If this does have the effect of increasing CTR I am sure it would be only a matter of time before this feature becomes available to all Adwords search and content network advertisers. This could be a good thing for the millions of Adsense publishers with increased CTR hopefully in turn bringing extra revenue.

Heres the link:
Interview with Yahoo! Answers Q&A Competitor Blurtit | Inside the Webb.

I’m guessing its only  matter of time before Google enters this field, but in the meantime here is my list of the 5 best available today.

Clicky

Cost: Free limited (see above) tracking on 3k pageviews per day, to get access to the full feature set $9.99 per month.
Who uses it: Wine Library TV, Buy Sell Ads, Mashable, Smashing Magazine.
Check out the demo site

Woopra

Cost: Free for upto 30k per month.
Who uses it: Unknown, let me know in the comments if you use Woopra.

Chartbeat

Cost: 30 day free trial then $9.99 per month.
Who uses it: The Onion, The Huffington Post, User Voice.
Checkout the demo site

Mixpanel

Cost: Free for 10k pageviews per month.
Who uses it: Posterous.
Checkout the demo site

Footprint

Cost: Free.
Who uses it: Unknown, let me know in the comments if you use Footprint.
Checkout the demo site

This week I had the pleasure of speaking with web usability expert Jared Spool. Jared is CEO and founder of User Interface Engineering the largest research, training and consulting company specializing in web and product usability.

Watch Jared speaking at SXSW 2009:
Journey to the Center of Design Pt. 1 and Journey to the Center of Design Pt. 2

Over the 20+ years Jared has been working in the industry, he has helped countless companies reach their business goals, both online and offline.

Jared was kind enough to agree to a short interview and share some invaluable insights into web usability.

What are the common mistakes made by designers?

I think the most common mistake is not spending enough time watching users work with their designs. They assume they know who their users are, what they are trying to do, and how they go about doing it. However, when they finally sit down and watch the users, they quickly discover their assumptions have been wrong, and therefore the decisions they made weren’t creating the great experience they thought they were.

“The best designers spend at least two hours every six weeks, just watching their users use their design or a competitor’s design”

The best designers spend at least two hours every six weeks, just watching their users use their design or a competitor’s design. If you’re not doing that, you’re missing important information. It’s not difficult or expensive, yet it’s something we all treat as a nice-to-have instead of a requirement. And that’s what gets us into trouble.

Over the past 5 years do you think in general web usability has improved?

I think there are more sites that have paid attention to their users’ online experience. So, that could be a ‘yes’ to improved usability. But there are still a ton of sites that are really hard to use. For example, many people regularly complain about their online banking site. Or that expense reporting application on the intranet.

I think, proportionally to the number of sites and applications now online, the percentage of sites that deliver frustrating experiences is still probably the same. But the high profile sites are better than they were. Mostly. Facebook recently redesigned their site and 97% of the users reported they wanted the old design back. They were frustrated by the changes.

A major retailer, in the top 15 e-commerce sites, redesigned their site in 2008 and immediately saw a 40% drop in purchases, because they made it more frustrating that it had previously been. It’s easy to break an experience, especially if you haven’t done your homework. So, I think it’s fallacious to say things are better in any major way. I think we all have frustrating experiences every day.

Which websites do you admire from a usability perspective?

I think Netflix has done an amazing job of really understanding how the design of the site drives their business. They make changes all the time, pushing new releases out every two weeks. Yet, they don’t make major redesigns or changes to the site.

Each time the user visits the site, it feels familiar, even though subtle things are now different. They can only do this because they spend hours each week studying how people use their site.

An important part of making a more usable website is about sticking to conventions, do you think the spread of blogging platforms such as WordPress helped or hindered this?

I’m not big into sticking to conventions. I think that’s the wrong approach. Instead, I like to ask, “What are our specific users’ expectations?” “What do these users come having previous experience with?” And, “What pre-existing knowledge do we want to take advantage of?”

If you go into the design thinking you need to stick to conventions, you’re likely to pick the wrong conventions and thereby make a more difficult design than is needed. However, if you go into the design thinking you need to learn these answers about your specific users, you’ll end up designing something that works specifically for them. It’ll match conventions when it needs to and innovate when it’s the best time to do so.

Can a businesses online usability effect its brand in a negative way?

Absolutely! Of course, it depends on how engaged the customer is with the brand to begin with. Customers who are strongly engaged with a brand will put up with more usability issues than customers who are weakly engaged.

Take a brand you love, whether it be a e-commerce site, type of technology, or favorite restaurant. If their site is hard to use, you’ll likely give them some slack and just say, well, they are good in other ways. Now think of a company you regularly find frustrates you. Maybe it’s an airline or government agency. If their site gives you any problems, will you cut them slack? Or will it just frustrate you more?

“It’s important that designers focus on eliminating frustration and creating delight.”

The thing is that every little frustration reduces brand engagement, even if just by a little. And it adds up. We regularly watch people who go into a site with a high engagement and come out thinking they’ll never do business again. Frustration weakens a brand and delight strengthens it. It’s important that designers focus on eliminating frustration and creating delight.

Do all websites need to do some form of usability testing? and if they do, how should they get started?

No. Websites where the designers don’t care if anyone uses them (or don’t care if the users become very frustrated when they do) don’t need any testing. But, all other sites need testing. It’s really simple. Find a user, ask them what they do with the site, sit them down in front of it, and ask them to do just that.

Like anything, there are tricks and techniques for getting the most out of your testing, but it’s really just as simple as sitting and watching. You can do it anywhere with practically anyone and get useful information. Remember, usability testing is all about informing all the decisions that you need to make in the process of creating a great design. Every usability problem that has ever been introduced into a design has done so because the designer didn’t have a key piece of information.

When you conduct usability tests, you collect the information that will make your designs better going forward. So, if you want to get better designs, you need to conduct usability tests

If I wanted my website tested professionally how much would it cost?

It’ll cost you two hours every six weeks. If you want to go whole hog, you can spend two hours every week, like the best folks do. You can hire someone to do your testing for you, but I don’t recommend it. It’s sorta like hiring someone to take your vacation for you. It gets the job done, but it’s probably not what you were really looking for.

It’s easy to learn how to do usability test. My favorite book for learning is Dana Chisnell & Jeff Rubin’s Handbook of Usability Testing. They’ve just revised it and it’s a perfect way to learn how to do testing yourself.

“Usability testing isn’t hard to do. It’s not rocket science.”

Usability testing isn’t hard to do. It’s not rocket science. (We know it’s not rocket science because NASA is one of our clients and they have very strict definitions as to what rocket science is. They’ve told us this is not it.) Buy the book, read the chapters, and you’ll be up and running with a test in no time, learning cool things that will make your design rock.

What kind of people and businesses attend your conferences?

100% human. (We’ve never found that other species are that interested. Seriously, our conferences are attended by anyone working with technology and wanting to create great experiences.

For example, we’ve just launched our second UIE Roadshow series for this year. At these sessions, we’ll have people who design sites for all different types of applications and organizations.

Typically, the people who come are designers and managers in charge of their design’s user experience. They are all looking for ways to get better at what they do. And, because our teachings are all based on our years of research, they get more than they come for. We regularly hear that they took what they learned in our sessions and make instant, measurable changes that put their organization light years ahead.

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If you want your site to reach its full potential it’s important that you have an understanding of how your visitors interact with it. Making your site easy to use can have a massive effect on conversions, sales or whatever goals you may have.

Here are a selection of excellent books covering the subject of usability and interaction design to get you started:

About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design

by Alan Cooper, Robert Reimann David Cronin

Web Style Guide: Basic Design Principles for Creating Web Site

by PJ Lynch

Constructing Accessible Web Sites

by Jim Thatcher

Cost-Justifying Usability

by Randolph G. Bias and Deborah J. Mayhew

Defensive Design for the Web

by 37signals, Matthew Linderman, Jason Fried

Deliver First Class Web Sites: 101 Essential Checklists

by Shirley Kaiser

Designing Easy-to-use Web Sites: A Hands-on Approach to Structuring Successful Websites

by Vanessa Donnelly

Designing for Interaction: Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devices

by Dan Saffer

Designing Interactions

by B Moggridge

Designing Interfaces: Patterns for Effective Interaction Design

by Jenifer Tidwell

Designing the Obvious: A Common Sense Approach to Web Application Design

by Robert Hoekman

Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction

by Ben Shneiderman, Catherine Plaisant

Designing Visual Interfaces: Communication Oriented Techniques

by Kevin Mullet and Darrell Sano

Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

by Steve Krug

Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things

by Donald A Norman

Envisioning Information

by Edward R. Tufte

Handbook of Usability Testing: Howto Plan, Design, and Conduct Effective Tests

by Jared Spool, Jeffrey Rubin, Dana Chisnell

Handheld Usability

by Scott Weiss

Human Factors in Product Design: Current Practice and Future Trends

by W. Green, Patrick W Jordan, Patrick W. Jordan

Information Visualization: Design for Interaction

by Prof Robert Spence

Human-Computer Interaction: Concepts And Design

by J. Preece, Y. Rogers, H. Sharp, D. Benyon, S. Holland, T. Carey

Prioritizing Web Usability

by Jakob Nielson and Hola Loranger

Readings in Human-Computer Interaction: Toward the Year 2000

by Saul Greenberg

Shaping Web Usability: Interaction Design in Context

by Albert N. Badre

Submit Now: Designing Persuasive Web Sites

by Andrew Chak

The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America’s Leading Design Firm

by Tom Kelley, Jonathan Littman, Tom Peters

The Design of Everyday Things

by Donald A. Norman

Human-Computer Interaction Fundamentals

by Andrew Sears, Julie A. Jacko

The Humane Interface: New Directions for Designing Interactive Systems

by Jef Raskin

The Inmates Are Running the Asylum:
Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity

by Alan Cooper

Non-Designer’s Design Book

by Robin Williams

Homepage Usability: 50 Websites Deconstructed

by Jakob Nielsen and Marie Tahir

Thoughtful Interaction Design: A Design Perspective on Information Technology

by Jonas Löwgren and Erik Stolterman

The Design of Sites: Patterns for Creating Winning Web Sites

by Douglas K. van Duyne, James A. Landay, and Jason I. Hong

Usability Engineering (Interactive Technologies)

by Jakob Nielsen (Paperback – Sep 23, 1993)

The Usability Engineering Lifecycle: A Practitioner’s Handbook for User Interface Design

by Deborah J. Mayhew

Usability for the Web: Designing Web Sites that Work

by Tom Brinck, Darren Gergle, and Scott D. Wood

User Interface Design: A Software Engineering Perspective

by Soren Lauesen

User Interface Design for Mere Mortals

by Eric Butow

Web Application Design Handbook: Best Practices for Web-Based Software

by Susan Fowler and Victor Stanwick

Web Bloopers: 60 Common Web Design Mistakes, and How to Avoid Them

by Jeff Johnson

Web ReDesign 2.0: Workflow that Works

by Kelly Goto and Emily Cotler

Web Site Usability: A Designer’s Guide

by Jared M Spool, Tara Scanlon

Today I received an invite to the Hunch private beta, which was pretty exciting, usually when I apply for these things I never hear back from them : (

Anyway if you haven’t heard of Hunch, its a new take on the Questions and Answers format, instead of getting a written answer from another user, it takes you through a simple decision tree, basically it asks you multiple choice questions about the thing your looking for the answer to, after a number of steps it give you an answer.

To better illustrate how it works, check out the video below:

I was pretty impressed with hunch, considering its a brand new service it already seems to have a fairly decent database of questions and seems relatively active. Hunch apparently learns from the feedback users give to it, updating its answers all the time. After using it for a while however, I think there are two issues for Hunch to overcome. While the service performs pretty well on yes/no style questions when things get a bit more complicated or less black and white it struggles, it’s answers become more uncertain and from my experience with Blurtit a large percentage of questions fall into this second category. Hunch also seems to lack the community aspect of more conventional Q&A sites like Blurtit or Yahoo Answers and because of this I am not sure it will hold the attention of its users. That being said of all the new Q&A sites I have seen in the past year Hunch is by far the most innovative and the most promising.

Jimmy Wales the founder of Wikipedia announced today that his user generated search engine Wikia search will be closed down.

While the idea of a social search engine was an interesting concept, the results on Wikia search when I have used it have been terrible. Whales said today that the project is still one or two years away from being usable by the public and that the search engine was receiving an average of 10.000 uniques a month.

I have just finished watching BBC’s Watchdog review UK text Q&A services.

Watchdog focused on the three largest suppliers: 118 118 (the market leader in the UK), Textperts (recently taken over by 118118) and AQA (Any Question Answered) 63336.

Watchdog which is a weekly consumer affairs programme in the UK, received complaints from viewers concerning the quality of responses, so they decided to investigate.

To test the accuracy of the answers they conducted an experiment, they asked 20 general knowledge question to 118 118, Texperts and AQA 63336 the results are as follows:

Textperts – answered correctly 65% of the time. (text costs £1.00)
118 118 – answered correctly 72.5% of the time. (text costs £1.00)
AQA 63336 – answered correctly 92.5% of the time. (text costs 0.98p)

For the full review see Text question and answer companies