There has been an explosion of Tweets about eye tracking! Google recently captured the hearts and minds of SEO experts and designers with a blog post about research they did with a Tobii eye tracker on the user interface for Universal Search.

They wanted to test the affect incorporating thumbnail images into the search results interface and ran a series of eye-tracking studies that compared how users scan the pages with and without thumbnail images. The studies showed that the thumbnails did not strongly affect the order of scanning the results and seemed to make it easier for the participants to find the results they wanted or skip over the ones they didn’t.

In the twitter stream last night I noticed some people asking what it would be like to eye track Twitter, so here it is!

I eye tracked Kylie, a novice Twitter user, and she had all sorts of trouble working out how to find people to follow!

Remember how hard it was to find people to follow on twitter when you started?

This is a video of that experience. It takes a bit of time to load, but you can click on it to go to YouTube.

Kylie clicked on ‘Find People’ and wanted to search on a real name, but she couldn’t.

Later on she wanted to see a summary of the people on someone’s the follower list. This is there but hidden in pop ups (alt text). So the followers’ details are impossible to see unless she scrolled over them!

You know I never knew that ‘alt’ text was there either until I was watching the replay!! Why not just put it on the screen next to the person’s photo?

Stay tuned more to come!

Hey #IMBS peeps and welcome @hunvalski!

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I hope you came to visit us at ad:tech!

Get ready for ad:tech! ad:tech is the world’s leading interactive marketing event dedicated to connecting all sides of today’s brand marketing landscape. This year’s show is comprised of exciting keynote speakers, current case studies, topic driven panels, interactive workshops, an explosive exhibit hall, unique networking opportunities and the new expo seminar theatre. The event is designed to bring companies operating in the digital market space together with Australian marketing decision makers to discuss and network around online-marketing topics.  Join us at ad:tech on 10-11 March 2009 at the Sydney Convention Centre,

Here’s what ad:tech reckon I need to do before the show… Pretty good list!  Help, I’ve only ticked one!

• Advertise my participation at ad:tech on my website [DONE], e-newsletters [DON'T HAVE ONE] and your email sign-off. Use the ad:tech logos provided in your toolkit.
• Announce my participation at ad:tech to my client database. Send a series html and/ or print communications to my prospects leading up to the event.
• Announce product launches – what will they expect to see when they visit.
• Tag my pre-show online / print advertising with my Stand Number.
• Arrange a pre Event planning meeting with my onsite staff – outline goals, objectives and strategy. Make sure they leverage their networks [ALMOST DONE].
• Having a systematic approach to collecting the contact details of those visiting my stand is essential. Consider the use of a electronic tracking device available from Info Salons.
• State my business with explicit and highly visible signage. Don’t assume that visitors will recognise my company name and/or know my business.
• Don’t just stand there! Consider incorporating some activity on your stand. Movement and presentations all get the visitor’s attention and provide an opportunity for engagement [ASK Can I help you?] .
• Engage the senses – how can I engage the visitor using all 5 senses?
• Pre-arrange meetings to take place at the exhibition. Target my team on this. Activity attracts activity!

Tweet about it is missing!!

Please come visit me!

www.ad-tech.com/sydney

My heart goes out to all involved in the Melbourne fires.

Here’s a useful map from Google that I saw on Mashable. It takes Victoria Country Fire Authority data from an RSS feed and shows markers where fires are in progress, controlled or contained.

Mouse over to see info

Hopefully you and your loved ones are ok!

Find customers’ problems and solve ‘em!

Poor customer service irritates me, as you might have noticed in a recent post! However, great customer service gets me excited and I tell everyone about it!

Recently, a proactive customer service experience converted me to DIIGO’s product and also revved up my enthusiasm for Twitter.

Basically, a few days ago I Twittered my annoyance about something on the DIIGO website.  Within about 3 minutes I got an @ reply from DIIGO to see if there was anything that I needed help with!  They must have used Twitter Search or one of these types of tools to alert them to my cursing. I was pretty impressed and have told many people since!

I recently set up a Twitter account for Tobii Eye Trackers ~ @TobiiEyeTracker ~ and have had some similar customer service experiences of my own.

Here’s one example of what I did to help Tobii’s customer service:

In Tweetdeck(TD) I set up the terms I was interested in like ‘tobii’ and ‘eye tracking’.  TD then automatically updates a single column for each word with new tweets that contain that word.  Here’s my Tobii search:

1. You can see that leebd915 was a bit frustrated with his machine

2. So I followed him and then @ replied politely and suggested a fix. Then…

3. My suggestion solved his problem (as he told me above) and he followed my Tobii twitter profile back a day later!

You will notice that I have to use the Twhirl app for managing TobiiEyeTracker tweets. On TD you can’t have two profiles live at once ]my other is @jamesbreeze]; but TD it has great functionality!

I did a bit of research and found this Twitter Customer Service stuff has been around for a little while. ReadWriteWed discussed customer service with Twitter last year.  The RWW post linked to Brands that Tweet by BusinessWeek that showcases corporate tweeters like of Comcast, Dell, GM, JetBlue and Kodak. Obviously, I’m onto something here!!

What really fascinates me about Twitter is that you can tap into everyday conversations that would normally go unheard.  Twitter can be a great tool for social interaction or just a great place to have a whinge or get something off your chest. For this reason it provides a fantastic opportunity for companies to research the chatter online and hopefully do something useful with the newly found knowledge.  

When a company puts their front foot forward and provides me with unsolicited customer service I certainly notice! Thanks DIIGO!

Enquiro recently blogged about Tweets from the Edge and discussed the 5 stages of Twitter Acceptance by Rohit Bhargava.  Rohit’s stages certainly made a lot of sense to me and his concept is a bit simpler than my old post about Twitter!

If I take the liberty of including business uses of Twitter in these stages, then the list stops short! To my mind The next steps are:

6. Marketing and PR http://tinyurl.com/d5moos

7. Customer service http://tinyurl.com/57fbvr, 

Success in the final two steps is only really achieved by understanding and engaging the first 5 steps.  That is how you can make sure that your business oriented tweets are authentic and relevant. 

In my experience, the final two business oriented applications of Twitter can really help reduce business costs and improve service quality.  I’ll blog about that tomorrow!