Notes to self (part 1)

On the Macromedia Website Production Management Techniques Process Map:

Phase 1: Discover

• Learn about the company, industry, audience and competition
• Gather information using the client survey (rtf)
• Analyze features of competitive sites
• Profile users and their paths through the site

Phase 2: Define

• Understand goals & objectives of the new site
• Determine client's expectations
• Distribute surveys to all decision-makers
• Identify primary objective: Why launch this site?
• Prioritize other objectives
• Establish measurable goals up front
• Create project plan with budget, deadlines & deliverables

Avoid Scope Creep: "The inevitable migration of a project from a budgeted, scheduled, defined plan to a slowly expanding source of conflict, confusion and additional costs."

• Convey a sense of urgency via task-specific timeline
• Establish requirements in the creative brief (rtf)

Phase 3: Structure

• Structure connects user to content in intuitive way
• Inventory content in existing site
• Organize new content to fulfill primary mission
• Create content outline to setup hierarchy of key sections
• Develop content delivery plan, including:

-- primary content (text, images, media, marketing messages)
-- secondary content (error messages, forms and search keywords)
-- production-specific content or invisible content (meta tags, alt tags, title tags, etc.)

Content Truth: "No matter how organized both you and the client are, the content will inevitably arrive late. Receiving final content from the client on schedule is perhaps the most predictable bottleneck for any project. Clients often have an unrealistic view of the task. Content will be late. Plan for it."

• Build site map based on content outline, with links and global nav
• Set naming conventions for hierarchy and URLs
• Use approved site map to track progress (content, production)
• Changes to site map incur additional charges (change in scope)
• Show elements on each web page in schematic or wireframe
• Address technical standards (browser size, etc.)
• Create user views with paper-based clickthrough prototype

Brain Traffic Blog

A new favorite: Brain Traffic Blog, by the company that "put content strategy on the map."

Website production management

Kelly Goto of gotomedia developed the Macromedia (now Adobe) Website Production Management Techniques, which provide a roadmap for everything from establishing requirements to maintaining a newly redesigned site. I intend to use a customized version of the client survey (rtf) and web design workflow (pdf) on an upcoming project. Why reinvent the wheel!

Goto's book, Web ReDesign 2.0: Workflow that Works (2nd Edition), may also be an excellent reference. Although the 2004 publication date is pre-Web 2.0, I believe there's longevity in a fine-tuned production process that brings projects in on time and budget. Let me know if you've read and recommend it.

Thanks go to Mary Beth Sanders of Metography for suggesting these resources!

33 Tools for Tweaking Your Site

FutureNow points us to 33 Free Tools to Make Your Website Better, including my personal favorites:

• Customer Focus Calculator to test the "WeWe" factor of your site (e.g., the ratio of self-focused to customer-focused words)
• Spider Simulator to see how the search engine sees your pages and get recommendations on how to improve visibility
• Bad Neighborhood Link Checker to see if pages your reference have questionable content.

New year, new copyright date

Don't forget to update your copyright notice from 2007 to 2008.

What an ad hoc alliance can do

When clients need services I can't provide, I try to connect them with someone who can. In the case of my new client, it was Mary Beth Sanders of Metography Visual Communications.

I had never worked with Mary Beth, but an SF IABC colleague highly recommended her for web design work, and that was good enough for me.

Thanks to Mary Beth's incredible talent and dedication, we delivered all new marketing collateral -- from taglines to templates. Check out the website before and after:

Before:

After:

Of course, the client deserves a lions share of the credit for doing the heavy lifting -- articulating the company mission and vision so we could communicate the message in text and images. Well done, Hokura.

Write persuasive links

Grokdotcom gives some sage advice on how to write persuasive links, in response to a recent MarketingSherpa test of "click to continue," "continue to article" and "Read more" (none of which appeal).

They say a persuasive link joins an imperative verb with an implied benefit. For example:

"Steve found an investment secret that changed his life. See how you may be able to double your income in one year."

This is a great concept that is, in my opinion, poorly executed. Cut the copy in half: Learn how you could, too. Not ideal, but shorter.

Whenever possible, I start link text with a verb to give a command: Get help. Donate now. Read an excerpt. Download pdf. For the test case above, Continue reading.

No more happy talk

Jakob Nielsen's latest Alertbox, titled "Blah-Blah Text: Keep, Cut or Kill?" chastises copywriters for filling home page intros with meaningless blather.

Instead, we should cut the crap and deliver actionable content. Orient users to the website (what's it about). And tell them what to do next (e.g., download product sheet). After we draft the copy, we should cut it in half before publishing.

I'm going to keep this alert on my desktop while I draft content for a client's new website. Keep it real.

Using tabbed menus

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, "Tabs, Used Right," gives tips on how to use tabs correctly. His premise is that you should only use tabs to present alternating views of similar information -- for example, stock market indices for North America, Europe and Asia. He points to Yahoo! Finance as an example.

Oddly, the Yahoo! Finance site also uses tabs "incorrectly" by Nielsen's standards, because the tabs across the top of the home page include drop-down menus, and each tab selection presents a different type of content -- news, personal finance, portfolio, etc -- and you can't select the tab itself.

Have you seen a good example of hybrid navigation that presents clear and consistent choices?

Web analytics definitions

The Web Analytics Association (WWA) has just published standard definitions for 26 web analytic metrics covering the areas of site visits, content and conversion. This initiative attempts to standardize the way we measure and report Web site traffic so that we can compare our results to industry benchmarks.

Having written about this recently, I can tell you that marketers are confused about what the various traffic statistics mean and how to tell if they're achieving their goals.

Jason Burby, co-chair of the WWA Web Standards Committee, explains how the new definitions will affect marketers in his ClickZ column, "The Importance of Web Analytics Standards." He concludes:

"Web analytics has left the hands of the über-technical folks and [gone] into the hands of marketers who can act on this data. These aren't Web analytics experts, they're Web strategy experts ... who may run a specific portion of the Web site. They must understand site performance is key, but they won't spend all day using an analytics tool. ... They must understand analytics basics so they can act on data and change the site accordingly."

Download the report for these very straightforward definitions.