StomperNet is an online business-building membership website. They currently have some great quality videos published online featuring “cutting-edge content.” I’d like to share with you their “Click Fu” video which I found to be an excellent learning experience.
I have embedded the “Click Fu” course video in this post. In total it is 30 minutes long, separated into four parts, but is worth every minute of your time. You will learn through the eyes of your website visitors how to optimize your content.
Part 1: Welcome to Click Fu!
Part 2: Click Fu - Understanding Visitors
Part 3: Click Fu - Optimizing Text Content
Part 4: Click Fu - Wrapping Things Up
I downloaded and toyed with their “Scrutinizer” utility mentioned in the video. It allows you to simulate how a visitor envisions your page layout. Their vision is narrowly focused, contrasting colors are emphasized and peripheral vision is blurred so, as you learned in the Click Fu videos, you need to group important data and links together and organize headers and navigation properly.
Here is a screenshot of the Scrutinizer application in action viewing the DotSauce Forums. Wherever you place you mouse the surrounding area goes out of focus.
The StomperNet Scrutinizer download is free.
Give it a try and scrutinize you website content.
10 Uses for the Scrutinizer Utility
1. Simulate eye tracking in a usability task
2. Assess the ease of use of multi-step processes
3. Give your designer a fresh pair of eyes
4. Find out what “pops” in your design
5. Conduct findability challenges
6. Ask: does your visual grid work?
7. Evaluate your site’s contrast levels
8. Insure learnability in your template
9. Avoid button gravity errors
10. Tell the story of how your eyes work
