Persona Research for Discovering Website Needs

A Masters in Psychology class presentation on discovering the core needs of a website's users in order to better optimize the user interface.

Defining Users for Finding Website Needs

View more presentations from Jason Levine.

A Pixel Takeover

Chemistry.com signs with Perfect Pixels Media Group

Chemistry.com, started in 2006 by the Dallas-based dating giant Match.com, Dallas-based Match.com, owned by IAC/InterActive, is an industry behemoth by any standard, with 30 U.S. brands. It also operates sites in 24 countries, including China and Australia, in eight languages. And it powers online dating for the MSN network as well as AOL.

Helen Fisher, the biological anthropologist who developed Chemistry.com’s questionnaire, says the site is designed to predict compatibility based on traits of temperament like adventurousness, decisiveness or empathy. The sites attract cohorts of people interested in slowing down the online dating and mating process, in finding out more information about potential partners — or in ruling out unlikely suitors — before they graduate to the meet-and-greet stage.

Its parent site adds 20,000 new members each day. That amount of “churn” is vital. If success in online dating is measured as an exclusive relationship or even marriage, many lapsed memberships are sure to result. Several researchers estimate that online dating will generate about $1.9 billion this year, with some 40 million Americans active in the medium.

Perfect Pixels Media Group, a Seattle-based interactive branding and design agency with clients like ING Direct, All Recipes.com, Classmates.com, Microsoft and Trulia.com, will be creating interactive applications to further generate connections amongst Chemistry.com members.

Sometimes a brand needs a hero

Empty space ads, an innovative ad network service, scans a site and appends additional banner space to a website to increase advertiser's reach and content provider's revenue. I was thinking an owl would make a good logo - as in a knowing seeker that searches for empty space. The client was thinking Batman. And so, a hero was born, the Empty Space Girl!

The logo itself was devised to represent the contrasting metaphor of the negative space in the word "empty" then shown filled with the word "space". The color pallet was devised to create a unique differentiator for trade shows, networking events and of course, ads.

Twitter for Business

Twitter is successfully being used from pop culture icons, well known athletes, businesses to every day folks. But what is to say for twitters true usage rate? There are around 6 Million users that have signed up for twitter as of August of this year. This equates to 3.8 of all internet usage. So what does that mean for you?

Twitter is expected to at least double within a year to an estimated 12.1 Million users. For brands to understand this power and available accessibility, it is at the least, very powerful. This mean "brands", you have the opportunity to search a database of millions of users and find out if they are talking about your company, service, product. If customers have issue with your service, believe me, they will tell the world. Stop the fire before it catches on and show how responsive your company is to it's customers.

What about using twitter for business? A novel idea, perhaps. Out of 6 Million people, someone is interested in your product or service. Send DM's to your people on your twitter list and let me know how successful this is for you. We want to know what kind of success you are having with any tips we are planning to give weekly. Our blog is not a daily blog. We will report on the most important information relating to digital marketing, iPhone marketing and social media tips.

Let me know how this works for you.