A lot has been discussed in the technical press and media on the merits or otherwise of this law. These discussions have mainly focused on web design, implementation and web marketing but there has been little written to educate web users.

First contact

In reality most web users will first encounter the manifestation of this law when asked to accept cookies on visiting a website. Without guidance the web user will almost certainly say no!

This decision could affect their browsing experience and will certainly impact the website owner if their website is running any form of analytics, marketing or functionality requiring cookies to be accepted.

As a web user how does this affect me?

If you are asked to accept cookies what should you be aware of?

• What are cookies? Cookies are used by website owners to store various types of information on the machine you are using to browse their site. The UK Information Commissioners Office (ICO) identifies 4 categories of cookies; ‘strictly necessary’, ‘performance’, ‘functionality’ and ‘targeting’.
• What information are cookies storing? This depends on the websites design and use. Generally cookies are used to store website parameters specific to your browsing session. For example, in an ecommerce website cookies store the products in your shopping basket. The most common cookies used are web analytics that anonymously track your navigation through the website.
• What are ‘strictly necessary’ cookies? These cookies are critical to the correct operation of the website. For example, an ecommerce website has ‘strictly necessary’ cookies to ensure your selected goods get put in, and stay in your shopping basket. Without these cookies the site just wouldn’t work. There is no opt-out for these cookies other than not using the website.
• What about ‘performance’, ‘functionality’ and ‘targeting‘ cookies? These cookies typically enable additional functionality for the user, manage web analytics or various types of marketing. Declining these may reduce your web browsing experience; however, because they are not ‘strictly necessary’ the basic website will work.
• How do I know what cookies are being used? Website owners are encouraged to disclose what cookies they use to allow you to make an informed decision. Some web browsers have an option to display cookies.
• What about my web browser, can I use that to control cookies? Functionality is included in a number of web browsers to decline cookies. This can be an all or nothing situation which, if you are on an ecommerce site may require you to adjust your browser settings to purchase goods. Additionally, web browsers can also be set to delete cookies on closing; this is how I have my browser set.

What cookies is this website using?

We have no ‘strictly necessary’ cookies. We have ‘functionality’ cookies that record you have accepted cookies and what colour scheme you are running and ‘performance’ cookies that manage the anonymous collection of analytical information about your navigation round this website (Google Analytics). Use this link to see our cookie policy.

Finally …

I ask you to accept cookies from our site so that we can use the analytics to help us improve the overall browsing experience for everyone. As a bonus this will also allow you to play with the colour scheme changer rather than sticking with the default scheme.

Well, having looked into the rise of Smartphone usage within and outside the UK and I am bound to say yes, and this is why …

Smartphones – the figures

According to a 2011 survey by Ofcom over a quarter of all adults (27%) and almost half of all teenagers (47%) use a Smartphone with the Apple iPhone the most popular brand (32% ownership for adults) followed by BlackBerry (the favoured device for teens at 37%).

Taking adult Smartphone ownership, 58% are male and 42% female. For the teens there is a reversal with girls at 52% and boys on 48%.

Interestingly, when it comes to being addicted to their Smartphone 37% adults and 60% of teens agreed they are.

Finally, it has been recently reported that in 2011 Smartphone sales exceeded PC sales.

What do we now know?

If your target market is adults then it seems that over a quarter of all adults use Smartphones with the vast majority (81%) never switching them off. Nearly a quarter admitted to using them during meal times.

This is why the time has now come to upgrade your website to give them a good browsing experience.

Most websites are not geared to the small screens on Smartphones so the user has a lot of zooming in and out, scrolling left, right, up and down just to read what you have to say.

Wouldn’t it be nicer if you made this a lot easier and gave them an enjoyable browsing experience? It would certainly encourage them to contact you.

How can we help?

Talk to us about upgrading your website for use on Smartphones … Smartphones are taking over!

What’s Wrong with IE6?

It was designed when few international web standards existed and the capabilities required to deliver on-screen web content were fairly limited and easy to achieve with a dominant browser solution.

In addition, IE6 is more susceptible to security problems which were not envisaged when the browser was first designed.

Since 1995 web standards have been developed and new browsers have come to market. These browsers have converged to follow international web standards which benefits both consumers of web information and web developers who struggle to deliver rich content on a browser that is not up to the task.

Finally, later browsers provide better internet security features than IE6.

Why should I Upgrade?

Recent security breaches, well reported in the press, had the French and German governments recommending to their citizens not to use IE6.

Additionally, there is a growing movement of businesses and web application developers who are dropping IE6 support. This is because IE6 can no longer deliver the browsing experience expected by visitors because of shortcomings in available functionality and compatibility with other modern browsers.

Which Browser Should I Choose?

There are choices but all of them will give a better and more reliable browsing experience than IE6.

The dominant browser (although becoming less so) from Microsoft is IE8. The next most popular browser is Firefox, followed by Google Chrome, Safari and Opera.

All are available as free downloads with automatic updates as new releases are published.

The question is, how to determine what these should be to make it easy for a visitor to find your blog post?

Why categorise and tag blog posts?

Simply to enable visitors to quickly get to the blog post which interests them and answers their question.

In addition to adding categories and tags, posts can also be date/time coded. Using these three approaches (category, tag and date/time) allows postings to be ‘sliced and diced’ so that your visitor can get to the relevant blog post quickly.

How to identify categories and tags?

This is known as designing the blog taxonomy – identifying unique categories and tags that will be used for all blog posts.

There are two things to consider:

• The greater the number of categories and tags the finer grained it will be possible to set each blog post.
• Too many categories and tags can result in blog post subject overlaps which can easily results in too many low quality visitor search matches.

Getting started …

So, the best approach is to start off with a small number of categories. These could be the main goods or services you provide or main subjects that you will blog about. It is worth recording these.

Next, create some initial blogs and categorise them. When this is done identify an initial set of tags and tag these blogs.

Finally, review how the blog categories and tags are distributed and make any changes.

Thereafter, as you create new blogs try to use these blog categories and tags unless there is a good reason not to.

Business marketing messages, information, products and services shape a website structure. Identifying the information architecture is the process whereby all these elements are brought together. The process identifies the major web pages and how the site will be navigated for intuitive browsing (website usability).

To design the information architecture requires a knowledge of the business. Business First is the process to gain knowledge and understanding thus ensuring the published website reflects the business marketing aims.

Large Websites

The larger the website the more important it is to review the information architecture to ensure information is placed logically within it, and to ensure there is room to expand without significant website redesign.

Reflecting Your Business

One important point worth noting is that the website information architecture should reflect the way visitors see your business from the outside, and not how your business in structured internally.

Your website must have immediate visitor appeal (see website usability guidelines) but there is a balance between sufficient information for the visitor to make a decision and too much that they won’t read. Getting that balance right is the hard bit.

Authoring takes into consideration your business marketing (see Business First), website structure (the information architecture) and SEO requirements (see SEO).

Services Websites

Services websites require sufficient and engaging information to persuade visitors that making contact with you is worthwhile. Think of it as your business CV, and like any good CV it won’t get you a job offer but it will get you an interview.

eCommerce Websites

eCommerce websites have different information criteria covering products, descriptions, pricing, availability, reputation, and security. It is important that your website covers all these in sufficient depth to encourage visitors to undertake transactions.

Building a successful website requires an understanding of website usability blending website structure and content together.

Website Structure

Structure should follow established conventions to prevent visitors having to learn new ways of interacting.

Website structure covers for example, ‘look and feel’, search engine optimisation, accessibility and font styles and sizes.

Website Content

Content sentence complexity should be aimed at the target audience.

Web content covers writing style, language complexity, sentence and paragraph construction and information presentation.

Positive visitor experience

• Interaction. Visitors want to interact with your site at their own speed.
• Site navigation. Ensure the site layout and navigation are intuitive and follow established conventions.

Negative visitor experience

• Distractions. Heavy use of advertisements or moving text and images.
• Registration. Asking your visitor to register before providing basic information.
• Incomplete site. ‘Under construction’. If there is nothing to say, don’t say anything.

Visitors increasingly see ‘Search Engines’ as ‘Answer Engines’ to answer their question.

The Challenge

Visitors to your website want answers quickly, and with the minimum of effort expended.

They can be quite ruthless in assessing the benefits of spending time on your website.

This results in visitors ‘information snacking’. That is, coming to your website, collecting a piece of information, then going off to another website for another piece of information.

The challenge therefore is to answer the question and retain the visitor on your site long enough for them to undertake a transaction.

Positive visitor experience

• Content scanning. Visitors interact with your website by scanning content on the web page. If it looks interesting they will read it.
• Information foraging. Your site structure and content should support foraging to enable visitors to find the answer they seek.

Negative visitor experience

• Unreadable text. Block text, small fonts and poor colour contrasts are difficult to read on screen.
• Introduction screens. Visitors almost always opt to ‘Skip intro’ when flash introduction or splash screens are displayed.
• Browser plug-ins. Don’t expect visitors to download a browser plug-in to see your content.
• Page load times. Visitors are impatient. Too long and they will give up and go elsewhere.
• Browser incompatibility. Failure to display your web page correctly on their browser.
• Poor site navigation. Not knowing where they are and how to navigate their way round the website.