websites

Internet Librarian 2011: 20 steps to better web services

by David Lee King on October 17, 2011

Sarah Houghton – librarianinblack.net

#1 – where to put your websites.

WordPress. Blogger. Drupal – not really where your website goes… Squarespace – not free, but cheap.

#2 – images.

Gimp. Image editing program.
picasa – edit and host images.
Picnik – simple editing that most people need. Connected to Flickr
Flickr – great place to host, find cc-licensed photos
Pictobrowser – great slideshow for images
Openphoto – free images – high quality

#3 – hot topics

Addictomatic – info gathering place Sarah’s library used this for a local city emergency

#4 – make ur codez priteez

Beautify JavaScript – helps make code pretty – also CSS beautify

#5 – surveys and polls

Google forms – simple and easy
Polldaddy – easy polling

#6 – slider

Wow slider – web based image rotator/slider

#7 – translate

Google translate – easy, adequate.

#8 – remote assistance

Log me in (logmein) – remote access to your pc or Mac – there’s a free version. This is a very quick tool. I sends an email asking for permission to access the other persons computer

#9 – wireframing

Balsamiq – gives pre-made parts and pieces

Wow – 40% of Sarah’s library web traffic is mobile

#10 – testing your mobile stuff

W3c mobileOK Checker

#11 – stats

Google analytics

#12 – Skype

Great place to talk to users, to staff, etc

#13 – social management

Tweetdeck
Namechk – searches dozens of sites to find names that you can use

#14 – webcasts
Slideshares zipcast – works great.

#15 – video

Jaycut – browser based editing tool
YouTube – they have online editing too
Animato
Xtranormal

#16 – audio

Audacity
Podbean – great place to host audio

#17 – learning environments

Moodle

#18 – infographics

Visual.ly

#19 – librarything

#20 – the google

Google plus has some potentially cool stuff…

Helios – from the audience
Cheap calendar … ?

Tagged as: , , , ,

1 comment

The Creative Group

by David Lee King on September 20, 2011

Creative Group

The Creative Group

In my last blog post, I mentioned my library’s Creative Group. What is that, exactly?

My library decided that Public Relations and the web team did a lot of similar things, and needed to work together. PR routinely creates print ads, newsletters, posters, banners, and PR campaigns. The web team does much the same thing, just online. Why not collaborate up-front, so the message online and in-print is the same?

And hey – while we’re at it … both teams are highly creative. What’s not to like about schmushing two creative teams together into the same physical space, to see what happens?

So we stuck both teams into the same work space. We also started holding regular weekly meetings. So every week, our three PR staff, two web developers, me, our Programs Supervisor, our Digital Content Librarian (new position that’s part of Public Services), the Deputy Director, and sometimes our library director meet. Anyone else in the library is invited, too.

What do we do? We talk about projects. Last week, we talked about our Personalized Reading List service – we’re reworking the form and the page the form lives on. The staffer in charge of that service and the Public Services Manager came for that part of the meeting. We also talked about creating some database widgets (did you know database vendors like Gale and EbscoHost have widgets now? Who knew?), guest posts for book reviews, and a new blog we’re creating.

So what do you think? Is it helpful for PR and the Web team to meet regularly? It’s sure been helpful for us!

And – boring pic by me, using my Instagr.am account. Follow me at davidleeking on instagr.am if you’re interested!

Tagged as: , , , , , ,

6 comments

Copying Other Websites During a Redesign

by David Lee King on September 16, 2011

During my library’s last website redesign, we went through quite a few design iterations, and we still weren’t happy. Two people in our Creative Group team (more on that in the next post) … ok, our head of marketing and the deputy director … kept sending us website examples they liked. Sites like shoe stores or clothing shops. Yes, they were beautiful websites, and nicely designed. But they weren’t really all that similar to a library website.

One big difference – these attractive websites did one thing well – they sold shoes or clothes. They didn’t have any catalog to speak of. The websites were full of single pages that pointed to single items.

But a library website has at least two basic needs – a site that talks about the library, and shares useful stuff. And we have a library catalog. So it didn’t really make much sense to me to base our library website design around a site that only does half of what we do.

So I started poking around, looking for websites that focus on two things:

  1. stuff, like a storefront.
  2. a “catalog” of some sort.

Amazon and Zappos? Pretty much all catalog. News sites? Pretty much large multi-blog sites – focusing on stuff. Then it dawned on me – library websites are like Apple. Apple essentially has two separate websites – the main site that focuses on their stuff, and their “catalog” – their online store.

We based our redesign around Apple, in these ways:

  • Top horizontal navigation with drop down menus. We also found some “nav bar inspiration” at NPR’s website.
  • Focusing on a single large ad, then a couple of smaller ones, then more detailed content below that – based on many of Apple’s pages. This directs customers to a few things that you REALLY WANT THEM TO DO, while still having easy access to everything else.
  • A prominent link to the store. That’s where you’d click “Find Stuff” to get to our three catalogs (catalog, digital downloads catalog, and DVD dispenser catalog).

So far, it’s working out great – few complaints, lots of compliments. Our public trainers have told us they cut down training on how to use our website from an hour to 10-15 minutes. Fingers crossed that it stays that way for a while!

Tagged as: , , , , , ,

1 comment

Three Questions every webpage should answer – conclusion

by David Lee King on August 29, 2011

Last week, I focused on three questions every webpage should answer. The questions were:

  1. What can I do here?
  2. What should I do next?
  3. Why should I care?
And now, I have a question for you. Are there other questions a website or an individual webpage should answer?
Said another way, what do your website visitors need to know … at a glance? And what’s the best way to provide this info?
Discuss in the comments please – thanks!

Tagged as: , , , , ,

5 comments

Is the Web Modern Yet?

by David Lee King on August 16, 2011

Today’s web is the “modern web” – css, HTML5 coming soon, websites designed with grids, lots of functionality. Yes-sirree, this is the modern web.

Just like this was a modern car:

This “modern car” could’t move fast enough for today’s modern highways (top speeds of 40-45 mph), wasn’t automatic, and didn’t have a/c, radio, or an iPod hookup. Or windows, for that matter. But I’m guessing that to the buyer back then, it was a pretty modern car, and a major change for them. They had to figure out the details of the change – i.e., what should we do with Bessie the horse? Where do we park it? Where do we get gas? How do we maintain it?

My point? That’s where the web is today – roughly 20 years after the first web page went online, we have today’s “modern” web. It certainly looks pretty modern to us, much like those cars from 1927 probably looked to the buyer.

Guess what? Much like that Model T … I don’t think we’re done yet. With websites or with libraries.

Car photo from Wikipedia

Tagged as: , , , ,

1 comment

Check out builtwith.com

by David Lee King on June 23, 2011

Mark this down as a cool tool for your website-building toolkit…

Ever wondered what CMS or web server a certain website was using? Wonder no more! Simply enter the URL of that interesting site into builtwith.com and voila! – this site will tell you all that geeky stuff!

For example, look at their CMS page. For the top million websites that BuiltWith tracks, they find that 62.87% of websites use WordPress, 14.77% use DotNetNuke, 10.25% use Joomla, and 3.40% use Drupal. Then when you move to their Top 10,000 sites graph, those percentages change quite a bit.

Or look at the Top Payment Distribution Services – look at the top 10,000 sites graph. % us Paypal (duh), 35.94% use CCBill, 10.94% use Google Checkout, then Flattr, Mollie, and Amazon Payment Services are there, too. CCBill, Flattr, and Mollie? Never heard of them.

So – use it to check out your website against others, use it as a discovery tool to learn about new services. Pretty handy!

Swiss Army knife by AJC1

Tagged as: , , ,

3 comments

Creative Briefs for the Website

by David Lee King on June 21, 2011

Our Marketing department frequently uses a Creative Brief to plan the marketing and promotion process for events, services, and other stuff the library does.

Marketing and our web team meet weekly, and are part of a team we call our Creative Group (we’re big on team-based planning at the library).

So when we started redesigning our website, our friends in marketing suggested we use Creative Briefs to figure out some goals for the website, and the idea worked wonderfully.

Here’s what we did: we looked at every major section of the website – areas like About Us, Blogs, or Research – and went through our creative brief planning process for each.

We focused on these areas:

  • Purpose – what’s the purpose of this section of the website? For example, one purpose of the Research section is to connect customers to our databases.
  • Goals – slightly different and more specific than Purpose. Here, we set goals, like “We want a 20% increase in database usage in 2 years.” Or for our About Us section, it might be something like “we want fewer calls asking for our phone numbers” (since we now list out everyone’s phone number).
  • Primary Audience – Who’s the target audience? We try to choose 2-3 targets, usually based on market segments from a GIS study we’ve done (with help from Civic Technologies). This could also just be simple targets, like “the Kids pages focus on kids 8-12 years old.” This way, you can then focus the design and content on that target group.
  • Why Viewers use section – answer this question for the target audience – “Why would I want to go there?” For example, for the research section, the answer probably isn’t “because I want to find EbscoHost.” That answer focuses on the library. Answer this question by putting yourself into your customers’ heads. Do that, and the answers, more likely, resemble these: “I need to do research for my paper” or even better, “I want to get an A in History” or “I want to increase sales in my business for next year.” Then focus your design so those types of questions can be answered.
  • Tasks section accomplishes – This one is a bit more library-centric. What can you do here? List it out, then design those tasks to be as easy as using a light switch.
  • Content Requirements – What content do you need for this section? This isn’t a list of tasks – instead, it might include directions, explanations, links to more information, etc. You should also include any graphics needed here, too – graphics should support the content, and help make the main content easier to use.
  • Functionality Requirements – All the web stuff goes here – i.e., for a blog, you should list things like RSS and email subscription functionality. For the kids site, maybe you want things to move around on the page – list those ideas here. Basically, anything your web wizard needs to build.

Going though this process was great – it gave us some goals to shoot for on each section of the website, and helped make our redesign efforts more focused.

Here are a couple of articles with more info on creative briefs:

Anyone else use this or similar tools? Tell us what you do in the comments!

photo by insomnia

Tagged as: , , ,

3 comments

Upcoming Webinar – Building the Digital Branch: Designing Effective Library Websites

by David Lee King on May 16, 2011

If you’re interested in building better websites, make sure to sign up for my upcoming webinar for ALA TechSource on June 8 – Building the Digital Branch: Designing Effective Library Websites. Just click the link to sign up!

This will be the second time I have given this webinar. If you attended the first one, never fret! There will be new content – I’m going to talk about how Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library (where I work) built our current website (the redesign went live on March 1).

Here’s the blurb for the webinar:

Every library needs a presence on the web. Whether you work at a large academic library or a public library in a small town, you need to be able to deliver service and content to patrons outside  your building. David Lee King will once again present this popular workshop, taking you through the process of building an effective, user-friendly library website that will expand and enhance your library’s presence in the community.

In this workshop, you’ll learn:

  • How to successfully plan and implement a redesign of your website
  • How to find out what patrons want from your website
  • How to use your website to interact with patrons
  • How to create strategic plans and goals for your website

Sign up NOW!

Tagged as: , , , , ,

4 comments

No One Starts at Your Website

by David Lee King on March 31, 2011

Guess what? Your patrons aren’t starting their information searches at your library’s website. In fact, OCLC checked that out. In their Perceptions of Libraries, 2010: Context and Community report, they found that … NO ONE … started their info search at a library website. Yep – that’s a big, fat 0%.

And you know what? That’s ok.

Here are a couple of thoughts about that:

1. Your site isn’t built for that, and probably will never be. Sure, you have a link to your catalog. And links to a variety of databases. But those aren’t your website. On your actual website, you have a lot of information up about your library, like your policies and info on your board of trustees. But that’s not really what the majority of your patrons are interested in.

You do have some information that your patrons want, like hours, locations, etc – those are used a lot on my library’s website. But that’s not really the start of someone searching for information, is it?

2. There are other tools already set up that do that whole “let’s start an info search” much better than us. Think Google, Bing, or even Wikipedia. They are made to find little nuggets of info. In years past, actual librarians did that great – and there weren’t many other options. But now, the web owns that ready reference type stuff.

So what are our websites for?

Well – that should depend on your library’s strategic plan. But generally speaking, our websites serve a variety of purposes, including:

  • point to info sources. Catalog, databases, useful local organizations
  • we’re set up to answer questions (that’s not necessarily connected to beginning that info search)
  • some of us enhance learning, entertainment, and local community stuff via blog posts or posts/reminders about events at the library
  • all that normal stuff about the library – hours, locations, board members, policies.

But start info searches? That doesn’t really make sense in today’s web environment anymore (not to me, anyway).

Instead, point your patrons to the best places to go to start their searches – then, when they get confused … make sure they know that you are there, ready to expand, reshape, and redefine those searches so they’re actually useful.

That’s our job.

pic by jakeandlindsay

Tagged as: ,

16 comments

Answer these Questions

by David Lee King on February 10, 2011

I recently read What do You Want People to See over on the Social Rabbit blog. Good read … and it made me think a bit.

The article discusses setting some goals for your social media sites by answering some questions – questions like this:

  • What are you using social media in your business for?
  • what impression about your business do you want to leave people with?

Not bad questions to answer at all. For example, think about your organization’s Facebook Page (assuming you have one). What are you using that for? Have any idea?

How about the second question – what impression do you want to leave people with who visit your organization’s Facebook Page? Answering this question might change the way you post status updates, or what types of pictures you add to the page, for example.

Pondering those questions made me think about our organization websites. Shouldn’t we answer those types of questions in relation to our websites too? I think so.

Take a peek at a page on your website – any page will do. Then answer these questions:

  • what should your audience be looking at while on this page?
  • where are you pointing your audience? What actions should they take here?
  • What should they do next?

Answering these questions will start you down the path of setting some goals for major sections of your website. Not a bad thing to have at all :-)

Pic by Alexander Henning Drachmann

Tagged as: , , , ,

2 comments

← Previous Entries