However, there are still sites that don’t work. But what are these sites doing so wrong? Are they bad sites? And does the fault lie with the iPhone and Apple, or the sites themselves? In this post, I’ll list the five most common problems I’ve come across when using the iPhone to browse the web, and ways around them.

Flash

By far the biggest hurdle (but not the most common, see below) that needs to be overcome is Flash. Not only is it popular and used for a variety of uses, but many sites use only Flash. This renders them inaccessible on the iPhone. The two biggest offenders are those sites that use Flash for navigation and those sites that use Flash for media. In the grand scheme of things, navigation is the biggest problem, if a site uses Flash for it’s primary navigation it is basically useless on the iPhone. Multimedia is less of an issue as it often provides only supplementary content. It’s worth remembering that text replacement tools like sIFR use flash and can also cause problems if not implemented with due care. Although sIFR itself should be OK so long as it is implemented correctly.

To avoid problems with iPhone users, sites should avoid using Flash.  If you are hosting multimedia content, then use a well supported format and codec (e.g. .h264).  If you are using Flash for navigation, then more fool you.  Switch to XHTML and CSS and become accessible to everyone.  If the use of Flash is unavoidable, then following the WCAG guidelines is a good place to start when thinking about not only making your site accessible to Mobile Safari users but also those with disabilities and impairments.  Provide an alternative version of the site, or at least the content in question, and clearly link to it.

Applets

Along with Flash, the ASA singled out Java applet support, or lack thereof, as one of the reasons for banning the iPhone 3g advert.  Fortunately, Applets aren’t as big a part of the Internet as they once were.  You no longer have to regularly block MS Java and Active X applets at every turn.  However, they still exist.  So if you are thinking about adding some functionality to a site, and someone suggests using an applet, consider whether the same thing could be done in Javascript for example, just to give iPhone, and other mobile web users, a chance.

Fixed Footers

I’ve been keeping an eye out for a new job recently, this involves trawling the popular job sites for things that may be of interest to me. However one of the biggest sites out there, Monster, is effectively unusable on the iPhone.  The image to the left is a screen shot of Monster.co.uk as seen through Mobile Safari.  As you can see, there is a bar fixed on the bottom of the screen that sits out of line with the rest of the text.  If the same page is visited in  desktop browser, the bar stays fixed to the bottom of the browser view port even after the page has been scrolled.  In Mobile Safari, you simply cannot scroll the page.  If you do try to scroll the page, the entire viewable area moves and then snaps back into place, the same behaviour as is seen when you reach the bottom of a normal page.  Apparently, Monster doesn’t want to target the iPhone using demographic.  Odd that, because most recruiters bend over backwards to explicitly target the educated, fairly well paid, technologically savvy people in their 20s and 30s.

This may be a bug in Mobile Safari, but quite frankly this is a horrible idea from a usability point of view even when it works, so the blame should lie squarely in the laps of Monster.  People don’t expect elements to move with the page, and anything constantly position at the bottom of the view port, such as this, will surely be considered by most users to be part of the browser and promptly ignored.  Probably not the effect Monster were after.

Quite frankly, the fixed footer, and in fact any elements on a page that necessarily follow the user as they scroll, should be dumped.  Not just for the benefit of iPhone users, but for the good of everyone.

Drag and Drop

We’re (unfortunately) seeing more and more implementations in web applications of drag and drop functionality. Again, like fixed rooters I have a general usability issue with drag and drop on the web, in most cases. It’s not an interface feature people expect to see on the web, and as such it has to be treated with great care. On the iPhone, the technique you would use for dragging and dropping is used to position the Safari viewing area, so using the same interface method for something else just isn’t possible, and if it was it would be hugely confusing. Again, the solution (in my opinion) doesn’t just benefit iPhone users, but everyone, and the solution is to find a better way of performing that task in your web application.

Hover Behaviour

The last, and most common, problem with Mobile Safari comes from sites that use hover elements for various effects.  When you are using an iPhone, you do tend to notice how many sites use hover effects and how many different implementations and uses there are out there.  Take Flickr for example.  Often heralded as the way to gradually reveal a complicated set of features to users through exploration.  They highlight certain areas of pages when you mouse over them and give you instructions.  See the screen shot below taken from my Flickr photostream.

As you can see, the title on the left is highlighted in yellow when I mouse over it to indicate it is editable.  If I leave my mouse there for long enough, it also provides a tool-tip.  It is not possible to get this information on an iPhone because you can’t hover over anything.  And it doesn’t stop at Flickr, there are sites that use hover behaviour for expandable navigation menus, to show information that is not accessible in any other way and to provide extra features.

There are two ways to avoid this problem on your site.  Firstly, you can avoid using hover behaviour.  Secondly, you can carefully describe that hover behaviour exists (which you should be doing anyway, as it’s not a standard interface method on the web) and making sure your coding is robust enough to handle clicking as well as hovering.  For example, if you have a navigation list that expands when the user hovers their mouse over it, make sure it also expands when they click it.

Bonus! Write bad code

Mobile Safari manages to provide the “Full Web Experience” by allowing users to zoom in and out of pages to examine different levels of detail far easier than any other device.  It does this by intelligently determining the area of the site the user wants to view when they try to zoom in.  It does this by examining the structure of the page to pick out block elements.  For this to work, your site must be at least fairly well structured.  So make sure your lists, paragraphs and headings are correctly marked up, just to make the iPhone’s life that little easier.

Anything to add?

Do you have anything to add to this list? Is there anything I’ve missed out?  I have noticed certain sites being really slow and unresponsive on the iPhone, notably the BBC News homepage.  I believe this is because of the unnecessary news ticker they have at the top of the screen.  What do you think?

A way to … “to make it as easy as possible to create and maintain pages for large countries as it is for small ones, whether they are currently the location of big news stories or not. Or to build pages for a politicians, famous people and historical figures that alert users to relevant programmes and news stories they might otherwise miss. Or to showcase the best and latest things the BBC has produced about topical issues, historical events, big organisations and popular hobbies. And we wanted to produce a page all about dogs.“

They way I look at Topics, sorry /Topics, is the BBC’s attempt to replicate Friend Feed.  For those not in the know, Friend Feed allows you to follow a user and receive updates on everything they do on the web.  The BBC has put two twists on this idea.  Firstly, the updates are in fact news stories from the BBC’s News Website.  So instead of seeing pictures of your sister’s cat, you’ll see that George Bush has invaded Mexico on a white stallion.  The other notable difference is that all the updates come from a single source, the BBC.  So while the service acts as an aggregator of information, it’s actually aggregating information that’s already held in one place.

One of the interesting aspects of this service is that the BBC are effectively Judge, Jury and Executioner.  They produce the news, and then decide which aspects of the news gets recorded against a Topic.  I’m not sure what the planned longevity is of this service, or how permanent they intend the data to be.  But the opportunity for the BBC to effectively write the history of a certain /Topic shouldn’t be looked on lightly.

I’m also currently struggling to see why this has been separated out from the rest of the BBC site.  This service is surely something that would be best utilised tightly integrated into the BBC website.  At the moment, it’s not integrated at all.  If you view a Topic, for example Globalisation, and then read one of the stories, there’s no link back to the topic.  I’m sure the real power of this facility is allowing users to further explain a topic introduced to them through a news story.  I think they’re also missing an opportunity to define the topic.  I certainly suggest that the BBC define the topic themselves, but a link or pertinent quote from a definitive source (e.g. Wikipedia) would greatly enhance the usefulness of the /Topic page.

Something else that’s slightly confusing is the way the BBC classifies its News content.  Looking at the front page you have stories sorted by physical location, as well as broad topic.  Obviously there are significant overlaps between the two methods of classification, which aren’t really resolved or acknowledged.  Throw into the mix this new, third way of classifying data and it may become a source of confusion.  The BBC have to be very careful with the way they structure and promote this feature.

At the moment, the accuracy and relevance of the stories returned in each /Topic are a bit hit and miss.  Take the George W Bush page.  It’s currently filled with stories about Barack Obama and general American Politics.  No doubt this is due to the fact George Bush is mentioned in the stories, but they aren’t necessarily about him.  So a clear definition of what each /Topic page is about, and what causes content to appear on those pages, is needed.  For a service like this to be truly useful, the results have to be predictable in so much as you aren’t surprised to see something appear because it’s not in line with the rest of the content.  A distinction needs to be made between stories about the topic and stories that involve or affect the topic.

All in all, it looks promising.  It’s quite obvious the service is in beta, the lack of Topics and integration belie this.  I think the biggest step in it’s progression will be a clearly defined purpose and vision.  As I touched on above, the question of what a topic page is needs to be answered, and it needs to be answered publicly so people know whether it’s something they can actually use.  It will be really interesting to see how this service develops.

Embracing Width, Sort Of…

One of the biggest changes has seen the width of the site increase. As a user or a widescreen laptop, this is a welcome change. This new, expanded, design should have opened the door for the designers to better fit the content to the space, however, this hasn’t really happened. There’s been lots of talk in the BBC Blogs about the new design embracing multimedia, allowing for larger, higher quality images and videos to be integrated with the content. At this moment in time, this is being done badly. Take, for example, the current Sport Homepage, pictured to the right. There’s a fairly dominating picture of Fabio Capello in the centre of the screen, with very little actual content above the fold. One of the strengths of the old section pages, especially the sport section (which I happened to frequent regularly), was the amount of high level information that could be garnered from the “above the fold” area of the page.

White Space for the sake of White Space

I don’t mean to harp on about the sport page, but I do think it’s by far the worse of the redesigned pages. One of the issues I have with it is the use of white space. Now white space is clearly an important element of web (and print) design, and one of the BBC designers has clearly heard that on the grape vine. Unfortunately, they haven’t quite grasped the aesthetics of a web design that utilises white space effectively.

Taking the sport page as an example, there is white space in wholly inappropriate areas. Taking a look down the page (pictured to the left) you can see that the use of white space is uneven and badly balanced. The area above the fold, which is crucial when trying to convey information quickly, has been underutilised, with too much white space in inappropriate areas. This is compounded by the fact that almost a third of the screen is taken up with vacant branding. I’ve added an image below which highlights the actual content on the page, above the fold. When viewing this image, please remember that one of the comments made about the redesign by Richard Titus (Acting Head of User Experience & Design for FM&T ) was:

More importantly, much more of this information is content, rather than blind links to various areas of the site you could have just as easily bookmarked, adding greater value & utility to the audience.

Ok, that was a comment about the redesign of the home page, but it’s such a lofty goal it should really be applied across the board. To see how the sports section page stacks up, I’ve highlighted all the actual content in green. And I’ve been kind. I’ve highlighted the images that have been added with each post, even though they may very well be generic stock images and certainly don’t add anything to the story.

As you can see, it fails by their own metrics.

Fonts, Type Faces and Weights, Oh My!

Going hand in hand with the redesign has been a fairly major rethink of the fonts used. I was previously in the camp that thought the fonts used on the BBC site added to it’s overall dated look. A refresh of fonts is certainly welcome. This is one aspect of the site design that I think is mostly successful. The new, or refreshed, fonts look cleaner and on the whole are more readable. There some exceptions, the fonts in red seem particularly difficult to read and need to be a bit weightier and, once again, the sport section lets the side down by using an awful mismatch of fonts throughout the page, which just adds to the general shabby, confusing, unstructured look of the page. Considering the care that seems to have gone into choosing the fonts for the homepage, the complete lack of care taken on this page is surprising.

The Home Page

Possibly the biggest change of all has come in the shape of the new BBC Home Page. They’ve taken a similar approach to services such as Net Vibes, with a modular approach and customisable content. It’s a bit of a walled garden however, with content being taken purely from the BBC and no option to add anything from other contributors. This isn’t perfect, and it prevents it from being a true alternative to something like Net Vibes.

There are a couple of things that annoy. As I mentioned above, there’s no way to add the content you really want. This extends to the TV and Radio modules. So what would be a useful tool, a list of what’s currently on TV, instantly becomes much less useful because you only get the listing for the BBC channels. I’ve also noticed that if you rearrange the content boxes, and then add a new one, the arrangement you’ve chosen is completely lost. it’s not as if the new box is added to the top of the stack, moving everything else down, because its not. It seems random.

There is also a fixed element to this otherwise customisable design. A featured, or promo area, located in the top right of the page is fixed and cannot be removed, moved or resized. This has been much discussed in the BBC blogs, with a need for an anchor to the page being referred to. I don’t buy this. Surely if the user needed an anchor to the page, they could leave the promo box there. Personally, I don’t want or need an anchor, and the homepage service I actually use doesn’t have one, yet still works fine from both a functional and aesthetic standpoint. There were also claims that it will be used to push content other than promotional material. This isn’t currently happening. I can understand the BBC’s wish to remain in control of part of the page, but it just serves to emphasise the fact that they are only half embracing the Web 2.0. It’s the difference between a transvestite and someone who actually goes through with the op.

There are some real successes. The effort an consideration that’s been put into validity and accessibility is truly exceptional. Probably the best I’ve ever seen for a page of this type. And let’s not forget, making dynamic content accessible is very very difficult. There’s also a nice layout to the page. Fonts have been chosen well and the colours are user-selectable. Each content box is spaced nicely from the next with enough room to breath, but not so much as to make it appear unduly sparse.

Summary

I think the redesign is very hit and miss. Some strange style decisions have been taken and there’s a lack of cohesion between the various “sub-sites” or sections. There’s also a feeling that they’ve held back a bit, not fully committed to the ideas that were driving the redesign. It feels like the sort of project where the engineers brainstormed a really sleek approach, only to have the manager curtail it because they’re a bit out of touch. A bit uncommitted. There are some points that need to be addressed. Some of the layouts don’t quite work, some of the text is a bit difficult to read (all down to colouration and weight choices, easily fixed but should never have been released as is) and parts feel only half implemented (which, in their defence, they are). There also seems to be less adherence to the strong grid based design that was such a dominating feature of the old design. It’s still there, but not as tightly implemented. Which for me, is a shame.

For some inspiration, I’d love to see the BBC looking around the web. Trying to get a grasp on the trends currently out there. For my money, people like adii with his Premium News WordPress Themes are at the cutting edge of laying out news on the web in an attractive, organised way. By the way, adii is currently having a competition where he’s giving away a developers package of the Premium News Themes. You’d get all 7 themes, including the Gazette Edition, my personal favourite and one I’d love to use. The reason I mention that, and especially the gazette version, is that, in my opinion, it does a much better job of laying out content than the newly designed BBC site. It seems to embrace all the ideals the BBC set out with but manages to achieve them in a much more pleasing way.

I do really like the daylight tracker though.

When the PageRank drop happened, many were surprise by the scale of the up date and the size of some of the sites affected. Established, highly successful blogs such as Engadget suddenly dropped PageRank. It was dramatic to say the least. The way PageRank works is that if a site with a PageRank of 8, for example, links to you, your site gains a portion of that PageRank. Therefore, in the vast majority of cases getting a link from a site with a high PageRank is better than a link from a site with a low PageRank. The cascading nature of PageRank is one of the defining features. The result is a site can acheive a moderate PageRank with just a few links from prominent sites. Sites like Engadget. To me, this is fascinating. By reducing the PageRank of some of the highest rated sites, Google is also reducing the PageRank of all sites that were benefiting from a cascaded PageRank. And then sites linked to from the second tier sites will also get hit. Google, in one swoop net reduced the PageRank across the internet. I believe this lead to some people believing they had been punished by Google where, in fact, they were indirectly affected. Casualties of war if you will.

Now we understand the implications of this, we need to figure out why Google would want to do it. And I can think of an obvious answer. Every site has a certain PageRank value attributed to it, even if it is a brand new site with no incoming links. It has to be worth something. This leaves Google with a problem, every time a new site is created, it can pass PageRank on to another site. And let’s face it, new sites are springing up at an alarming rate these days. So Google has to keep recalculating PageRank based on the number of sites it indexes. I’m not saying this isn’t possible, in fact, knowing Google, I’d be 100% certain that the PageRank algorithm takes into account the number of sites currently indexed. What I would guess though, is that Google didn’t count on as many sites springing up at the rate they are currently. This Text Link Ads problem seems like the perfect excuse to balance the algorithm and get PageRank down to a more manageable level. And as I mentioned above, it’s not just the direct punishments, this move reduces PageRank across the entire internet.

So the net result is Google increasing the net value of each PageRank point.  Or, to put it another way, a PageRank of 4 is worth more now that it was a month ago.  If Google decided not to balance out the PageRank some way or another, you would end up with a disproportionately high PageRank attributed to average sites through sheer quantity, and not quality, which Google would prefer.

Below I’ve listed some key points that bloggers should consider when designing, or redesigning their blog. I should point out that I take a holistic view of usability, which is something many so-called usability consultants don’t agree with. I guess this puts me firmly in the “user experience” camp but I fail to see the difference between the aim of the two approaches.

So what areas should blog design concentrate on when thinking about usability?

Is the Purpose Obvious?

Most blogs have a purpose. Whether it’s to get across a point of view, promote a product or service or cover the latest news, every single one has a purpose. It’s key to convey this purpose to your readership, especially if that purpose relates to an action you want the reader to take. In these cases, the blog becomes an extended sales page, and so should contain many of the same elements. It’s probably best if I give an example.

I stumbled across a blog called Scribe Fire earlier. It’s a fairly nice looking blog, very clean and easy to read. Upon looking at the front page it’s obvious that the blog is for a product called Scribe Fire. That’s all well and good, lots of software products have blogs these days. What makes this blog different is that the purpose of the product isn’t stated anywhere. I defy anyone to explain to me what Scribe Fire is from reading the first page of the blog. You can see some recent changes and features, and I know what the latest version is, but I don’t know what it actually does. This is a bit of an oversight by the designer and is compounded by two things. Firstly, this is the landing page of the www.scribefire.com domain. This isn’t a blog linked to from the “main” site, as many product suppliers do, if someone hears Scribe Fire they will end up here. Secondly, there aren’t any clearly worded links that would point to the purpose of this piece of software. There’s a “Getting Started” link, which implies that this is where you go after installing the software. Following this link confirms this.

By the way, Scribe Fire is a FireFox plugin that allows you to quickly post content to your blog. Why they don’t have that simple text anywhere on the front page is beyond me. You can get a description of what Scribe Fire does by clicking on the “Download” link (which actually takes to to a completely separate site), but why would you want to download a piece of software without knowing what it does?

Categories, Tags and Archives. Oh My!

To access the vast majority of content on a blog, a reader is going to have to leave the front page. When exploring a blog, there are a few ways the content may be organised. Firstly, there are the “Archives”, which are typically organised by date. Then you have the Tags and the Categories. Personally, I don’t see the point in the date based archive. If I’m navigating a blog, I’d have no way of knowing when a post I’m interested in was actually posted. I wouldn’t know whether to go to September 2006 or April 2002 to look for a specific post. So I’m definitely a fan of Tags and Categories.

There are some problems with providing links to Categories and Tags, namely that there tend to be a lot of them. There are a few options available, like listing them in the sidebar, Tag Clouds or putting them in a drop down list. I favour simply listing links for two reasons. Firstly, it follows the web usability convention of linking to new pages. Secondly, I’m not a fan of using drop downs to link to other pages. Why not? Well, drop downs are essentially form elements. They are typically used for providing information to a page, things like selecting a colour when buying an item of clothing. Using the same page element to navigate away from the page will confuse less experienced users. Another factor that will confuse less experienced users is the multiple ways of dealing with navigation drop downs. Some will change page as soon as the option has been selected where some require a button to be pressed. In my personal experience, I’ve found it difficult to label and name drop downs such as these effectively. For example, take a look at the category drop down at Techie Buzz (screenshot to the right). By clicking on the “categories” button will I get taken to a list of categories, as the name implies, or the category I’ve chosen in the drop down, which is what happens. There is also a default category, which further confuses the issue.

Link Me Up

I’ll keep this one short and simple. Just because it’s a blog, there’s no need to treat links differently to any other web site. So, they should be carefully and descriptively worded, underlined and relevant. I can’t click something if I don’t know it’s a link.

Good Form, Chap!

Many forget that most blogs do still have forms within them. The most common example is the comment form which, despite it’s simplicity, can still cause problems. Similar to the Links point above, there’s no reason to not follow standard usability guidelines just because your on a blog. So, something you may want to concentrate on.

• Readability – I’ve lost count of the number of blogs that, for some unknown reason, have tiny text boxes. There are two ways this can play out, either the box itself is too small or the text within the box is too small. At the end of the day, I link back to my blog when leaving a comment, so if I leave a poorly conceived comment, or one riddled with spelling or grammatical mistakes, it’s going to negatively impact on the image of me as a blogger. So I’d rather not run the risk. To solve this, you may want to look at Forms that Leap Out.
• Required Fields – Most forms have compulsory elements, make sure your readers are aware of what they are.
• Feed Back – Even if you design the perfect form, people will still make mistakes. When this happens you need to provide them with usefull feedback. This should include stating exactly what’s gone wrong, why, in which fields and how they correct it. Tone is very important when providing this feedback, and should be helpfull and supportive, not condescending. You should also leave the data the user entered in place to avoid the situation where a user spends ten minutes writing a comment and then gets it cleared when they put a typo in their email address.
• Spam Prevention – Unfortunately, spam prevention needs to be considered by all bloggers. Most use a tool like Akismet to catch spam after it’s been submitted but increasingly CAPTCHAs are being used. If you use CAPTHA you need to consider a few things. Firstly, you need to offer an audible challenge for those who cannot actually see the CAPTHA test. Secondly, there are CAPTCHAs which use mathematical questions, or similar. Be carefull when setting the difficulty and be sure not to discriminate against those who’s first language is not your own. Even better, I would recommend using the previously mentioned ProtectWebForm CAPTCHA which tends not to even challenge genuine users.

I hope you enjoyed this post. I deal with usability every day and I really can’t overstate quite how important it is. With that in mind I’m announcing two things. Firstly, I’ll be redesigning this blog with an emphasis on usability. Secondly, I’m offering free usability assessments to bloggers. When I was doing this as a job, I would charge over £50 ($100) for this, so take the opportunity while you can. If you are interested, leave a comment or send me an email and I’ll consider you. Each assessment can take a long time, so I’m only looking to do one a month, depending on the level on interest.

The first comment someone operating on behalf of LinkWorth was on a valid post, so I followed the link and took a look at their website. Bearing in mind I hadn’t identified them as spammers at this point, so I was pretty open to them as a company, and I’m all for additional income sources. Browsing through their website, a couple of things worried me about some of the services they offer.  In amongst the usual TLA style link advertisments, there is a product called LinkPost.  LinkPost allows advertisers to purchase posts on blogs of their choice, similar to PayPerPost and ReviewMe. The most worrying point in the advertising spiel is the following:

Control. You may set length requirements, keyword linking, review topic, and whether or not the review will be “positive” in nature.

Browsing their site you will also notice that this point is emphasised in the “Advertisers” section but only briefly mentioned in the “Partners” (i.e. publishers) section.

Classy. So essentially, if you sign up to review a product the advertiser, your new pay master, can force you to write a positive review. There is also a throw away line in the copy that goes “Why pay for someone to bash you, right?”. Well I can think of plenty of reasons for paying for a review that “bashes” you.  Many people purchase reviews from prominent bloggers, such as John Chow, in order to receive constructive critiscism from someone who knows the industry. In the long run, this honest information can be far more worthwhile and valuable than a single, blinded, positive review.  Especially if you are exposed as having paid for positive reviews.

Put yourself in the shoes of an advertiser. Now you can force people to write positive reviews for your product, even if they don’t like it. What could be better than that? Only one thing, imagine how great it would be if you could write the review yourself and have it appear on a popular site. Well, unsurprisingly, LinkWorth has you covered with their LinkBB product which literally allows an advertiser to write some content that then goes on to appear on the publishers blog.

I have two major issues with this. Firstly, if I see LinkWorth advertisments on any blog, I’m going to leave straight away. The reason is simple, I can no longer trust that the content on said blog is the honest opinion of the author.  It is irrelevant whether or not the blog participates in either of the schemes I’ve mentioned above, affiliation with the company is enough to plant the seeds of doubt.  Secondly, I would assume that advertisers like the opportunity to place content on popular sites that carry with them a level of trust. Reviews only really work on trusted sites. Unfortunately, what most advertisers won’t realise is that through the very act of advertising on these sites, they will be diminishing the already fragile trust of the audience.

I think it’s best, as always, for you to make your own mind up about LinkWorth, and the myriad of other monetisation companies out there. What I would say is that LinkWorth appear to have chosen all the worse kinds of advertisments to sell. This includes not only advertisments that call your integrity into question, but also those annoying pop-ups that automatically appear over certain words.

Consider the section of the page in the screenshot to the left. You can buy various pieces of software to use on your MBP but strangely, they have used Radio Buttons to select them. It’s worth noting that from a usability point of view, there are various reasons for choosing each type of form element on a web page. Radio Buttons mean you can select one and only one option. No more, no less (typically). Usually, Radio Button elements are used to limit the choices a user can make. Are you Male or Female? You can only be one, so this would warrant a Radio Button element to choose. Check Boxes are different. Check Boxes allow for none, one or more than one options to be selected.

So let me ask you the question, if you were designing a web store and wanted to generate as many sales as possible, would you limit your customers to only one piece of software on the purchase page? No, neither would I. There are a couple of reasons you may want to, for example if the software was mutually exclusive (i.e. buy iPhoto if you’re an amateur, Aperture if you’re a Pro), but this isn’t the case here. There is only one reason I can come up with for Apple making this design decision, usability and the impact it has on customer’s perceptions. Imagine finding a check box form element on this page. Apple would haveto default to having nothing selected as opposed to selecting a “None” option by default (the concept of a “None” selection doesn’t work with Check Boxes). A user could select whichever product they wanted and move on, which is fine until you find yourself in the situation of a user wanting to change their mind. This means that they have to click the option again, which almost seems counter-intuitive when compared to the “None” selection available when using a Radio List.

Counter-intuitive? I bet you’re questioning that statement, and you’d be right to. It isn’t counter-intuitive to me, and it probably isn’t to you. But it may be to people who aren’t familiar with internet mechanics. For these people they have accidentally selected to purchase something and now can’t intuitively de-select it. This will leave a sour taste in people’s mouths. If you find yourself questioning my logic, consider this. You are wondering around a supermarket and you decide you fancy some steaks, so you put them in your basket and carry on your merry way. A few minutes later you realise that your date for the night is a vegetarian, so those steaks aren’t going to be popular. Now how do you get them out of your basket? Do you put them back on the shelf (i.e. select the “None” option) or do you try and put them into your basket again (i.e. clicking the radio button again to de-select it). You can scoff at my logic all you want, but this is how some people will see it.

I have to say though, despite Apple trying to target the sorts of consumers that may not be familiar with computers and the internet, it seems as if the amount of extra possible sales would far outweigh the possible confusions.  What would you do if you were Apple?  Or do you think I’ve put more thought into it than the store designers?

Write and Sell an ebook

Ebooks are an obvious extension on blogging. You are still writing, focusing on an audience and providing value to your visitors. The only difference is, ebooks are nicely bundled and can take a bit of extra effort to publish. Because of that you can charge for them, if appropriate. The best ebooks are those that build upon the content freely available on your site. You can then come up with a nice proposition, if a reader enjoyed an article but felt it ended a little soon, or have followed the suggestions in the article and want to know what the next steps are, they have a natural progression. A word of warning though, don’t purposely sell your readers short with the aim of hocking ebooks. The content has to be special enough to warrant a purchase. You will also want to set up a specific landing page to sell the ebook and this alone can take some work.

Prostitute Yourself

No, not in that way. It’s entirely possible that you can sell your writing services to other blogs and publications, both online and offline. Your blog is a perfect place to advertise yourself, so take advantage of the platform that’s already there. This doesn’t have to be limited to writing, you can go for web design, graphical design or any other sellable skill you have. You may also gain some handy links back to your blog in the process.

Create Some Stock Content

The odds are good that you have a skill in producing something that can be sold on as stock content. These days there are markets for a whole load of stock content, such as photos, web design, Flash and written articles. Pick something you’re good at, research the best place to sell it, and wait for the cheques to roll in.

Domaining

If you’re taking time out to concentrate on blogging, it’s likely that you’re going to spend some (read: alot) of time reading other people’s content. This puts you in a great position of being able to identify trends early and act on them. A really cheap way to do this is to buy up domain names with the hope of either parking them, or selling them on for profit. Domains are the equivalent of stocks in my eyes, you buy it with the hope it will go up in value and you can sell it. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. The beauty of domain names is, while you own them you can park them and earn money, and you are never going to lose more than the price you paid for the domain, which will rarely be above $10. On average, I make a few dollars a day from parked domains and I sell, on average, one domain a month at around $100. If you want a cheap and reliable place to buy domains, check out 123 Reg.

Reselling

There are a number of ways you can get into reselling. You could use drop shippers to supply and deliver products that you sell (low risk, low profit), you could act as a middle man to sell goods and services (medium risk, medium profit) or you could invest in some goods and sell them yourself (high risk, high profit). You will have to decide which approach suits your situation best, and be prepared to move when opportunities present themselves. I recently made $70 by buying something in bulk on ebay, and then reselling them individually, again on ebay. As long as you can buy for significantly less than the sell pric, you should be ok.

I hope this post gave you some ideas. In the first few months it’s quite likely every source of income, no matter how small, will make a difference. If you are looking to boost the money you make from advertisments, check out 5 Ways I TRIPLED my Adsense Income and Knowing your Audience, and what yo Expect from them.

Not By the Hour covers some of the points above in a little more detail.

1. Analytics Dashboard Widget (Dashalytics) - Some people love the Dashboard, others hate it. Personally, I sit in between. I wish it used less memory but if you get the right collection of widgets, it can be very handy. One of the great advantages of using dashboard is the ability to quickly display small bits of information. One such application is the ability to view your Google Analytics statistics right in your dashboard. This is a winner for me because it not only supports multiple sites but also multiple statistics, and it’s all displayed in a very nice interface. Personally, I love this dashboard widget because it very quickly gives me access to the headline Analytics stats I’m interested in without having to dig through the slightly overwhelming Google Analytics interface. Of course, sometimes you do need to dig right into the stats, and when you do you need to know what stats to be be interested in.
2. Adsense Dashboard Widget (RevenuSense) – With the danger of this becoming a Google/Dashboard love-in, I thought I should cover this great little widget as well. All this widget does is show you your daily adsense earnings, along with some other key stats, like ePCM and hits. You can’t really get much simpler that that and so far, RevenuSense is the only Adsense dashboard widget which seems to actually work.
3. TextMate & Transmit – There are so many free and open source text editing and ftp clients out there, it takes something special for me to go out and actually spend money on some. Fortunately, both TextMate and Transmit are so far ahead of the crowd, they are really worth the investment. TextMate has become an essential tool for OSX bloggers for two reasons. Firstly, through the use of a bundle, it has easy support for WordPress (and other platforms) theme creation. This means that you don’t need to head off to the WordPress codex to find out the syntax for every tag, it’s right there in the editor. Secondly, through the use of another bundle (a bundle is TextMate’s equivalent of a plugin) you can post directly to your blog. A whole boat load of different blogging services are supported, including WordPress and Moveable Type, and it’s pretty fully featured, allowing things like images to be uploaded, custom fields and updating existing posts. It’s very sleek. Have a look at this blog post on the TextMate blog for further details, and be sure to check out the linked screencast. Transmit is just a great FTP client for OSX. One of the features bloggers will especially like is the ability to create “droplets”. A droplet is an icon you can drop files onto and have then automatically uploaded to a pre-determined location. It’s the quickest way to upload files, period. If you’re into theme creation, using TextMate and Transmit together is simply a joy. You can edit files that are on a remote server using the two applications, which is fantastic.
4. FireFox (
   ) -
   This is a personal thing and will depend on how you compose content for your blog. I’ve found that Safari doesn’t cope well, or at all, with Tiny MCE, the JavaScript library that allows for rich editing in WordPress. So, if you compose your blog posts within the WordPress admin area, Safari probably isn’t going to cut it. Beyond this obvious limitation, I find that some of the Extensions available for FireFox make it an excellent blogging tool. And I should probably leave it there, you’ve probably already made up your mind as to whether or not you like Safari or FireFox.
5. Quicksilver (+Stikkit) – I’ve covered both Quicksilver, and my method for managing blogging using Quicksilver and Stikkit before, so I won’t bother reiterating it. Suffice to say, I’m yet to find anything better (or even close). What I will say is, I’ve got a fantastic post on Quicksilver coming up in the next few days. It may completely change the way you use it.

If you liked this post, and you use OSX, why not have a look at 5 Hidden OSX Gems, 5 More Hidden OSX Gems and Why OSX is the Ultimate Web Design Platform. If you liked this post and are a blogger, why not check out How to Scientifically Identify Content that’s Perfect for your Blog, 5 Ways to Monetize your Blog and One Week to a Professional Blog.