Don't Make Me Think!

Don't Make Me Think is a short and very easy-to-read book by Steve Krug about human computer interaction and web usability. The book has a very simple premise, exactly as its title says, that a good program or website should let users accomplish their intended tasks as easily and directly as possible. Krug points out that people are good at satisficing, that is taking the first available solution to their problem, so design should take advantage of this. He frequently cites Amazon.com as an example of a well-designed site that manages to allow high quality interaction even though the site gets bigger and more complex every day. Krug cites Amazon's intelligent use of file folder-like tabs.

The book in itself is supposed to be an example of concision and extremely well focused writing. The goal was to make a text that could be read by an executive on a one or two-hour flight.

I have spent years at RIT studying how to make applications and specifically websites easy to use. I would summarize this book to be a quick-start-guide to getting you heading in the right direction when it comes to what to put where on your website. It is critical that you have this book if you are determined to make a great website.

To further wet your appetite for usability, check out this episode from DevSource featuring Steve Krug talking about usability.

Search Engine Marketing

Search Engine Marketing, or SEM, is a form of Internet Marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in the Search Engine results pages (SERPs) and has a proven ROI (Return on Investment). According to the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization, SEM methods include: Search Engine Optimization (or SEO), paid placement, and paid inclusion. Other sources, including the New York Times define SEM as the practice of buying paid search listings, different from SEO which seeks to obtain better free search listings.

Market Structure

In 2006, North American advertisers spent US$9.4 billion on search engine marketing, a 62% increase over the prior year and a 750% increase over the 2002 year. The largest SEM vendors are Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter. As of 2006, SEM was growing much faster than traditional advertising.

History

As the number of sites on the Web increased in the mid-to-late 90s, search engines started appearing to help people find information quickly. Search engines developed business models to finance their services, such as pay per click programs offered by Open Text in 1996 and then Goto.com in 1998. Goto.com later changed its name to Overture in 2001, and was purchased by Yahoo! in 2003, and now offers paid search opportunities for advertisers through Yahoo! Search Marketing. Google also began to offer advertisements on search results pages in 2000 through the Google AdWords program. By 2007 pay-per-click programs proved to be primary money-makers for search engines.

Search Engine Optimization consultants expanded their offerings to help businesses learn about and use the advertising opportunites offered by search engines, and new agencies focusing primarily upon marketing and advertising through search engines emerged. The term "Search Engine Marketing" was proposed by Danny Sullivan in 2001 to cover the spectrum of activities involved in performing SEO, managing paid listings at the search engines, submitting sites to directories, and developing online marketing strategies for businesses, organizations, and individuals. In 2007 Search Engine Marketing is Stronger than ever with SEM Budgets up 750% as shown with stats dating back to 2002 vs 2006.

Ethical questions

Paid search advertising hasn't been without controversy, and issues around how many search engines present advertising on their pages of search result sets have been the target of a series of studies and reports by Consumer Reports WebWatch, from Consumers Union. The FTC also issued a letter in 2002 about the importance of disclosure of paid advertising on search engines, in response to a complaint from Commercial Alert, a consumer advocacy group with ties to Ralph Nader.