There is always a place for Kim Krause here. It is called "Other Online Marketing" I believe. Do you agree?
12 Comments

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Its not really about having a place for Kim. Its about having a category devoted to usability. Good idea -- Ill add it to the list. We have one for web analytics, which is somewhat related but not the same thing. Im sure we can add this along with other topics related to online marketing (someone else suggested domaining, which I think is a good idea).
I think there might be merit in renaming "Video Search" to just "Video" so we can include IPTV and Click to Play, etc.
The place for Kim is the doghouse, but I accept that. A category for web analytics is a great idea, as is a usability one. There are several well known people who presently speak on the topic to marketers who may wish to participate. Maybe someday the usability industry will find Sphinn and learn some things as well.
A category for usability would be great, especially as search algorithms (paid and organic) seem to be relying more and more upon user behavior.
I think usability is a great topic - were talking - as a company - about implementing a "test" of sorts for new comprehensive clients on the usability of their site - if they dont pass, they need to fix some things before we can take them on for marketing purposes. Kim has done some usability studies for us that are SO helpful. A great "measure" of how cooperative prospective clients are can be their willingness to implement standards of usability - the big issues is "defining" those standards! Great article, Kim
i believe that usability is a huge part of optimization. i think we do usability when were optimizing a site to begin with, but its nothing i specialize in. i can optimize a site but i could always stand to learn more about usability. im glad itll be its own separate area no matter what its called. i wont have to sift through the "online marketing" (which i wouldnt have thought usability would have been a part of) or "other".
Thank you, Carrie, for the kind words. Your company is one of the smart ones I was referring to in my post. There are, indeed, many search marketing and web design companies who offer an umbrella of services that include usability reviews, testing, or audits of some scope. And the list is growing as people understand its value.
you bet Kim - say are you going to be at SES Travel? Mary Bowling and I will both be there presenting & moderating. Is it taboo to mention SES events here? You can delete my comment if you like, Sphinn-ers :)
Its not taboo to mention SES at all. In fact, we have an events calendar where I dropped them a personal note to add the shows that Incisive is doing, so hopefully youll see them added to the calendar.
I am not going because I wait for Danny to come closer to where I live :) But, Im sad to not meet you and Mary. Id really look forward to that. I hope to find an excuse to go to SMX SM in NYC. I wish you both a blast in Seattle, esp. since travel sites ARE your specialty!
Every time I do an SEO evaluation I always find myself mentioning usability. I cant stop myself. When I see a site that 302 redirects traffic to the front page that would normally be 404 I tell them that is bad for seo. I then really want to go into how they should create a custom 404 page that trys to guess what the visitor was looking for.
Story now moved from Sphinn Zone to the new Usability area :)