In Don’t Make Me Think, Steve Krug gives a spot-on guide to website usability— all that stuff that helps visitors to your site find what they’re looking for. What Krug’s book doesn’t touch on is the relationship between usability and search engine optimization (SEO) —how visitors actually find your site in the first place.

I really don’t fault Krug for this (too much) since it’s not his area of primary expertise, and there’s plenty written elsewhere on SEO. Still, a nod to SEO might have been nice since some principles of usability that Krug advocates can appear to be in conflict with best practices in SEO.

If you’ve read Krug’s book along with a few guides to SEO, you probably know what I mean.

The current maxim for SEO is “content is king” with textual content sitting high atop the searchability throne. If you want search engines to find your site, you need good copy. A picture may say a thousand words to most of us, but to bat-blind Web crawlers, a picture only whispers whatever you can squeeze into its alt tag.

In contrast, to make sites more user-friendly, Krug suggests you “Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what’s left.” (Cue hearty shouts of approval from graphic designers everywhere.) Read the rest of this entry »

A while back I met with an industry colleague of mine who admitted to struggling with a moral dilemma because of her involvement in advertising. She mentioned that she regularly considered getting out of the business. I found this particularly interesting since most of my friend’s work was done for nonprofit organizations that help people. She felt that there is something inherently “bad” about advertising. Hollywood often portrays big businesses as “evil” (when was the last time you went to a movie and a big corporation was the good guy?), and my friend seemed to have a similar take on her own profession. I thought it was sad that a person would continue to work day after day in a job they feel is taking advantage of people.

I don’t feel that way at all. Sure, there is a dark side to the industry. I’m thinking of the schlocky “Girls Gone Wild” TV spots that come on late at night, those unsolicited phone calls for time-shares during the dinner hour, and of course spam (never before has anyone been so concerned about my medication needs and my opportunity to meet Russian girls who want to get to know me better). But there is a downside to almost every good thing. A glass of wine with dinner is fine, but we all know what happens when alcohol consumption goes unchecked. It’s a matter of balance. We can always tune advertising out—that is, until we need something. For years I ignored the Sunday ad section of our local paper until I wanted to buy a snow blower. And then I was all over the ad inserts looking at options and matching prices from Home Depot, Lowe’s, Sears and others.

No, for the most part advertising is good. It’s the grease that turns the wheels that run our free-market economy. And a free market spurs products and services to keep improving, raises the standard of living and even helps prevent civil unrest and wars. Advertising helps people find goods and services they need, educates them about their benefits, helps them save money and even entertains them. (Remember the Super Bowl ads?)

Further, in the nearly 30 years I’ve been involved in the industry all but a few (I can count them on one hand) of the vendors, managers and creatives I’ve worked with have been fine, upstanding, moral people who really want to help society.

Has advertising enhanced your life? Think about the last time you needed something—say, an electric hedge trimmer, groceries you could afford, toys for the kids at Christmas or a jacket in the springtime. How do you know where to go and what to buy? You got it: advertising.