Search Analytics for Your Site; Conversations With Your Customers by Louis Rosenfeld is a book with a very clear target audience in mind. It is aimed primarily at those who work in user experience, information architecture, content, design and usability. That’s right – anyone who works with a website and is responsible for how users interact with the site. Whether it is in relation to what they read, or how they find it – those working in these areas will have no trouble finding something to take away from this book that will assist them in their daily activities.
Search Analytics for Your Site is all about learning how search analytics can help you to get the most out of analysing your search query data, how to gain insight from this data, and how to measure performance against pre-defined goals. In addition to this topics such as tips for improving performance and also improving navigation, metadata and content are also covered in the later chapters of the book, providing valuable assistance in utilising the data that has been gathered through the process of analysis.
The publishers state that “This book shows you how to use search analytics to carry on a conversation with your customers: listen to and understand their needs, and improve your content, navigation and search performance to meet those needs” and I agree wholeheartedly. The author takes the time to explain the differences between Search Site Analytics (and designing and building to optimise performance) and Search Engine Optimisation and states that “Search engine optimization looks for ways to make Web-wide searches (for example, via Google and Bing) more likely to find your site. SSA looks for ways to improve how searching works on your site, using your site’s own search engine. That said, SSA and SEO share much in common, and can influence each other.” This is important to remember as SSA can be used later on as a tool in order to assist in SEO, as it provides further insight into the keywords contained in the site that are of interest to users and can be focussed on in natural SEO and CPC search marketing.
The book is written in a simple style, and I was particularly impressed that the publisher has made many of the charts and diagrams used in the book available via flickr, for use when explaining the topics discussed in the book to colleagues in internal presentations etc. This could prove to be invaluable if coming up against resistance internally caused by a lack of understanding of the topic.
Above: An example of one of the figures available for linking from Flickr
All in all I would recommend this book as a useful guide should you work in any of the earlier identified roles. It is not a terrifically exciting subject to read up on, however, what it lacks in glamour it more than makes up for in importance. Packed with useful information and written in an authoritative but not patronising tone, the book should act as a solid reference for those looking to add a little more science to their user experience works, and as such include some quantitative data to augment your qualitative user research.
The book is available now from O’Reilly Media.
The New Community Rules – Marketing on the Social Web is a book by prolific blogger and all around social media expert Tamar Weinberg. The back of the book claims to help you “understand how social web technologies work, and learn the most practical and effective ways to reach people who frequent these sites.”
When first picking up the book it is a lot thicker than you would normally expect for a non-technical text. Weighing in at a healthy 346 pages, it is a weighty tome – the reason for this seems to be that the book is designed and written to cater for the majority of different potential users. Rather than just devote the text to those already working in the field, looking to brush up on their knowledge – the book assumes that you have no prior knowledge of the social web technologies discussed and holds your hand through the very basic right up to explaining the more detailed reasons why you might engage with users in a particular way, through to methods for quantifying success and setting targets. Although most of this introductory text was not directly applicable to me – I did use some of the information to help me explain the benefits of the various technologies to other people – and this is where the book really comes into its own. If you work within digital marketing already, but sometimes have a hard time explaining the reasons behind your recommendations or persuading clients to commit to digital marketing campaigns then this book will become a very useful part of your arsenal. Read More
In such a rapidly developing industry as digital marketing and web design it is hugely important to stay on top of all the latest technologies and techniques, not only for managing projects, but also to ensure that the right ideas make it out of client meetings and on to the design brief.
97 Things Every Project Manager should know is a collection of tips and tricks from some of the world’s top project managers and software developers. These tips are aimed at both IT and non-IT professionals and I can see how many of them could relate to almost any project.
The book is essentially a collection of short articles and extracts that show real life and theoretical examples based on project manager experience with the aim of imparting some of this “real” knowledge onto the reader. If you are looking for advice on a particular aspect of project management there is an index to point you towards information on the following topics; Agile Methods, Software Development, Managing People and Teams, International Issues or Distributed Teams, Managing Projects, Communications, Managing Stakeholders, Project Processes, Project Requirements, End-Users, Purchasing Issues, Self-Management and Web Development. Read More
Recently, I have been reading Mobile Design and Development by Brian Fling. A book that describes itself as being full of “practical techniques for creating mobile sites and web apps”. This is indeed the case as this excellent book covers all the basics that you will need to know in order to produce excellent websites and apps for mobile devices. It is important to mention that this book is not solely focused on the iPhone (unlike many other books of this ilk), but instead covers all of the main smartphone technologies available today.
The book covers topics from understanding the mobile eco-system, the differences between mobile and traditional design, putting mobile work into context, pros and cons of native application development versus mobile web apps, usability, testing and justifying the choice to work for mobile. All in all this book provides an excellent introduction to designing for mobile – something which is becoming increasingly more important in the current climate. With the convergence of various technologies it seems as though many of us are now carrying around small multimedia computers in our pockets, not just phones. These permanently connected devices provide so many opportunities for the budding mobile designer and content provider, and understand what makes these platforms different in vital to the success of any project. Read More
Oh dear Adobe, oh dear. Once more you have managed to get your big stirring spoon out and get all the tech media in a rage about Apple, and guess what – this time they didn’t even do anything wrong! Following the recent launch of Mac OSX 10.7 Lion, Adobe claimed that Apple had removed support for hardware acceleration from their operating system – making Flash appear to perform less effectively than it had done under 10.6 Snow Leopard. The media jumped on the accusation, always keen to get an attack going on Apple.
Shortly after, the following post appeared on the Adobe Flash Player Team Blog.
“We saw that there were some questions today related to Flash Player 10.3 support for Mac OS X Lion (10.7) related to hardware video acceleration. To avoid any more confusion, we wanted to clarify:
The final release of Mac OS X Lion (10.7) provides the same support for Flash hardware video acceleration as Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6). The previous “Known Issue” described in a tech note suggesting that video hardware acceleration was disabled in Lion was incorrect and based on tests with a pre-release version of Mac OS X Lion that related to only one particular Mac GPU configuration. We continue to work closely with Apple to provide Flash Player users with a high quality experience on Mac computers.”
Sounds like a lot of fuss about nothing to me, as usual.
