Paul Rouke - Usability Professional

A study carried out jointly by BITKOM and Oracle found that ‘More than 50 percent of German companies use the means of communication provided by web 2.0.’

So why are UK companies taking so long to catch on? Below are a few issues which I think are to blame.

Afraid of the unknown

For many, the online world is something they are still getting to grips with and at first it can be a daunting task to keep up to speed with the continually changing online landscape. But we all know not to knock it until you’ve tried it, and those who aren’t are getting seriously left behind.

Not buying into the idea of ‘web 2.0’

Frequently I hear ‘but we have a website, we don’t need anything else’. These little figures from Microsoft digital advertising solutions, speak for themselves:

• 73% of UK social networkers have visited the personal space of a brand
• 16% have had a dialogue or sent a message to a brand
• 68% will visit a website related to what they have seen or read on a friend’s site

It’s not enough to simply have a website – consumer’s use a range of different networks and sites to find out about your business and brand.

According to research by Hitwise (Hopkins, 2006) , social networking site MySpace is responsible for more Traffic flow into the HMV.co.uk music portal than both the Yahoo and MSN UK search engines.

Confusion on how to measure the results

There’s no jiggery pokery involved, and compared to some forms of activity this is one of the more tractable and measurable activities. On the simplest level of measurement; conducting searches to determine the number of times a brand was mentioned on forums and blogs is a good self analysis tool. However there are some pretty smart ways and means of tracking conversations about your brand which range from monitoring online share of voice within a particular sector, analyses of content and tracking micro blogs to name a few.

Not sure where to start?

A good starting point is a company blog, something that we here at PRWD could help you set up. It gives your customers and possible consumers the opportunity to see a more personal side to the company and allows them to participate and comment – and as marketeers and usability professionals know the key to building brand loyalty is getting the consumer highly involved with the brand.

Google’s famous motto ‘do no evil’ seems to be in conflict with the terms and conditions of their new browser Chrome – Google stated that they can use any of your copyrighted material posted to the web via Chrome. This has since been retracted but inevitably makes me question Google’s true agenda. The other thing which strikes me is the similarities between the Microsoft and Google chrome logos.

Impressive Look, Speed and Ease of Use

Ignoring my initial hesitance I downloaded the browser and I have to say I’m impressed with the look, speed and ease of use.
I’m also please to see Google have created a URL box which also works as a search function, called the omniBox. A great example of applying user centered design. The browser is a lot less cluttered also meaning that more appears above the fold and its faster to load. Another nice feature is that you can grab tabs to open them up as new windows.
Chrome, which is still in beta version, has had a few teething problems; its unable to use some plugins and is currently only available for Windows. Also if you type :% into the search bar it makes Chrome crash, but I’m sure these will all be ironed out in the near future.

Google, The Big Brother

My real shock was when I opened up my history. It had listed my history pre-Chrome, showing information such as who’s profiles I had viewed on Facebook, emails I had sent and documents I had opened on my desktop (with exact times) and the option to open them direct from the browser. Its a useful feature and there is the option of ‘incognito mode’ but it a little too scary to think what people could do with such information if they got a hold of my laptop, not to mention what Google can do. I’m all for intuitive search but for me however, it’s a little too far – I think it’s time to de-Google.

If you have already tried it, how are you finding this new web browser, and what are your views on the advanced history functionality that can track your daily activity to such depths?