Posts Tagged ‘IntelBuilder’
Dice, a Dice Holdings, Inc. service, is the leading career site for technology and engineering professionals.
Dice conducts comprehensive surveys that delve into the world of web technology and career paths for technology professionals. These fields include anything from website programming to IT service to basic web design to software packages. The statistics included in this article give a good insight to the inner workings of the world of technology.
The Annual Tech Salary Survey for 2009-2010 from Dice reported some extremely interesting results for tech professionals.
Here are a few quick summaries and some key points from the survey results:
Salary Increase
1% increase in average pay to $78,845
47% say their employers are doing nothing to keep them motivated
19% are being offered more challenging and interesting assignments
14% are benefitting from more flexible work hours
24% received a bonus, the average salary was $90,521
42% report dissatisfaction with their compensation
Job and salary dissatisfaction is at its highest level in recent history, and tech professionals should be willing to fight for advancement and higher compensation. However, some departments are doing much better than others:
4% salary increase in Washington, D.C. to $89,014
4.4% average increase for technology professionals in the Government and Defense sector
1.5% increase for New York City to $86,710
$96,299 is the average IT salary for Silicon Valley
Salary by Employment
Certain areas of the field are in very high demand and pay significantly higher salaries. These salaries include:
$115,916 – ABAP (Advanced Business Application Programming)
$107,827 – SOA (Service Oriented Architecture)
$105,844 – ETL (Extract Transform and Load)
The average salary by employment time for 2009-2010 is as follows:
$78,845 – US Average
$76,784 – Full-time Workers
$98,964 – Consultants
$61.56/hour – Consultants Base Rate Per Hour
Future Concerns
The biggest concern technology professionals have for 2010 include:
24% – Position Elimination
17% – Keeping skills up-to-date and being valuable to respective employer
15% – Lower salary increases and lower billing rates
15% – Canceled projects or fewer projects
11% – Increased workload
5% – Increased outsourcing
3% – Position relocation
10% – No concerns at this time
Why We Webinar
Posted on: June 1, 2010
What is a Webinar?
As the name implies, a webinar is a one-way seminar conducted on the web. The functionality and demand of webinars are increasing significantly. Companies employ the use of webinars to conduct presentations to their employees, clients, and prospects.
They can include polling and question/answer sessions to allow full participation between the audience and the presenter. In some sessions, the presenter may speak over telephone while discussing information onscreen. The audience can tune in using their own telephones.
A webinar can also be a powerful tool you can use to help your online marketing strategy.
Why YOU Should Webinar
Using webinars are fast, easy, low-cost, and effective. It is a revolutionary tool used to connect a presenter, an audience, and a subject. The advantages of using webinars include:
- Receive valuable and useful information in a fun, convenient, low-cost and flexible way
- Distance is not a barrier, all you need is a computer, internet access, and a telephone
- Allows the presenter to combine audio with an online visual presentation
- Allows the presenter to structure and pre-design the presentation content
- Gives the audience an easy flexible way to participate and ask questions
Features
- Slide show presentations
- Live or Streaming video
- VoIP (Real time audio communication through the computer with headphones and speakers)
- Web tours – URLs, cookies, scripts, and other important information provided to audience
- On-demand replay and event recording
- Whiteboard with annotation – allows attendees to highlight or mark items on slides
- Text Chat – for live question and answer sessions, can be to the whole group, or private
- Polls and surveys – allows presenter to conduct questions with multiple choice answers for audience members
There are several sites out there that provide fast and easy ways to design and set up your own online meetings and webinars.
Check out some of these websites:
GoToMeeting / GoToWebinar
All good marketing begins with principles, knowledge and a good plan.
Many people pretend to understand the power of the Internet and how to leverage that power for small business marketing. There has been much hype around the Internet and this has lead to a gold rush mentality with individuals and corporations jumping in head first without any knowledge of the playing field.
In all to many cases the uninformed have held all manner of myths and false ideas about what results and timeline to expect. There impatience, lack of knowledge, and poor planning lead them inevitably to great frustration.
Largely this frustration is the Internet marketing industry’s fault. With the grandeur of yesteryear’s billion dollar tech IPOs fresh in their heads small businesses have greedily eyed the Internet, imagining all of the fantastic things it will do for them without any effort at all. And to their great discredit, rather than calming the fever and giving their clients reasonable and intelligent expectations, Internet marketers have fanned the flames of delusion.
Scammer SEOs have promised the moon and the stars. First page positions on Google by yesterday with no effort, strategy, or thought necessary from the client. Just like in the story of Jack and the Beanstock, they have been sold “magic beans” – the promise of effortless gigantic overnight growth and riches. Real farming does not work that way, neither does real Internet marketing.
The truth of the matter is that building a business leveraging the Internet is much like building a business offline. It requires daily disciplined effort (building content) and genuine, human, business relationships (building links, engaging customers). These things cannot be rushed anymore than a farmer can stand outside his field with a megaphone and command his seeds to hurry up and grow. These things have to be worked on a little each day.
A small business must start on to the web with a good attitude, honesty, and integrity in order to gain and retain their customer’s trust – right principles. The company must do everything it can to learn about the medium and understand best techniques for using the Internet to enhance their business systems (permission marketing/newsletters, customer feedback/testimonials, social media, relationship building, establishing preeminence, and the list goes on). And as the business acquires this knowledge it has to put it to good use in creating a plan of action and executing it.
There is so much more that can be said about these three pillars of marketing – principles, knowledge, and planning – and the concrete details of all three will no doubt be expounded in future posts of this blog. These three elements are not “easy.” They require that you become a farmer. But if you are willing to cultivate, plant, and water diligently everyday your field will surely yield a bumper crop and all will marvel at your “overnight” success.
What Your Website Is Running On?
Posted on: May 20, 2010
With the right web platform, businesses are able to have access to a rich and powerful web application framework with a supporting cast of tools, servers, and technologies to help them succeed on the web.
By choosing a web developer for your website, you are choosing a framework (PHP, .NET) with their own advantages and disadvantages. A web developer will choose the framework for developing a website depending on the requirements and his or her technical proficiency.
PHP framework is an open source application, usually chosen by people who wish to have a short term solution and save money. Even though add-ons may be available, they may not be easily integrated into your website or may not be the best fit for your company.
Unlike PHP, .NET is not an open source and does not come for free. This framework is compatible with a number of programming languages like VB.NET, ASP.NET, C# etc and gives you plenty of access to offline and professional support. A number of high end programs are developed with the help of .NET. Though working with .NET involves paying a cost it is considered worthy of its price. Dot NET applications are generally used for the corporate sites where more stability is required. For sites that have many functionality and use .NET is highly preferred by developers.
The Use of Content Management System (CMS)
Once the website is launched you need to operate and market it to drive traffic to your website. It is important to have a sophisticated content management system that allows you to maintain, edit and operate a website on a daily basis with ease and efficiency. Sometimes CMS software deployments fail due to technology choices. The main cause of CMS solution failures lie in poor or non-decisions about CMS software and CMS implementation essentials such as web publishing models, web content governance and assignment of enterprise content management responsibilities. To achieve successful CMS implementation, consider these guidelines as CMS software deployment essentials:
- Web Content Migration
- Web 2.0 Standards and Templates
- Web Content Creation
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Web Content Modification and Reuse
- Monitoring and Progress
- Ease of Operation
Content Management System and Search Engine Optimization
Content management and search engine optimization are inter-related. The quality and relevance of your web content along with its appeal to the search engines are considered the main magnets of web traffic.
Solid content is the key to a successful website. With CMS you are able to keep track of URLs and meta data for all your pages. In addition, CMS can provide an efficient way to syndicate the content you create to other websites.
Similar to a blog, it can also keep track of who created the content and when. CMS allows you and your staff to create and update content and graphics quickly and without the use of additional programs such as Microsoft FrontPage or Adobe Dreamweaver and costs associated with using these programs.
Using CMS has benefits for your search engine rankings as well. CMS platform gives you the ability to insert SEO-friendly tactics directly into CMS templates. Each content type or content category can be assigned its own section of your website. This allows the CMS to create keyword-rich, search engine friendly URLs easily. Your meta data and title tags can be managed in a central location also, making changes simpler and faster.
To take advantage of both worlds — the convenience and management advantages of a CMS and the site promotion advantages of SEO — you need a search engine optimizing CMS. It is important that CMS solution you choose allows non-technical users to easily specify keyword rich URLs, title tags, descriptions and image alt text. The system should provide feedback on these elements in terms of how they will impact the page’s performance for selected keywords. This kind of CMS allows users to create and optimize content in one tool rather than having to switch back and forth between a CMS and a set of SEO tools.
The blogging movement has grown tremedously since businesses begin to realize the benefits of blogging. Business blogs are sweeping the business community. Blogs are an excellent method to share a company’s expertise, build additional web traffic, and connect with potential customers. Discover what a business blog can do for you company:
What is a Blog?
A blog (web log) is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. “Blog” can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.
Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability of readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs.
The boom of weblogs happened in 1999 when several companies & developers made easy blogging software and tools. Since 1999, the number of blogs on the Internet has exploded from a few thousand to over 100 million.
In addition to 2 major categories (personal and business), there are different types of blogs, such as:
- Artblog
- Photoblog
- Mini blo
- Video blog
- Audio blog (commonly known as podcasting).
Although there a number of blogging platforms available such as TypePad, WordPress, BlogSmith etc., not all offering features to compliment your social media efforts.
IntelBuilder Social Media Platform offers a Blog that is not only part of your website (unlike WordPress), but also offers unique features such as social bookmarks, comments, tiny URLs, PDF generation and syndication feeds. Do your research before you choose a blogging platform to operate your business blog.
10 Strategic Benefits of Blogging
Blog can easily become one of the most powerful marketing weapons you will have in your arsenal. Google, MSN and Yahoo give more weight to well-linked blogs. A business blog has the ability to inform your customers of any changes, new products, latest offers, reviews and reports in the timeliest matter. This, in turn, can lead to direct sales. If you haven’t started a business blog yet, perhaps this list from Toolbox for IT will motivate you:
- Search Engine Marketing.
- Direct Communications.
- Brand Building.
- Competitive Differentiation.
- Relational Marketing.
- Exploit the Niches.
- Media & Public Relations.
- Position You as an Expert.
- Reputation Management.
- Low cost.
Facebook Dos and Don’ts
Posted on: May 14, 2010
As Facebook soaring in popularity and becoming more popular than Google, people should be cautious when creating their personal or business pages. The most important thing to pay attention to when creating your Facebook page is profile settings. Make sure you check the appropriated boxes based on the privacy you wish to have. Below you will find some tips, do and don’s that may help you protect your privacy and avoid scams and embarrassment.
DO Consider the Following:
Use Your Friend Lists
Facebook describes friend lists as a feature which allows “you to create private groupings of friends based on your personal preferences. There are a few very important things to remember about friend lists:
- You can add each friend to more than one friend group
- Friend groups should be used like “tags” as used elsewhere around the web
- Friend Lists can have specific privacy policies applied to them
Using friend lists is useful for organizing your friends if you have a lot of them. Having lists also helps if you wish to send the same email to all the friends in that group.
Remove Yourself From Facebook Search Results
Visit your search privacy settings page. Under “Search Visibility” select “Only Friends” (Remember, doing so will remove you from Facebook search results, so make sure you want to be removed totally. Otherwise, you can select another group, such as “My Networks and Friends” which I believe is the default.)
Click “Save Changes”
By default, Facebook makes your presence visible to the network you are in. Frequently, people aren’t aware of their visibility, so this is one of the first settings that users wish to modify. By selecting “Customize” from the search visibility drop down you can make your settings even more granular.
Remove Yourself From Google
Visit the same search privacy settings to control the visibility of your public search listing which is visible to Google and other search engines. You can turn off your public search listing by not marking the box next to the phrase “Create a public search listing for me and submit it for search engine indexing” as pictured in the image below.
Avoid Photo/Video Tags
To avoid infamous tagged photo or video from showing up in all of your friends news feeds do the following: Visit your profile privacy page and modify the setting next to “Photos Tagged of You”. Select the option which says “Customize…” and a box like the one pictured below will pop up.
Select the option “Only Me” and then “None of My Networks” if you would like to keep all tagged photos private. If you’d like to make tagged photos visible to certain users you can choose to add them in the box under the “Some Friends” option. In the box that displays after you select “Some Friends” you can type either individual friends or friend lists.
Protect Your Albums
Visit “Photos Privacy” page from which you can manually configure the visibility of each album Set your setting according to your preferences. If you wish your photos to be viewed only by your friends, make sure you choose that option.
Things NOT to DO
Password
Do not use the same password used for your banking or email address. Consider using letters and numbers and different case letters. If it is hard enough that even you can’t remember, write id down and stash in place only your would know.
Birthday
Do not leave your full birth date on your Basic Profile. You can choose not to show your birthday at all or have certain variations, such as month and day only.
Travel and Vacation Announcements
Do not make announcements of your oncoming vacations and/or trips. You can write and post pictures after you come back. Safety first!
Name Drops
Avoid using names of your Immediate family (spouses, significant others, children). If the picture is intended for your friends and family, they will know and recognize the pictures without names.
Supervision
Do not leave your teenagers unsupervised. Facebook limits its members to ages 13 and over, but there are children younger than that find have access to Facebook. If you have a young child or teenager on Facebook, the best way to provide oversight is to become one of their online friends. Use your e-mail address as the contact for their account so that you receive their notifications and monitor their activities.
Solid content is the key to a successful website. Solid content requires superior organization and better-quality management. Each business or organization has its own strategies for collecting, organizing, storing and maintaining the information intended for consumption by an audience. These strategies will change from time to time to go along with ever-changing technology. This transition is the key; which technology to implement to stay competitive and operate more efficiently without loosing the existing resources, databases and practices businesses built since the inception.
Content Management Systems (CMS)
CMS is a set of processes, applications, and databases that help businesses create, store, coordinate, and publish information with a consistent method in a useful format and in a timely fashion. Companies need to spent considerable amount of time evaluating CMS platforms and their use based on the requirements set forth by each company. One important thing to consider is the skill level of the people who will be directly involved with the chosen platform on the daily basis.
Types of CMS
There are several different types of products and styles within the CMS world. Most CMS tools in the market are fine tuned to target one of the CMS sectors. Different front ends are available depending on the content type. Elements of various CMS styles can even be mixed and matched.
Web Content Management Systems (WCMS):
WCMS is used to author and manage HTML content. It is used to administer and control a large, dynamic collection of web content such as HTML documents, images, and Cascade Style Sheets (CSS). This subset of CMS emphasizes managing only web content. Products vary in functionality, complexity, and range.
Enterprise Content Management Systems (ECMS):
ECMS manages content on an enterprise level of organization’s information, company templates and logos, including web, print, and any alternative outputs. This type of ECMS emphasizes comprehensiveness. The products offer a good amount of functionality, complexity, and range.
It is designed to capture, manage, store, preserve, and deliver content for the following main categories:
- Document management
- Software
- Web content and portals
- Records management
- Workflow management
Document Management Systems (DMS):
DMS is a specialized content management system for technical documentation. Main focus is on documents (such as Microsoft Word files), and are more for internal use than for presenting content for public consumption. They vary broadly in functionality, complexity, and range.
Digital Rights Management Systems (DRMS):
DRMS are parallel or complementary to CMS. These systems only manage intellectual property rights information for any content that exists. They vary broadly in functionality, complexity, and range, but tend to specialize in areas where Digital Rights are a priority (such as music or video). The content in CMS also may refer to abstract information and not necessarily physical documents, such as semiconductor or smart card configurations.
Asset Management Systems (AMS):
AMS systems manage so-called content “assets” (images, video, audio, and other binary, non-textual content). They vary broadly in functionality, complexity, and range, but tend to be used in organizations where assets like these are numerous (such as photo agencies or graphic design firms).
Mobile CMS – is a system with the ability to deliver managed content on mobile devices and Smartphone.
CMS Styles
Hosted: With hosted CMS, CMS vendor hosts, administers and maintains the CMS. In this scenario all responsibility lies on the vendor.
Commercial: With commercial CMS, a vendor builds a CMS application and sells it to the client, who is in turn responsible for the maintenance. The client has more control, but more responsibility as well.
Open Source: As with any Open Source software, there is no cost to acquire the software. The client has all of the control and responsibility, with full dependency on the Open Source community for support. More often than not, open source products tend to be poorly documented, with a narrow focus in their features.
Nonprofit: These styles may be hosted or commercial, but they tend to include features that many nonprofits find useful.
Getting ready for CMS
It is important to evaluate the state of your content. Is your content well organized? Is the information easily found on the website? Is the information searchable? How often is it updated? Is feedback readily available on your website? All these questions should provide an insight into the state of your web content, its organization or lack of it. With the right CMS platform, companies are able to standardize their processes and save time by having a better organized content. Whether it is starting a website from scratch, or updating your web structure and building extra functionality, using CMS can help you move towards your goal faster. Keep in mind that CMS platform is only a tool which helps businesses to operate more effectively. To have a successful website requires commitment and daily work. Having the right tools to operate your online business gives companies that competitive edge against their competitors.
Is Your Website Ready for Launch?
Posted on: May 6, 2010
If you’ve just finished building your new website (or revamping your old one), how can you be sure it’s “ready for prime time”? Web technologies, online tools, requirements and standards change so rapidly, any website that was “cutting edge” when it’s built can look obsolete a year later. Below we offer 10 aspects of web development you should consider:
1. Compatibility: Will your website display correctly for most people regardless of their computer hardware, operating system, browser and monitor resolution? Make sure your site renders properly for as many users as possible. If any features of your website require certain browser plug-ins, provide a download link. Remember that not everyone will have Javascript enabled and that graphics can be turned off by the user; make sure your site will still work without them.
2. Completeness: None of your website should be “Under Construction”. Websites tend to evolve over time and are never truly “finished”, but that’s no reason for your website to look like a construction zone.
3. Content: Do you need to update the text on your site? Have you added services, expanded your product line, targeted new markets, or changed your business strategy? Is your website’s description of your company current and accurate, including your contact information? Could the content be written more clearly, convincingly, or succinctly? Could your website be more informative, helpful, interesting or relevant? Would customer testimonials or an FAQ section strengthen your sales message? Check all of your site content for incorrect grammar, spelling errors and typos.
4. Graphics: Do your graphics contribute to or detract from your website? A website with no graphics would be uninteresting, but a site with too many graphics, animations, and different fonts is overwhelming and distracts from your sales message. The trick is to find the right balance.
5. Interactivity: You might consider making your site interactive by adding a blog, RSS feeds, mailing list, message board, poll, or guest book. A contest or trivia quiz can attract visitors and bring them back more often.
6. Links: Are all the links on your website working? First make sure any links between pages on your site are directing site visitors to the correct page. Check all of your links that redirect to other Websites, too; the webmaster may have renamed the page or removed it altogether, and those dead links will make your site look unprofessional and frustrate your site visitors.
7. Speed: Does your site load quickly enough in the viewer’s browser? The “Eight Second Rule” is a good rule of thumb, meaning no site visitor should have to wait longer than eight seconds to view the opening page of your website. After eight seconds have elapsed, chances are good the viewer will give up and go elsewhere. If you have graphics or animations that take awhile to download, provide some engaging content to hold their interest while they wait. Adding graphic elements always comes at a cost in terms of slower loading times, so only include graphics if they really contribute to visual impact of your Website and strengthen your sales message.
8. Navigation: Is it easy to find information on your site? The opening page should tell visitors, at a glance, who you are, what you do, and how to find what they’re looking for. From there your visitors should be able to follow a logical path to learn more about various aspects of your business. If you list products or services on your site, organize them in a logical way. If you decide to use graphic icons instead of text, make sure their meaning is obvious. Make it easy for your site visitors to find what they came for.
9. Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Is your website optimized to rank for important keywords in the most popular search engines? Double check your page titles and meta tag keywords and descriptions to make sure they are accurate and descriptive. Did you work your keywords into the actual page content as well (including variations)? Is your website focused on a specific theme, and do you have plenty of informative content related to that theme? Is your website spider-friendly (meaning search engine spiders can access every page and read the most important content from the source code)?
10. Usability: Usability refers to how easily site visitors can use your site. The best measure of usability is feedback from users -the people who visit and try to navigate the site. If you received any feedback such as complaints, comments, questions, or suggestions from site visitors, change your site accordingly. Of course, dissatisfied customers won’t always let you know. That’s why you should also analyze your web stats and traffic reports to see whether visitors quickly abandon certain pages or don’t visit some of your pages at all. Think in terms of building pathways through your site that visitors can follow.
Your Website Potential
Posted on: May 5, 2010
The web is not just a marketing tool – it’s a business tool as well.
A good website will help you inform your customers in a timely manner, gain valuable market research, reduce support and customer service costs, reach a broad audience with a message, find sales leads, conduct e-commerce, gain advertising revenue, brand your company, build trust, and reduce printing and mailing costs.
A professional website presence can enhance your marketing efforts and serve as an online presentation of your information. If you ever considered updating your website, perhaps now is the right time. Please consider the following factors when choosing your web development team:
Website Development
Before making a website decision, it is recommended to evaluate what you are trying to get from a website? Are you building an online store? Are you building a website that requires a constant update such as specials, new events, etc? Or are you looking for a blogging system with ability to post comments?
Today’s technology offers a variety of publishing platforms and Content Management Systems (CMS) tailored to all sorts of purposes, and saves you time and sometimes money by providing the ability to manage and update your site effectively.
Some CMS platforms offer a variety of features that meet all of your website requirements and are scalable so you can add on custom features as you grow your business. Some are limited and provide short term solution. Regardless of what you choose, make sure the platform or system promotes your website more than it promotes the platform itself.
For example, WordPress is a blogging platform that gives you the opportunity to blog on a daily basis, and is free, but is not part of your website. Also, WordPress is not flexible enough to allow you to publish web content across social networking websites such as Facebook or Twitter or bookmarking websites such as Digg or Technorati.
Web Design
Design should have appeal or energy. Elements such as strong background, sliding images, video from a president or spokesperson can enhance the website as well. Be cautious with Flash technology, although still popular with many, it limits ability to use “BACK” button and offers poor integration with search. Your new design should go along with new technology, and offer flexibility and functionality.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Keywords are the cornerstone of every SEO campaign. The keywords that identify the company or the industry, and most importantly drive traffic to your site must be present on all of your pages and not just your home page. Also, your website must support all browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, or MAC vs. PC environment)
URL Friendly Links
In order for Search engines (Yahoo, Google, and MSN) to cradle (index) your site, your URL links must be recognizable. If your pages says “Services”, your URL link must say so.
Static vs. Dynamic
Static sites do not provide site administrators with ability to change or control the web site content. Data driven or dynamic sites developed with Content Management System (CMS) give site administrators full control to manage every aspect of web content such as text, video and/or images without the help of a web designer or knowledge of HTML. CMS offers administrators an ability to have unlimited amount of web pages, create and maintain company’s news or press releases, update staff listing, have forum for members, upload files or videos, update forms for inquiries, and much more. To stay competitive, websites must be regularly updated, providing fresh, relevant content to your customers, so CMS is a must. Do your research to find a CMS Platform that provides the most functionality and offers competitive cost.
Social Media Marketing
Marketing with social media is a powerful strategy, the process of which involves promoting your website or business through social media channels—such as Facebook and Twitter—to build stronger traffic, brand awareness and user-generated content.
Social media marketing is a low-cost marketing method that will easily give you large numbers of visitors, which a business will be able to retain provided there is solid and relevant information on your website.
Companies that have implemented social media into their online marketing have been able to see immediate results. Evaluate and compare all the social media platforms available on the web to see which platform will support your business strategy and help your business achieve online goals more effectively.
Creating Relevant Web Content
Posted on: May 4, 2010
Once you’ve determined your website strategy and created a clear site map, you will need to collect and organize content for the website. Developing content (text, photographs, links, etc.) for your website requires some careful thinking and planning to ensure that you meet the needs and interests of your primary audiences.
1. Develop Content Goals
The first step is to develop your content goals – what you want the content of your website to communicate to your audience. Keep in mind the following guidelines:
- Reflect best practices in web writing.
- Be informative and engaging.
- Accurately portray your mission in action.
2. Adhere to Best Practices for Website Content
Content for your website may come from a variety of sources – print collateral, an existing website, other media. Or, the content could be brand new, generated from web team meetings to develop your website strategy.
Appearance
- Chunk content in paragraphs of 100 words or less.
- Introduce key points with descriptive headers and subheads.
- Include bulleted lists to help readers slow down and make text easier to read.
- Use embedded links in body text sparingly. Links interrupt flow, and often distract from the main point.
- Use “printer-friendly” page options when your pages exceed five paragraphs or more than 500 words.
Tone
- Write in “news style” – put the facts up front. State the main point right away – additional details can follow.
- Write for your audience – content written for fifth-grade students should be significantly different from content written for donors. Remember to consider the reading level and literacy of your audiences.
- Reserve “feature-style” writing (narrative, descriptive writing) for testimonials and stories of your mission in action.
- Be sparing with adjectives. Too much advertising and promotion can affect credibility.
Length
Pages one or two clicks away from the home page of a comprehensive website should be concise. Pages four or five clicks away can be lengthier. Readers who decide to dig that deep into your website are usually committed to a particular topic. Include “Back to Top” links on pages with longer text – especially if the user will need to scroll more than one screen length to read the full text.
3. Engage and Organize Help
Developing content for a website is rarely a one-person job. Create a “content task list” to help keep your content providers to task. Crucial categories for the content task-list include:
- Where does the content fit on your website? (Use your site map as a guide.)
- Who is responsible for developing the content?
4. Provide Multiple Ways for Users to Locate Content
More choices exist today to help visitors navigate your website. A search box appearing on your home page is still a must, but A–Z indexes for larger sites or “Quick Links” are a big help to visitors looking for a very specific item.
Less popular are graphical representations of your site map. If your navigation is intuitive enough, a site map on your website is redundant. This is also more difficult to maintain than a site index.
5. Test Your Site
Scan your website after populating to test the readability and user-friendliness. Organize a focus group to get a better feedback. Give participants the pages to browse and a time limit, since a member or other committed individual may spend longer than a random visitor. When they are finished browsing, ask them what they recall. What were the key points? How much do they remember? What were their first impressions? What did they “feel” about your organization?
If you’ve met your goals, your testers will not only remember key points in the text, but they will be more informed about your organization, will have gotten an immediate impression of your organization’s identity, and will be able to describe examples of your mission in action.
