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Archive for the ‘Website HELP Articles’ Category
Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011
By Nora McDougall-Collins
Let’s say that you want to learn something about a product you just bought; so you go to the company’s web site. That product could be a motorcycle part, a new computer, your credit card, etc.
Delivering product information on the web is a great tool for both the company and the client. It could mean less phone time for the company (save employee hours and $$$.) For the client it means not having to wait for business hours to get an answer, and not having to sit on hold, and not having to understand an unfamiliar accent, and not having to deal with untrained phone staff, and being able to go back and forth through the information, as needed.
But, unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. I recently got my new NNFP phone (740-541-2857), which is from Alltel, and I needed to set up the voicemail. I hate waiting for phone prompts so I thought, “they probably have all the steps to set up voicemail on their web site!” Then I can just read and push buttons without waiting for the messages. I found out that their web site uses the typical barriers that keep people from using a web site. In my case, I went ahead and used the prompts, and I get to write this article about how they kept me out of their site!
Here is a screenshot of the Alltel web site:
They don’t really tell me on the front page what resources are available on their web site. I know who they are, but I don’t know “whatcha got.” I don’t have a log in. I don’t want to buy a Treo. I already have a phone in my hand; so, I don’t want to buy a new one. I’m not checking their models. I don’t need a prepaid plan. Since that about covers everything on their front page, they obviously don’t have the information I need on their web site. Well, actually, it’s entirely possible that they have spent a lot of $$$ making pages that explain their voicemail functions, but they have hidden them!
Here’s another one. SalesForce.com. This company has an online Contact Management Resource package. Sounds like a tool I would like to use! But I don’t know whether their software is easy to use or does what I want it to do. So, I look for a demo (the first thing you should do when looking for software.) But, like Alltel, they have put up a barrier to me, as a potential consumer. To get a demo, I have to fill out a form. Now, I understand that if I’m going to demo a car, they need to know who I am, in case I don’t bring it back! However, I’m not exactly going to run away with their online software. Not only do I get a demo, but I get a call, and I get an ongoing stream of spams from them. Oh, I guess it’s not spam, because they think that wanting to see the demo is the same as wanting an endless stream of emails.
Would you feel there was a barrier if your favorite clothes store made you fill out a form before they let you try on that nice fuzzy sweater? Well, I filled out their form, and I get the endless stream of emails, but their online demo was mostly a sales pitch, and not much of a demo! Like the Alltel site, SalesForce had the opportunity to make me think that their product was easily available and easy to use, but they pretty much made sure that I didn’t want to use their web site.
How do you avoid putting up barriers on your web site? First, be aware of the types of barriers that annoy you! Then have a few people (not your Mom) try specific tasks on your web site – like pretend they want to buy something! Ask them how many steps they had to take, and whether they found what they wanted!
Posted in Web Content, Website HELP Articles, Website Planning | No Comments »
Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011
 Would you believe that even the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) industry has folks wearing black hats? These are the folks that will do anything they can to trick Google and other search engine into ranking their sites at the top. Instead of spending their time having a great site, they spend their time trying to get around the system with “Black Hat SEO.”
Here are some snippets of text from some of their sites:
“Are you prepared to use every cut-throat trick in the book to exploit the search engines and outrank your competitors?”
“… if you need to escape the White Hat SEO Whiners …”
“Black Hat SEO Techniques – Making Money Online by Exploiting the System”
So what is Black Hat SEO?
Others have done a great job of describing the tactics of Black Hat SEO. Here is an excerpt from an excellent article by George Ajazi:
“Keyword Stuffing – Literally the practice of repeating a keyword or words over and over again on a given web page. Google’s algorithms work very hard at trying to find pages that read like normal text, not like a broken record. And they are getting better at it all the time. If they suspect you are just trying to “stuff” the content of your site with keywords, there is a good chance they’ll penalize you for it.
Cloaking – Is a technique where a webmaster will have two versions of a given web page, one version that it shows the search engine spiders, and one version that it shows the regular web surfer. Highly frowned upon if the engines find out.
Invisible Text – (mentioned above) Filling a web page with text that is the same color as the background. I love this one.
Doorway Page – A highly optimized web page whose purpose is to direct traffic to other pages using either a redirect method or merely by being full of links that direct you to these other web pages.
Spam Page – Basically a doorway page that is full of ads that a webmaster makes money off of if someone clicks on them. Very annoying pages.
Interlinking – Setting up multiple websites about a given topic and having them all link to each other in order to increase their relevance and subsequently their rankings in the search engines.
Selling PageRank – If you have a high PR website, you sell links from your site to another for cash. Helping their site rank higher in Google and in turn, making your wallet fatter.
Buying Expired Domains – Buying expired websites that had some decent PageRank in order to try and keep the site’s inbound links.”
The rest of the article is also great reading.
The unfortunate situation is that I hear these strategies being promoted by folks that don’t know any better. What do you tell another baseball parent when they are all excited about these new strategies they have learned? Another local gent is very generous and enthusiastic in passing these ideas on to others. In fact, I heard about him from other technical people several years before he showed up in one of my classes. Unfortunately, he doesn’t know about the loss of respect it has earned him in the technical community. I wish he were as enthusiastic about just plain having great web sites!
So, if it sounds like a gimmick, reconsider!
If you wouldn’t like to use web sites that have to con you there, don’t do it to others.
Spend your time building a great business name and a great business site that people will come back to!
From a proud White Hat SEO Whiner!
Posted in Website HELP Articles | No Comments »
Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011
By Nora McDougall-Collins
There’s no way to get around it – your website has to be hosted somewhere. Finding a web host is like finding a mechanic when your car breaks down in a strange town. There are plenty of them, but which ones are fantastic, which ones are semi-competent, which ones are incompetent and which ones are pure thieves?
Before we launch into a discussion about good and bad web hosts, I should probably explain what a web host is. Every website has to be hosted on a web server somewhere. A web server is basically a computer with software that knows how 1) to take calls asking for web page, 2) package a web page for delivery, and 3) send the package to the right computer. Oh, and by the way, the web server needs to be able to tell the difference between a genuine web page request and one that is asking the computer to attack something. Believe it or not, there are bad guys out there trying to get web servers to do all kinds of bad things.
When you order a web hosting package from a web host. you get a place to store your web files where they are available to the public (storage.) You also get a certain amount of work that the computer can do, such as deliver web pages (transfer.) These are the main services you need, but there are other services, such as email and database, available too.
Here are some of my experiences with web hosts.
The first high-tech company I worked for was a web host, besides providing design, programming and some other web services to a particular industry. Not a single employee, including myself, had any formal training in web development or programming. We learned by the seat of our pants.
A lot of web hosts today are just someone who figures it’s just a quick way to turn a buck.
In our case, we weren’t credentialed, but we had a great customer service ethic, and if something went wrong we worked double time to fix the problem. But, one time a new tech guy completely deleted a new client’s web site. The words “off-site backup” took on new meaning!
What kind of backup system does your web host have? if the server with your website on it goes down, what will they do?
My next web hosting experience was with a great company, based in Missouri, called Communitech. Their system was great, and their support was even better. But, they were so good, a company called Interland bought them out. It was downhill from there. I teach web development classes, and I put all my course materials on my web site. Three times in one year, I got to class to find out that my site was not functional. When I would call, they would fix it, but their main emphasis was to try to get me to buy a new hosting package. Finally, late one night I got one of the original tech support guys on the line. He said that Interland was cutting back on all their resources, human and computer. All they really wanted was the client base!
So, I moved my site to a local, Missoula, web hosting company, called Modwest. And, I told them that, if they sell to Interland, I’m moving my site.
Do you have a list of other great web hosting companies, in case yours goes bad?
Another company I worked for hosted one of their sites with Interland. The company has a weekly emailed newsletter with links to various articles on their web site. A large portion of their weekly traffic comes on the day the newsletter goes out. About 3 or 4 weeks a year, the web site goes down on the day that the newsletter goes out. And they can’t seem to figure it out themselves. We had to call then to let them know that the server was down. I found out that their web servers are set up so that one site is only on one server. If that server goes down, all the sites are dead. Modwest has their web sites on clusters of servers. If one goes down, the others in the cluster pick up the load. You would think that at the very least, if the Interland servers go down, someone would be alerted and fix it before we have to call!
Look into your web host’s “configuration” before you sign up!
I wish that this were the end of my “bad experience stories,” but it’s not. If you have your own stories, I’d like to hear them!
Posted in Website HELP Articles, Website Planning, Website Set-Up | No Comments »
Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011
By Nora McDougall-Collins for the National Network of Forest Practitioners
FIRST!!! Before you do anything on your web site, stop and ask yourself what your message is! Then figure out who you want to deliver it to. If you have a web site, show it to someone who doesn’t know your organization and ask them to look at your site and tell you what you do, based on the information on your web site.
I’d like to thank Harry Groot, who has given me permission to use the Blue Ridge Woodland Coop web site as a case study in our efforts to help our forest practitioner organizations and businesses have successful web sites. First, notice that their site has a great visual design:
However, the question is, what is the message of this home page? Viewers will decide whether they like your site in less time than it takes to blink and eye*. If the home page doesn’t show them what they want, people aren’t likely to click to your inside pages. Do you click on sites that don’t have what you want on the home page?
The main message of the Blue Ridge Woodland Coop is that their members have wood products for sale. Then the underlying message is that they are a community effort, etc. The images currently on the home page are more like a site promoting real estate or travel in the area, where the natural beauty is what the visitor is buying. It all goes back to “What are you trying to say?”
SECOND!!! Figure out who cares about (or should care about) what you are trying to sell, and what is important to them? If your site is about selling flooring, what do those folks care about? Well, first they care about what the floor will look like. So, they want to see it – not the boards, the floor! Then, they care about how well it will wear when someone walks across it with their muddy boots (horrors) or drives Tonka trucks over it (the little darlings.) Finally, they want to brag about how much better their wood flooring is than all their friends floors because it comes from sustainably harvested trees, etc. “And, by the way, I can show you a picture of the guys who grew the trees, cut the trees and made the flooring right on this web site!” So, where can I get a floor like that???? Can’t let my golfing/gardening/business/etc. acquaintance have a better floor than I do!
YOUR WEB SITE HAS TO SAY ALL THAT IN A FEW PHOTOS AND TEXT ON YOUR HOME PAGE. After the photos hook them, the specific details follow on inside pages, but the front page has to hook them. Notice that they don’t really care about how wonderful your organization is until after they see what they want? Your inside pages should also reflect how wonderful each of your members is, as well. Make a personal connection, and folks will come back.
So, should they start the Blue Ridge Forest Cooperative site over? Absolutely not! They just need to make some adjustments. Somewhere the web developer didn’t get the message. When you are looking for a web developer, the people you interview should be spending as much time asking about what you do, and what your message is, as you do asking them questions. That person should tell you how they are going to get your message across, not just how beautiful your site will be.
What is the old saying,” Beauty is as beauty does.” It applies to websites too!
I look forward to seeing the website changes that Blue Ridge Forest Co-op will be making in-house, as I work with them by phone and webinar! They already have some high quality photos taken of their members and their products through the People and Land project. NNFP is proud to be working with great grassroots organizations!
*Article about Canadian Research on how long it takes someone to make a decision about a web site. “Gitte Lindgaard of Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, and lead researcher of the paper expressed her surprise at the results.”
Posted in Web Content, Website HELP Articles, Website Planning | No Comments »
Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011
By Nora McDougall-Collins for the National Network of Forest Practitioners
Once you have a preliminary plan for your website project, it is time to start looking for a developer who can take your project through the rest of the planning and production. Even people with technical backgrounds can hire the wrong developer; so, for those without web technical experience, the risks are even higher. However, you are more likely to find a good developer, if you take the time to do your homework.
Many businesses hire the most convenient person for the job. This person might be “the kid down the street” or the “great package” on a website. Without checking further, you may be buying yourself a nightmare. So, take a good look under the hood before buying.
The developer can make or break a project for many reasons, including:
1. Quality of communication between you and the developer.
2. Amount of time the developer has available for your project.
3. Hiring a developer with the right skill set for your project.
4. The developers work habits – what good does it do to get a great site, if it’s impossible to maintain later
5. Matching your style with the developer’s style
Finding Web Developers to Interview
1. Make a list of ten sites that you like. Find 5 sites in your industry and 5 sites that have features you need on your site, which aren’t in your industry. Record the addresses of those sites with a comment about why you chose that site.
2. Ask your business acquaintances for web developer recommendations. Ask them why they recommended that person or company. Ask them about costs and communications.
3. Ask your business acquaintances for web development horror stories. Find out specifically why it was a bad experience. Your situation may be entirely different, but the information will help you understand what can go wrong.
4. Based on these recommendations (and other services you may find out about,) call at least 5 developers and ask about their availability. It doesn’t matter how good they are, if they can’t fit you in, they can’t fit you in.
5. Set up meetings with the developers to discuss your project. You may need to pay for their time because, if they are any good, they will be giving you some expert advice as part of the discussion. Everything you learn now, will make the project cheaper later.
6. If a developer tells you that more planning needs to be done, you are probably speaking to a good developer.
Check off list for your Conversations
Here are some of the things that should be included in your conversations: These aren’t black and white questions. They are designed to help you get a well-rounded picture of each potential developer.
There probably isn’t a developer out there who will be perfect for you in each item. For example, in projects that require high quality graphics, I recommend that prospective clients hire a graphic designer for that part of a website, because I don’t have graphic design training and abilities.
1. Explain your project to the potential developer. As part of the process, show the developer the sites you chose from the previous section and your thoughts.
2. Ask the developer how he would go about building such a site with that information.
3. Did the developer give you plain English explanations to support the suggestions?
4. Did the developer spend a lot of time asking you about your needs, listening carefully and making suggestions?
5. Make a list of the skills and experience the developer has, including what software packages she would use to develop your site.
6. Is there a match between the skills of the developer and your website needs?
7. Find out whether your developer is available for a long term business relationship.
8. Will it be easy to find someone else who knows those software packages, should that developer become unavailable later on (you will have to verify this by asking others?)
9. What pricing system does the developer use?
10. Do the sites the developer has previously created match your style and needs?
11. What types of responses did you receive from the developer’s references?
If you are new to these topics, be extra careful. Each of these topics is a potential breaking point for your project. Look for a developer who will take the time to help you understand the topic. Each of these questions will be discussed further in future articles.
Posted in Website HELP Articles, Website Planning | No Comments »
Friday, February 4th, 2011
By Christy McDougall for the National Network of Forest Practitioners
You are an artisan, and your wood products are beautiful and well made. Naturally you want to show them off on your website! You dream about having such a wonderful gallery that people will be contacting you daily, eager to get their hands on what they see there.
So, because you are intrepid, you find the perfect online gallery yourself, and you click the little “Browse…” button that lets you upload your pictures. And what you see makes your brain spin. You see a long list of the photographs you took last month, all in weird little photograph icons, all labeled “img085,” “img243,” “img047.” What picture is what? Where’s that magnificent picture you took of your son at work on that oak log?
Or maybe you’re busy, so you hire a web developer to put your gallery together for you. You put all your photographs on a CD and send it to her, and the next day she emails you with a dozen questions. “Can you tell me about your pictures? What are these cabinets made out of? If you want them divided up into albums, can you tell me which go in which albums? I don’t know what fir looks like, so can you tell me which ones are fir and which ones are Ponderosa pine?” So now you have to write a very long email explaining all the pictures in detail rather than doing what you really want to do, like finishing that cabinet your client is antsy about.
The answer to both these problems is quite simple, and it involves managing and organizing your product photos from the very beginning. As soon as you sit down to put your pictures on your computer from your camera, follow these steps, and it will make your website work or your developer’s website work much more simple:
1) Look through your pictures and name them. Give them very specific names that tell exactly what they’re about, such as, FSCCertifiedKitchenFirCabinet. You’ll notice that this name has no spaces and the first letters of all its words are capitalized. This is called Camel Case and is the best way to name the images that you’re going to put online. Having very clear names for your pictures helps both you and your web developer understand what the picture is about, causing less confusion on her part.
2.) Create a ProductImages folder and copy all your pictures into it. By copying them rather than cutting and pasting, you’re saving yourself a backup, in case anything happens to any of the pictures. The name of the folder you create should also be in Camel Case, so that it will work with the browser if it ever goes online.
3.) Create subfolders and give them appropriate, Camel-Cased names. If you have a lot of pictures of tables you have created, group all your table pictures in a Table folder in the ProductImages folder. If you want to group your cherry tables apart from your walnut tables, create one folder called CherryTables and one called WalnutTables and separate the pictures accordingly. By doing this, you will nearly always know where to find any particular photo.
By organizing and renaming from the beginning, you will save yourself a lot of time and your web developer a lot of confusion. When you go to upload to your gallery, you’ll see instantly what each photo is and know which album it should go in. Or when you send them to your web developer, she’ll already know how you want them grouped and what their names should be, and her long email full of questions will be greatly reduced. It can be a rather annoying task if you’re not used to it, but in the long run, this will save you
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Tuesday, October 5th, 2010
When I first spoke with Neil from Custom Creations Woodworking about establishing a web presence, he had some concerns. How much will it cost me? Can I update my own site easily? How quickly will my website be ready? Very important questions for small businesses looking to get their name out there without breaking the bank or becoming a computer programmer. The solution: WordPress.com.
 Example of Custom Creations Woodworking main page Not only does WordPress.com allow for independent user control, it has no monthly fees! The NNFP Website HELP Team will handle all of the set-up for $750. This package includes banner design, page creation, image preparation, help with content decisions and training on how to use the system, if a business owner doesn’t have the time. In Neil’s case, this could not have worked out any better.
WordPress.com is a blog tool that has the capacity to be transformed to each user’s personal preference using themes and widgets. In other words, a person or business signs up for an account, uses a template (theme) to build their site and when ready, go live.
What people don’t know is that it is a powerful Content Management System (CMS) that can be used for blogging as well. With WordPress.com you can build a blog, a website, or both. It is a great choice for small businesses like Custom Creations because there is minimal cost involved with building or maintaining your site and you have complete control over any changes made.
WordPress.com is an Open Source Content Management System. Open Source refers to any program where the code is “open” to the public for use or modification. A content management system is a tool that allows a user to manage the creation and updates to web pages on their own website. In other words, this is a program that is constantly being made better by its users and allows users to build, maintain and change their own websites whenever and however they see fit.
What are some other good reasons to choose WordPress.com?
How about Search Engine Optimization!
What is Search Engine Optimization, you ask? SEO is the way clients find your site on the world wide web. The better SEO you have, the higher you rank on search engine lists like Google. If your SEO is good when someone types in, say, “sustainable wood products in Minnesota,” your site will come up in one of the initial listings. This means that, at no cost to you, your business gets marketed to potential customers specifically looking for your products through WordPress.com’s already recognized code design. The program automatically does some basic SEO for your site including setting up title and meta tags based on information from your site. More exact SEO can be done by the NNFP Website HELP Team or referencing the large posts database and asking relative questions.
 Example of a WordPress Photo Gallery Page How about easy to use Themes, Plug-Ins and Widgets!
WordPress.com provides thousands of themes a business can use as a template to base your site around. After designing the basic site using a theme, a user can add plug-ins and widgets to customize their site to provide specific functions as desired such as photo galleries, calendars, stat trackers and much more.
How about tons of support!
If you do have problems, or want to add very custom features, it is easy to find support and developers who can help you. The NNFP Website HELP Team is available to assist you with any questions you may have. In addition, there are literally thousands of WordPress.com developers out there. And there are so many people writing about WordPress.com that help is only a search away!
The Limitations Of WordPress.com?
With all good things come some bad. If you do decide to go the WordPress.com route, keep in mind that you have to use one of the themes that are provided. You cannot access the code to make extensive changes. You can’t upload any plugins or widgets not accepted by the program. And your website name will include “.wordpress.com” in its title. Now, some of these issues can be avoided but there are costs involved with those changes.
WordPress.com
 Example of WordPress Main Page In the end, WordPress.com is perfect for small businesses looking to keep costs down and have control over their own website. Just ask Neil at Custom Creations Woodworking! It is easy to install, easy to maintain, easy to change, and has no monthly fees! WordPress.com allows for your business’s website to grow with your business needs with minimal effort or cost. And the best part is that the NNFP Website HELP Team is available to help with the entire process.
If you are interested in learning more about WordPress.com, just go to their site and check it out. There are tutorials and posts galore covering every topic you can imagine. Or visit Custom Creations Woodworking to see the program in action. If you want more information about what the NNFP Website HELP Team can do for you and your business just click on our name.
Have fun, and see you on the web!
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Sunday, September 5th, 2010
By Sandy Drake – NNFP Website HELP Team Member
The New Website Versus The Old Website
 LFC New Home Page  LFC Old Home Page The Living Forest Site wasn’t a bad site; it was loose like a blanket that was starting to unravel. The colors and layout were visually pleasing but filled with a lot of empty space that needed to be tightened up. The user would have to search and scroll to get to the information, because of the empty space. It wasn’t easy to navigate to get to all of the important information that Living Forest had to offer.
First we created a template to make maintaining and updating the site easier. Living Forest Cooperative (like many wood organizations) doesn’t have large amounts of time to spend learning how to maintain a website. With the template they can learn more specific and less time consuming actions to update their site, without having to worry that they might damage to outer structure. The outer structure, the template, gives them the opportunity to create and update pages, while the structural part of the page remains locked. This prevents headache causing accidents that might put a site down for a couple of hours or a couple of days. In the future, as they become more familiar with their web development skills, they will be able to go in and adjust the template to the needs of the site.
 LFC New About Us Page  LFC Old About Us Page We moved a new slideshow up to the top of the home page so that it was an immediate attraction visible as soon as the viewer opened the page.
What we did was tighten up that space, so that information was right there in front of the viewer as soon as they would open a page. We had one page filled with four pages worth of information that we would have to scroll through to get to one piece of information. We took that page and spilt it up into the four pages that they could be accessed by links to each page directly, instead of having scroll through the other pages to get to the page they were looking for. We reorganized other groups of pages so that they were accessible this way and hopefully easier to find.
We fixed outside links so that they produce a new browser window and viewer doesn’t have to leave the Living Forest Website in order to view the information from links.
 LFC New Products Page  LFC Old Product Page We added more images to better illustrate some of the Living Forest activities, interests and practices. We went through and organized the root level of the site so that information and images were in organized folder and easier to locate when it came time to update a page or fix a problem on a page. We also renamed the web images. The new small descriptive image names in CamelCase and size, allow for easier recognition when updating and fixing problems. It also adds a little search engine optimization as well as information for “readers” used by handicapped individuals that can’t necessarily see the images.
We are now improving the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) with Title tags, Meta description, key words, alt tags and Google Analytics so that Google searches will reach the Living Forest Site.
 LFC New Forestry Services Page  LFC Old Services Page It was also decided that with the face lift, colors and layout might be changed for a different look. The nice thing was with way the template was built it was fairly easy (40 min.) to adjust. We chose gray colors with a green tint and a differently organized table within the structure that might be more versatile as far as the information, images and all around look that LFC might like to represent through their website.
Visit the Living Forest Cooperative Website
Posted in Website Set-Up | No Comments »
Sunday, September 5th, 2010
By Christy McDougall for the National Network of Forest Practitioners
You are about to walk into a building, in a hurry, and the door won’t open. You push and push on the bar that is supposed to open the door, and it won’t work. After a frustrated moment, you realize you are pushing on the wrong side of the bar. With a humiliated feeling that you’ve just made an idiot out of yourself, you slink inside and hurry away from that door, knowing you’ll probably do exactly the same thing the next time.
Is there something wrong with you, that you can’t work a simple door? No. There is something wrong with the door. If it is difficult for you, the user, to use something as simple as a door, the door has been designed badly. And why has a bad design been implemented into a building? Because the designers did not test it on real human beings. If they had called in five random people off the street and asked them to open the door, they would have seen in about five minutes that they had some work to do to make their door usable.
Websites work the same way. What designers assume will be easy usually isn’t easy to the average person who happens upon the website. Website creators may be so familiar with their sites and with complicated computer tasks that they can lose sight of what is and what is not simple to other people. If it isn’t easy to use the site, the user will become frustrated, and no one wants the main feeling people have about their website to be frustration. That is why even the most basic website could benefit hugely from some simple usability testing.
Usability testing asks a few average people to sit down at a website and try to figure out what it’s for and how to use it without any prior knowledge of it. The average person should be able to tell in a split second, without any guessing, what your site is about, and the average computer user should be able to maneuver around the site without getting lost and to perform most tasks without trouble.
The easiest way to perform your own usability testing is to grab a couple friends or relatives who haven’t been on your site and ask them to take five minutes to play around on it. Give them a task to perform, like signing up for your newsletter or finding a certain page. Watch what they do, how much they hesitate over certain things. Ask them for feedback, especially what problems they had. Sometimes what you thought to be perfectly obvious won’t be obvious to them at all. Then go and fix the problems, and later ask a few others to try it and find out if you fixed them as well as you thought you did.
If you have a larger business or run an association with members, it is recommended that you get your new members to do usability testing. When you have a new form for members to fill out online, test it on a few of them and ask them to tell you how it worked for them. Many people will stay politely quiet when they find errors in forms, but when you ask, you will get plenty of very useful feedback. Listen to both the experts, who know how a good website should work, and to the beginners, who have yet to memorize all the computer rules many of us take for granted.
It is always a good idea to offer some compensation for your testers’ time, even (or especially) if they are friends or family members. Sustainable Woods Network conducts usability testing by offering free services if members will be willing to be testers. You might offer a gift certificate, money, or a product or service from your business.
Remember: your site is for other people. You want it to attract people by its beauty, its clarity of purpose, and its ease of use. Your site should give people who stumble upon it the best possible sense of your business. Even if you feel your site is absolutely wonderful, you should give your customers a chance to say how it makes them feel, because they are what is most important. Your customers and clients are your business’s lifeblood, and usability testing can help you create a site that attracts them rather than driving them away.
Usability testing resources: Web usability consulting – http://www.sensible.com/
Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability. A book by Steve Krug.
Posted in Web Content, Website HELP Articles, Website Planning, Website Set-Up | Comments Off
Sunday, September 5th, 2010
By Sandy Drake
NNFP Website HELP Team Member
Imagine you hired a company to build you a beautiful new home. From the outside your new home looks lovely, but you realize on opening the front door that none of the interior doors are installed but leaning against the wall in the main living room. Instead of moving into your new home, you’re stuck finishing the task that the construction company neglected to finish. Unfortunately, too many people are faced with the same sort of frustration when they take a look at the back end of their new websites.
 Unorganized Website
From the start of my very first web development course and throughout my web education, the instructors could not emphasize more the importance of good file structure and organization. They explained that most but not all new websites start out small, with just a few pages, a handful of images and probably one style sheet. As the business grows and time passes, new needs bring on more pages. Images and pages become outdated and updated. The site owner may bring in a programmer; add a database or PayPal and shopping cart options. With a database, newsletters can be sent out and member or client information can be stored and accessed in order to make the business run more smoothly. The root level is now overloaded and cluttered with current information, information to be used in the future and outdated information too important to discard. Original images, alternately sized images for different purposes and outdated images, along with informational documents, pdfs and programming criteria, mix together with no apparent order and fill the root level of the site. Your website is a mess, and it happens much faster than you would expect.
Now you bring in a web developer or find time in your busy schedule to update your site, fix broken links or to try to access past information to be reintroduced on the site. Where do you begin to look? The whole process seems overwhelming.
It is the web developer’s job, in the beginning, to set up a file structure and organize the information for the current and future needs of your site. It is a simple process to initiate and can cause the biggest problems if not implemented. Even a simple file structure can prevent confusion and sometimes large costly mistakes.
 Organized Website This simple file structure can comprise of as little as seven folders, labeled with easily understandable names. I would suggest a CSS folder, an Images folder, a CompanyInformation folder, an ImagesInProcess folder, a Templates folder, a Docs folder and an Archive folder to hold backup copies of current pages as well as outdated images and outdated pages of information. The only loose pages on the root level should be the index page and sometimes some programming information.
Next, a good web developer should educate the client on how to manage, maintain and update their file structure as the website matures.
I am still shocked to see how many websites, constructed by intelligent individuals, have been released as complete, even though one of the most basic and important areas in the infrastructure of the website has been neglected.
We would hope that a construction company, after finishing a building, would clean up loose and discarded nails, pieces of wood, sawdust and any other left over trash before presenting the building as complete. The web developer has the same responsibility. The backend area of the website should be clean and organized, free of miscellaneous pages, word documents and images, before the developer’s job is considered finished.
The correctly completed website should be user friendly on the inside as well as the outside.
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