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May 04, 2008

5 reasons your blog should have an editorial policy

Yorkshire Pudding
Yorkshire pudding, fresh from the oven, is yummy,
but does it have a place on your Baking Blog? Let
your editorial policy be your guide.

While the medium is different, blogs have much in common with magazines. They're published periodically, can accept subscriptions (via RSS feeds), may (or may not) accept advertising and typically focus on a particular topic or niche. If you blog, you have some notion of your topical area in your head, but have you defined it for your readers? If not, it may be time to take a page from the magazines and define a clear editorial policy for your blog. Just as setting clear goals aids in the development of a regular Web page, defining a clear editorial policy for your blog will aid you in authoring future articles and attracting new readers.

What is an editorial policy?

An editorial policy is simply a short document that defines what subjects will (or will not be) covered in your blog. It may also include information on why you are covering X and not Y as well as some background information on the authors. Magazines typically publish their policies in their advertising media kits and/or their guidelines for writers. For a blog you may wish to include your policy on the "About Us" page and also provide a quick summary in the meta description element in the head of your pages. If you edit a multi-author blog, you may also find it helpful to maintain a more detailed policy for your writers that you do not publish online. This could include style guidelines and other rules that are useful to your staff but not of particular interest to the public.

Here are my top 5 reasons to define your editorial policy.

1. Establishing clear parameters for the scope of your topic helps you determine what to write and lets readers (and search engines) know what to expect.

How much or how little you write about makes a great difference. If your topic is too broad, you may confuse readers who don't know what to expect. If it is too narrow you may run out of things to say. In For ‘bloggers, diversification avoids stagnation, Wayne Smallman addresses how the breadth of your subject area can keep your blog interesting while also supporting your Internet marketing efforts.

For example, imagine you are blogging about baking. This is a huge subject. If your expertise lies more towards bread than pastries you may limit it to that. But what if you don't discuss quick breads but do cover beignets? Perhaps your focus is yeast-leavened baking and not merely bread. Somewhere between recipes for oatmeal bread and anything cooked in an oven you will find, and define, the scope of your subject.

If your scope includes puff pastries and you have a yen to write about Beef Wellington, then feel free. Both you and your readers will know that it fits within your policy and you won't have spent hours wondering whether or not it's on topic.

2. Defining your scope reduces off-topic submissions

Some blogs accept suggestions and/or articles from readers and other writers. While this can be a great way to get new ideas and material, you probably don't have the time to sort through ideas that aren't relevant to the topic. In terms of our baking blog, it may be that our policy includes some desserts but does not include pies and tarts.

If we make this clear up front we can spend more time writing articles and less time writing rejection letters. Doing so also provides a service to your submitters. If Peter Piemaker knows your policy, he'll be able to focus his time more appropriately and find a different blog—one whose editors and readers would love to know more about making a kiwi tart with tamarind crème anglaise.

3. A clear editorial focus matches advertisers with your audience

This blog doesn't accept advertising, but yours might. When magazines sell advertising they create a media kit with information about the topic of the magazine and the demographics of their readership. Advertisers use this information in order to target readers who are most likely to buy their products. If your blog accepts advertising, you also want your ads to be appropriate to your subject matter and audience. Readers of your baking blog will be more likely to click on ads related to bread pans and mixers, than on fishing lures or hair-care products, and will thus generate more revenue for you and your advertisers. Having a clearly defined editorial policy helps advertisers choose between your blog and someone else's.

4. Publishing your editorial policy supports your Search Engine Optimization strategies

As we know from An Introduction to Search Engine Optimization (SEO), including topically relevant keywords within your content helps search engines to identify the topics discussed on your site. While individual entries will feature keywords appropriate to those entries, where should you put the keywords that describe the the blog as a whole? Your editorial policy is the perfect place to include these because it defines the topics included in your site overall.

By publishing your policy on an "About Us" or other page, you can draw readers searching for the overall themes of your blog in addition to those searching topics covered in more specific entries.

If you already have an "About Us" page this is a good time to review it to determine if your editorial policy is clearly defined and if that policy includes the appropriate keywords. As your blog evolves, it is also a good idea to review this once a year. I just re-read mine and found it unsuitably vague so I've now rewritten it to be more specific.

5. Including an editorial policy or content description promotes a professional image and can demonstrate your expertise.

One of the first things I do after discovering a new blog is to look for the "About" page. I want to know more about the blog's overall theme and its author(s). If that information isn't available I'll have to skim through the entries to see if an identifiable theme emerges and if I can learn anything about the writer's expertise. If I've found an interesting entry—and I'm thinking of subscribing to the blog—I need this information to decide if I'll be interested in future entries and if the author should be considered a reliable source. If I don't have time to do this research myself I probably won't subscribe. I'm already subscribed to more blogs than I can keep up with, so if I can't quickly determine a blog's relevance to my life, I probably won't bother.

If you want repeat readers, especially subscribers, take a few minutes to provide this information. They'll respect you for it.

Conclusion: Establishing an editorial policy helps you set the tone of your blog

Whether you want a better way to determine what to write, wish to increase readership or want to fine-tune your advertising, a clearly defined editorial policy can guide the way. Whether you call it "Editorial Policy," "About Us" or something else doesn't matter. If the policy is clear to you and your readers it will enhance the blogging experience for all involved.

Examples of Editorial and Advertising Policies in Magazines and Blogs

The following policies vary from short descriptions to more in-depth policy statements. If your blog accepts advertising you may be interested in The Nation's advertising policy which is very detailed and says, among others things, "Although the relationship of the First Amendment to commercial advertising is complex, we start with strong presumption against banning advertisers because we disapprove of, or even abhor, their political or social views. But we reserve (and exercise) the right to attack them in our editorial columns." I thought that was rather thought-provoking, though such a statement is obviously more necessary to "The Nation" than it would be to many blogs.

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Posted by Heidi Cool at 04:00 PM | Comments (4)
Categories: Blogging , Content , Heidi's Entries , How-to , SEO , Search Engine Optimization , Writing , marketing

April 20, 2008

Embedding YouTube Videos the Standards Compliant Way—SFWobject 2.0

As video becomes easier to produce, more and more people are creating and sharing videos online. Whether you are a professor demonstrating your research, a student working on a film project, or me creating how-to instructions, you've realized that there are times when video can enhance your Web content.

Get Adobe Flash player
The resolution on YouTube is not as crisp as the original.
You can also view the video in higher resolution .mov format.

Back at the turn of the century, embedding video was complicated. Streaming required a special server, you had to decide what format(s) you wanted to stream, then you had to provide links to whatever software users might need to view your video—in case it wasn't already installed on their computers.

With YouTube, that's all changed. Now you can just go to the YouTube page for the video you wish to embed, copy the coding they provide, paste it into your html file or blog entry and publish the page.

It's just that easy—unless, like me, you care about adhering to Web standards. In that case, it requires a few more steps, but don't worry, they're not that complicated. YouTube videos can be embedded on the Web using swfobject.js—in a manner similar to the method I described last year in "Embedding Flash Objects for Internet Explorer." You can also use this method for embedding regular Flash .swf files. Just substitute the path to your .swf for the YouTube link in the instructions below.

Downloading swfobject 2.0

SWFObject 2.0 provides a significant upgrade to SWFObject 1.5—what we'd previously been using to embed Flash .swf files. To begin you will want to download the new script from the SWFobject project page. After downloading the script, you can upload it to your site, in whichever directory you prefer. Note: SWFobject 2.0 is not backwards compatible with 1.5, but the script has the same file name, swfobject.js. If you are already using 1.5 on your site—and don't plan to immediately edit all the pages that use it—you should rename the file to something like swfobject2.js or store it in a different directory so that you don't write over the prior version.

Generate the embed code for your page

While you could do this manually by following the instructions in the documentation, the SWFobject team has provided a rather handy Web-based code generator that we'll use in this example.

  1. Go the the YouTube page for the video you wish to embed and copy the embed code provided.
  2. Paste this into a blank file in Dreamweaver or your preferred editor. We won't be using this code in our page, but we'll want it for reference.

    <object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/b-tYxJcFj9I&hl=en"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/b-tYxJcFj9I&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>

  3. Within this code you will see a link to the video after value=". Within this link there may be an ampersand. Escape the & by typing amp; after it.
  4. Copy this link,http://www.youtube.com/v/b-tYxJcFj9I&amp;hl=en, then go to the SWFObject 2.0 HTML and JavaScript generator v1.1.
  5. Paste the link in the box to the right of "Flash (.swf):."
  6. Near the top of the generator, choose between static and dynamic. I will be using static in this example as dynamic would require me to put additional code--specific to this video--in my header. Here on the blog my headers are part of my templates so I can't use anything that would be specific to only one entry. (The documentation offers additional information on the static and dynamic methods.)
  7. Copy the width and height values from the YouTube embed code and paste them into the dimensions boxes in the generator.
  8. Click on "more" in the SWF definition box if you like to edit additional attributes.
  9. In the HTML definition box choose the version of XHTML or HTML and character encoding you use on your Web site.
  10. Click the "Generate Code" button.
Embedding the video in your page
  1. Copy the script code found with the head of the generated output.

    <script type="text/javascript" src="swfobject.js"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript">
    swfobject.registerObject("myFlashContent", "9.0.0");
    </script>

  2. Paste this into the head of your HTML file or blog templates. Note: Because I have already been using the previous version of SWFobject on this blog, I named my script swfobject2.js before uploading it to the server. Therefore I must also change the name in this code then add it to the code that is already in my templates. Thus my files will include:

    <script type="text/javascript" src="swfobject.js"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="swfobject2.js"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript">
    swfobject.registerObject("myFlashContent", "9.0.0");
    </script>

  3. Copy the object code found within the body of the generated output.

    <object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" width="425" height="350" id="myFlashContent">
    <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/b-tYxJcFj9I&amp;hl=en" />
    <param name="wmode" value="opaque" />
    <!--[if !IE]>-->
    <object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="http://www.youtube.com/v/b-tYxJcFj9I&amp;hl=en" width="425" height="355">
    <param name="wmode" value="opaque" />
    <!--<![endif]-->
    <a href="http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer">
    <img src="http://www.adobe.com/images/shared/download_buttons/get_flash_player.gif" alt="Get Adobe Flash player" />
    </a>
    <!--[if !IE]>-->
    </object>
    <!--<![endif]-->
    </object>

  4. Paste this into the place in your file where you would like the video to appear.
  5. Upload the file to your server and watch the video!
SWFObject Resources
About the Embedding YouTube Videos the Standards Compliant Way video

The video screen captures were recorded using iShowU, a program I discovered yesterday afternoon. The scenes were pieced together, and audio was recorded and added in iMovie. As this was my first time experimenting with iShowU some portions of the video are a bit wobbly, but overall I found it very easy to use. I expect my skills will improve with time.

I'll post more about the process as I become more familiar with the software. Members of the Case Western Reserve University community interested in producing similar instructional videos may also wish to visit the Freedman Center which offers tools and instructions on this and related topics.

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Posted by Heidi Cool at 07:24 PM | Comments (8)
Categories: HTML , Heidi's Entries , How-to , Javascript , Web Standards , video

April 15, 2008

Maximize your marketing through blog networks and aggregator sites

machines.jpg
"Machines Like Us is dedicated to keeping you informed about the latest research in the areas of evolution, cognition, artificial life and artificial intelligence." While not a typical aggregator, this site includes a variety of resources including articles by Case blogger, Mano Singham.

techdispenser.jpg
"Tech Dispenser is Computerworld's human powered technology blog network and news aggregator." Frequent commenter and fellow blogger Wayne Smallman is a contributor.

scienceblogs.jpg
ScienceBlogs aggregates over 60 bloggers writing about science, education and related fields.

createx.jpg
"Createxchange is a beta project, syndicating the best design blogs the world has to offer."

Lately I've noticed that I've been subscribing to more and more blog networks/aggregators. As a reader I like these because they help me discover blogs I might not have heard of otherwise. As a blogger and marketer I like the aggregators of which I'm a part or a similar reason; they put my blog in front of new readers—readers who already have shown an interest in my topic.

What is a blog network or blog aggregator?

The term "aggregator" is usually used to refer to tools or software, such as Google Reader, that aggregate RSS feeds to which you subscribe. For today's discussion, I'm instead referring to topically aggregated sites. Using this definition, a blog network or aggregator is a Web site that aggregates posts from multiple blogs into one central location. Simple aggregators can be made using tools such as Yahoo pipes to combine the RSS feeds from multiple blogs. More full-featured aggregators can be programmed to not only pull in the feeds from multiple sources but to also organize and archive them in a way that allows users to search or explore by keyword tags, author, blog name, date, etc.

Blog network and aggregator are often used interchangeably, but there can be some differences. Networks are usually composed of member bloggers who have joined the network to share their posts. Some networks, such as REALNEO, provide multi-authored group blogging within their own interface—rather than by aggregating individual blogs—while some aggregators simply pull in feeds from related blogs without active participation from the original writers. There are also networks that post only selected articles from their participating authors in order to focus on very particular topics.

As is true with any site, an aggregator is only as good as the content it presents. Ideally a good aggregator will pool together high-quality content from blogs that are topically or otherwise related. Well produced aggregators are like specialty stores offering a fine selection of a certain type of product. Just as one might go to a bakery, such as Lucy's Sweet Surrender, for a selection of desserts, one might go to Food Candy for a selection of posts from food blogs.

Finding good aggregators and blog networks

As aggregators have become more common, they're relatively easy to find via Google or your preferred search engine. If you search on the term "aggregator" plus a topically relevant word or phrase you are likely to find a relevant site. If nothing comes up, try combining your search term with "blog network." If you are already reading a number of blogs in your area of interest, you may find that some are already participating in an aggregating network/site. Try looking in their sidebars or links pages to see if they are participating in such a site. Professional associations, both academic and otherwise, may also aggregate content from their members. If you belong to such organizations, peruse their Web sites to see if they offer such a service.

Joining a blog network

If you have a well-established blog with a clear editorial theme you may well be ready to join a network. First find a few blog networks that fit your subject area. Read a number of the entries to get a sense of the writing styles and the breadth and depth of the subjects covered. If you think that your blog would be a good fit, contact the maintainers. Many networks will provide a submission form for prospective members. Some networks are highly selective, only selecting blogs that meet certain quality or topical requirements, while others may accept any blog pertinent to the subject area. When submitting your blog, take care to provide the required information and provide a good description of your content. Before submitting your blog, re-read your entries, checking your spelling, grammar and content just as you might if submitting an article for a professional journal or magazine.

Help! I didn't join this network, but they're aggregating my content! Is that legal? Ethical?

The first time I saw one of my blog entries republished on someone else's blog—without the proper attribution—I got a bit miffed. I ranted and raved at my friends about intellectual property, ethics and so forth. I composed angry letters in my head. I imagined my lawyer friends composing angry letters for me. Since then this has happened a few times, but I've mellowed out about it. Typically this happens with sites that are trying to make money by repurposing other people's content and selling advertising. Also typically the sites are a design nightmare, the content is mangled and mutilated, and they have very low rankings in Google, Technorati, etc. Most of these sites don't last because they don't provide anything useful to their readers. Their content seems to include a bit of everything and entries are truncated. So if any reader happens to stumble upon them, they'll probably have to click on the header to read the full article. In most cases that will bring them back to my blog, because I've included the link in my entry headers.

Legally and ethically this sort of thing gets a bit murky. I expect I could do a whole series of entries on this issue alone. But as a blogger who has produced an RSS feed—designed to be read through RSS readers, shared via Google Reader Share pages, republished via Facebook, Tumblr and the networks to which I belong—I think the question is more about usage. Obviously I expect my content to be shared, I just have certain expectations of how this should be done.

When I share other people's entries via my Google Share page, I'm promoting them as something worth reading, just as I would be if I were simply linking to their content. Google takes the content directly from the author feeds and clearly displays the original source and author. I think that attribution makes the difference. If someone aggregates my content in a manner that makes authorship and source clear, with a link to the original article, then readers will clearly understand the source was me. If they like the content they may visit and/or subscribe to my blog directly and I'll have gained a new reader. So from a marketing standpoint, being aggregated—whether I did it on purpose or not—serves my own goals as well as the goals of the aggregator. (This issue gets murky again if the aggregating site generates ad revenue, but let's leave that discussion for another day.)

Aggregation matches bloggers with their target audience.

As often as we talk about search engine optimization, social media marketing and so forth, our primary marketing goal is to put our content in front of readers who care about our subject matter. Having your blog included in an aggregated site on your topic does just that. Readers who subscribe or visit that site have already shown an interest in your area. They are far more likely to become long-term readers than will the teenager who found your site on Google after you mentioned Britney Spears three times in your entry on hadron super colliders.

Blog Network and Aggregator Resources

The Web Development Blog is aggregated in Planet Case, The Cleveland Web Standards Association, Blog High Ed, and other sites of which I may not be aware.

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Posted by Heidi Cool at 01:27 AM | Comments (5)
Categories: Blogging , Heidi's Entries , Social Networking , Tips and Tricks , Web 2.0 , marketing , social media

April 03, 2008

How did I get by before Firefox Add-Ons?

Last night, whilst catching up on my RSS feeds, I discovered Paul Fenwick's video, "How to Fix the Web with Greasemonkey in 3 minutes." The video offers some clever tips on how one can use the Firefox add-on, Greasemonkey, to make Web sites (not just yours) behave the way you wish. I was particularly amused by the way he made MySpace content disappear. But it also reminded me of just how dependent I am on Firefox add-on's.

What are Firefox add-ons?

According to Firefox Support:

"Firefox add-ons are small pieces of software that add new features or functionality to your installation of Firefox. Add-ons can augment Firefox with new search engines, foreign-language dictionaries, or change the visual appearance of Firefox. Through add-ons, you can customize Firefox to meet your needs and tastes."

There are countless add-ons available that will let you do anything from tracking your trades on Ebay to validating the code on your Web site. Add-ons are categorized by type or function and offer tools for both casual Web browsing and development.

A sampling of my Firefox add-ons

I just counted, and apparently I have 35 add-ons installed on Firefox. Some I rarely use, some I actively use and others work passively in the background to add value to my browsing experience. I think I take the latter for granted, but they offer some interesting insights. While I'm not going to discuss all 35, here are a few (in addition to those mentioned in the video) that you may find interesting:

Web Developer
Chris Pederick's Web Developer is the work horse of my add-ons. I use it to validate my HTML and CSS, measure things onscreen, outline elements, display line guides, view javascript, disable styles, and view or analyze details of a page in order to troubleshoot problems or fine tune my CSS. It's incredibly useful and a tremendous timesaver.
Delicious Bookmarks 1.5.44
Adding bookmarks to del.icio.us is pretty easy to begin with, but sometimes I forget. With this installed I don't have to think about it. When I add a bookmark to Firefox a box pops up asking if I would like to add it to del.icio.us as well. It then lets me add the bookmark and relevant tags in the same box and continue on my merry way. Now I don't have to worry that I can't access the bookmark on computer A because I only saved it on computer B.
StumbleUpon 3.18
The StumbleUpon toolbar is inherent to the StumbleUpon experience. If it's 2:00 a.m. and I can't sleep I can hit the Stumble button to be shown sites in areas that interest me. If I come across a cool page, that I think others should know about, I can hit the thumbs up, either to promote it or to be the first to write a review. If I want to know if a blog entry or news release has been stumbled, I can click on the reviews button to see who (if anyone) said what. And if I find a nifty new recipe that I want to share with my friend Josh (an avid Stumbler) I don't need to bother with e-mail, I just click "send-to," select his username and it will be shown to him next time he goes Stumbling.
SEO for Firefox
This is an interesting tool for Web marketers. When you do a search with this turned on you'll find data ranging from Google page rank to the age of the site underneath each result description.
Social Media for Firefox
When you install Social Media for Firefox, icons appear in the bottom status bar of Firefox to indicate how many users have bookmarked or reviewed the page you are viewing on Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon and Delicious.
KGen
KGen lets you scan a page to see which key words are strongest on a page—handy for search engine optimization.

This sampling should give you a good idea of the power of Firefox add-ons, needless to say there are hundreds (perhaps thousands) more to choose from. To learn more, visit the resources listed below.

Are you already an add-on fan? If so, leave a comment listing some of your favorites. I'd be interested to see how readers are using these handy tools and which great add-ons I may have missed.

More Firefox add-ons resources

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Posted by Heidi Cool at 12:16 AM | Comments (14)
Categories: Heidi's Entries , How-to , Recommendations , Tips and Tricks , marketing

March 17, 2008

Reflections on social media networking and marketing

Social Media Cartoon
With Bitstrips you don't need to be able to draw to create your own comics. Alas, that's still no guarantee that you'll write something clever.

These days everyone seems to be talking about social networking and/or social media marketing. Until fairly recently these were topics for tech nerds and Web marketers, but now more and more people are wondering how they can use Facebook to market their programs or products, or how Twitter can be leveraged as a tool for campus communication. I don't have an immediate answer to such questions, but I thought this would be a good time to reflect a bit on what I've learned about social media.

Online social media marketing and networking aren't really that new. People have been connecting via blogs for several years now, and even before the World Wide Web, people were connecting on Usenet News, listservs or other services. What's new is the array of social/Web 2.0 tools now available to us. Today we have services available that will allow us to make "friends" online with whom we can:

  • share and organize our bookmarks via services such as de.licio.us or ma.gnolia,
  • send short messages via Twitter or generate discussions and share files and links via Pownce,
  • recommend articles and sites on Digg, StumbleUpon or reddit,
  • network with like-minded souls and share best practices through topically centered networks, such as University Web Developers on Ning,
  • compare music tastes on last.fm or book suggestions on goodreads,
  • archive, share and discuss photos on Flickr and Zooomr,
  • share personal information, promote bands, products or services on MySpace, publish status updates, join groups and become zombies on Facebook,
  • ponder intellectually meaty issues on Big Think,
  • connect with fellow bloggers on MyBlogLog and find out which bloggers are linking to your blog on Technorati, and even
  • create cartoons on Bitstrips.

These are but a fraction of the options available in the social media world of Web 2.0. From the descriptions alone, it is easy to see how many of these could play into our marketing strategies. After all, what organization wouldn't want its public sites being shared online?

Social media marketing: online word-of-mouth

Whether people are buying a new shampoo or deciding on a doctoral program in biomedical engineering, they will weigh the opinions of friends and colleagues more heavily than the brochure they received in the mail. This doesn't mean that we no longer need brochures, just that online word-of-mouth and viral marketing can often serve to enhance our other marketing strategies.

Of course the trick with this is the same as it always has been; word-of-mouth referrals are driven by satisfied customers, not marketers. We can pave the way and create opportunities to make this happen more easily, but we can't put words in people's mouths or on their social networks.

For example, I can't just go digging cool news stories from Case Western Reserve and expect everyone to follow suit unless I develop a reputation for digging worthwhile reading material. To do that I have to become a more active member of the digg community where I make connections, digg the recommendations of others and recommend pages that I think my followers will like. That sort of activity takes more time than most of us have (including me—one does need to sleep after all) and for many organizations spending time on such activities is just not cost effective.

If marketing is the only reason you are considering social media, then it may not work out unless you've got the resources to implement it and a product or service that people like to talk about. But if networking is your goal, then you may get some marketing benefits as a by-product of your other activities. If you're a faculty member making connections with peers in your field via Facebook, sharing sites on de.licio.us or Stumbling your colleague's research articles you could find your peers reciprocate by sharing links to your articles, blogs or Web sites as well. This isn't a matter of quid pro quo, it's more like link karma. Those who respect your work will link to you as you do for them. It happens on social networks just as it does via phone calls or e-mails.

As a result you could soon discover that your sites are getting more traffic, your articles are reaching a wider audience and you're meeting more peers with whom you can share best practices on polymer research, collaborate on a cognitive science study, discuss new insights into Proust, or whatever else may be of interest.

Marketing impact of my social media activity

Last July when I wrote Web 2.0 & Social Networking can enhance "findability", I was just beginning to experiment more actively with social media. I was already blogging, commenting on other blogs, sharing photos on Flickr and tracking blog reactions on Technorati. I just wasn't doing it proactively. Since then I've joined more networks and spent many a night online connecting with Web developers, designers, bloggers, marketers and other like-minded souls all over the world. I started this primarily to learn more about social media. I kept with it because I made some great friends who shared some great ideas and sites. And somehow, in the process, readership of this blog increased substantially.

Between July and December of 2007 subscribers to the blog (those reading via RSS feed) increased by 55%. Unique visitors to the site, # of visits and page views each increased by more than 200%. While readership has risen steadily since I started the blog in 2005, this was a noticeable upturn.

If I'd set out on my experiment with only a marketing goal in mind, I don't know that it would have worked out so well. As I've since discovered the key is in making connections—which can only be done by becoming a participating member of whatever community you join. But if you find a community of interest, whether pertaining to your research, work or hobbies, there are many benefits to be had.

Social Media Resources

The following articles related to this topic weren't found through Google; they were either written or recommended by people I've met through social networking.

Postscript

As another result of social media networking, the Web Development Blog is now a member of BlogHighEd, a blogger network covering a vast array of topics pertaining to higher education and related fields.

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Posted by Heidi Cool at 11:01 PM | Comments (17)
Categories: Heidi's Entries , Social Networking , marketing , social media

February 26, 2008

Wayfinding within your Web site

Door for a store in Cork, Ireland
Door for a store in Cork, Ireland

In Your home page is NOT your index; it's your store front, I discussed some of the goals of homepage design and navigation. Today we'll consider how users navigate within the site. As my friend and fellow developer Wayne Smallman correctly surmised—when commenting and following up on that entry, the pages inside your site are like the aisles or departments within a store. Each page needs to be identified so that users know both where they are and where they can go.

Port of Entry: Not everyone uses the front door.

In a real world store, visitors typically enter through one or two main doors then follow the signs or clues to the department they need. But in the online world, they may enter through the front door, crawl in a side window, shimmy down the chimney or teleport in via Google. Each page on your site is a potential entrance. In some cases, you may get less traffic through the front door than through other pages. For example, last month 58% of those who visited http://www.case.edu/visit/ entered through the main page. The other 42% entered the site through one of 44 other pages. Here on the Web Development Blog, visitors entered through 152 different pages—only 8.6% came in through the main page.

To serve these users we need not replicate the experience of the home page, but we can offer wayfinding tools that will help them and other users browse the site.

Where am I? Wayfinding signage and landmarks.

You are here map

If you've ever wandered around a department store, mall or national park, you've probably encountered the ubiquitous "You are here" sign. Whether you've walked past the same pond 5 times or just can't find your way out of "men's shoes," the "you are here" sign indicates where you are in relation to other areas. A Web site doesn't need something this obvious, but users do expect to find clues that will let them immediately determine where they are, whether they are in the right place and—if not—guidance to direct them towards their proper destination.

To determine location, users will rely on site "landmarks" and "signs" such as logos, images and headers. On sites here at Case Western Reserve University we include:

Wayfinding Examples
This screen shot from the
Provost's site shows you some of
our common wayfinding tools.
View enlarged image.

  • The university logo in the upper left corner—to let users know they are on one of a collection of Case sites. (On sites using the newer templates, users may click on this image to return to the Case home page).
  • The site title on the right side of the the banner indicates the name of the specific site. (On sites using the newer templates, users may click on this title to return to the home page of the site.)
  • Section headers appear at the top of the side navigation menu (on the advanced templates) to let users know which section of the site they are in.
  • Descriptive page headers at the top of the main content area let users know which page they are on and what the content will include.
  • A detailed footer includes the department or organization name, addresses and other contact information.
How do I get there from here? Navigational tools within the site.

If the user has determined that he/she isn't in the right place, menus and other navigational aids should be readily available to guide the user to a more relevant page within the site or to a different site with related material.

Here at Case our pages include menus and other aids such as:

  • Top navigation on the upper right of the page offers links to the Case home page, university directory pages and a university search page so that users may easily seek out other Case sites.
  • A primary menu appears on each page to let users navigate between sections (on large sites using the advanced templates) or between all pages (on smaller sites using the basic templates.)
  • A secondary menu appears on each page of large sites (using the advanced templates) to provide navigation to all pages within a section.*
  • Sites that have sections within sections may also incorporate tertiary menus near the top of the content area of pages within subsections.
  • A search box below the left hand menu allows users to search within the site for a particular topic or page.
  • The related sites box guides users to other sites (Case or external) that provide related content.

*Blogs, such as this site, will typically use topical categories/tags and date archives rather than the usual sectional navigation.

Wayfinding and navigation conclusions

Navigational and menuing systems vary. If you're the XYZ corporation your site may rely on searchable databases to display your enormous inventory of widgets. If you're a small non-profit with a lot of data you may have a site that is many levels deep and requires breadcrumbs in addition to, or instead of secondary or tertiary menus. The navigational tools you employ will often be determined by your content. As long as it works effectively, it doesn't matter which system you use. If you include some basic wayfinding tools to let users know where they are and how to proceed, you will improve the user experience increase the odds that they'll stay on the site now and/or come back in the future.

Navigation and Wayfinding Resources

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Posted by Heidi Cool at 07:30 PM | Comments (14)
Categories: Content , Heidi's Entries , Tips and Tricks , design , navigation , usability

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