Merchant & Affiliate: 
Design, Usability & Branding

• Affiliate marketers are not designers
  • Hire an expert for an expert result
  • Go back to what you do best...marketing
    Your website design is like a home project on Trading Spaces. You need an expert to get the job done right, just don't get stuck with Hildy or you'll end up with a room with straw covered walls and a fabric ceiling. The time has come to uninstall your copy of Photoshop and get yourself back to doing what you do best...marketing.
    
    
    
    
    
• Usability testing is easy, so why doesn't anyone do it?
  • Lack of usability testing with real people made things worse
  • Jakob Neilsen was right, usability works
  • Have you honestly tried to hear what your affiliates are saying?
    Sure, most merchants talk up a good usability study, but how many are actually doing it? Usability became a buzz word around the time of the dot-com crash several years ago. VC's pointed the blame finger at companies who didn't have the vision to look ahead enough to test their products with the people who would actually use them, while people like Jakob Neilsen continued to tell the world how important it was. Today, we know the power of usability. So why aren't we doing it? As an affiliate, I have only been approached once or twice from a merchant asking me my opinion about their products or interface, etc...
    
    
    
    
• What the #@$% is branding, and how do I do it?
  • Google becomes #1 Internet brand, why and how?
    Maybe you've heard the recent survey touting Google as the #1 brand...globally. The survey, conducted by Motleyfool.com has Google beating out the likes of Apple, Coca-Cola, Starbucks and Ikea, respectively. So how did they do it? They had no advertising agency, or expensive public relation firm, or even a budget to advertise like Yahoo or MSN. And their site is devoid of any fancy graphics. What makes Google the #1 brand? We'll find out...