Maintaining an intranet can be a tricky business, but why not kick off 2010 with some New Year resolutions that will make your intranet fly? Read on for our top 5 tips for the year…
2010
06
Jan
By Geoff Scaplehorn
Maintaining an intranet can be a tricky business, but why not kick off 2010 with some New Year resolutions that will make your intranet fly? Read on for our top 5 tips for the year…
2010
05
Jan
By Hugh Fidgen
It is, as everyone knows, best practice to use analytics code on websites to track visitors.
Pretty much every client we talk to expects metrics on their website (and we soon suggest them if the client doesn’t), but no one seems to know that you can track visitors in Flash applications too.
2009
31
Dec
By Geoff Scaplehorn
Social media: it’s the ‘in thing’ for marketing departments around the world. But not all campaigns are created equal, and the internet is a fickle place. What works for one campaign might not for another, and ideas quickly get stale.
We’re always impressed with creative uses of social media, and this year we’ve seen some incredibly inventive ideas. Keep reading to find out about three of our favourite campaigns of 2009, and one of the worst. Don’t forget to let us know about your favourites in the comments!
2009
21
Dec
By Kate Murray
What’s the best way to design your intranet site? Who should you centre your intranet around: the site owners, or the site users? Take a look at our presentation that highlights the advantages – and disadvantages – of both approaches, and that offers advice on how to build your site to be usable for everyone.
2009
17
Dec
By Kate Murray
Using search analysis to improve your site.
Running user surveys and interviews are good ways of finding out what your users want, but they might not give you the whole picture. People can’t always say exactly what it is that would make a site and its content more usable. Furthermore, what a user wants and what a user needs might not be the same thing!
Analysing search patterns and results on your site is a great way of studying user behaviour which can give you different insights into how your site and its content could be improved to better meet their needs, as well as how you can optimise the internal search on your site.
It’s nothing to sniff at: users are becoming very comfortable and very proficient at using search engines, both on the web (using search engines such as Google) and internally (using your site’s search function). So the better your search works, well, the better.
2009
16
Dec
By Geoff Scaplehorn
Stuff the turkey, set light to the pudding and have an egg nog on us
while you play the most traditional of festive games:
Charades!
2009
04
Dec
By Geoff Scaplehorn
There’s been a lot of talk recently about newspapers charging for online content. Famously, Rupert Murdoch of the News Corporation said that the newspapers under his command – which include the Times and the Sun in the UK – would move to pay-per-view formats. More recently, Johnston Press in the UK has begun charging readers to read their articles online.
Johnston Press is one of the largest newspaper firms in the UK, and publishes a wealth of local newspapers. Taking part in its pilot scheme are the Worksop Guardian, the Ripley & Heanor News, the Northumberland Gazette and the Whitby Gazette, and – in Scotland – the Carrick Gazette and the Southern Report. The Scotsman – another Johnston Press title – already has a pay-per-view model in place.
2009
24
Nov
By John Scott
Firstly I must point out that I am in no way advocating horizontal scrolling on web pages.
Assuming that you are using a screen resolution of at least 1024×768 pixels (96% of internet users worldwide in 2009), you will almost never see horizontal scrolling. This is because it has been recognised as highly unusable for some time. I won’t be debating that here.
However, I take issue with the fact that vertical scrolling seems to have been tarred with the same brush.
It’s extremely common for a client to request that users should not have to scroll to see any content on their pages (or a large majority of the content at least). This seems to be based on two assumptions. First is that users don’t see content below the page fold (the point at which the content disappears behind the frame at the bottom of the web browser). Second is that users don’t like scrolling and find it a chore.
2009
19
Nov
By Daniel Keegan
The results of a survey of the cost of workers using social networking sites have been published, putting the figure at £1.34bn.
The report, commissioned by tech firm Morse, was covered in the Daily Telegraph in late October, and labels the use of these platforms as a “productivity black-hole”.
2009
13
Nov
By Kate Murray
Information architecture is a key phase in all of our projects at Content Formula. Whether website or intranet, we know that if you get the structure, organisation and classification of content right at the start of the project, the end result will be a seamless, usable site.
It always starts with defining both the business and user requirements. It’s important that you define both, because the way the business wants to organise their content is not necessarily going to be how users will search for it. There are numerous ways to gather this information (that’s a whole other blog post!), including interviews, surveys and focus groups. This stage is also often combined with an audit of any current site or content.
