08/01: Give your website a new year’s resolution
I successfully dug out of our chalet in Vail in time to get to Las Vegas for CES. I was given a new Burton snowboard as a gift from my dear friend and Olympic Gold Medalist Snowboarder, Hannah Teter and wanted to try it out. While there are few things nicer than fresh powder, eight days of it can be too much, especially after you have polished off your last bottle of Maker’s Mark two days earlier. Regardless, I was happy to check into the Wynn for this year’s Consumer Electronics Show and some poker.
I plan on post some reports from what I see at CES later this week, first lets talk about New Year’s Resolutions. While I was sitting in the airport, I heard a number of conversations related to New Year’s Resolutions. While most of them revolved around exercise and dieting, I started thinking about what New Year’s Resolutions owners of Websites should consider. Here is my list:
1- Give your site a good cleaning – Review your site and remove content that is out of date or not relevant.
2- Streamline your forms – A pain point for most users is when they have to enter, or reenter, information to get value from your site. There are exciting technologies, from AJAX to Flex which can significantly improve the user experience. Create a flowchart of the steps and see what can be done to cut the number of steps in half.
3- Integrate conversations with your customers into some part of the site – These conversations are happening elsewhere. Why not embrace them, respond to them and learn form them.
4- Work a video into your site – Broadband home users outnumber dial up users 5 to 1. Pick a topic that video communicates extremely well and think about how to integrate it into your site. Video can be tucked into your site in a very seamless approach.
5- Distribute the role of adding content – New content is great for visitors and search engines alike. Add a small content management tool to an area of your site and enlist some associates to add content monthly.
I’d love to hear what you plan to do with your site this year! Leave a comment and tell us all!
I plan on post some reports from what I see at CES later this week, first lets talk about New Year’s Resolutions. While I was sitting in the airport, I heard a number of conversations related to New Year’s Resolutions. While most of them revolved around exercise and dieting, I started thinking about what New Year’s Resolutions owners of Websites should consider. Here is my list:
1- Give your site a good cleaning – Review your site and remove content that is out of date or not relevant.
2- Streamline your forms – A pain point for most users is when they have to enter, or reenter, information to get value from your site. There are exciting technologies, from AJAX to Flex which can significantly improve the user experience. Create a flowchart of the steps and see what can be done to cut the number of steps in half.
3- Integrate conversations with your customers into some part of the site – These conversations are happening elsewhere. Why not embrace them, respond to them and learn form them.
4- Work a video into your site – Broadband home users outnumber dial up users 5 to 1. Pick a topic that video communicates extremely well and think about how to integrate it into your site. Video can be tucked into your site in a very seamless approach.
5- Distribute the role of adding content – New content is great for visitors and search engines alike. Add a small content management tool to an area of your site and enlist some associates to add content monthly.
I’d love to hear what you plan to do with your site this year! Leave a comment and tell us all!
