case study of blogger

Blogger came to Adaptive Path to determine how it could convert more new site visitors into Blogger users. Adaptive Path, in coordination with Stopdesign, completely overhauled Blogger's site and helped accomplish its goal.
Background: Blogger, a simple tool for publishing Web sites, was bought by Google in February 2003. When it was purchased, Blogger already had thousands of customers who used its tools for creating and maintaining their own blogs, or personal sites.
Clarifying the Problem: We met with Blogger's management and its Web team to identify their immediate needs and Blogger's long-term goals. Since growth was one of Blogger's key objectives, managers wanted to identify why sign-ups weren't increasing as much as projected and find out what they could do to correct the problem. Specifically, Blogger wanted to increase the number of visitors who clicked to register for blogs, completed the registration process, and ultimately posted to their new personal Web sites.
To understand current user behavior, Adaptive Path's Jeffrey Veen and Blogger's team reviewed Blogger.com's traffic patterns. Jeffrey and the team determined that a large number of new users were leaving after reaching the home page, and that many of these users dropped off at specific points in the registration process. Blogger's own support team validated what we surmised: Many of Blogger's new visitors didn't know what a blog was and couldn't provide the necessary technical information during registration.
Blogger's site needed to accommodate these new users. But to retain Blogger's existing customers, any changes had to simplify the site without weakening its powerful tools.
Adaptive Path's Process: Our next step was to bring in Doug Bowman of Stopdesign, a San Francisco-based design consultancy, to work as our partner in redesigning Blogger's site.
Jeffrey, Doug, and the Blogger team met face-to-face to undertake the redesign as a group. Approaching the project as a team, instead of three different companies, ensured that major issues were addressed before anyone moved forward in the wrong direction. Key decisions took into account the real constraints presented by technology, business, and design itself. This process prevented the team from pursuing unfeasible or costly options – it also saved everyone a tremendous amount of time.
Triage and Interaction Design: Often, Web sites evolve without a clear plan. Developers add features or content because they can, not because it's necessary. When this happens, a site becomes jumbled and loses focus. "Triage" is our process of re-focusing a site's design to make it more consistent, and then laying out a clear plan for future growth.
During our face-to-face meetings with Stopdesign and Blogger, we catalogued Blogger's current content and identified what content to add. The team then reviewed the current site's features as well as the information they were requesting from new users during registration.
We pared down each page, particularly the registration forms. This considerably shortened the registration process. Wherever possible, technical terms were replaced with plain-language. Instead of asking users to choose a "template," for example, we asked how they wanted their blog to look.
Jeffrey recommended using common conventions, such as pull-down menus and text fields, which users would be comfortable operating. Internet users, particularly novices, expect certain conventions when navigating Web sites. They assume that new sites will work similarly to those they've encountered. Interaction design takes into account users' abilities, needs, and desires when designing interfaces. Creating novel, and possibly confusing, ways for Blogger's new users to input information would counteract the hard work we'd already done to simplify the site.
Why Standards? One key decision that Blogger, Stopdesign, and Adaptive Path made was to build a standards-based Web site. This allowed Doug to create the visual presentation while Jeffrey worked on interaction design and Blogger produced the structural work-up. If we hadn't complied with standards, each part of the team would have had to wait for the others to finish before moving forward.
Checking Our Work: Usability Testing: After incorporating comments from Blogger's team into the near-final design, we needed to confirm that the new site would please Blogger's users. We worked with Blogger to segment its wide audience into three groups: those who had a blog already, those who knew what a blog was but didn't have one, and those who had no idea what a blog was.
We did a round of usability testing with users who fit each of the three profiles. Our findings:
Experienced users simply logged in and went directly to their sites in seconds.
Those who knew what a blog was were able to complete the registration process and post to their new sites in less than five minutes.
Users in the third group took the new online tour, which defined blogs, explained why someone would want one, and then showed how they could sign-up. Each of these users decided to sign-up, sailed easily through the new registration process, and posted in less than five minutes.
Other than a few minor tweaks that our users suggested, we were ready to launch.
Mission Accomplished According to statistics collected from Blogger, the project was a smashing success!
15% more visitors clicked to register for a blog
67% of those completed the registration process
97% of those who registered created a new blog
76% of those who created a blog posted to it
Each percentage increase resulted in thousands of people signing up for and posting to their new blogs. Blogger's current users thought the redesign made the site even stronger, as well as more visually attractive and intuitive. In working with Blogger and Stopdesign, we created a best-of-breed, standards-compliant Web site that's easier to maintain and grow.

article from http://www.adaptivepath.com/services/casestudies/blogger/

dangers of using blogger

the reason of creating this blog is for my school's project . more inportantly though , its to let people know the dangers of blogging . blogging can be fun and also its a way to communicate with other people too . however , do you know it is also dangerous as some people tend to leak out some of their personal information .

posting pictures on blogger may leak out some of your information eg : where you stay
letting other people noe ur information that you leaked out (eg: name , age , etc.)
you know some people through blogger and you dont know who the other party is .
your pictures you post might be photoshopped and spread across the world ( eg : editting it into being nude , funny pictures , etc .)


objectives : encourage creative thinking , teamwork and presentation skills .
promote ispirational use of the internet

four cyber wellness values : be street smart
be responsible and respectful
achieve balance
embrace inspirational use of the internet

surfing safely by taking personnal responsibility ...

you can have a COOL identity

cool stands for ...

Cannot reveal age and gender

Original

Out of this world

something that you Like

1) being street smart ...

Do you know how to be street smart? Being street smart means knowing how to keep yourself safe from strangers . revealing your information on the internet is dangerous . this is what happen to a little girl ...

there was this girl who loved to blog . she revealed alot of her personnal information and soon she knew this stranger who read her blog . they chatted thru msn and the girl gave the man her handphone number . not long after , the man found out her address and sent her gifts!this girl then told her parents about this incident and reported it to the police .

see? revealing your information on the internet is dangerous!so be street smart and do not make friends without knowing the othe party enough .

2) be responsible and respectful ...

Many people exhibited ignorance about copyright laws. The findings, in fact, show that Singapore youths are not using the Internet optimally and adopting cyber wellness practices.

Teenagers here spend an average of 17.2 hours per week online.
72 per cent of students indicated that their parents knew how to use the Internet.
49 per cent of parents never check the websites visited by their children.
10 per cent of parents often use Internet filters.
67 per cent of parents are unaware of their children's passwords to sites.
10 per cent of students sometimes feel depressed, moody or nervous when offline.
2 per cent sometimes fear that life would be boring, empty and joyless without the Internet.
17 per cent (207 students) indicated that they had met people whom they got to know online.
90 per cent would not pay to download files off the Internet.
An overwhelming majority of respondents never or rarely reported illegal online activities of others. (taken from http://www.asiaone.com/Digital/News/Story/A1Story20070523-8363.html )

Perhaps most lacking was the awareness about copyright issues. Some teenagers gave responses like "..it was free. It should be free", as a reason for being unwilling to pay for downloaded material.If it's on the Internet, it's not illegal 'cauz if it's illegal, it would have been taken off already," was another's response.

we shud ...

Inculcate the same values of respect online as one would apply to others offline.
Provide information about the various authorities and avenues for help when we come across illegal activities
Get our parents to communicate with their children about online responsibility.

3)achieve balance ...

Help teenagers manage their Internet Usage.
Equip them with good time management skills.
Create more avenues that encourage offline leisure activities for teenagers.

help our mom with housework

studying , preparing for exams

hang out with our friends

take your pet for a stroll

etc.

4) embrace inspirational use of internet...

using the internet does not mean we have to always use it to play games . we can do other useful stuff like ...

doing your project using microsoft word ,blogger etc .

research .

using "yahoo answers!" wikepedia , etc . to find the snswers to your question

post your pictures that you have taken in your holiday trip . (facebook) ( blogger )

interesting facts

Every minute of every day, 270,000 words are written on Blogger

Millions of people worldwide use Blogger to publish to their blog each week

Almost two thirds of Blogger's traffic comes from outside North America (What's the #2 country after the U.S.? Brazil, followed by Turkey, Spain, Canada, and the U.K.)

The most popular sport for our bloggers? Soccer (that's football to the rest of the world), more than four times larger than the #2 sport, baseball

cyberwellness tips

never leak out any personnal information

never talk to a stranger

be careful of what you say on the net

be responsible of what you do on the net