Before you launch your shiny new website
Matt Commons
It's great when you see a new and improved website take shape and the journey is finally over! But if you’re not a developer, how do you know the website is built correctly?
It's great when you see a new and improved website take shape and the journey is finally over! But if you’re not a developer, how do you know the website is built correctly?
We all agree (hopefully) that websites should be intuitive. But what do we actually mean?
For most public-facing websites, the meaning of “intuitive” is pretty simple – in theory, if not in practice.
For example, if you’re building an online shop, you want to create a site structure, navigation scheme and labelling system that will help your potential customers find the products and information they’re looking for with as little guesswork as possible. (It’s Steve Krug’s “Don’t Make Me Think” principle.)
Quick quiz: how does Google decide how to rank web pages in search results? Write down as many things as you can think of. You have one minute. Go!
(One minute passes.)
How did you go? If you know a bit about SEO, you probably came up with some of the following answers:
Earlier this week, Susan and I attended a fascinating talk about content strategy by Karen McGrane. You can read more about the talk - and content strategy in general - at our friend John Ryan's blog.
While the talk was aimed at user experience professionals, a lot of it was also relevant to website owners and administrators. In particular, one of Karen's points struck me so much that I had to take a photo: