I just read the news that Ziff Davis Media is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. I worked at Ziff Davis until July 2007, but on the Ziff Davis Enterprise side of the company, as opposed to the Ziff Davis Media side of the business, a distinction that I’m sure the enterprise folks will be working hard to make in the next few weeks.

Ziff Davis Enterprise - which was spun off from Ziff Davis proper at the end of July 07 when it was sold to Insight Venture Partners - is made up of the Web Buyer’ s Guide, eWeek and the eSeminars groups. Ziff Davis Media is comprised of the Consumer (PCMag.com, ExtremeTech) and Gaming (1Up) sides of the business.

It’s too bad that this day came, but I doubt that many people at the company (or in the industry) are surprised. Ziff Davis Media has had trouble with its debt for a few years now, and the selling of the Enterprise group was seen by many as the last chance for Willis Stein to salvage some money it invested when it bought the company for about $780 million in 1999. As the consumer and enterprise groups were splitting, those of us on the enterprise side of the company almost had the feeling of abandoning a sinking ship, that the Enterprise Group was taking the one opportunity it had to get off the boat before it went down for good.

I’m on the plane right now, on the way to Jamaica with Chris, who is going to a conference (I’m tagging along), and we just spent about half an hour looking through SkyMall, the catalog of often-quirky products that they have in the seat-backs on the plane. I love looking through SkyMall, mostly because it makes me laugh the things that people come up with and actually sell. Some of our favorites from this issue:

• Gravity Defyer shoes (page 13) – Really Alexander the Innovation Wizard that is the best part of these shoes. Chris’ title is “Chief Innovation Officer” so I was trying to get him to change it to “Chief Innovation Wizard” after seeing this picture of Alexander.
  
• Spring Flex UX (page 66) – This ad features a man wearing nothing but white - shorts? underpants? - working out at his desk. Ummm…
  
• CD case(page 79) – This case holds 2,262 CDs – they better sell these fast before people stop buying CDs (does anyone own 2,262?) and the music industry implodes!
  
• Caddie Cooler (page 80) – “Cleverly disguised as a 3-wood,” I sincerely doubt that my dad or brother will be bringing this out on the course anytime soon.
  
• The Neckpro Traction Device (page 108) – The picture speaks for itself, but there must be a very limited market for this device.
  
• Big Foot the Garden Yeti Sculpture (Page 161) – Definitely not something to welcome the neighbors
  
• Basho the Sumo Wrestler table(page 160) – Will go well with any decor, unless you’re sitting behind it…
  

And these were just the products that made us laugh the most. Every page of the catalog we were pointing at things and commenting and talking about the good ideas, the bad ideas and how to improve some of the products that had a nugget of a good idea, but executed it poorly.

This made me wonder if the SkyMall people do user testing. Do they have consumers come to the SkyMall offices, give them the most recent copies of the catalog, and watch them interact with it? It is impossible to watch every person read and use their product, but how much testing do they do, and how much do they use the data they collect to make changes and to help them pick what will be included in the catalog in the future?

There is a really good correlation to the Web here. Any business that has a Web site (and every business should have a Web site) should also have some kind of analytics tool running on their site. I use Google Analytics on my Web sites, but I have used Omnitureand others in the past as well – any of them work (but I whole-heartedly recommend Google Analytics - it is free and very easy to set up).

Once you have analytics set up on your site, you should be able to do some user testing – you will be able to check out, among many other things, what pages people visit on your Web site, their navigation path, what pages they linger on, what are the most and least popular sections of the site. And if you sell things on your Web site, you can easily evaluate how appealing various products are to your market.

Along with this day-to-day evaluation, it is also a good idea to occasionally do user experience testing. It is incredibly illuminating to be able to watch your users interact with your Web site. When we ran such tests at Ziff Davis Media, we used software called Morae, which worked well. When we ran the tests, we had two computers set up; one in the user testing area, the other in a viewing area where everyone else could watch the users go through a set of tasks. (Our stations were actually set up in two different states.) The users are taken through a series of tasks by a tester (a guide of sorts) who asks questions and gives the users various tasks to complete. The users are instructed to talk out loud about what they’re thinking when they are navigating the site, and the software on the testing computer records all the various motions that the user makes, their facial expressions and their voices. The viewing computer has a split screen, which allows the observers to watch both the users’ faces (which are recorded via a Webcam) and the users’ desktop displays at the same time. It’s amazing the things that you can learn in just a few short viewing sessions.

Do you do any user testing on your Web site? If not, start somewhere. Make sure that you have an analytics system installed, and begin checking it and learning what all the numbers mean. It won’t be long until you can make simple changes that will lead to vast improvements to your site.