Providing a Better Initial Experience

The user experience begins as soon as a user adds your application. Remember, you only get one chance to make a first impression. Make a great one, so that users will continue to run your application. Offer a "smart" initial experience to your users by adhering to the general principles:

  • Ensure your application is up and running when the user adds it.
  • Take advantage of defaults, and infer values from the user's Profile information.
  • Localize your application and provide content relevant to the user's locale.

Do's

  • Look up the user's location data in the Profile. (Example: Social Weather)
  • Use GeoPlanet to convert user-submitted locations into usable data such as latitude/longitude coordinates and city name. GeoPlanet is also available through YQL.
  • Reference yap_jurisdiction (an ISO 3166 country code passed as a post parameter to YAP applications) and Accept-Language (an RFC 2616 section 14.4 language priority list passed as a header to YAP applications).

Don'ts

  • Don't ask users to provide information they have already provided through Yahoo!, such as Profile data, interests, or location. (Example: "Enter your nickname:")
  • Don't ask the user for their location unless there is no logical way of inferring it. For example, you may not be able to determine the location if the available information is abstract. (Example: "out in the country")

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