Mashable launched today it's redesigned website. The one thing that captured my eye the most was actually how they implemented sharing. Not only do they have the classical sharing counts and buttons for the page, but also for quotes and images. Great idea, since we always want to just share a bit of the content or maybe a image etc. Well done.
Is it to late for a small business to start a blog now?
We designers & developers live somewhat in the future and in the past at the same time. We try out the latest web app and social network, talk about responsive design and mobile first and advise our small business clients that they might not need a twitter account after all - because their target audience isn't there. Our clients on the other side are experiencing just the same. Many use social networks and modern smartphones, but have no idea what to make of a website or what services would be a great value added to their business if present on the website.
We can advise them with services we know - but how effective are those? More than one client I worked for now wants to get into blogging. Their heard it improves their "Google" - or that people visit the website more often. And I can only say that it make sense - as an SEO technique and if their audience/clients need to be educated. But do all businesses have clients that need to be educated? Yes.
Basically every business owner has information about their product on the website - but not many have background stories or content about the reasoning for certain business decision. So it's not to late to blog, as long as it lives on the main websites.
Last but not least. If you have a blog on the website show it. Not just a link on the side, show some content. And if after a while you see that more and more people "land" on a blog page and not on the home page, make sure that the visitors find the content you wanted to show gets some attention as well.
#blogging #smallbusiness #client #website
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The Version History of a website
How great is that - tracking the changes made to a website not a sense of content, but in functionality. Since websites are not longer just containers of content it makes perfect sense. Is it interesting to the visitor? Sure, here are a couple of reasons:
Feature Discovery Just like you are interested what are the latest features your favorite app has, website visitors are interested what they can do on your website. Especially if you have a lot of functionality that is not immediately visible.
Help Documentation While you add more and more functionality a website might need help documentation - it becomes in the end more and more an application. The Version History keeps a log of what features might need to be added to the help section or which description might be out of date.
Showing that you listen to users By having a version history you can show that you listen to suggestions of your users. Not all new features might be inspired by visitors to your site, but many will be and giving credit is a transparent way of showing your commitment.
Reduces feature redundancy It also gives you a place where you can look up if a similar feature might be already in place. If you are part of a big website with multiple developers and units the chances are high that you don't know all the functionality of the whole website - and you might want to add something which is already there. Even if the site is small you might take over from another developer/designer you might want to know why the site works the way it does. The version history shows you when and where new things got added and might give a hint why the CSS file is messed up the way it is.
It doesn't have to be public You can also make the version history just for yourself - as a reference when you introduced a feature. This can than later be used for measuring how effectively that introduction has been - have you met the goals you have set for the new feature (you have set goals right?).
These are just a few of the benefits I can see for the version history on a website, what are yours?
#website #ux #idea
Reshared post from +The Verge
We've got a Version History!
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