Archive for June, 2001

Posted on June 6, 2001 - by deCadmus

Do they come in threes?

Do they come in threes?

Two of the most useful and, in their own ways, relevant weblogs on the Net are ceasing publication. Dack.com has offered the musings of Dack Ragus… a guy from Minneapolis with a sardonic view of the web and the world, alike. Case in point: his Web Economy Bullshit Generator. Tomalak’s Realm, run by Lawrence Lee, has been one of my daily reads for nearly two years. If it’s relevant to web design, you’d almost certainly find it linked on Tomalak’s Realm. It’s a site that clearly required a lot of work behind the scenes, and some real diligence on Lee’s part.

Both weblogs offered something that I think is really important on the web… individual voices. Personal views. Undiluted opinions. Spiffy insights.

So long, guys. Wish you well.

Posted on June 5, 2001 - by deCadmus

What’s in your shopping cart?

Jessie, the abominable golden retriever, is a fertilizer factory.

Of course she produces the usual carpet bombs that any large dog is terrifically equipped to manufacture. She appears also to have an unlimited capacity to produce nitrogen, that elemental stuff that makes lawns and flowers happy. Happy that is, so long as there isn’t too much of a good thing. And, if you’ll recall from previous episodes, to Jessie there’s never too much of a good thing.

So I’m browsing the Drs. Foster & Smith web site for a nitro neutralizer. If you’re not familiar with the good doctors and have a critter in your house, you might want to visit. They have the stuff you’ll find at your local pet superstore, and some products you’ll probably find only at your vet… at prices that are usually below what your vet would charge.

Anyway, I discover G-Whiz [for dogs only it says... don't feed this to house guests, I guess] and put a couple bottles in my basket, fill in shipping and payment details, and submit my order… and get a page that says “Your shopping cart is empty.”

Not “Thank-you,” or “And that completes your order,” or even “Done!” It says, “Your shopping cart is empty.”

Well, yeah, I guess it’s empty if my order is complete, but… why not just say so? Tell me I succeeded. Tell me when you’ll charge my card. Tell me when you’ll ship it! Even better, tell me all of the above… but don’t make me wonder if you actually received my order, or whether some glitch emptied my shopping cart.

Usability matters. Really.

Posted on June 1, 2001 - by deCadmus

A tale of two searches.

A tale of two searches.

While plotting a gift for my wife, I recalled an Oprah episode featuring interior design. [For the record, I wasn't actually watching Oprah, I just happened to be in the same room while it was on. Glad we got that cleared up.] One of the guests had written a book about decorative wall painting that looked to be good gift material… except I could remember neither the name of the guest, nor the name of the book, save for “painted” something or other.

Plan A… Oprah.com. I plugged away at the site’s search engine, using virtually every related key word I could think of–painted, walls, decorating, design–and while I believe I found an abstract of sorts for the show in question, I still couldn’t uncover the name of the guest… or the book.

Plan B… Amazon.com. Plugging in the search terms “painted walls” returns a very small, targeted set of results, with Debbie Travis’ Painted House at the very top of the list. A home run with my very first swing.

So what’s the difference? Why would Oprah.com fail to return usable results after several minutes of searching and a dozen terms, while Amazon.com found my target in 3 seconds and two terms? I can’t be certain, but it may have something to do with semantics. First, Amazon can reasonably expect that most searches will target book authors and titles. Oprah’s web, by contrast, likely hosts a much broader variety of searches… show topics, guests, causes, what have you. Second, I’d expect that Amazon employs key word targeting, so that searches that are similar to a particular book’s title–especially searches that previously resulted in the selection of a particular title–are programmed to return precisely that book. Oprah’s site clearly doesn’t employ targeted searches… or doesn’t do them well.

It *is* possible to find the book in question on Oprah’s site. It requires a minimum three clicks down a very specific path, and you need to know when the episode that featured the book aired. Probably not the best way to track down a book….