Over time, people will start downloading the new version, and of course every new computer they buy will have it pre installed. However, there's a large group of users who might come across this site and who can't update their browser, for whatever reasons. Some large corporations have strict IT-requirements, preventing automatic updates of programs (which is natural, if you look at Windows vulnerability).

The real question here is, "what does standard compliant website" mean? Standards are good, because in comparison to the whole web evolution, the introduction and manifestation of standards ensured that within a reasonable timespan, all web users will get the same great user experience. At least from a technical point of view -- good web design is a different issue.

But compliant means more in my book. It means you care about your brand experience. It means you recognize, comprehend and acknowledge the needs of your visitors, and you comply to them. It means you don't give up aiming for the best possible usability, accessibility and you want to create a consistent experience, so the people visiting your website will reward you with returning to it more often. They come to your website looking for content, but they will only come back if your content delivers.

In the process I will work out fresh content, fix loopholes and remove redundant or confusive elements. Dense, my culture blog, is closing for now, and new stuff is lined up. Incubator was a start, overhauling the CSS was a consequence. As always, your feedback is welcome.

I think this all makes perfectly sense. You probably came to the site because you wanted to look up a place. Your main interest is to look up information about a trip you are planning on, or to look up a couple of places you had in mind. At the same time you don't mind being allured to look into other places, because the site applies a well balanced mixture of push and pull. Commercial offers live in harmony with folksonomy.

Before creating a website like TravelPost, you have to ask yourself a couple of simple questions. And you have to be not afraid of the answers. Take them as your road map for marketing, branding and usability. Being honest to yourself and to your client can actually give you an advantage when your site hits the market of competing websites.

What are the most important questions?

1. Why do people come to travel-websites? To book a hotel right away, or to spend time traveling before the actual trip?
2. Before they will book a room in a hotel or resort, what will convince them to choose this particular offering over a different one?
3. Is pricing the only or most important issue for your visitors?

Pricing has a certain relevance if it comes to city traveling, weekend trips and short business trips. If you are traveling to a foreign country and you are staying there for more than one night, you want something decent, reliable, comfortable. And you care more about "what can I do in this neighbourhood" than about low rates.

Conclusion

Combining folksonomy with brand values is what makes the true art of creating conversation websites. The example of TravelPost shows how you can build a solid foundation for your branding platforms, by using best practice in design, user experience, and most of it all by not being afraid of putting people's opionions and commercial offers on the same page.

Being unobtrusive and not pushy about your offers is paramount. People have a tendency to accept ads (text and links) more easily once they are allured by your site content. Microsoft's Expedia, for an example, is considered a leader in travel websites. But if you compare the two examples, which one appears friendlier to you?

On Expedia, the most prominent element is "Plan your trip, book a flight and a hotel". That might be of importance to me at some point, but I first want to find out about the place I'm visiting. I could look it up at Wikipedia, but given its straight forward name, I would expect Expedia to give me all information I want, providing a great travel experience in itself.

Resources
• SimpleBits has helped redesigning TravelPost and creating a better user experience
• Microsoft Expedia
• TravelPost

Apple is an extremely focussed, minimalist-style company. It has a strong focus on direction and is obsessed with purity and simplicity, mainly because Steve Jobs and Johnathan Ives are Zen-driven gurus. If the CEO says "We have a simple product and I want a simple packaging", there is no room to argue about that.

Besides, Apple has a different market position than Microsoft. Microsoft creates mainly software products (I think their only hardware is a mouse), and naturally, Microsofts software is placed on a shelf of boxes where thousands of other titles are competing. So in that same shelf, you would never find an iPod placed. A software packaging is also very different, it has indeed bulleted text, it has features, vendor logos -- Apple software products are not much different in packaging from other vendors. It is still a little bit cleaner though.

The iPod is iconic, it stands out by itself as a product already. It is featured in Apple Stores mainly, or third party stores dedicated to Apple products, or at least in a corner with Apple products. People buying an iPod are getting one because they were looking for that Apple boot or that Apple Store. Standing in front of a shelf filled with Microsoft software boxes, these people simply don't think about iPods.

It is also true that Microsoft has a different selling philosophy than Apple. Microsoft allures people by making them feel secure that they choose the right product. Microsoft's brand language is "Look, I'm the mother of all software. I am the de facto standard, so you can't go wrong with me!". Looking at it that way, everything Microsoft adds to a packaging underlines this approach.

"What's the news" you will say, and you are right. Interaction is the very nature of the Web, and the user experience has always been important. And yet, it is the approach, a different point of focus that marks the revolution in Web 2.0.

From a technological point of view, many will agree that only now, the Web has emerged to the point where browsers offer a more or less consistent behaviour, based on modern standards (let's exclude Microsofts Internet Explorer for once). Right now, modern technologies like Ajax (ironically invented by Microsoft), PHP, XHTML and CSS are driving the Web engine and improve the overall user experience to a degree never achieved before. Second to that, the consistent use of Open Source technology standards finally enables people with grey cells to not only plan better user experience, but also to pull it off.

So Web 2.0 is indeed about you and me, the average user, and not only geeks with powerful computers. It is about enabling people to communicate with websites, to interact freely and in most cases in real time. But this only works if the technology behind it is consistent in its expected behaviour and flexible in versatile application.

What makes Web 2.0 special -- the very reason why someone gave it a name -- is, it is marking a new era of understanding and establishment. It is as if someone had drawn a line under a kind of beta testing phase of the Web. It is remarkable that Web 2.0 draws so big waves, given the fact it does not really come with a true invention. It is basically a summary of existing technologies driving an improved, more stable and higher capable Web, resulting in a more satisfying experience.

In many ways, Web 2.0 sums up what core is all about since it started out as an idea on the sketch board. Core is about you, the average user. It is about the core of everything, the message, the truth in it and the brand -- not only as a promotional tool but as something that lets people participate.

Every website designed by core, every consulting we do, each product we help our clients to give birth, contains a spark, the very core of what Web 2.0 emphasizes. In the end, our effort leads to a higher capable and more satisfying experience, by everyone involved: you, your clients and ourselves.

One would assume that more variety in music and greater choice of download services would be a good thing for the industry, all to the consumers benefit. Wrong. Truth is, this does nothing for the people. In fact, it's just another try to push them away from buying iPods, and chosing Microsoft-technology based music players instead. Which is fine. But they are specifically excluding iPods to use the new music service.

"The biggest paradox is, the people who are most likely interested in an MTV-branded music experience are also probably the demographic that has the highest interest in the iPod," was a quoted statement from Michael Gartenberg, vice president of Jupiter Research.

Any possible benefit for users aside, just from an economic point of view, this makes no sense at all. The iPod owns 78% of the portable music player market and iTunes has an 80% coverage of all download services market share.

In the end, nobody wins. Microsoft seems eager to not lose more ground in the consumer electronics market, before they even had a chance to conquer it. Over the past few months they have been sitting there, paralyzed, stunned, watching the iPod bubble grow to an extent when it really started scaring them. No wonder they think it is URGEnt to do something. At first, the iPod was seen as a belittled attempt from an outsider computer company to fulfill the needs of a few nerds listening to an exotic music format called mp3. At the time when the iPod was introduced, mp3 was still cited in conjunction with software piracy and Napster, then a peer to peer download service. When the success of the iPod became clear, it was still regarded as short term phenomenon, not meant to last for longer than a couple of years, and still aiming for gadget loving people.

Now it has become clear, the iPod has substantially changed an entire industry, even more so, it has changed the way people live and experience media.

The content offered by Microsoft and MTV (actually Viacom) is yet to be seen, and the quality of this content, or added values for the consumers benefit are unknown. URGE is scheduled to launch in 2006. It's a mystery to me how they intend to make profit, let alone survive, in a market dominated by the iPod, completely ignoring one of the most basic and profound business rules: supply and demand.

I think a major mistake of computer companies and entertainment giants is to regard this market separatedly, with an inwards oriented view. In order to overcome the iPod dominance, anyone entering this market will have to look at three points:

1. Provide an integrated hardware- and software solution, either by inventing a new, better media player (the hard way) or by making your service seamlessly work with the iPod (the soft way)
2. Make sure that your system provides a straight forward interface, consistent, with a no fuss user oriented experience and design
3. Here comes the tricky part. Add something valuable to the service, something Apple does not provide. In other words, make it better than iTunes. That involves ability to listen to what people ask for and expanding your service according to their needs, not the ones of entertainment corporations. Innovation is a tough one, I know, but Apple has proven it works well

Innovation doesn't always mean you have to find a new feature, or invent a new product. Sometimes things are encountered by the people using your product. Just take a look at how Apple integrated podcasts. They did not invent them, but they recognized the importance of podcasts as soon the trend emerged from its grassroots grounds, and made it a consistent part of the iTunes experience, in a very elegant and seamless way. Did I mention the word podcast has been added to the Oxford Dictionary last summer?

Books have a great usability factor because they are all working the same way: books start with a cover, and in western culture, you're reading from left to right, turning pages in a linear left-to-right pattern. You can also go back and forward, or jump right in between chapters. And when you find an empty page, you're able to turn that page to get to one with content you were looking for. This is a given for usability. Something so profound and basic, you don't even think about it. But you'll be surprised how many websites fail with this simple standard of usability. On many sites, when you come to a dead end, there's no way out of it, except with your back button.

Most websites are drawing attention completely away from basic browser navigation tools. You forget about that back button on top of your browser window. I once talked to someone on the phone to help her find a certain link. She didn't know how to go back until I specifically pointed out the back button. It's not such a rare case that people forget about this button, given the sophisticated navigation systems websites are using nowadays.

People behave naturally. They are simply users who want to use your website for their purpose, not yours. When they come to your website for the first time, you teach them a certain navigation system. From the first page on, a user will expect the same behavior pattern of your navigation throughout your site.

This is another given in usability: What you experience once, you will expect to happen in the same way the next time you're using a similar trigger.

If your navigation is inconsistent and uses different terms, various colors and indicators for links, you're confusing your website users. If your navigation is showing up on different spots and in various areas of a page, it is confusing your users as well. It's even worse if they're running into a dead end.

You'd be surprised to learn how many websites, even of big companies, don't get this. You'll run into 401 errors, see missing-page announcements, discover Apache server notifications, and in some cases you will be told to contact the web admin. This is just like you turn on your TV, zap to a different channel and all of a sudden you're informed you did something wrong and you'll have to call the cable guy.

From a user experience point of view, this is bad. This is really, really bad. Consider this: Your users are not only visitors of your site, they are potential customers. And believe it or not, but they are judging your site based on their user experience. They will challenge your site, stroll in various places, try finding out if you're genuine and deliver real quality. In short, they will judge your brand by browsing your website. And if they find holes, or dead ends, or doors with a lock and no explanation, it will add to their negative user experience.

Doing it right on the other hand is not that hard. Just think about what you would like to see and read if you were a user visiting your company's website. Imagine yourself in this role: You've just entered a bad URL. Now you're on a dead end page.

1. What should this page look like?
2. What should it tell me?
3. How can I get out of here?

The best you can do is provide help. Give them a way out. Show them alternative ways to browse your site. Give them links to other places. Be nice and gentle. Your users haven't done anything wrong, you did. Ask them what they were looking for. From "Sorry, please try this." (where this is a link to your index page) to a comprehensive site map—anything is better than"405 - Page could not be found."

If you show your website users your effort to help them out, you are actually there for them when they need you, you're adding to their positive brand experience. And that will always translate back into business.

Reference:
• core missing page