gone country

i'm sitting on the floor of the nashville airport, and they just announced the reason for the 4 hr flight delay - " the plane just got off the ground from philly about 10 minutes ago, there's been a lot of traffic."

a guy sitting on the oh-so-luxurious seating to my left turned to the girl beside him and said, "how can there be traffic? they have the whole air."

should video autoplay?

a debate we're having on one of my current projects hinges on whether or not video embedded on websites should autoplay. my gut belief is that it shouldn't, but often times, designers and clients feel differently. as marketers, we want to be as in-your-face as possible... but does it annoy?

i remember reading somewhere that video should never autoplay, but i can't recall the source. i'm thinking it may have been the marketing sherpa's landing page handbook.

a discussion on linkedin today reminded me of the debate: as people answered the question of whether video raises conversions on websites, many respondents mentioned the same thing. do not autoplay.

• "video that starts to play, most of the times accompanied by a irritatingly high volume of sound, is one thing that makes me close the browser window immediately"
• "As long as the movie is clicked as an option and does not automatically load you won't run into any problems with people being scared off."
• "I agree you must take care not to make it annoying - I would never set a video to auto play without muting the sound at the same time. "
• "Of course, do NOT have the video audio autoplay. That's just annoying."

this set of users seemed to have some strong feelings about video that autoplays, but how could we be sure?

A/B testing and a few simple metrics could probably give us some insight. randomly alternate between 2 versions of a particular page: one on which the video autoplays, and another on which the video's start is controlled by the user. analyze the exit rates for each. look specifically at the average time spent on the page amongst visitors who exited. compare conversions from the page (or, at a simpler level, measure clickthroughs to your desired next step). what can you learn?

until further notice, I vote no on video autoplay-- particularly if the video includes sound. as far as whether i can convince my clients and designers of that... we'll see.

any thoughts/research on the issue?

my new job

so its my 7th week at my new job, and I'd like to break down a few of the things that i like and don't like, so far.

likes:
- the location. i work by UT and can swing by downtown or the drag within mere minutes. its nice to see the real 'austin' so much more than i used to. it reminds me how much i love our home here in the hill country.
- traveling. its nice to break up the work week with some time interfacing with clients, especially in cool places. its nice to get a nice out at a good hotel and to enjoy the cuisine.
- the clients. so far, i've worked with 3 major brands.. and the list is counting. its neat to work on planning user experiences for products & services to which i can relate.


dislikes:
- the drive. it takes about 40 minutes to travel the 12 or so miles between home & work. kills me.
- the hours. opposed to the somewhat cush hours of my old 9:15a-4:45p job, i'm now on the clock from at least 8:30a-5:30p. and if something comes up at 5:20 which needs my attention, i'm not expected to flinch as closing time flies by. this is a reality check for me.
- traveling. despite its perks, i HATE being away from home. i miss my dog, my cat, my fiance, my personal time, and my DVR. i really don't like sitting on airplanes with boring old men. i am beginning to resent all bottles of liquid less than 3oz.

guess i have to introduce myself as well

so here i am, sitting at my computer at a reasonably late hour. my fiance informed me that we now have blogging capabilities, which to me, means we're a little late with the tech revolution.

so a quick introduction...i'm simple, yet complicated, and very hard to please but i'm funny and enjoy everything about friendships and business time. the love of my life is erin, buskit my cat is the cool man, and the cookie monster takes the cake for most likely to pee on your foot.

so there you have it....me in a nutshell. take care, drive safe, don't settle, and take a day to go kayaking on town lake in austin if you get the chance!

intro

we're hoping to keep a record of all the adventures and random observations of our daily lives while hopefully capturing some of the geeky knowledge we all too often spew at our innocent clients.

the raves, rants, and stories from our daily lives will probably be laced with celebrity gossip, tech news commentary, song(s) of the day, and hopefully, some information to help you make good decisions when planning your web experience(s).

so, let me introduce myself. i'm erin. i'm an information architect the largest ad agency in the U.S. that is owned entirely by a woman. i'm responsible for wireframing, site mapping, and otherwise planning effective user experiences.

my co-blogger is brant, my fiance and business partner at the alynn group. brant designs for the online catalog and HTML direct mail program for a major golf and tennis retailer.

we met on the in-house web team of a high-tech engineering company here in austin, and have been partners in freelance web design (and life) since 2006.

thanks for swinging by. please give us some feedback on what you think of the blog.