Fact. Football referees are biased. Those players in the World Cup who cry "foul" when the referee finds against them could well be right, according to a new study of the unconscious effect of direction of motion. The research has found a statistically significant difference in the accuracy of spotting a foul depending upon the direction in which the ball is being played. If the ball is travelling from left to right, the referees are much more accurate than when the ball is going from right to left (from the perspective of the referee's position on the pitch). It seems that video technology would not only help in deciding whether a goal has been scored, but would also determine if a true foul had taken place. Referees are not as good as they might like to think they are...!

The study tells us more than referees have an inbuilt bias - perhaps you already thought that anyway...! It also emphasises the importance of direction in our analysis of a visual situation. The study shows that for people who read from left to right, anything that travels from right to left is perceived less accurately. For countries where the reading is right to left, the reverse is the case.

Recently I showed how WordPress has design wrong from a memory point of view. The preponderance of right-biased menu options makes it less easy for people to remember what is on your website. Now, this new study on the bias of motion in football matches, adds weight to the argument. The football study confirms there is a bias in left to right writing for our brains to consider anything that goes right to left as "not quite right".

This clearly has implications for your website design. It is not just about where you put navigation, but about the flow of the page. If things flow from left to right, your visitors are much more likely to find it "normal" - assuming your readers are all from countries where left to right writing dominates. For example, do your pictures have a left to right flow in them, or are the "pointing" the wrong way. Newspaper and magazine designers often use facial images with direction in them to move your focus around the page; but they work best if they go left to right - not "against the grain". The flow in the photo on this page is, for instance, the wrong way (deliberately to make the point..!). It is going right to left. Traditional designers would say that's good as it draws your eye to the text to make you read it. But this new research on directional bias would imply that it makes you think there's something not quite right.

What this all means is that subtle design elements on your web page could have consequences for the "stickiness" of your pages and the engagement which people have with your material. Much website design these days has a right to left bias. Maybe that's why engagement is not as good as people might like it to be. Left to right may look "boring" but it sure appears to help psychologically.

If you don't want you readers to cry "foul", you might need to reconsider the directional bias of your website.

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How well do you know your online rights? What information should you give online to commercial suppliers? And what protections should you look for in the small print? These are areas where the Consumer Affairs section of the European Commission is hard at work. Ther eare several European laws in place that are designed to protect online buyers. If you are a purchaser you can benefit from knowing these, but if you are selling stuff online, you need to be sure you understand these laws in order to protect yourself from prosecution.

So, how much do you know? Watch this video then answer the questions at the end. If you get the answers right, there's a chance you can win a USB Memory Stick.

 

 

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Facebook insiders have revealed exclusively to me that later today they will be announcing a new language which is set to revolutionise the web. At the moment the web is mostly in English, with other sites in Japanese, Chinese, and a multitude of European languages. The real difficulty is that translation of pages either costs a lot of money to get right, or automated systems are used that provide a seemingly foolish approximation.

Facebook has discovered that the limit to its global dominance is linguistic. If all of its pages were in a single language that everyone could understand - no matter what their native tongue - Facebook would be able to expand even further.

Two years of research on the words being used on the billions of pages hosted on Facebook has led to an analysis of words which will be understandable the world over. Later today, Facebook is due to hold a press conference announcing the introduction of their new language. It is called the Facebook Open Operating Language (FOOL) and is the First new language to be introduced directly as a result of the Internet.

A Facebook spokesperson said: "We are delighted to have come up with FOOL this April. Our extensive research has shown us that this new language will catch on very quickly. Not only is it completely understandable by everyone, but the humour is also translated. For years people have tried to find a common language which everyone in the world can understand. Our extensive analysis of the languages used on our site has enabled us to do this in a way that wasn't possible beforehand. We call the technology we used to do this the Analytical Program Researching Into Language (APRIL)".

With Facebook's APRIL technology inventing FOOL, is there any other date they could be announcing this breakthrough than today?

No animals were harmed in the making-up of this blog post.

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Conservationists are up in arms about the internet. They are pointing out - ironically using the internet - that the web is responsible for threatening more endangered species than ever. Apparently you can order a polar bear skin online, or if you want you can get a baby lion shipped to you. That's to say nothing about the ivory trade or other rare items which are traded online. True, the internet has made it much easier for the criminal gangs to sell their goods. But the internet is also responsible for the impending death of another species.

The "traditionalist", the "old-fashioned", the "dinosoaur" of business is on the way out; and not before time. There are several business leaders and so-called experts who are completely out of step with the modern world we now inhabit. It's rather like the people who loved gas lamps saying "that electric light nonsense will never catch on".

Nowhere is that more obvious than in the world of Government and its quangos. Yesterday, Labour MP Ann Begg advised people never to go near Twitter. In touch with the electorate? Seemingly not. And today Ofcom has reprimanded GMTV for including a link to a commercial website on its own site. I kid you not. Ofcom reckons that having a link to Martin Lewis's Money Saving Expert web site was promoting his business. And apparently, that's bad. OK then, Ofcom, you'd better ban all advertising on GMTV as well and perhaps Corrie shouldn't get sponsored by a furniture company. After all, they use tables and chairs in the Rovers Return - that could be a promotion for the sponsor. Ummmm!

Dinosaurs are alive and well at Ofcom obviously; totally out of touch. Many of the viewers of GMTV probably want to save money. The reason GMTV has Martin Lewis on the sofa is because of his passionate delivery of money-saving advice. Linking to his website is what GMTV viewers want...! Suggesting it's some dastardly act is to completely misunderstand the multimedia world in which we now live.

These two stories - about real endangered species and the endangering of a species we actually want rid of - are a potent reminder that we now live in a different world; a dramatically altered one from that which we inhabited even five years ago. The slowness of businesses to respond to these significant shifts in expectations, understanding and use of internet technologies is a threat to the very existence of such firms. It may well be that many organisations, such as Ofcom, or businesses which want to live in the past, will soon go the way of the polar bear.

Don't be an endangered online species; understand the internet and use it with vigour in your business.

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John Witherow is hard at work today, but luckily most of his work will be done by other people - his team. For John is the long-standing Editor of The Sunday Times and will be beavering away today so that we can get the paper in the morning. Luckily, he doesn't have to write it all himself; we could be waiting several weeks otherwise for him to get it all done. The way The Sunday Times works - even if you don't like its politics or doubt its accuracy - is an important lesson for website owners. Indeed, new research on Wikipedia shows that the collaborative way in which content is produced is, in fact, the best way to go about it.

This research, from the University of Arizona, found that the highest quality entries on Wikipedia were those with most collaboration and in which the teams putting together the article had specific roles. Some people merely added content, others added content and justified it, and others re-wrote and edited material. The researchers found that when teams were working together, with individuals taking up specific kinds of writing and editing tasks, the quality of the resulting article was highest.

Strangely, this is the way newspapers work. Different people in the production process have specific writing and editing roles. Reporters merely write the articles. Sub-editors then seek to justify that what has been written is correct and that it fits the space. "Back Bench" editors, as they are called, then re-write and hone the article so that it fits the political viewpoint of the publication. The result is invariably a much better article than even the best reporters can produce. It is a system that goes back centuries and endures today, simply because it works.

With Wikipedia it appears that those articles which have been assembled rather on the newspaper production model are those which are the best ones. In other words, quality content comes from teamwork - but, importantly this research tells us - only when team members are assigned specific roles.

This is an important consideration for many website owners. Much website content is "home produced", especially in the small business sector. Even if you have a ghost writer, website content rarely goes through much of a review process. Usually what happens is somebody writes it and then someone else approves it. Often that's the same person - even in big business. The consequent quality of what appears online is therefore not as good as it might be.

So, assembling a website team - with specifically assigned roles - could well help boost engagement as a result of increased quality. Here's what you could do:

• Appoint a website writer (that might be you, of course)
• Get someome to be the "sub-editor" who checks the text only for accuracy and adds relevant links, pictures, charts and so on
• Ask another person to review the article and re-write it if necessary for grammar, spelling, clarity and house style

Giving people these specific roles will, according to the University of Arizona research, boost your quality. At the moment you might have a couple of people writing and "approving", but it seems such roles are too generalised. Providing your staff with much more specific roles - just like a newspaper - means your quality will rise.

And what do you do if you are on your own? Easy. Use a three-step process:

1. Write the article or blog post, but don't worry about links and graphics
2. Check the article for accuracy and then add relevant links, images and so on
3. Come back to the article after a break and then re-read it, concentrating this time on grammar and spelling

Even the worst online writers can improve the quality of their work in this way. And just think, you only have to do it for a few hundred words each day - not the 250,000 words (five novels worth) that will appear in tomorrow's Sunday Times..!

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Mark Thompson, the Director General of the BBC, will doubtless have several nasty things said about him today. In the pubs down the road from TV Centre in Shepherd's Bush, disgruntled staff will be slagging him off, no doubt. Newspapers tomorrow will be full of vitriol poured out against him. And Twitter and Facebook are already awash with people criticising his proposals to axe BBC Six Music and the BBC Asian Network.

Tucked away in his announcement today was the proposal to scrap 50% of the existing BBC web presence. The headlines shouted the notion that the web budget would be cut by 25%, but apparently one way of doing this would be to cut the size of the BBC website's presence in half. Just when you thought there was one organisation that understood the internet, in one swoop, the boss reveals that he - at least - doesn't seem to know much about the web.

For a start, even if they remove half the BBC's web presence, it won't save them much money, if any. True, there'll be a slight saving in storage costs, but that's pennies compared with the production costs. And even they are cheap in comparison to an hour of Strictly Come Dancing. The theory appears to be that if you "get rid" of half the website, it will enable us to save money. In fact it will cost money. Here's why. Firstly, if there are areas which the BBC removes from the web, other content producers will fill the gap. That will take audience away from the BBC Online to alternative websites. One of the benefits of the massive BBC presence on the web is the fact that people stick with their websites, moving from one page to another thanks to the massive amount of content. Slash that content and overnight the online audience will plummet.

And with it will go the cross-media promotional opportunities the BBC gets. They will find that their reduction in online audience fuels a reduction in TV and radio audience. They have forgotten that we now live in a multi-media world with people consuming information in multiple ways. They watch the TV show, go to the relevant web pages promoted on the programme and see, for instance, that one of the stars is on the radio next week. Cut your website and you reduce such promotional potential.

But that's not all. Slash and burn your website, as Mark Thompson is proposing, and you give the likes of The Guardian to further increase its production of podcasts - eating further into the BBC audience. Already, The Guardian is one of the world's biggest audio and video podcasting producers with millions of listeners and viewers worldwide. It only needs the "nod" from the BBC that there is now a bigger gap to fill and boy will they fill it.

Furthermore, the BBC website announcement comes the day after the publication of a report pointing out the ever increasing move to online consumption of news. You might call it bad timing or madness, but to suggest that you will halve your web presence, just after a study proves the increasing value of the Internet to an organisation like the BBC is, at the very least, unfortunate.

True, the BBC needs to save money and provide value to us, its audience. But the website proposal - whilst popular with politicians and competitors - is probably the single, most ludicrous suggestion that has been made by the Corporation. To cut the web presence so significantly will have serious, dramatic and possibly irreversible consequences for the BBC. Far from reducing its web presence, it should, like every organisation be seeking to increase it. Rather than spending less money on the web, the BBC should be spending more.

The world has changed;  today's announcement reveals that the BBC either thinks it is immune to that change, or that it has to please politicians who are about as web savvy as my ginger tom cat.

And does this have an implication for your web business? Of course it does. It shows that changing your web presence will have implications for you, beyond your website. Any changes you make, in order to save costs online, will have consequences outside your control. For the BBC it is various Facebook groups damning the suggested changes. For you it could be negative Twitter comments. Changes to your web presence must not be taken lightly. The suggestions from the BBC today about their website shows they have not understood the web and the implications of their ideas. Don't let your business get caught in the same way. Invest more in your web presence - not less; online is the only future many businesses have. And it is the only future that traditional media outlets have. By cutting the website, it seems as though the BBC is struggling to get the "good old days" back. It looks like the BBC is going backwards, rather than forwards. By September we could be tuning in to the Light Programme or the Home Service. But at least we will be safe in the knowledge that they will be coming from spanking new £1bn offices and studios. What a good way to spend licence payers money that was...!

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Happy New Year; have a great 2010. Thank you so much for supporting me over the past year and reading my blog - it is much appreciated. In 2010 I have plans to expand the service I provide and to write more practical articles to help you enhance your online business. I look forward to 2010 with enthusiasm for a brand new year of excitement on the internet. If you thought 2009 was fun online, wait until you see what 2010 will unravel via the web - touch, smell and much more besides. See you next year....! Add a comment