websense

What a great idea, removing all style from a site. To most of us with big egos, that love to see our logo and company look good, its really tough to see all that go away. Even though, we’re probably the only ones who really care about our own graphics.

We decided to participate in CSS Naked Day, a day to promote web standards. It’s not too late to participate if you, or your business are concerned about web standards. Follow this link to learn more about participating in CSS Naked Day.

In my last post (admittedly, a long time ago) I mentioned that it may not be necessary to put all of your site content into a mobile format. There has been some debate on this topic already. Very valid points have been made on both fronts.

If it were an ideal world, sure, we’d all create a mobile version of our sites with trimmed down, mobile appropriate content and accessibility. But, lets be realistic for just a moment. It’s hard enough to find primary sites that are half decent; what are the odds of the average company putting the resources into both?

So, my advice is focus on what’s mission critical in selecting your mobile content. Get that built and live, then consider the debate and challenge in creating a mobile version of your entire site.

Some things to consider when deciding which content to create a mobile version of:

What might your customers be looking for while they’re on the road? Remember, they aren’t likely to be “surfing”. Realistically, they’ll be using a mobile device because they are away from their PC and need to get something done.

Some brief ideas to get you thinking about how it could be applied to your site:

• Hours, directions and phone numbers.
• Current inventory (especially auto dealers, how nice would that be when you’re out car shopping?)
• Schedules and Agendas (if you have events customers attend such as seminars for example, they might just be checking to see if they’re on time).
• Airline arrivals and departures (a great one that we’re fortunate enough to be implementing soon for CAK)
• Web coupons/specials (what easier way to decide which pizza shop to go with when you’re out of town and searching for local joints?)

Of course, there are many other great uses for mobile content. Hopefully the few I’ve listed here will generate some ideas and help prioritize the nature of the content that you might add to your site.

For sure it’s time. If you’re not planning, or at least thinking about, a mobile version of your website by now, then get ready to play catch-up.

Mobile is catching on. Wireless companies are finally bringing some smart phones to market that browse the web fairly well. As an early adopter, I’ve been wanting the web and email from my phone for at least 5 or 6 years, and not until the last 2 years did that really happen. And believe me, I tried every device that came out claiming it could do it. Even since it did happen, I’ve had to carry around what isn’t all that different from a brick in terms of shape, size and weight.

Well, they’re getting better, they’re getting slimmer and they’re actually becoming reliable. I would argue that it’s really tough to beat the combination of a Windows Mobil 6 device with Microsoft Exchange server. That puts your contacts, calendar and precious email in your hands at all times with very little setup or maintenance. Business owners will go with a smart phone for that reason alone, then they’ll realize one day that they can access the web through the same device.

So, it’s inevitable, mobile web content is becoming a necessity.

Now the question is, what does a website owner do about it? And how soon?

Start thinking about it now. Start determining which parts of your website a customer might want on the road: the hours you’re open; your current inventory of products they regularly buy; directions to your facility. These are pretty basic things, and would be surprisingly easy to have them added to your site in a mobile friendly manner.

Mobile users are likely to be after small bits of information about your business, not reading your corporate history. The content should be trimmed down to what they’ll want, which gives you an advantage in this new challenge. You don’t have to over think this mobile web design thing and make it harder than it is. It’s not an all or nothing deal. Start somewhere, with the basics and see what kind of use/response it generates.

As you see results from adding small parts of your website in a mobile version, add more to it based on user feedback and analytics.

Something I’ve noticed over the years is that so many site owners want to take the easy way out on content. Maybe the worst offenders are Auto dealers. Auto dealer websites tend to be some of the worst I’ve come across in my 13 years in this business. So, I’ll use that example in this post, but the concept applies to any site marketing products they don’t manufacture. The reason they do this, I believe, is 2 fold. First; it’s not cheap to add all of that content, especially in an industry where the whole product line changes every year or so. Second, it’s too tempting to take advantage of either the free website the Auto manufacturers will give them or to just link to the manufacturer’s site for details.

In my opinion, the Auto Manufacturers are just enablers in this arena. Either by justifying to their dealers that it’s really OK to link back to their site for details, or by handing out cookie cutter, poorly built websites to their dealers that have little to no chance of helping them separate themselves from every other dealer that has the same site.

Whether you’re a car dealer, or you’re a dealer of any other manufactured product, before you take the cheap way out and rely on what the manufacturer will give you, consider these points:

• Linking to the manufacturer is sending the visitor away from your site; giving up the conversion completely.
• Using a website that a manufacturer supplies you; makes you look exactly like your competition, not any better.
• Not having the content within your domain affords you no opportunity for natural search engine rankings.
• Using the same exact content as everyone else, also limits your ability to rank and adds little value to your users.

So, if you’re going to take the web seriously, build a professional site. Make sure that your site has all of the information a prospect needs to become a customer. Take the extra time to make that information unique to your site. It’s OK to add in all of the content that the manufacturer supplies you, but it’s better to enhance that content. Add your thoughts, your opinions and your expertise.

These are likely the reasons people buy from your dealership in the off line world. Is there any reason the same principles would not apply online?

Here we go again, Microsoft has decided to take on Flash. They’re launching Microsoft Silverlight, which is supposedly going to rival and replace flash. You’d think their lack of success in the browser wars would have taught them a lesson.

A few things to consider before you head out and ask your web developer to switch to Silverlight for your Interactive/RIA projects:

• Market Penetration: My prediction is a minimum of 3 years after official launch of the project before they hit 70%, despite their line about pushing it out via automatic updates etc. Do you want to spend a lot of money to develop really cool stuff that no-one will see?
• Designer/Developer Support: Like it or not, most designers don’t like Microsoft. Yes, there are lots of developers that do, but they aren’t the guys with the artistic abilities you need to develop good interactive. Until the design community buys into this, if they ever do, it won’t have significant reach.
• Experience:Flash has been around for years now, and is just now fining it’s place on the web. Until now, little to no quality content has been developed in Flash. Designers were too busy discovering all the cool things they could do with it, rather than focusing on what the user wants. Silverlight will have to go through similar pains, if it’s really going to offer anything different than Flash.

So, before you jump on the Silverlight bandwagon, think about your market. Do they want to be forced on to the bandwagon to get your content? Or will they just go elsewhere all together?