Fuzzy Content

I’m talking to all the content authors out there.

Colleges are getting so much better at testing their sites by watching visitors. A simple view of how students, alumni, and other audiences move through your site on a daily basis can surprise administrators that spent months drowning in navigation labels and content placement. Remember to do this on a regular basis.

These tests, in too many cases, are done by central administration and only affect the top level of the site. For your institutional presence to be effective as a whole, this practice must trickle down to content owners in individual departments. [by the way, if you aren't allowing people across campus to develop and manage content, what are you waiting for?]

Site success for the visitor comes with ease of use and being able to find information on a regular basis. Site success for the institution (and I don’t think I’m being selfish here) is the drive to whatever action your department wants visitors to complete.

The right side of a Web page has conventionally become a location for “related” information. Related links, campus events, and the latest news have populated this area to give more eyeballs to dynamic content. Your job is not done. I’ve always proposed drives to action for this area as well. It’s also time to drive them to next step information.

For example, you know that handy directions to campus page. Add campus visit information, open-house events, and alumni events. Supply parking permit information, local hotels, and printable campus maps.

Every page has a focus to it. As the owner of a portion of the site, your job is to understand what site readers will do with the information they have found. Here are some questions to ask for every, and I mean every page in your Web presence.

• Why do site visitors come to this page (what’s the focus)?
• At what point in the relationship are most visitors coming to this page?
• What questions will the readers ask after reading the information?
• What do I want them to do after they read this information?

Doyle Brunson, the legendary poker player, once said, “The key to No-Limit Texas Hold ‘Em is to put my opponent to a decision for all his chips.”

Usability testing is not about getting them to the page…it’s about moving them through the relationship.

In helping colleges understand how a Web site should be managed day-in and day-out, I am sometimes surprised at how closely Web content is held by a select few. It is also surprising how many departments want nothing to do with keeping their site up to snuff for visitors.

I just read a short book, QBQ, that talks about personal responsibility and providing a positive atmosphere…two concepts built for the Web. Without going into a full book report, I decided to apply these concepts to you and your site.

• It’s Not My Job. The Web is everyone’s job, since it affects every department. If you are in the Biology department, and that site is out of date, you need to either change the content or alert the proper channels. You may not be an official “content author”, but if you find a mistake, get it fixed.
• I Don’t Understand the Web. In this day and age, the Web has become a major (if not the) communication and marketing tool for key audiences (parents, prospective students, alumni, campus community). Don’t shy away from the opportunity to tell your story.
• Why is Our Site So Bad. The saying goes, “It takes a village to raise a child…” It also takes a community to maintain a Web site. If content is out of date, put in some elbow grease. If the navigation is chaotic, get the right people together. If the message is missing the mark for your story or your audiences (or both), you’d better get to work.

People say that if you don’t vote, don’t complain about politics. And unfortunately, this feeling has made its way into Web site maintenance. Many colleges and universities work very hard to get the right people and publishing processes in place. With this effort, those not given responsibility automatically just leave it up to designated users. Stop it! A smooth running Web site benefits all.

Now get in there!!

I recently caught a Webinar from x-pubs, which discusses the necessary changes that go into moving to full content management across campus. Emma Hamer discusses some of the problems and opportunities out there when changing to content management. Watch it all on YouTube.

For higher education, I work with many institutions that can underestimate the impact of a change to content management. To be done properly, please consider the following points:

• Start with goals and expectations. Many projects I am involved with are tied to a redesign of the entire .edu. Not only is content management being implemented, but also drastic navigation changes, a new interface design, and exciting new features. All this change at once can overwhelm users as well as authors and developers. Start with identifying what is not working on the existing site, what institutional initiatives impact the Web, and what the organization expects out of the Web in one, two, and three years. Without this understanding, it is difficult to determine success of the site, let alone how to fix a problem.
• Content management is not technology. I find myself saying this often. Besides a CMS being selected, an institution needs to identify who’s involved, what they will be doing, and what publishing and development processes need to be put in place. Also, all CMS providers are not created equal. Know what you want out of a content management solution, then seek CMS providers that match that criteria. Without a clear understanding of content management as a whole, no one CMS will succeed.
• Understand the hidden costs. CMS unfortunately is not a silver bullet. Once software is installed, the site does not build and manage itself. There is still initial training for authors and administrators, as well as periodic workshops to ensure all authors across campus(es) are on the same page. There is server installation and maintenance. And there are always new features and uses that can be incorporated to improve the user experience of your Web site.
• Get people involved early. With site redesign projects typically being on the “massive” side, those currently managing portions of the site will be impacted greatly. Whether site management is already decentralized or you are moving to distributed authoring, the people managing the site at the page level need to understand what is changing. They need to be able to provide direction, since they are the closest to site users. And especially if you are giving them ownership of the content (ability to directly publish), they need to have some say in navigation and interface changes. Don’t wait until all the big decisions are made. Bring them into early focus groups to share user stories. Involve them in changes to navigation. Ask them what they think the tone of the site should be. Trust me…they know.
• Understand your minimums. Content management works wonderfully, as long as there is central control of key aspects. The closer you get authors to only controlling content, the more successful your site will be. But there has to be a strong foundation. This includes navigation schemes, branding elements, and user resources that appear on every page. Understand what those are and who manages those elements.

As always, review site performance at least once a year, and don’t be afraid to make changes. A site redesign and content management implementation brings on so much change, you must keep what’s working and cut bait with what isn’t. You’ll be better off for it.

Unfriendly Unsubscribe Confirmation
Originally uploaded by bobrobboy.

I unsubscribed from a mailing list today and was reminded of an article I read a few months ago called “Death by a Thousand Cuts Kills the Web Experience.”

If only the pain those cuts cause were as obvious to the businesses who inflect them as they are to us readers. If that were the case, WebTrends would be in a world of hurt. My experience has been plagued with usability problems and challenges.

And as a fond farewell, they tell me that my “request to unsubscribe from the above newsletter has been committed to [their] database.”

There are so many touch points in the consumer courtship you can be sure that businesses will fail to meet our expectations from time to time. That’s why recovery so important. In this instance, WebTrends appears to be saying “Goodbye and good riddance. You never understood us anyway.” rather than attempting to understand the problem or to keep a bridge open for future engagement. Too bad for them. There are many other good tools available to the Army of Davids roaming the internet.
Do you have any examples of the small things businesses have done to recover from times they have failed? Here’s what you do:

1. Post them on your favorite photo or bookmarking site
2. Tag them with “another cut”
3. Blog that photo or bookmark
4. Trackback to this post

BTW: I love the scene in Bugs Life when Hopper opens the seed bottle and overwhelms the nitwits at the bar.

It’s the new year. This is always a good time to get your bearings, straighten lingering issues, and catch up with the latest trends.

I talk often about following Web conventions. There is no point reinventing the wheel on elements that are so common for people. Conventions make life easy. Picture a vehicle hitting the US market with the accelerator and brake pedals reversed. Here are some Web conventions that I believe you cannot ignore when developing your Web site:

• Branding. Your logo (or nameplate) is always at the top of the page. It identifies who you are. Visitors to your page look to the upper left corner first to make sure they are on the right site. Even better, your logo is linked to the home page, allowing visitors to start at the home page at any point in their session.
• Global Navigation. Global navigation identifies major sections for site visitors to move through. Either topic- or audience-oriented, your global navigation better stand out from content on the page. A horizontal list under Branding or vertical list on the left side of the page are the two locations that visitors first look to.
• Site Resources. Where do you look for a search box on every Web site? So many Web sites (and big Web sites) have used the upper right corner. Because of this, that’s where visitors’ eyeballs go. Don’t fight it.
• Consistent Elements. Picture a phone book where every page is laid out differently. Would it be easy to use? The same premise exists for your site. CSS allows us to do some amazing things with site layout, but keep the common elements in the same location. Page-level navigation, body content, and alternate content (or feeds) should show up in roughly the same place from page to page. Better yet, they should be formatted consistently as well.
• Short Content. Site visitors are scanners before they are readers. They are looking for relevance. They are looking for a connection. When they find that connection, whether that be one click in or ten clicks in, they will read. And even at that point, they want Cliff’s Notes, not the novel.

I know there are more out there, such as microformats, font sizes, and drop-down menus. But these are certainly the “at your own risk” rules. Break these, and try new ways to attract your site visitors. If you have others, feel free to share through comments.

Many moons ago, I was a corporate trainer for software and web development. One of the unique aspects of my job was instant feedback. If I had a bad day, I knew about it that night. If my students agreed with everything I said, I knew about it that night. Every student completed an evaluation form and rated my session from 1-10…instant feedback.

Since then, no other organization I have been with provides instant feedback. And unfortunately, that is how most Web sites work. I talk frequently about consistent usability testing and audience focus groups, but that may not be instant enough. It also may not be truthful enough.

There are several places on the Web that provide instant feedback. Any product you purchase at Target.com has reviews from other consumers. These products are, at most, $500. Most of their products are around the $10-20 range. If it is so important when dealing with products at that price level, why wouldn’t it be more important for the second largest expense of your lifetime (typically).

Gerry McGovern wrote a great article a few months ago, titled “Truth Sells on the Web“. Many institutions I have met with have been worried about blogging. Either they are worried that external blogs will say bad (or incorrect) things about their university or that comments on internal blogs may not be favorable. But that is what makes people believe the content on your site. If it’s all rosy, prospective students wonder what’s missing.

Page-level commenting on every page of your site is not quite feasible at this time, but open the door a little. Provide a link on pages for readers to comment (then publish those comments). Open up your blogs for commenting. Comment on external blogs about your college. This is what will allow instant feedback to ensure your site is moving the right direction.

By the way, agree or not agree with my viewpoints….comment on it.

A large percentage of us start every new year with resolutions: lose some extra weight, spend more time with family and friends, and be more generous. But if our Web site had some resolutions, what would they be? Let me take a stab:

• Usability testing. Just to get our bearings and make sure our site is serving audiences properly, let’s try some one-on-one testing with actual users. Spend 10 minutes watching people use the site. Grab 10 a month and make it part of your site maintenance, not part of the next version of your site.
• Retraining authors. Content authors across your organization can certainly use some refresher tips going into a new year of managing site content. Cover latest trends and statistics in site usage, re-emphasize searchable content, and review overall goals of the site. Recharge their batteries for a successful year of content management. Make a plan to get authors together every couple months or so.
• Reviewing standards. Are you up to date on compliance? Always a nice time to improve overall compliance. Remember that higher education is one of the lowest in compliance, especially public institutions. Update your standards policies per state and federal guidelines and test the site to see where you stand. Don’t be afraid to throw this into your training sessions if page content is a common violator.

Have others? Don’t be afraid to share them.

I made an aggreagated feed for all the higher ed web development sites I could think of

http://feed.kickrss.com/uwebfeed

Or you can view as a page

http://www.kickrss.com/uwebfeed

Please let me know if there are any that need to be added or that you feel shouldn’t be there.

Here are the sites in the feed currently:

Bob Johnson’s Blog on Internet Marketing
CogDogBlog
collegewebeditor.com: web, marketing & PR in higher ed
EducationPR
erelevant: electronic marketing for higher education
Fuzzy Content
Higher Ed Webs
Institutional Knowledge
Interllectual.com - coffee
Intermedia
mStoner Blog
Syndication for Higher Ed
templatedata
The Chronicle: Wired Campus Blog
U B r a n d e r
U Marketing Guru
University web marketing and usability
Weblogg-ed

URIs are just one of many clues that readers use to divine information from a Web page. Jakob and others wrote about this years ago. I’ve taken it for granted until I opened the print version of the November issue of Campus Technology.

The first page of the Data Pioneers article includes an ugly URI that directs readers to the online edition of the August issue of the magazine by underlining: “www.campus-technology.com/article.asp?id=18953″. The last page of the article includes a call-out-box that promotes “Web Extra” and provides an other ugly URI. I’ll quote that one:

WEB EXTRA
Your DW solution is in place. Now, how to secure it? See www.campus-technology.com/article.asp?id=17886.

These URIs are even underlined! It’s bad enough exposing online readers to ugly URIs. Why in the world would a print publication do that with pages on their own site? Here’s some quick suggestions for the editors:

• www.campus-technology.com/web-extra/DW (and “extras” to catch the typos)
• www.campus-technology.com/november2006/DW
• www.campus-technology.com/august2006/
• www.campus-technology.com/archives/august2006

But to be really Web friendly they should simply use:

• www.campus-technology.com/data-pioneers

Ugly URIs slow the reader down online and on the printed page. They are a challenge to remember and type. But more importantly their use shows a lack of respect for your readers.

Use your URIs purposefully. Don’t miss this opportunity to show the reader some love.

(And you’ll probably get some Google love in return!)