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Here is a nice document which popped up in my reader today about Facebook, a social network. If the whole social network concept is new then here are a few steps you can follow to get up and running. Facebook appears to have some of the largest growth in this environment right now, so if you had to pick one, I would pick this.
I was by chance looking at the foxtel website recently in an effort to see what movies were on on the weekend, and found that they have a new flash based tv guide.
I was actually amazed to be honest. The guide is fast, easy to use, can be filtered, and has all the detail of the programming in one window. It has an ajax style interface although relies exclusively on flash to deliver the result.
Right now it seems to only have foxtel channels however it has an accomodation for free-to-air channels but nothing yet populated.
I will be using this from now on, definitely worth a look.
Have been searching high and low for a new theme for quite some time and finally found what I was looking for.
This theme has sidebar widgets capability which is great plus i love the “content front and centre” approach.
While doing this addition I decided to add a plug to manage threaded comments, so check that out. Finally am working on putting in LightBox or something similar for image management.
Your comments welcome.
I think there is a definite need for sites for the older generation. However at the same time there is a need for education of some of the common things that we take for granted over the web.
A few examples:
I don’t use these examples to jest, there is a legitimate need for education in these very simple tasks.
The other thing to remember however is that my mother-in-law wouldn’t want to use a site specifically targeted to old people, she would see this as condescending more than anything else.
Just been to the qantas.com website to have a look at travel dates for April. Normally I would say ‘i have to travel on the exact date’ however in this case I looked at the ‘flexible with dates’ option.
The interface that was returned presented a matrix of the departure and return dates, with all the prices on one small table. Excellent! So i can look at the prices (all the same in this case) and then pick a combination of departure and return dates with one click.
Well done qantas.com
My news reader this morning notified me of a few articles in relation to like.com.
This is a new search engine specifically designed for finding things that look ‘like’ something. It was instantly useful and intuitive.
This is what I tried… I click on a watch on the front page, it then asked what sort of watch, so I said a men’s watch. From this point on I was able to move some sliders at the top of the page that then updated the search results on the page based on whether I liked the colour, the shape or pattern of the items I had selected.
Once I had narrowed this down I was then able to literally draw a box around the parts of the watch I had found that I liked (I liked the band) and then the search results updated again to show me watches with similar bands. It was a great experience. I never went to the point of buying, but would definetly use this as a research tool. Here’s hoping if will go beyond watches, jewelry, handbags and shoes soon.
Some of you might now that my wife and I run www.newagestore.com.
This site is currently running using some really old ASP code that I wrote, and an access database (or 4) that has is well overdue for a re-design.
So, over the coming weeks and month I’ll be writing about what I have learned and the process for completing the re-write.
Step 1 - choosing the right CMS. No decision as yet, however I have set up a test environment for the new site consisting of a server running Win2003 Server and SQL server.
More to follow…
Digg.com appeared to be one the greatest tools an IT person could use to see what was happenning in the world, what was capturing the attention of others just like me.
For a while (maybe 4 months) I have regulrarly visited and interacted with this social networking community. You know, social networking… the killer app? Web 2.0 and all that.
I guess the bad part about social networking is that it is social however. Humans and the ones interacting with the information on the site, and just like the real community there are good humans and bad humans. Their are nice ones and angry onces, and ones that think they are better than the rest and above the crowd.
So I go to digg last night, hoping to find out something interesting and new and instead of seeing encouraging comment from the IT community I see comment after comment ridicule and bullying.
To be honest, I never posted anything on digg for fear of getting shot down in flames because I didn’t research my posting enough. As an example, I just went to digg and picked a story at random and found a comment like “As if they f***ing will be you retard.”
You don’t have to search hard to find something or someone being flamed! Go look for yourself.
Unacceptable behaviour, disrespectful in fact. Just because you are sitting behind a keyboard doesn’t give you the right to act this way.
Well… no digg, in fact i digg no more!
1. Your website is an electronic brochure
2. Can’t be found in Google
3. Was last updated when it was created
4. Is organised how you want it organised
5. Is missing what your audience wants
6. Is home grown, and looks like it!
You’ve invested money and time into making your website what it is today, but you’re just not seeing the results. If any of the above applies to you then you need to fix it, and fast.
The six issues above require some explanation:
You can fix it by following these simple steps. Research, Restructure and Refine.
Research
This is one of the most overlooked steps in building a website and is incredibly important. You can cover this off very quickly however by looking at what your competition is doing, thinking about what your customers are asking for, and finding out what the most common issues people are having with your product after purchasing from you. During this process you should generate a list of the types of people that visit your website. The automatic answer is of course “customers” but this is not correct. You might home business owners, soccer moms, students, or an accountant who works for an SME just to name a few. If you can create a list of about the top 5 then this is a great start.
Restructure
Restructuring sounds like a big job, however with a good content management system you should be fine. Without a content management system then you are up for considerable effort, so be prepared.
Here’s the key to getting this right! This is the BIG SECRET to building a great site that will actually help you achieve results.
Draw up a table with six columns, and put the following headings at the top of each column; Who, What, How, Why, When, Wake.
Who - this is generated from the list you developed in step 1. Each row in your table should be started with one of audience types you identified above.
What - For each audience type you need to identify what they are actually looking for on your site.
How - How are they going to find your site? Is this type of person someone who relies on referrals from friends, search engines, advertising or a notice at the local mall?
Why - This is an evaluation process that these type of people will go through. What about your product/service will be important to them? Price, geographic location, your reputation, or that you have a payment plan?
When - This is not a date or time, this has more to do with ‘under what circumstances will they buy’. You need to establish what will actually move them to make the purchase.
Wake - After the sale (in the wake of the sale) how will you keep this type of person in touch with you?
Here’s an example
Who: Home business owner.
What: They need something cheap, practical and easy.
How: Referral and Local community bulletin boards.
Why: Price.
When: When they have confidence that the money they will spend will do the job.Â
Wake: Monthly Newsletter
Having completed this exercise you will now have a roadmap to follow when building the content for your site and how it should be structured by looking for commonality in your table. If you find that you have a common ‘how’ or ‘why’ then you should probably target parts of your navigation to address this.
Refine
Remember the six key elements that I stated at the beginning of this article? Here they are again:
1. Your website is an electronic brochure
2. Can’t be found in Google
3. Was last updated when it was created
4. Is organised how you want it organised
5. Is missing what your audience wants
6. Is home grown, and looks like it!
Refining is all about identifying how you measure the change in your website’s performance. Having made many changes you want to make sure that it has not all been in vein, or more importantly you may still have issues to be addressed if you are not seeing the performance you might expect.
Your site should now be anything but an electronic brochure. It should have rich captivating information that people actually want to read, and be targeted towards particular audiences that you know will visit your site.
You should be able to visit googlerankings.com to see whether you appear in Google. Remember that one of the key elements Google uses to identify a good website is the depth and breadth of the content. If you have valuable information in the right quantities then getting into Google should happen automatically. If you still can’t be found using the keywords you want then I would suggest you visit the American Marketing Association’s website (marketingpower.com) and invest some time in their pre-recorded webcasts, they’re free!
You need to keep your site up to date; a week should not go by without some sort of modification to the content or structure. This is another measure search engines use to evaluate the ranking your site gets in search results.
Finally I would suggest you need to make sure your site looks professional, and one of the best ways you can do this is by asking your customers for their honest opinion. There are thousands of designers just waiting for the opportunity to give you a great looking site, however you can also get some exceptional designs from template sites (like templatemonster.com) for a reasonable fee.
Remember that there is no mystery to making a great website. All you need is quality information that people are looking for and that is easy to find.
