CIL2008: Web Manager's Academy Preconference

I'm just getting around to posting about the great pre-conference I attended on Sunday presented by Darlene Fichter, Frank Cervone, Jeff Wisniewski, & Marshall Breeding. In 6 hours we learned about a variety of topics relating to redesign, which is what we're about to do at HCPL, so this was a great refresher.

One of the first things they asked us to do was write down as a table what we wanted to learn. Darlene Fichter put it up as a tag cloud - what a great use of web 2.0.

To Ponder: 25 Questions to Ask Your Leadership Team & Yourself - Are We Ready for the Web 2.0 Digital Age? - Based on a post on Tame The Web.

Main points:

• The library web presence is bigger than your website
• Make sure you're looking at your usage statistics to see what people want
• When planning a redesign, use SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats)
• Set up a redesign committee - While I think it's helpful to get input, I like what Seth Godin had to say about creating a great website - #1 Fire the Committee
• To maximize web 2.0, blogs have to embrace participation by: writing in a conversational tone, inviting participation, accepting comments, participating in the conversation in a timely fashion
• We're great at content, but web users are fairly superficial. Websites need to be aesthetically pleasing. It's hard, if not impossible to recover from a negative impression.
• Most users come to a site to perform specific tasks, so emphasize the highest priority tasks so that users have a clear starting point.
• Generally, you should only have 7 +/- 2 categories at the top.
• Use a flexible vs. a fixed design, where possible.
• The web safe palette is dead - be as colorful as you want
• Don't look at library sites for ideas, look at where your users are going - Amazon, Home Depot...
• Rather than a revolutionary change, build for evolution. Try A/B testing - Amazon.com does this a lot.
• Accessibility is critical for core content, BUT value added content doesn't HAVE to be supported by all browsers.

People have a tendency to never look at a slim rectangular area that's above the page's main headline - Jacob Nielsen

• While important content still needs to be above the fold, users will scroll to the bottom.
  
• Jakob's Law: "Users spend most of their time on other sites that your site" - Jakob Nielsen
  
• What are they experiencing?
• Highly visual
• Highly personalized
  
• Highly interactive
• User generated
• Simpler is NOT always better. Amazon experiments using A/B testing. They tested a page by removing extra features. They added them back when sales went down.
• Design for scent. Users will drill down if they feel like they're getting somewhere. You don't have to stick to the 3 click rule anymore.
  

A few cool tools:

• Frogreview.com - Hysterical usability videos
• CMS Matrix - Find a CMS by function
• Google Analytics - Install code on site to track (for free) usage and other web analytics.
• Yahoo User Pattern Library - Optimal solutions to common problems.
• Google Webmaster Tools - OMG! Why haven't I seen this before.
• Sitemap.org - Info on creating site maps.
  

Some ideas:

• Add a Flickr group for HCPL to let customers submit photos
• Google has suggestions by drop down. Use in search boxes for electronic journals, etc.