websites

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!

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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!

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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!

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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

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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

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