May 11, 2010 2
A Web Standard is both a guide and a measure. I believe that Web Teams that invest enough time and the right effort into Web Standards, will surely reap the benefits. We covered this in a previous post. Today, we dive straight in with a concrete example: URL Naming Web Standard. Note, just to keep this post to a reasonable length, I’ve had to trim it down. Rest asssured it does have enough meat in there to illustrate what is a Web Standard.
May 5, 2010 4
The majority of Web Sites today are launched without clearly defined and/or enforceable Web Standards. For larger organisations, looking to execute efficiently on the Web, this is a major stumbling block.
Confession. Having worked in and for large organisations for over 25 years, I always hated Web Standards. They were always out-of-date. They were written by non-practitioners. Their format was dry and verbose. Their purpose unclear – just obey. Effecting change or providing feedback was actively discouraged – information flows one way: down! There was not much to like about Web Standards.
However, when you sifted through it all, there were little gems of insight hidden away. Looking back through older eyes I realise that I never really hated Web Standards. I just didn’t like the way they were enforced. So I rejected them. In doing so, throwing the baby out with the bath water.
Nov 29, 2009 0
I’ve been delivering web content management solutions for a while now and like a lot of folks out there I still find it extremely challenging. It’s never a walk in the park. No two are the same. And the results lie between the two extremes of weird and wonderful. The bigger the customer, the more intriguing the experience. Customers definitely come with baggage, others with wild expectations. So when a couple weeks back, at the Janus Boye Conference Jon Marks crowd sourced opinions using the twitter hashtag fixwcm on the “How to Fix WCM” track I followed with keen interest. Firstly because I didn’t think for one moment that WCM was broken. And secondly, I thought it was just a distraction from the underlying fact that we are broken!
Jul 2, 2009 0
Three months. Three different prospects. The same problem.
We have site(s) that are part of our Global CMS Platform, but we cannot make changes without working with global. We have been put in the content contributor box but are really content owners and need the associated tools to deliver our messages to our target audience. This centralised model of content management just doesn’t work for us. Can you help?
The is not an uncommon problem. If you invest in something big, you want something bigger. So for large organisations, an enterprise CMS is a strategic piece of kit. However, depending on whether you’re on the inside or outside, your view on whether this is a good and bad thing can differ widely.
Jun 18, 2009 0
Delivering and maintaining large web sites is hard. It requires the business team to communicate what they want and for the technology team to deliver what they need. The two groups are known for not getting on. For a web project to succeed, they must eat from the same table, talk the same language and reach consensus. Communication is the key differentiator between success and failure here. It’s essential that when someone in the business says product that a developer not only understands what a product is but can implement it. Now, business and technology folks don’t share the same view of the world (which is a plus). However, not enough effort is invested to align these two views during the project(which is a minus). Think about it. The business is entrusting their most valuable assets, their content, to software developers that may or may not get it! We don’t have to live with great content divide.
Jun 10, 2009 0
What is a site map? Its a helicopter view of a web site with all the pages arranged in a easy to view and/or accessible manner. The best site maps fit onto a single page. For the more complex sites out there, the ability to drill down into specific areas of the site but keeping to the one page rule provides an alternative site navigation scheme.
In the majority of design-led projects, the site map is presented in graphical form that provides an essential first look at the structure/grouping of pages within a web site. The problem I have with these diagrams is that they are typically presented along with the completed designs. The finished article. However, for me they are the critical starting point for the journey to the centre of the content hierarchy.
May 26, 2009 2
Say you’ve been asked to buy a suit for someone you’ve never met. What do you do first?
For design-led projects, we’re buying that suit first. By damn, one way or another that content will well fit into that design and look good! Of course I’m exaggerating a little here. But if have been in a project where the content is delivered at the end and simply doesn’t fit, you never want to go there again.
Now call me odd, but wouldn’t life be that little bit easier if we sized up the content first and then designed the site to fit it. Measure, then fit. I dream of projects where we all work together to determine what information a site needs upfront, organise it, think of ways to be navigate it and then and only then do we create the designs to satisfy those requirements. What typically happens is something that lies between these to extremes depending on when I get involved.
May 23, 2009 2
Whenever I start out on a new project, I aim to deliver demonstrably value back to the customer. I try to make an immediate change for better. After all, that’s what they pay me for. For content-oriented projects, a large part of that is knowing what information the customer thinks is important to them. Content modelling is key here.
If content has value, then take the necessary steps to manage it:
Content modelling is a journey where those on the project strive to get consensus on ‘the what’ of information. The deliverable is a content model. However, the real value is in doing content modelling. Get a better understanding of what information you have and need, inspect and adapt it, define it in business terms and measure it in a way that your organisation can seek to continually improvement their business processes. Only then are you in a position to attempt to manage it.
May 18, 2009 1
For any content managed web site, content types are its first class citizens. Content types describe the chunks of information that companies depend upon to conduct their business. Things like events, news, products, journals, flights, holidays, adverts, campaigns and call to actions. All possible content types. Yet, when talk to business folks about content types, 9 times out of 10, you may as well be speaking klingon. And right there is the communication gap. So is it any wonder, when you entrust third parties such as design agencies, solution providers, and vendors with the task of dissecting your business into manageable information chunks, that things don’t go according to plan.
Apr 6, 2009 0
When I start a new project, particularly with a new customer, I pay close attention to how they use the term web site. Customers arrive wanting a web site. They walk out with a digital solution. The web site is the easy bit. The hard part is defining, creating and rolling out a digital solution specifically for them.
So what is a digital solution? For me, its a dynamic map that continually adapts as you journey through a project. A bit like Harry Potter’s Marauders Map. Sometimes it actually feels like we’re using the map to guide our customers through the project pitfalls but without the protection of the invisibility cloak. So to be clear, a digital solution takes a customer from what they want to what they need. And for me, this is the key differentiator between happy and unhappy customers.
Now people have been creating, redeveloping, re-skinning web sites for over 20 years. Once you find the right people, they can do that until the cows come home. Building web sites is known technical challenge. But executing somebody else’s (business) vision, well that’s a people thing. It requires a clear strategy, with input from multi sources, to increase its likelihood for success. So let’s take the building of web sites out of the picture, the execution, and step upstream into the strategy, and see what happens there.
