90% des consommateurs font confiance aux recommandations des personnes qu’ils connaissent.
70% des consommateurs font confiance aux recommandations en ligne de personnes qu’ils ne connaissent pas.
41% des gens font confiance aux résultats de recherche des moteurs.
Source : 111 trucs et astuces référencement issus de SMX Londres 2010
Sur un an, Facebook croit 3 fois plus vite que Twitter : entre mai 2009 et mars 2010, Twitter a augmenté son trafic de 10% environ, tandis que Facebook augmentait de 30%.
Deux courants s'opposent : tweeter des données personnelles pour humaniser son compte professionnel et surfer sur la vague sociale OU limiter les tweets d'un compte professionnel à des données purement professionnelles.
Personnellement, je suis le deuxième courant. Nous sommes dépassés par l'information, la course à la fraîcheur de l'information, la réactivité... On veut tout savoir sur tout, et vite. Alors on s'abonne à des dizaines de comptes Twitter, Facebook, des dizaines de fils RSS, etc. Et les filtres ne seront jamais assez bons : ils filtrent trop ou pas assez, et c'est intrinsèque à leur fonctionnement sur mot clé.
Alors je filtre d'un manière radicale : je ne m'abonne pas, ou me désabonne de ceux qui mélangent vie privée et vie professionnelle. Pas du tout par désintérêt pour eux, mais par manque de temps !
Des statistiques viennent aujourd'hui confirmer le bienfondé de ne pas mélanger les tweets privés et professionnels (en anglais), même si des guides pour débutants professionnels sur Twitter recommandent encore parfois maladroitement le contraire.
When you choose to read the tweets of your friends in Google Reader, notice that you will only see the first 20 every time Google Reader checks your Twitter account. If there are more than 20 tweets between two connexions of Google, you miss them !
It is well known that this occurs if you pass through another service such as freemyfeed, feedburner or yahoo_pipes. But it actually also occurs if you directly use the Twitter option to import you friends_timeline.
I noticed it because of the new authentication process of Twitter. Because of that, I found no way to keep following my Twitter account with efficiency that adding each RSS of all the people I follow one by one into Google Reader !! No other way to avoid the 20 tweets limit (or extended 50 adding ?n=50) AND still keep updated on real-time.
Well, I notice that I receive much more tweets now that I added each RSS feed manually than when I added the Twitter friends_feed before their new authentication process! This means Google Reader and the Twitter friends_timeline actually doesn't combine. Be aware !
L'étude IPSO AFMM 2009 nous renseigne sur divers usages du web mobile chez les Français de 15 à 50 ans en 2009, parmi lesquels:
- 31% des 1121 personnes interrogées ont surfé sur le web à partir de leur portable dans les 6 derniers mois avant l'enquête (contre 25% en 2008), parmis lesquelles même 20% dans le mois précédent.
- Les nouveaux utilisateurs du web mobile sont surtout les 25-34 ans (augmentation de 40% d'usage) et les 35-50 ans, tandis que l'usage chez les 20-24 augmente moins vite mais dépasse tout de même en 2009 celui les 15-19 ans.
- 1/3 des mobinautes rencontrés se connectent au moins une fois par jour.
- entre 31 et 38% des mobinautes voudraient pouvoir surfer davantage avec leur téléphone mobile, mais sont freinés surtout par le coût de la connexion
- L'usage le plus commun de l'internet mobile consiste à consulter des services, principalement l'actualité et les e-mails. Suit la consultation de sites pratiques tels que plans et itinéraires de transport...
- 73% des mobinautes interviewés sont intéressés par de l'information géolocalisée
User tests in usability are costly but have a high and irreplaceable ROI in terms of data quantity and/or quality. This is what we say to our clients. Now, when they ask for a cheap, quick and still valuable user test plan (don't they?!), we may be given into the temptation of
- using lambda test monitors with no usability background,
- reducing the number or participants to the minimum key 5 users (see Nielsen),
- take notes instead of recording think aloud,
- working with several test monitors running simultaneous tests
The test monitor should have an average usability knowledge because he has to be able to ask the participant to think aloud about why he hesitates here or there, if he did see that option, whether he would prefer the interface to be adpated in this or that way, etc. A first problem interpretation phase can start during the test itself. A usability professional costs more but brings key value to the test.
On the other hand, reducing the number of participants is not by default problematic. It depends on the type of test plan (repetitive or not), the target audience (one single profile or not), the interface homogeneity (many different interfaces or not), etc. The problem raises when combined with other risk factors below.
Actually, if you also choose to avoid recording the test, but ask the test monitor to take paper note instead, you will miss many other key information. First of all, you cannot take note and follow the test with sufficient attention to the participant body language and mouse movements. Furthermore, people naturally filter what they will write down, and this is dangerous if combined with few participants and multiple monitors.
Now, if you also split the test plan into several test monitors in order to save time, each monitor will still filter what he decides to write down. One single monitor could decide to write down something he dropped in a previous test, just because he heared that same comment for the third time. If he only monitors one or two tests, he may drop a comment that is actually repetitive accross the participants - and would worth a note. The person in charge of merging all notes and extract main user problem trends may also miss key data only mentionned once instead of more. You can still organize a post-test brainstorming with all monitors, but each one will naturally focus on what he wrote down before.
Do you still expect to reach the 85% of problem detection with 5 users in such conditions ? I had the experience of a test plan run by two monitors : one with paper note, the other with video/audio record. Many times, the paper monitor agreed, at the stage of merging annotations, that he missed key data that the video/audio monitor did write down when rewatching the video/audio record. The video/audio monitor did also ask more useful and detailed questions to the participants during the test scenarios.
So take care when ensuring the client that he will still have the same result quality with such a 4-means quicker and cheaper test plan !
PS: Did J. Nielsen read in my mind when writing the just published article "Anybody can do usability" ?! Now you already know my opinion about that assertion. What is your ?
Did you ever wonder what is that small search field below a few search results in Google ?
- user attention is catched by a layout break-down : a form field in the middle of the result list
- a form field immediately calls for action, which is especially interesting for e-commerce
- a (performant) search feature is the quickest way to find a product in a e-store; this shortcut to the product also attracts the potential customer
Now the question is : why does this search field not always appear for the same query and same site target? For instance, a query on 'bebo' (the social networking), not always shows that search field (depending on the computer on which I tested). For the same query, it sometimes shows, sometimes not. Any idea of the user settings that could be involved in this behaviour?
Anyway, this feature that already exists from nearly two years now in Google UK, only shows up rarely in Google BE. Did it lack of the expected success in UK ? I found no update about that on the Google blog, nor others...