The Modern Web Development Process | alexking.org
The Modern Web Development Process | alexking.org
Reading through the comments, you’ll find a great nugget that’ll give you chuckle.
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Google moves beyond text ads with acquisition
New York Times
Published: April 14, 2007
Google reached an agreement today to acquire DoubleClick, the online advertising company, from two private equity firms for $3.1 billion in cash, the companies announced, an amount that was almost double the $1.65 billion in stock that Google paid for YouTube late last year.
Share This SphereNewsrooms turn to programmers to lead Web initiatives
MediaShift . Digging Deeper::Web Focus Leads Newspapers to Hire Programmers for Editorial Staff | PBS
Finding Solutions WithinJohn Robinson, editor of the Greensboro N.C. News & Record, expects to eliminate a newsroom position — it might not be a reporter — in order to hire a programmer, and hopes to find someone with journalism experience as well. He’s curious about the Tacoma experience, and says that newspapers have been slow to court programmers in the past and have failed that vision thing.
This is an interesting and welcome change. In most newsrooms I’ve worked in, technology has been a naughty word unless it supported the daily production of news stories or when it was the focus of a news story, such as a piece on the iPod or a new advance in medicine.
But the Web provides a means for newsrooms to enhance to collection of relevant facts and brings to the fingertips of consumers of information new ways to interact with content — from links to relevant content to interative databases and multimedia to adding their own content.
News leaders have their own ideas about how their readers should interact with them and having programmers in the newsroom who are solely focused on producing content (and not advertising) would be very beneficial.
Share This SphereThree major pieces of work to accomplish at n-r.com
I must admit, it’s been quite a struggle to get up to speed with the various, generally incongruous, pieces of managing what is collectively known as the News & Record Web sites.
We market jobs/careers, shopping, autos and homes differently and that makes for a tough sell to advertisers and users alike.
There are three things, though, that are in my sights as far as needing a major overhaul:
- Search
- Calendar/events
- Project management
Search, research, reference all rolled into one tool. But is it useful?
I’m going to be adding lots of things to the blog to test, to evaluate to ascertain whether they make any sense for the user or not.
This evening while surfing, I was looking at The New York Times site again and came across a feature they’re using from Answers.com. “Answers” include dictionary and encyclopedic references for words on Web pages. There’s also software you can download and use on your Mac or PC.
I’m just on the cusp of exploring. I’ve added the feature to WebManagement@Ramblin’ Prose. The AnswerTips feature allows you to double click a word that will open an information bubble, giving you a reference for the subject. So far, it seems to be working well. As a blogger, you can get listed in as a resource.
The company also offers a mobile search page.
One key reason for using is to keep visitors stuck to your site. Another is to add depth. As if there weren’t enough ways for the times to keep you stuck on their site, here’s another reason.
Share This SphereIn the beginning, you learn from your mistakes
After two years of News-Record.com’s last redesign, we’re in the midst of another. I’ll probably reference the changes we’re making as we continue down this road, but for now, I think I’ll say this: The first redesign came at a time of great change, of moving to a new content system, and probably wasn’t the best idea at the time. I was only tangentally involved, seeing a mockup of the design after it was pretty much headed down the road of implementation.
Let me say I hope we don’t follow that same path.
I came across these Top Ten Mistakes of Web Management from Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox. The essay is old, 1997 old. But it speaks to Web managers, designers and developers today.
The third “mistake” listed is: Letting the Site Structure Mirror Your Orgchart. For newspaper professionals, it should read: Letting the Site Structure Mirror Your Newspaper. The Web offers so much more than the printed page yet many sites use navigation that pays homage to the way things used to be. The paper provides the reader serendipity — one can scan and refer back to articles of interest. But the Web can be so much deeper, linking in and out of your site and bringing a richness of experience you can’t get from print.
For example, The New York Times began its redesign with the article page and not with an overall site revamp. Why? Speed and depth.
We needed to fix the article page, because people were coming into the article page and leaving the site, so we decided that since we really couldn’t move fast enough on the site redesign, we did the article page as a one-off in 2005.
That was Len Apcar, editor of the New York Times website, in a Q&A with Online Journalism Review last year.
Apcar goes on to say that newspaper design and Web design have certain similarities but some significant differences. The similarities include a “simple clean logical experience” and the addition of elegance makes it all the better.
The differences?
… you want a magnetism to a webpage. You want to bring a reader close in and hold them there and give them a reason to go deep. Because you are asking a reader not to read headlines and captions and pictures — to get involved in text, you are asking them to read and click and keep clicking and dig deeper in the site, in layers. And when that happens, that’s what I call the essential magnetism of a successful webpage design.
We’re experiencing that very problem. Time spent on the site is brief. Our site’s goal should be to keep people there and keep them coming back. We’re not there yet. But we have time to make it happen.
Share This SphereStarting from scratch and learning as I go
Welcome to Web Management@Ramblin’ Prose.
This is my way of learning. I’m new to Web operations management. The pace is fast, the curve is steep, but I’m having fun.
I began in September, moving out of print content. But my fascination with Web technologies began in 2003 when I started Ramblin’ Prose. Just like I remade my career when I left writing to do page design, I saw the future changing; not the fundamentals — good writing and editing and compelling stories and good content will continue to rule the day — but the form and function of presentation and access.
The Web changes the way we interact with information just as it changes the way we interact with each other. Information is expected on demand and as media professionals, we can no longer dictate in which format or at what time to deliver the information people want. We’ve got to be able to deliver in any format; no more mass media, we’re now niche media.
At work, we’re just now moving into mobile technologies, slowly, gingerly and with great help. We’re behind some and ahead of others.
We’re trying to recover from a redesign that didn’t take into account what people want and now we’re playing catch-up.
Since this is my first post, I’ll stop for now. In upcoming posts, look for information that’s varied and as in depth as possible, but targeted to making the best of a business Web site.
Comments are welcome and conversation is expected.
Thanks for reading.
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