Tagged with 'web'

I have a love/hate relationship with website awards.

Prevailing Hate
I hate awards for two reasons. First, aiming to win awards is a terrible incentive.  I mean, do you want your website developer to say, “We’re going to build you a website that will win you some really great awards!” Or would you rather they say, “We’re going to build you a website that is going to achieve your business objectives!”  Can you do both? Maybe.  But which fence is that web developer swinging for?  Your needs? Or more plaques on their wall? Why should there be any distraction from the obvious objective.

Second, most web award programs suck. Quite simply, they often reward pretty websites. Rarely is there any serious lifting of the hood to find out how robust the site is. Criteria such as interaction, information architecture, usability, content quality, search optimization, engagement,  goal and conversion orientation are rarely part of the evaluation. That’s because these essential requirements are also the hardest to judge. But everybody has an opinion about pretty.  Web awards often reward pretty junk.

Embraceable Love
I love website awards almost as passionately as I hate them. Usually so much effort goes into the creation of a good website that it’s wonderful to see these business solutions recognized. Moreover, the site development is generally driven by internal client staff who sweat bullets producing their online presence. When their site is recognized with an award, it’s just great seeing them and their organizations get the recognition they deserve

And don’t think those acrylic and lacquered wood awards don’t mean something. I closed an award winning computer business in 1993 and among the last things I tossed out – 16 years later – were some of the award plaques this business had won. Even after the business is toast, the awards validated a lot of the effort.

And the Winners Are……
Today, the Web Marketing Association announced their WebAwards for 2009. And I have no ambivalence in celebrating the winners.  Duo is one of a handful of companies worldwide that won 5 or more web awards. Our client sites that received recognition include:

• comScore- Marketing Standard of Excellence
• Youth Ready Chicago – Government Standard of Excellence
• American Library Association – Non-Profit Standard of Excellence
• Burnham Nationwide – Consulting Standard of Excellence
• Illinois Humanities Council – Non-Profit Standard of Excellence
• PricePlease, Inc. – Outstanding Website

A tip of the hat to these organizations. I want to believe that in all cases their business objectives were paramount on our development agenda and the sites are now meetings these performance objectives.

Of course, the award plaques won’t look too bad on our wall.

We’re becoming more accustomed to correcting small-ish errors on wiki web pages when we come across them. I catch myself looking for an “Edit” link on other people’s pages, but of course not all web pages are editable. But that habitual reaction has me wondering about web content mistakes and how best to correct them.

What’s the biggest web content mistake you’ve seen (or done?)

Michael Silverman told us about the six-year-old news article that went out due to inaccurate automation techniques, causing a 75% drop in a company’s stock price before it could be corrected, in Save $1 Billion with Web Content Management! Now that is a big web content mistake.

So, what’s the best way to correct someone else’s web page? Does it matter if that web page is a blog entry? I typically would email someone whose blog entry I wanted to see a correction in. And when I correct blog entries, I always show the text deleted in strikeout format so that it always remains in the original post. I don’t want to seem like I’m hiding anything if readers who read it before the change remember the content differently. I think that approach only works well with blog entries, though.

The Suxorz

SXSW Interactive was last week in Austin, TX, and they will once again feature the “hall of shame” for social media at The Suxorz. They feature the web content campaigns they consider to be the most embarrassing or most poorly executed.

One of the common mistakes from last year’s panel was creating all-flash based sites but hiding the metadata from search engines. There are certainly ways to solve that problem, though. One example from a panelist at SXSWi last year was an example from Samsung. They used Flex and AJAX to create a web-based catalog containing 20,000 SKUs of different TV models. To avoid the problem of a lack of deep search, they used XML site maps to get all the deep links that werere previously not findable.

This year’s Suxorz are being discussed on this Facebook Group. Hasbro shutting down Scrabulous seems to have a couple of votes, and really any campaign with the scent of dishonesty will get a vote or two. For example, Belkin paying for reviews on Amazon and New Egg stuck out to me.

What would you vote for as an example of poor execution on web content?

Web usability expert Jakob Nielson just released a new study that I think every marketing manager with a company website ought to pay attention to. It’s about your company’s About Us page.

The study, released last week, follows up on an earlier study done five years ago and looks at 63 websites from large, medium and small companies, government, and nonprofits. You can read the executive summary on Nielson’s Alertbox website or download the whole thing for a reasonable price (compared to most studies like this) if you want to see the dirt on the company sites with usability problems or see examples of good About Us pages. But here is some of what he says about putting your best face forward on these important pages, along with some of what I’ve seen of this in my own experience.

“On each site, we gave users one open-ended task: evaluate the organization. We also gave them several directed tasks, such as to find out who runs the organization, what community or social programs the organization contributes to, and when the organization was founded.”

There was some good news and some bad news on these tasks. First, usability for those pages had actually increased by (what Nielson calls) an acceptable 9% in five years, but the bad news was that when users were asked to find out what the organizations actually do success rates went down from 90% to 81% in the last five years. Apparently, a trend has emerged where marketing execs are more interested spewing “marketese and blah, blah” about what they do, than being clear.

I do a lot of research via company websites and I see this type of mistake a lot. They usually say something like, “We deliver you the most innovative solutions in multiple languages to give you improved outcomes and a more impactful position in a unique marketplace within all industries.”
What!? But what do you do? It kills all your credibility to be so vague that you appear to be trying to be all things to all people. Nielson has this to say about credibility:

“Trust and credibility are major issues on the Web, where even the biggest company exists as only a few words and pictures in a browser window. The most deceitful and unethical company can look as good as a company with a long history of community involvement and honest customer relationships. Explaining who you are and where you come from does matter, as do simple things like providing management biographies and photos.”

Nielson, gives some great free advice in his executive summary. For example he suggests web designers have a homepage link that simply says About Us or About Company Name since this is what most users are accustomed to. In his study users had trouble deciphering the meaning of nonstandard terms like  Info Center or other descriptors, so it’s best to use what is familiar, rather than trying to be different.

And it’s important to be sure the content on your About Us page says clearly who you are, becuase as Nielson says, this is pretty much the content you want all other content based upon, so it’s important to nail it down tight—without the marketese and blah, blah. He then goes on to recommend a hierarchical structure for the rest of your About Us information (more free advice):

“We recommend providing About Us information at 4 levels of detail:

• Tagline on the homepage: A few words or a brief sentence summarizing what the organization does.
• Summary: 1-2 paragraphs at the top of the main About Us page that offer a bit more detail about the organization’s goal and main accomplishments.
• Fact sheet: A section following the summary that elaborates on its key points and other essential facts about the organization.
• Detailed information: Subsidiary pages with more depth for people who want to learn more about the organization.

Nielson explains the effectiveness of this approach through a good example (Alcoa) and bad example (US General Services Administration).  Search these yourself and see if you don’t agree.

This is just an overview, so if you want to read the study information that supports these ideas, or you need some type of metrics to convince your boss, you might consider reading the entire report, but Nielson’s exec summary has even more valuable information than I can talk about here. So, I’ll leave you with Nielson’s bottom line on this:

“The Web is very depersonalized, but from our earliest usability studies, we’ve seen that users like getting a sense of the company behind the website.

Having a good About Us section facilitates this understanding. Clearly stating what you do helps customers understand your site as a whole. Of course, your overall site is what ultimately represents your organization to users. People look at product pages and read the site’s content when they’re evaluating an organization as a possible vendor, business partner, employer, investment, or (in the case of charities) donation recipient. Communication isn’t restricted to About Us. But dedicating an area to providing users with facts about your organization and its history and values helps pull all of the site’s content together.”

What do you do when your web content engine, while aging gracefully, indicates to you that it’s ready for the rocking chair on the porch? Serena Collage had an internal communication leak to a few message boards, such as the Collage Higher Ed Yahoo Group and their own Support forums, that hints at the eventual sunsetting of the product.

Later correction and clarification came on the Support forum from Vickie Schira of Serena, saying “Serena has not announced any major changes to the Collage product plan, and there isn’t an announcement planned that I’m aware of. In case you haven’t seen it before, Serena does have a published end of life (EOL) process. That process gives a two year lead into ending support. The two year timer begins when Serena notifies the customer base. If you would like to read more about the EOL process, you can see it here.”

With a detectable trend toward fewer updates for a product, perhaps even expiration of support of the product, what are some considerations for migrating the content? Duo Consulting is researching products that can be suitable alternatives to Serena Collage. One key tactic is ensuring that both the content and the structure migrate smoothly to a new platform. While the sun hasn’t set on Serena, good content and structure decisions assist in smooth moves no matter where your content lives and breathes.

Today, the Web Marketing Association announced the winners in its annual design and development competition. Duo congratulates 5 clients who are the recipients of this international website recognition:

• Chicago Public Library – Government Standard of Excellence
• Valorem Law – Legal Standard of Excellence
• Chicago Public Schools Alumni – School Standard of Excellence
• Bracewell Giuliani – Legal Standard of Excellence
• B.C. Ziegler – Financial Services Outstanding Website

The common thread among these projects and our clients is their engagement and active collaboration with us to manage their content so they would realize meaningful business objectives. Our clients put a lot of effort into their projects and, in addition to gaining organizational benefit it is wonderful to see them be publicly recognized for their achievement. Congratulations.

Winning a Web Marketing Association WebAward competition, now in its 12th year, is particularly noteworthy. A panel of international judges applies a 10-point scale to 7 criteria for evaluating websites, recognizing the interplay of multiple factors for determining what works online. These criteria are:

• Design
• Innovation
• Content
• Technology
• Interactivity
• Copywriting
• Ease of use

Additionally, judges offered constructive criticism and emotional context to overcome the limitations of their numeric judging scale. Noting the interaction design of the Ziegler website one judge wrote, “You have done a great job of anticipating your audience.” A tip of the hat was extended to the complex underlying technology of the Chicago Public Library site with, “”This is a strong interactive site. It allows the users to interact with the site provider, allowing them to save time by doing research online…”

Reaffirming what many of us have felt about Chicago Public Schools Alumni website, “”This site is fantastic. Really impressive interactivity. Excellent work!” Our content-rich law firm clients’ sites were singled out as well regarding the rich content of Bracewell Giuliani, “The content is compelling.” and the positioning of Valorem, “”Great copy and distinct style and messaging. Sets it apart from the others without undermining credibility.”