Comments on: Website Usability and Conversion

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 13:39:00 +0000

Thanks, but I can’t get to watch the video. It’s not loading at all.

By: pjsherman

pjsherman — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 03:12:32 +0000

Thanks Alexandra! Glad you enjoyed it. -Paul

By: Alexandra Hopkins

Alexandra Hopkins — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 02:21:17 +0000

Paul Sherman's slide show on Usability is terrific. I sent it to a colleage. Thanks!

By: admin

admin — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 19:46:16 +0000

Thanks Alan, and much appreciated! -Paul

By: Alan

Alan — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 03:24:45 +0000

Hi Paul,
It did the trick, the slideshare works fine now, and… WOW!! This is the best presentation I have ever seen on the topic. Absolutely fabulous, thank you a billion times!

By: pjsherman

pjsherman — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 00:53:36 +0000

I am re-uploading to Slideshare, maybe that will fix it. Thanks for the heads-up. And for the comments! -Paul

By: Alan

Alan — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 23:39:30 +0000

Hi, it looks absolutely brilliant, thanks for sharing all this :)
Juste one issue though: I can't watch the presentation until the end: everything's ok until slide 42 and then only 1 slide on 2 is visible (apparently a conversion issue during the upload according to the slideshare message “Oops! This slide did not vconvert properly hence cannot be displayed”. Anything you can do about it? That would be great! Cheers in advance

By: pjsherman

pjsherman — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 22:06:13 +0000

Good points Susan, and thanks for commenting! Regarding the “under-prepare” point; I concede much of what you say is true. Confession: I have a tendency to oversell a particular point to drive home a counter-intuitive idea. And in this case I didn't follow up with good information about how to do field visits the “right” way, as you describe. Again, thanks for the great comments Susan.

By: pjsherman

pjsherman — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 22:04:53 +0000

Again, thanks for the great comments Susan.

By: Susandra

Susandra — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 21:03:59 +0000

Captain Obvious is on #22, Paul. ;-)

Interesting points – and well-presented. Thanks for sharing it.

I particularly like your points on slide 89 – you are so right that you'll learn more from field visits than other means –

As for slide 91, I agree you shouldn't have an elaborate *script* going into the field, but I totally disagree about “under-preparing” to go into the field. That is wrong, wrong, wrong! You *should* have a protocol that has the focus structure. You need to know all of the places you need information so you can pounce on it opportunistically when you see it. We've found that, perhaps counter-intuitively to some, being prepared INCREASES what you see – rather than decreasing it. That's because in any complex situation like a field visit, you aren't going to be able to comprehend all of it, and having a clear idea of what's most important will help “tune” you and will ensure that you get the information you need.

And, of course, there's always stuff you don't know in advance – so it's also important to be able to be flexible so you can see “the real stuff” if it's different from the assumptions you and the team went in with – but it's only by know what those assumptions are that you can see clearly where they are wrong. And that's an important output too – possibly even more important at least in some cases, than other things.

But – overall, a very interesting and thoughtful presentation – so thanks again for sharing it.