Recent Google Webmaster Blog posts highlight the new features in Google’s Webmaster Tools which webmasters and site owners can use to submit information to Google. Also highlighted is the need for businesses to keep an eye on what the search engines are asking them to do, else they risk being left behind their more savvy competitors!

I will be concentrating on Google here, but we can apply the below to other search engines.

A lot of people will already know the basics of SEO

• Create page titles which carry information, rather than just one or two word titles.
• Create the page content & copy with audience and keywords in mind.
• Structure the page using headings, paragraphs and lists in the code.
• Give images descriptive alt text and titles.
• Add metadata descriptions to your page. (This is becoming less and less important, but it is still often used on the search engine results page!)

Following the above guidelines goes a long way to achieving a good ranking on any search engine you care to mention, but any SEO consultant will be at pains to tell you that there’s a lot more you can do.

Read on…

Navigation is of utmost importance to your site: visitors expect to achieve their goals in very few clicks, whether those goals relate to contact information, products, or services. If that information isn’t reachable in a short space of time, you are not only wasting your own time, but that of your visitors!

I highlighted examples of well-thought-out navigation in a previous post, illustrated by a handful of sites that were a mix of e-commerce and blogs.

Since then, we have seen a number of new trends in site navigation. We look at three of the most interesting.

Read on…

SharePoint 2010 is in beta testing, with a probable release date somewhere in Q4 this year. In the new release of the collaboration platform, emphasis seems to be placed on breaking out the roles of people involved in the production of a SharePoint intranet, and the access to resources as needed by people in those roles.

SharePoint 2010 looks to be the biggest update in the Microsoft Office family this year, as all communications so far indicate that other Office applications will only undergo minor tweaks.

So what are the big changes for SharePoint?

Read on…

It’s not enough for a website to simply look good. It’s not even enough to have a good product. If a user can’t find their way to that product, the best images in the world won’t help your sales.

As designers it’s our job to take stock of the behaviour of typical users and position navigational elements where users would expect to find them.

Your navigation will be based on the Information Architecture (IA) – the structure and organisation – of your site. When choosing a navigation type you should weigh up its limitations and benefits. Will it be a series of buttons? Is it Flash-based? Does it use any special features? Where is it on a page?

Read on…

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.

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.

Read on…

A brief history of mobile web browsing

Web browsers first appeared on mobile phones at the start of the millennium. These initial attempts to ‘mobilise’ the web were pretty disappointing. Firstly, the hardware wasn’t powerful enough to handle full web pages, and screens were too small and low resolution. Also, use of WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) and WML (Wireless Mark-up Language) demanded special tools and limited the possibilities for creating usable interfaces. Furthermore, the web’s best content was rarely adapted for delivery to mobiles.

Read on…

SharePoint has launched a revolution in the workplace. Thanks to its easy-to-use collaborative features all employees can now publish information about their projects, initiatives and skills onto the corporate intranet.  We hear stories of blogging CEOs; departmental wikis that allow everyone to post the solution to their problem; forums buzzing with activity. It’s like Facebook, YouTube and Wikipedia all rolled into one. Oh, and don’t forget Google.

Sadly, reality in most companies doesn’t look like this. A typical SharePoint intranet is made up of many, many pages containing poor quality content. There’s an abundance of uploaded Office documents with filenames that tell you very little about the contents (do you really want to click on “pm_update.ppt” to find out what it’s about?). The countless forums you come across contain one or two obviously planted (and unanswered) posts from last year. Content that you do take the time to read is poorly laid out, badly written and boring. Images are either massive and take an age to download or they have been distorted and shrunk beyond recognition. Jo User is poorly served. Read on…

What is a user persona and why do we use them?

A persona is a detailed profile of a user – whether that person is a user for a website, an intranet, an animation or a widget. It turns them from being just “the user” into “Roger Moore, retired, 65 years old, partially-blind, challenged by new technology”: it puts a face on the target audience of the project you’re working on.

Personas are used across marketing. We use them to help us understand the audience of a project we’re working on. This is important because as digital media gurus with a high degree of familiarity with digital technology, we can become removed from the way the general public actually uses, navigates or searches. Similarly, our clients, who know their own product or service inside-out, can also forget that the general public has a different perspective. So personas are about walking a mile in someone else’s shoes – putting the user’s hat on, and asking the questions that they would ask. Would Roger Moore notice that button, and know to click on it?

Read on…