Archive for the 'Content Management' Category
May 11, 2007
Pre-requisites for a Successful Small Business Web Site
There are 6 pre-requisites for a successful small business web site. The are:
- Have one!
- It lists location, hours and contact information prominently on the home page.
- Services and/or products are clearly identified in general on the home page and in detail on dedicated pages.
- They qualify that they are the best source for whatever the business provides.
- The design looks reputable.
- They have updated their listings in the local search engines for Google and Yahoo!.
Hitting each of the above won’t guarantee success but it will prevent fundamental flaws from preventing the best possible outcomes for a business with their web site.
The above is based on part of my presentation to the American Association of Endodontists a couple weeks ago.
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May 10, 2007
First Product Wiki in the Association Space?
Avectra, vendor of one of the major association management systems, has launched a public wiki to support their products.
This is the first public wiki to support an association-dedicated product that I am aware of. I think there is a good chance this will build critical mass with their customers. Association staff are going to have high incentive to contribute since this is such a major part of their management systems yet there are few to no resources, such as commercially published books, on the subject.
It might work better if the user groups dedicated to the AMS vendors launched their own wikis, maintaining some independence.
(Spotted on Wes Trochlil’s blog.)
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May 8, 2007
What information should a consultant share with a client about the RFP process?
I heard from an executive recently that the consultant helping them to select their content management system had a highly qualified list of vendors they had researched and were sending requests to those who best matched their needs. So far, so good. However, the consultant refuses to share or discuss the list of vendors with the client!
This presents a few problems:
- It shows contempt for the client on the part of the consultant;
- It prevents the client from providing their highly valuable take on the prospective vendors as part of the selection process;
- How does the client know they are really talking to more than one vendor?
Does your buyer agent Realtor present you with a single house? Does a car salesman show you only one vehicle, take it or leave it? Of course not.
There is no business need or ethical basis for not sharing and discussing the list of potential vendors with a client, in my not-so-humble opinion. It is simply bad practice. Any consultant doing so is not serving their client nor themselves well.
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February 6, 2007
IA’s Miss the Point
This thoughtful post by Christopher Fahey is a great example of how information architects tend to miss the point of their projects: The Holy Grail of Information Architecture. If you read through this post you hear a lot about process and tools and what form the ultimate deliverable from the project should take in order to be most effective. Christopher has concluded that standard deliverables aren’t the Holy Grail of an IA project but he doesn’t quite make the leap to what is: achieving the objectives of the organization.
The point of information architecture should be to help the organization in question to better achieve its goals. The output of an IA engagement should be the achievement of those business goals, not necessarily a nifty flow chart and set of wireframes. Selling widgets, providing membership value, business networking, politics, whatever the purpose of the site: IA should help to achieve those ends more effectively and efficiently. If you can provide that value simply by reviewing and discussing a site in a meeting, great! Don’t get hung up on the deliverables. Do focus on the outcomes to which you are contributing.
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December 19, 2006
WYMeditor
Here is a new WYSIWYG editor for use in web-based content management interfaces: WYMeditor. It won’t give your users true “what you see is what you get” views of the content they are editing but it does enforce strict adherence to XHTML markup. If you have to have highly structured content then this might be a good tool to add to your system.
Spotted via Gadgetopia.
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December 14, 2006
Managing the Politics of Your Web Site’s Information Architecture
I have added a new article to the resources section of my web site: Managing the Politics of Your Web Site’s Information Architecture. This article was originally published in Associations Now. In it I discuss how to defuse political infighting around your site’s information architecture by focusing on achieving your stakeholders outcomes and creating a variety of traffic guidance tools for managing your site. Here are the first two graphs:
Some days it may seem that the biggest problem with your Web site is not the technology that powers it but the power struggles that threaten to undermine it. Whether in a large, decentralized organization or in a small, local nonprofit, a Web site can turn into a battleground on which everyone fights for prime spots on the home page to highlight their programs. Too often, the winners are the ones who are best at internal politics. The losers are the weaker negotiators—and the visitors who give up in frustration without finding what they want.
It doesn’t have to be this way. By thinking about what’s behind the struggle, you as a Web site manager can de-emphasize internal politics while helping organizational stakeholders achieve their goals through—not in spite of—your Web site’s information architecture.
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December 13, 2006
Free Open Source Search Tool from IBM and Yahoo!
IBM has released a free enterprise search engine, IBM OmniFind Yahoo! Edition. The engine includes some technology from IBM’s OmniFind product, so this is probably prositioned as an entry level introduction to their commercial product. It is a direct challenge to Google’s Mini search appliance, according to this story on CIO.com. Yahoo! seems to have contributed some interface design expertise for the management interface.
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November 16, 2006
Yahoo and Microsoft Adopt Sitemaps Standard
Does your site offer a site map for search engine crawlers yet? It just became a lot more compelling to offer one now that Microsoft and Yahoo have begun supporting it:
In alphabetical order, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo have agreed to all support a unified system of submitting web pages through feeds to their crawlers. Called Sitemaps, taking its name from the precursor system that Google launched last year, all three search engines will now support the method.
Providing a sitemap according to the specification will make it easier for the search engines to rapidly index new content you add to your site.
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September 25, 2006
Quoted in The Washington Post: Access Denied
In case you missed it, I was in the lead of an article on the first page of the business section in The Washington Post this past Saturday: Access Denied by Yuki Noguchi.
Between work and personal e-mail, multiple banking and retirement accounts, two association memberships, photo sites, Web communities, and retailers like Amazon.com and eBay.com, C. David Gammel maintains 130 online accounts, each requiring a user name and password.
Gammel tracks his sundry log-in information in a file on his computer, but on at least two occasions he’s confused or mistyped his password, and been locked out of his SunTrust bank accounts, forcing him to call the bank or look for an open branch to regain access.
“It’s frustrating — if understandable,” said Gammel, a consultant in Silver Spring. He has also been denied access on a news site when he couldn’t remember his log-in information, he said. “I bail on them if I’m having a difficult time,” he said.
I actually keep most 0f those logins stored in my browser and only those for non-sensitive sites. I provided some tips on better managing logins and balancing security with ease of use but that didn’t make it into the piece.
The article is a good lesson for site developers to keep in mind: the plethora of usernames and passwords that people have to manage these days is a real burden and a barrier to using sites in many cases. You have to balance your security measures with the sensitivity of the data you are storing and the value of your service to your customers. It is also critical to unify your own login system so that ONE username/password pair can be used to access all services related to your company.
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August 16, 2006
Get Your IT Administrator Out of My Webmaster
I’ve seen several position descriptions lately that meld both IT/Network Administrator and Webmaster* responsibilities into one impossible job. I just saw one come across a list I belong to that included:
- authoring, posting and managing web content
- upgrading web site software
- managing an in-house CRM database
- providing desktop support for staff
- managing network backups
- bringing peace to the Middle East
OK, I made up that last one but the whole thing is still completely unrealistic even without peacemaking. If they find someone willing to take this job, I guarantee that none of those tasks will be done well. Or only one or two will and the others will fall by the wayside completely.
While Nick Carr may be the crankiest guy on the web these days, I do agree that many day-to-day IT functions are commodities and can be effectively outsourced. In this situation, I’d recommend they focus the position on the most valuable activities for the organization and farm out the rest to support companies who specialize in those tasks. Even having CRM and web content in the same position would likely be too much and require very different competencies.
* (Webmaster is an outdated title and concept for web positions these days, but that’s another post.)
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