

George Oleson wrote a piece for Boxes and Arrows that provides a refreshing view of information architecture and user-centered design.

It’s one of the first times I’ve heard an user experience person say “focusing exclusively on users like this is just plain wrong.”

User experience folks can seem a little a clique-ish to the rest of the Web production world, some in particular.

I can only hope that the viewpoint expressed in Oleson’s article is not his alone.

Nor do I think that UX is bad thing. The willy-nilly, who cares about the user attitude that some “designers” take is appauling.

Web design, like all other design, is about solving problems. Balancing the needs of the user, aesthetics, the product, the business, etc. is part and parcel of the design world.

It’s just nice to hear from one camp that the rest of the variables in the design equation are important too.

Permalink | Comments (0) | Categories: Web design

Bigger is better

Tuesday | February 11, 2003 | 9:16 am  

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the New York Times is planning to have larger banner ads on its site.

courtesy of the Wall Street Journal

The new banner ads will take up about half the page on most resolutions, and the article did not mention if they would be GIFs, rich-media or a combination of the two.

I applaud the New York Times for making a move to bigger ad sizes — the traditional banner, box and button ads are awfully small.

While it is often uncouth to compare mediums, consider what an ad in a newspaper would look like if it took up the same percentage of page real-estate as a banner ad does on a Web site. It’d be pretty small and wouldn’t have much impact.

While I think the failure of most online ads, so far, can be attributed to a multidue of factors, size is one of them.

I know some people in the online community will be put off by the new, larger ad sizes. Some will say it impedes getting to the content — I say, if done right and targeted well, advertising is content.

Some will say the bigger ads are more annoying. What’s more annoying to me is having to pay to get content.

Permalink | Comments (0) | Categories: Business

It’s alive!

Saturday | February 8, 2003 | 3:12 pm  

As you can see, my Web site has finally gotten it’s facelift.

The new, all-CSS all the time design is up.

The Moveable Type back end is in place.

And, most dear to my heart, all of my Web and print clips are finally up, including my first redesign of themaneater.com

Now, all I have to do is the mountain of schoolwork that awaits me…

Permalink | Comments (0) | Categories: Web design

Blast from the past

Friday | February 7, 2003 | 8:45 pm  

I’ve got MP3s playing on my computer and I’m working on reconstructing an old front page of themaneater.com for my online clipbook.

It’s like it’s 1998 all over again — the year I was online production manager at The Maneater. Those were good times, as my friend Adrian can attest too.

MDC4L!

Permalink | Comments (0) | Categories: Web design

If you change it, they will come

Friday | February 7, 2003 | 3:43 pm  

An article on Poynter’s E-media tidbits confirmed a suspicion I’ve always had about Web design.

“Every area is going to change frequently, even several times a day,” says Robinson. “That was a key point of fan feedback — that for two and three days at a time, the site looked basically the same, even if we did put in new stuff. People saw that sameness and were on their way to something else.”

I’ve always felt that newspaper’s sites were constrained by a.) their backend softare and b.) tight deadlines and a content staff that may not feel comfortable changing a Web pages design.

This comment would seem to indicate that it’s not just enough for a Web site to publish new content, but to actually change some of it’s visuals so that folks know its changed.

The system that most newspapers use for updating their sites involves pushing a new headline, blurb and maybe a photo to the front page.

This would be the print equivalent of running every story in the same position as it was the day before, and just putting new headlines and new photos on the page.

I think news sites should try and use editorial judgement in their design. The New York Times does this to some extent when there is a big story — they run the Web equivalent of a strip headline and deck, and then the page continues as usual.

In my free time (ha ha), I’m going to try and do a mockup of what a site might be able to do.

Of course this concept would be easier on non-technical staffs if the backend software could easily change to one of several different layouts…

Permalink | Comments (0) | Categories: Journalism, Web design