You can’t force anyone to click, or do anything they don’t want to do on the internet. So how do you encourage visitors to your website to do what you want them to?

The answer is to use websites to engage in conversations with their users, just as a business would with a potential customer face-to-face. In person, they’d be polite, trustworthy, expert, answer questions (perhaps even before they’d been asked) and show off the business’s benefits over its competitors. In short: make the customer feel relaxed and in good hands.

You can anticipate the conversations a business would like to have with its customers and design the website to reflect that. Whether the business wants to make an online sale, provide information online before an offline sale takes place, or simply provide information – a website that answers its users’ questions will stand any business in good stead.

The practice of UCD (user-centred design) means considering a website’s end-users at every stage of the design process. As a designer, it is your job to balance the needs of clients with those of their users. The user-centred design techniques help you and clients understand what their customers want and need.

Understand what you want users to do

It sounds obvious, but if you don’t know what you want your users to do, how can you possibly design an online experience that encourages that behaviour? The business goals for the website and any given webpage are key. Goals provide a clear understanding of what the page is for and what the desired user actions are.

If a business or organisation wants a new or improved website, there will always be a reason behind it. Some businesses will have a list of goals or KPIs (key performance indicators) for its new website. Others will be less explicit. If you understand its reasons, you can design to meet its goals.

Eliciting business goals is often a case of simply asking. It’s something that’s easy to forget especially when you’re caught up in the thrill of a new design project. For that reason, it can help to have a more formal approach to drawing out the information and documenting it. When starting a new project, the first step is to conduct stakeholder interviews, asking people in the business with an interest in the website a series of questions. Typically one of the most useful ones is ’what will make this redesign successful for you?’ Answers can range from ’a 5 per cent uplift in conversion rates’ to ‘a website that isn’t embarrassing’, but they are always helpful in shaping the design work ahead.

At the level of individual pages, it’s hugely useful to discuss business goals. It gives focus to the design work and provides a framework for critique of proposed designs. Does the design meet the business goals set for the page?

Consider documenting the page goals as part of the design process, perhaps as annotations to wireframes or alongside early sketches or content lists.

Understanding the goals of a webpage has the added benefit of allowing you to set up analytics to measure the outcome of your design choices.

Understand what users want to do

Considering likely user goals for any given webpage before you start design work is hugely important. It is always interesting to compare user goals with business goals. Are there any tensions there, and how can they be addressed? It is very difficult to encourage users to click in an environment that makes them feel uncomfortable or over-sold-to. Later on in this article, we’ll discuss specific ways of understanding what your users need and want. The point here is to list out user goals alongside business goals, and discuss any conflicts before you start on design work.

An extremely common example of business needs conflicting with user needs is within transactional forms. Businesses typically want to gather as much customer information as possible, alongside eliciting permission to use that information for marketing purposes. Customers, on the other hand, want to complete their task as quickly as possible, give away as little information as possible, and sign up for no spam at all.

Prioritise, prioritise, prioritise

A prioritised list of page content is the first thing to start with when designing a new webpage. If you don’t know what the most important item on the page is, how can the page be laid out to convey that?

Discussing the conflict between business and user goals is an invaluable tool for prioritising page content and calls-to-action. If you want users to click, you need them to clearly understand what and where to click. If there are too many options, choice paralysis will set in.

There are often lots of things that the business would like the user to do (buy now, add to shortlist, share on Facebook, Twitter. Google+ or Pinterest. read reviews, add a review, understand the returns policy, look at more products, read another article – the list goes on and on). Clearly, the most important item on that list is to actually buy the item. In order to design a coherent experience, we need to know which of those options the business most wants users to go for. If we know that we can design a page that supports the business goals. If we don’t know the answer, we’ll have to design a page that equally supports all those options, which is likely to provide a bewildering array of choices. A prioritised list of desired page content and outcomes is every UX designer’s friend.

Reflect users’ language

Remember that conversation the website is having with its customers? Here’s where the analogy comes into its own. If the website speaks the same language as its users, they are far more likely to click where the website’s owner would like them to. If site content is organised in a manner that is logical to its users, they are far more likely to find what they are looking for. A sales person wouldn’t use complicated jargon when speaking to a new customer face-to-face, so don’t do it on the website.

Common mistakes here include using business- or system-centric language. For example, my current pet hate is a link on the Virgin Tivo Ul. It says, ‘express series link’. I know from experience that this means ’record series’, but I’m always reluctant to click it as the wording introduces doubt in my mind. What on earth does ‘express’ mean, and why do I want a ‘series link?

Another easy mistake to make is to organise a website’s navigation and information architecture around the business’s internal structure. Where I work, we call this “showing your organizational underpants’(www.cxpartners.co.uk/cxblog/showing_your_ organisational_underpants). An example might be having main navigation options based on revenue streams, when these names mean very little to new users arriving from a Google search. Is my virtual course listed under Training or Online shop? Who knows, but a joined-up experience would be much more useful.

UX practitioners have a number of tools and techniques to help them understand their users’ worlds, i Chief among them is user research in the form of user testing. Interview existing or potential website users about their needs and concerns. Watch them use the website or those of competitors. This is the single most valuable activity you can do to improve a site’s UX. I’m lucky enough to work somewhere with a dedicated user research lab. It contains a computer and cameras, with audio and video links to a viewing room elsewhere in the building. We use a market research company to recruit existing customers, or people matching the customer profile, as test participants. We typically devise hour-long user tests and invite our clients to come and view them so they can learn along with us.

However, you don’t need all this fancy kit to conduct invaluable user research. You just need a computer and some test participants. The key with test participants is to get people who have experience of the content you’re designing around. For a camera website, your dad may not be suitable, but your mate the photography enthusiast could be. Your client may be able to help you out here – can they point you at any existing customers? Talk to your interviewee about their experiences in your area of interest. Try to ask them about past experiences rather than asking them to speculate about what they would do – you’ll get much more accurate information. Note the words they use to describe the things they are looking for. Watch them using relevant websites. What works, what doesn’t and why?

There is a veritable wealth of information to be found on how to conduct user research, it’s all over the internet and in plenty of books (sorry for the shameless plug, but that includes my own book). There is also a number of online tools that allow you to conduct user testing remotely.

Website analytics are another useful tool for informing user-centric navigation and other naming structures. What search terms are users typing into Google before arriving at the site? What about the search terms users type into any existing site search? Can you adapt the terms the website uses to better match the terms real people use?

Support users’ tasks

The key here is to understand what the website’s users are looking for and to tell them that the website has it (or to not waste their time if it doesn’t!). Answer their questions at the appropriate time and don’t bombard them with too much information up front.

It is useful to capture the gems we learn in user research in diagrams. These diagrams are then used to support our decisions throughout the design process. For example, a task model is a diagram that describes the activities users perform in order to reach their goals. They help us to create websites that fit seamlessly into users’ lives.

To generate a task model after conducting user research, look for patterns. One way to do this is to write each task or activity you heard from your test participants on a Post-it note. If you were looking at a website selling shoes, you might have heard someone say ‘I need to know if this is heel is low enough to walk in’, so you could write ‘Heel height’ on your Post-it. Keep going with all the needs you heard in user research. Get your client involved – are there any other questions they get asked? Once you’ve got a wall full of Post-its. you can start to organise them. Take away duplicates, and then try to put them in chronological order. perhaps grouping them into phases in the process.

This is your task model. You might want to document it in a drawing program so you can share it and easily refer back to it, but you have all the information right there in your wall of Post-its.

Task models come into their own when designing the user journey through a website. This is often a balancing act between too much information and a clean design. For example, a page with a list of many products on it needs to provide summary information to allow users to decide which product to click to find out more. If you know that the main things that your shoe buyers care about are price and appearance, design a product-listing page that allows users to easily see what the shoes look like, as well as refining by price.

Use a task model to help you decide which features are important enough to users that you need to filter out unsuitable options early on. Provide richer details later in their journey, for example on an individual product page where the information may be more relevant. Returning to the shoe example, your task model might show that most users need to understand material and heel height, in addition to the overall appearance. Some users care about wide fittings and others about returns information. When you design the page, prioritise the information most users need, then provide the information that others want, but give it a reduced visual priority so the page remains clear.

Anticipate users’ problems and concerns

This is goes hand-in-hand with supporting users’ tasks, and is again about having a conversation with a website’s users that they find helpful. What are your customers worried about, and what can you do to address their concerns? Again, creating a task model helps here. Also, customer-facing staff are great people to ask for this information: shop assistants or anyone who speaks to customers on the phone. Ask them about common customer questions or problems. Ask them what they do or say to resolve them.

Recent research has revealed that some users wanted to search for a particular product by name, while others wanted to use its code. The website only used codes to refer to the product, so users who wanted to search by name ended up leaving in frustration. We redesigned the website to use both name and code every time the product was referred to, including in main navigation and in search results, and this has tested well. If you fail to solve your users’ problems on the website, they will have to go elsewhere to solve them, and they may never come back.

Be trustworthy

Again, this is about the conversation the website is having with its users. Does the business want to come across as a trustworthy one? There are many, many things that contribute to users’ perceptions of trustworthiness. User research will identify the important factors for the website’s specific situation. As food-for-thought, here are some examples I’ve come across:

• Users don’t like surprises, particularly when their hard-earned cash is involved. Be really clear about stock levels, pricing, and the implications of options and extras.
• Be consistent. Always refer to the same product or concept using the same words, whether that’s in site navigation, content or in the shopping basket. Make sure sums always add up and show what’s included.
• Users prefer ‘real’ content. Showing your expertise with blogs or news can be compelling, but don’t resort to filler as it will erode trust. Think twice before using obvious stock photography.
• Be careful with advertising. A poorly located or ill-chosen advert can really undermine trust. Conversely, unintrusive ads from companies that your users feel complement your offering can be seen as helpful.
• Use clear, well-written, proofread copy. Even a small thing like a spelling mistake will make some users doubt your veracity.
• If you have a customer services phone number, show it in the header area of every page. I have often seen user test participants looking for the phone number of a company they are unfamiliar with. They generally don’t want to actually call the company, but a concrete number is reassurance that the business exists in the real world, and they are not about to get shafted.
• Use clear design. Make clickable things look clickable. Provide clear calls-to-action: make it obvious what your users should do next.

Use social proof

Social proof is one of psychologist Robert Cialdini’s six principles of persuasion, which have really worked their way into the world of UX over the last few years. One persuasion principle is that of reciprocity, whereby if someone gives you something, you are more likely to give them something in return. Another principle is scarcity, in that we feel compelled to act faster if we feel that we will otherwise miss out.

Psychological persuasion techniques can be extremely powerful, but be careful not to go too far and undermine trust. For example, using the scarcity principle to show that there is only one item left in stock may well cause users to act. but it will seriously erode trust if they think it’s made up Care there really 20 other people looking at this hotel room right now?)

The social proof persuasion principle states that people are more likely to do something if they see that others are doing it too. There are clearly many applications of this to web design projects:

• Customer ratings and reviews. Make sure you stay trustworthy, though. Don’t remove negative reviews. I’ve often seen user test participants deliberately seek out negative comments in order to reassure themselves the content is genuine.
• “People who looked at this eventually bought…” and other recommendations. The key here is to be genuinely useful. Irrelevant recommendations really undermine trust.
• ‘Zeitgeist’ links (which reflect what’s popular at this moment in time) such as top tens, most reads, bestsellers or most shared

Test, iterate, and test again

If you have examined the business and user goals for the website, then they are the first things you should test your designs against. Does your design support the business goals for the site as a whole or for any given page? Does your design answer users’ needs and concerns, as documented in the task model?

If you really want to make users click, you need to watch them using your product. Look at when they click what you want them to, and crucially, when they don’t. Why didn’t they do what you wanted them to? Is there anything you can do about it?

You don’t have to wait until you’ve finished building a new website before you test it with users. In fact, it’s best to test as early as possible. That way, if you need to make a change, it should be quick and easy to make. Where I work, we typically design wireframes to convey the initial UX of a website. Wherever possible, we conduct user tests on these wireframes.

Of course, different practitioners will produce different deliverables, ranging from sketches to PSDs to fully-functional HTML. But the principle of testing with real users remains the same. It is surprising how quickly test participants happily interact with even the most low-fidelity sketch. We generally test on wireframes because we find they provide the best balance between understanding if the design meets user needs, and making cost-effective changes. They provide enough information for users, before requiring the visual designers and developers to make changes.

User testing your designs, whatever fidelity they may be, will always show you ways in which you can improve them. This time, you’re trying to understand if users can find everything they need. Do the words you have used for the navigation system make sense to them? Can they predict what will happen when they click on a link? Are they able to  complete any forms there may be? Even if there is any information missing, or your users cannot find it, or your forms are tricky, you’ll come away from the testing sessions knowing what needs changing, and buzzing with ideas on how to improve your design.

Don’t assume context of use

Don’t assume you know where users are or what device they are using. They may be at home, at work, on public transport, or out shopping. They may be on a desktop, a laptop, a tablet, a smartphone, an internet TV or next year’s new gadget. They may be using more than one of these items at once and they will likely be using more than one of these devices over the course of several interactions with the website.

Yes, it’s unlikely that someone’s going to buy a £2,000 holiday on their iPhone on the bus on the way home, but it’s not impossible. Do you really want to miss that sale? Admittedly, a more likely scenario is that someone who’s considering buying a holiday is using that spare half an hour on their commute home to browse for holiday ideas.

There is plenty of debate about approaches to this question. First, it was all about iPhone apps, then mobile-specific websites. Now the focus is on responsive design, with techniques and best practice shifting over time as lessons are learned.

Technology issues aside, I would argue that consistency is the most important factor here. What if your commuter on the bus wants to take another look at the holiday they saw in your print brochure or on their laptop computer at home? They might be very frustrated if their iPhone redirected them to a mobile-only website that did not provide as much detail as the brochure or the desktop website. How many times have you found yourself madly scrolling to the bottom of a mobile website in the hope of finding a link to the desktop version?

Of course, you don’t want to force mobile users on patchy connections to download loads of superfluous images, but if the images are truly redundant, why subject your desktop users to all that clutter?

Prioritising your page content and having a thorough understanding of the website’s users and their tasks really helps with decision-making when it comes to considering context of use. My advice would be to never give your users a reason to go to another website to complete their task, even if they are on the bus.

The latest iteration of the web publishing platform WordPress now includes the fully responsive Twenty Twelve theme.

The almost omnipotent CMS has reached its latest iteration, 3.5, with a number of new and exciting improvements. Iterative updates often only include minor tweaks and enhancements, and while 3.5 has its fair share of these, it also has the added bonus of a new default theme in the shape of Twenty Twelve. The new fully responsive theme is compatible with WordPress 3.4.2 as well as 3.5, so you don’t even need to upgrade (but why wouldn’t you?) to get the Twenty Twelve theme. It is available to download directly from the WordPress Themes Directory – wordpress.org/extend/ themes/twentytwelve.

The new theme is a simple, minimalist skin that incorporates all the standard WordPress elements, but as already mentioned, is fully responsive. Images are responsive, and the menu shrinks down to a single button. Users need to tap the button to reveal the full menu. The simplicity and sparse nature of the theme makes it an ideal base from which to build. Users can modify the CSS. background, header and menus to create a bespoke version of the theme. While the new, improved default theme may be the headline grabber, the latest update includes a host of tweaks and additions that are certainly worth a mention.

The media uploader has been upgraded, making it easier and more intuitive to add media. The Gallery function has also been tweaked, giving users the option to drag and drop to arrange images. The Media library is now a far more hospitable place than before. Users can edit captions, alt text etc. as before, but the big plus is the image editing options, compared with the previous version. Now it is easier to resize without losing quality.

Other modifications of note include Embeds for SoundCloud, SlideShare and Instag ram, to sit alongside YouTube,Vimeo and Flickr. And finally, a simplified Edit screen improves the user experience.

If you haven’t upgraded yet. now is the time to add more power and features to your WordPress experience.

Comments

December sees the release of WordPress 3.5, and the CMS continues the philosophy of making each release easier to use. Twenty Twelve is now the default theme so you can implement a device friendly, responsive design ‘right out of the box’. The upload/insert media workflow has been revamped and adds features like drag-and-drop gallery image reordering. To help streamline the interface, the little-used Link Manager is removed from the menu when it is not used by an existing site. The edit screen has been simplified and there’s a new colour picker. On the Install Plugins page you can now select any plug-ins you have favourited on wordpress.org, and this greatly speeds up the process of adding plug-ins to a new site. There are a few more minor features to discover, but what’s most encouraging about this release is the obvious commitment to increasing ease of use, while maintaining the ever- important compatibility and stability.

The Paperwhite is a Kindle Touch with a light. A button at the bottom unlocks the screen, but everything else is touch-based. The light is turned on by default and four LEDs at the top of the screen emit a soft, white glow that makes it easy to read books in complete darkness, without straining your eyes.

The quality of illumination is less harsh than the bright light you get on a tablet or phone, so the images and text aren’t as sharp. But because the Paperwhite and the Nook use E Ink technology, which is designed to make the text and background colour of ebooks look like pages in a physical book, the words remain clear and legible. However, the Paperwhite’s 1,024×768 resolution screen is sharper than the Nook’s 600×800 resolution, which is the same as that of the Kindle Touch.

The Paperwhite’s light is also significantly better, because it’s more evenly spread. It gets a little uneven at the bottom of the screen, but this is barely noticeable. Although the Nook is also lit from the top of its screen, the light is patchy by comparison, making the screen look thin and the text washed out.

Both touchscreens responded with minimum lag, and the speed at which pages refreshed was the same on both.

The Wi-Fi and 3G Paperwhite costs £169, which is £60 more than the Nook and more expensive even than the Kindle Fire HD tablet. Although you are paying for 3G without the fuss of a contract, you should be aware that it can only be used for downloading ebooks, and not for surfing the web on the Paperwhite’s built-in browser.

The strength of the 3G signal depends on where you live, but we downloaded Hilary Mantel’s book Wolf Hall in 50 seconds. Downloading over Wi-Fi was much faster, as we expected, and took only five seconds, but having 3G adds a lot of flexibility to what you can read and when.
The Paperwhite is heavier and taller than the Nook, but it’s also thinner and more sturdy. The screens are the same size but when we set up the e-readers to display the same page of a book, using identical typeface, size and margin settings, the Paperwhite displayed 251 words compared to the Nook’s 222.

OUR VERDICT

Amazon’s Kindle Paperwhite 3G is one of the best e-readers we’ve tested. You can download books anywhere, quickly and easily. Its light and screen are better than the Nook’s, and the overall feel is of a higher quality.

The only real drawback is that it’s expensive.

We highly recommend the Paperwhite, but if downloading books using 3G isn’t a priority, get the Wi-Fi-only version, which costs the same as the Nook.

You can now download the Desktop version of Google Earth 7, which was previously only available on mobile devices.

It contains all the breathtaking 3D imagery that phone and tablet users have enjoyed for the last few months. Major US cities including Boston, San Diego and Los Angeles appear, as do European cities including Munich and Avignon. Hopefully, some UK cities will be added soon.

There’s also a brilliant new tool called Tour Guide which offers flyover views of more than 11,000 famous sites, including Stonehenge, Mount Etna and the Great Wall of China. Just click at the bottom of the screen to see them. There’s never been a better way to see the world on your PC. www.google.com/earth

What happened?

Mozilla, the not-for-profit organisation behind Firefox claimed the “browser ballot” missing from Windows cost it nine million users. In 2009, the EU ordered Microsoft to promote rival browsers to counteract the advantage Internet Explorer has by being installed by default with the Windows operating system.

However, when Service Pack 1 was released for Windows 7 in February 2011, Microsoft neglected to include the browser ballot. That meant any new Windows 7 users weren’t shown the list of rival browsers until July 2012, 18 months later, when Microsoft noticed and rectified the “technical glitch”.

In Windows 8, you now get to choose between IE, Chrome, Firefox, Maxthon and Opera. Firefox is described as “fast, flexible and secure”.

Mozilla claims that the missing ballot cost it between six and nine million downloads over the 18-month period, which translates to a 3.5-per-cent share of global browser usage. Because Mozilla makes much of its cash via a Long-term, it could diminish your choice of browsers because while Internet Explorer comes pre-loaded with Windows, and Chrome is advertised on every Google service, Firefox needs all the help it can get. It’s not good for the independence of the internet if the only two mass-appeal browsers are owned by Microsoft and Google.

What do we think?

This isn’t the sort of mistake a giant company like Microsoft should be making. The EU should take the proceeds of any fine against Microsoft and dole it out to alternative browser developers, including Mozilla. But this should also make Mozilla realise that it can`t depend on a helping hand from Microsoft to get people using it browser.

Rescue bad shots with these super-fast photo edit
Sometimes things don’t go to plan when you take your shots. All is not lost however, as Photoshop gives you some amazing edits that will allow you to save potentially ruined photos. This doesn’t take hours to do and it doesn’t need years of editing experience either. Follow these tips for some common photo mistake and how to fix them.

Technical tip
When making major edits, always duplicate the layer so you can revert to the original. Go to Layer>Duplicate Layer.

Brighten dull photos
Click a Auto Levels and Photoshop will instantly adjust the image’s brightness and contrast. Go to Image>Adjustments>Levels and then click on Auto.

Crop out distracting elements
If you’ve captured a distraction on the edge of your shot that deters focus from the main subject, just crop it out! Select the crop tool from the toolbar then drag over the part you want to keep, then double click your mouse to crop.

Sharpen blurry images
If your images are looking a little soft, using Unsharp Mask can sharpen them up in no time. Go to Filter>Sharpen>unsharp Mask and move the sliders untill you are happy with the result

Correct Colur Balance
To quickly tweak the colours in your image, go to Image>Adjustments>Color Balance and move the sliders until you get the colours you want.

Deal with noise
If your image has come out really grainy simply go to Filter>Reduce Noise and tweak the sliders to decrease the grain in your photograph.

Reader tip
“Use the Spot Healing tool to cover up blemishes. It’s great for portraits and your subject will be happy with you for giving them a tidy up! Just select the tool from the toolbar and then click on the blemish-it’s so easy. I use it all the time to get rid of my freckles”.

Technical Tip : Use Shutter Priority ( usually a S or TV sysmbol ) to change the shutter speed and let the camera set the aperture.

Your shutter speed helps you to control the amount of light that gets through to your sensor. A fast shutter speed such as 1/1000sec won’t allow much light through at all, but a slow speed such as 10sec will let the light flood in. Experiment with your shutter speeds and use these tips to see how these variations can be used to great effect.

• Set a slow shutter speed such as 2sec or less, combined with a neutral density filter, to create a smooth, misty effect on your landscape shots.
• Using a fast shutter speed of above 1/125sec will freeze any movement in your subject so this is great setting for sports photography.
• Set your shutter speed to slower than you’d normally use for action shots, such as 1/50sec, and move the camera with the subject to create background blur.
• If you find you are getting a lot of blurry shots you might need to increase your shutter speed, as higher speeds cope much better with hand shake.
• Use a slower shutter speed at night time to let in more light. You may need to use a tripod in order to stop motion blur created by hand Shake.

Reader tip Gareth Brooks
“If you’re about to give Manual a go, first try Shutter Priority. You choose the shutter speed, while the camera controls the aperture. Take photos and study the Information on the LCD. Then go to Manual and mirror the settings that Shutter Priority gave you from the last photo!”

Rainbows often appear completely out of the blue, and when they arrive, they have an unstoppable ability to make us stand and stare. Getting this moment in a photo however, is not always easy, but with our tips you will soon be able to create an image that has the exact same effect on those viewing it.

Technical tip
Use a wide-angle lens to fit in the breath of the rainbow, and try and show the two end points at the same time.

“When shooting rainbows there can be loads of dark and light parts of the photo, so using three different exposures and merging them will help balance the photo more than one single one. Also shoot in RAW so you can bring back more of the detail post-shoot.”

1. The same composition rules apply to rainbow photos as regular ones-think about positioning the rainbow to lead the viewer’s eye along it and through the frame.
2. Use a polarizing filter to add extra contrast and saturation to the colours in your photo. This can make the rainbow stand out from the background more.
3. Use a small aperture to make sure all of the rainbow remains in focus from start to finish, or if you don’t have manual controls, use the Landscape scene mode.
4. The most interesting part of the rainbow is often where it meets the land, so try and include this in your image, rather than just a part of the rainbow against the sky.
5. Enhance the colour by increasing Saturation in the editing process. Tweaking Levels and Curves may also make the rainbow ‘pop’ from the background.

View and select tabs
If your favorite browser doesn’t have a particular feature that you’ve seen in another browser, you don’t have to miss out. You can just use a plug-in to add it. Here, we’ve looked at how to recreate some of the unique features of Apple’s Safai browser in Chrome.

To get Safari Tab View feature, which lets you browse your open tabs using large thumbnails, open a new tab, click the Chrome Web Store icon and search for visual Tabs (or go to bit.ly/vistab303).  Install it to add an icon next to the menu button (which used to be a spanner, but is now three horizontal line). Open some tabs and click the icon to view thumbnails of the pages.

Open tabs are displayed using cover flow, which will be familiar to iTunes/iOS users. The left-and right- arrow keys scroll through the tabs, and clicking one opens it. Right-click the icon and select Options to experiment with different settings.

Too many Tabs (bit.ly/toomany303) doesn’t mimic Safari’s look, but it performs a similar task. Click the icon by the menu button to open a panel displaying thumbnails of tabs. Tabs can be hidden and reopened later.  Tab Expose (bit.ly/tabexp303) displays all your open tabs as a grid of thumbnail images. Just click the one you want.

Sync bookmarks, tabs and history
Safari’s iCloud Tabs service lets you transfer the tabs on your browser to a mobile device. To get a similar feature in Chrome, click the menu button and sign in with a Google account to sync with other PCs and devices. This means that when you browse the web on your PC, then start Chrome on your PC, then start Chrome on your Android tablet or mobile phone, you can tap Other Devices at the bottom of the window on a new tab and each computer and device you use will be listed. The open tabs or last-viewed pages are shown. You just tap one to open it.

There are some great chrome Web Store extensions that take this further. Tab Cloud (bit.ly/tabcloud303), for example, lets you save all your open tabs are saved as a bookmark. Bookmarks are automatically synced, so clicking the button or the bookmark on another computer or device opens all your saved tabs.

Share your web finds
Safari has an iOS-style Share button to send web links to Facebook and Twitter. shareaholic (bit.ly/share303)adds a button next to the menu button in Chrome that, when clicked, displays a list sharing options, including Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn, by default. Dozens of other services can be added by going to Options. Just select the one you want and a post is automatically created from the URL and page title, or you can type your own message.

An alternative is HootSuite Hootlet. Sign up for free at hootsuite.com, add your social networks, then grab the chrome extension (bit.ly/hoot303).Just click the button in the toolbar, select the network to share the link with and enter a comment.

Boost your privacy
Safari now includes Do Not Track, which proves privacy by telling websites that you don’t want them to store or track information about your activities. Chrome doesn’t have it yet, but it’s coming in Version 23. In the meantime, extensions like Do Not Track Plus (bit.ly/dntp304) and Keep My Opt-Outs (bit.ly/kmoo303) perform a similar job. You can choose which sites can and can’t track your activities.

Offline reading
If you travel with a laptop and don’t always have an internet connection, or you simply want to cut down on bandwidth, Safari can save web pages so you can read them later, either on or offline.

Chrome Read Later Fast (bit.ly/readfast303) lets you right-click a web page and select Read Later. To access your saved pages, open a new tab and click the Reader Later Fast icon. The saved pages are listed and you can click one to view it.

Accessibility tools
Safari has some useful accessibility tools you can emulate in Chrome. To give your tried eyes a rest, get SpeakIt (bit.ly/speak303). Select the text on a web page, right-click it and select SpeakIt to have it read to you.  Safari also has a nice zoom feature. To zoom in Chrome, hold down the Ctrl key and spin the mouse wheel.

For the past two years, Apple has shunned the 7″ tablet form factor in favour of its 4″ iPod/iPhone and 10″ iPad and that has left a chasm in the market that has sucked in an array of Android models.

In particular, we’ve seen something of an arms race between Acer and Samsung that has jinked from the Galaxy Tab 7.0 to the Acer Iconia Tab A100 and onward to the Galaxy Tab 2 7.0. The release of the Acer Iconia A110 raises the stakes once again and Acer has improved the specification in a number of respects compared to the A100.

The big change is the shift from a dual-core NVidia Tegra 2 processor to the quad-core NVidia Tegra 3, along with a transition from Android 3.2 to the very latest 4.1 version.

Unfortunately, the 7″ screen retains the same 1024×600 resolution as the Tab A100, which is a fundamental issue, because the A110 cannot display HD movie content. This isn’t, however, the end of the world, as the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 uses the same screen resolution as the Acer.

The major selling point of the Iconia A110 is the price of £180, which is undeniably cheaper than the £210 Samsung. Game, set and match to Acer you might think, except that the rules of the game have changed in the past year. For one thing, Google introduced the Asus Nexus 7 tablet, which you can find on sale at Dixons and Currys. We have to assume that Google has subsidised the cost of the Nexus, because you get a 1280×800 IPS screen and 16GB of memory for £199.99, which sounds very impressive.

The other fly in the ointment is the Amazon Kindle Fire HD, which is due to go on sale on 25th October. If you pay the extra £10 to kill adverts and splash out £9 for the PowerFast charger, you’ll still only pay £177 for a 16GB 7-incher with 1280×800 screen and 16GB of storage. We are under no illusions that Amazon will use the Fire HD as a shop window for the Amazon store, but the point is that Acer doesn’t have the sub-£200 market to itself, because the Iconia A110 faces stiff competition.

If you focus on the quadcore grunt offered by Acer, you will doubtless be impressed, as the Iconia A110 did well in the Google Octane suite and was the only tablet to complete every test. This appears to be a benefit of the inclusion of Android 4.1, rather than the 4.0 OS run by the four other tablets.

Acer has included a micro- HDMI port (no cable supplied) and uses the micro-USB port for charging the battery and data transfer, so the look and feel of the Iconia A110 is neat and tidy.

When the Acer is held in portrait mode – it just seems right – the micro-HDMI and USB ports are located on one long side, the micro-SD slot is at the top with the headphone jack, and on the right side there’s the power button and volume rocker control. The casing feels solid in the hand, but the flat grey back is smooth and a little slippery, so care is required if you wish to avoid dropping the thing.

There’s a single speaker at the top of the casing with audio that is decidedly average, so you will certainly wish to use headphones with this tablet, because that improves audio sound considerably.

The biggest area of concern with the A110 is the quality of the screen, which is below par compared to the competition. It suffers in terms of brightness, colour intensity and viewing angle. When you pick up the the Acer from a table or show the screen to a friend, you can see the colours change to an alarming degree as the viewing angle changes. The minimal screen brightness means you will struggle to use the Iconia on a sunny day when you’re outdoors.

This isn’t a killer flaw, but it certainly detracts form the appeal of the A110. Yes, it is quad-core and costs less than £200, but that’s pretty much all you can say in its favour.