Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Navigation

We went through the draft navigation proposal this week.

What we saw was different but conventional, if that makes sense, which it probably doesn't.

It was similar to the current nav. but also very different.

I think that's a good solution.

We'll have the surprise of something that's new but the comfort of something that's familar.

Wednesday, May 9, 2007

Men are from Mars

I went to a seminar last week which discussed the difference between men and women.

Now I know there are some fairly obvious differences, but this particular presentation was about website preferences.

Actually the presentation was done by folk from Glamorgan University who had done research about what kind of websites the two sexes design and build and, as a follow up, learning about which website designs the sexes prefer.

Allow me to summarise:

Men build sites that have few colours, lots of straight lines, lots of positive, assertive, technical copy and a design that is very traditional.

Women build sites with lots of colour, few straight lines, friendly, cosy copy and a design that is likely to differ from website design norms.

And men prefer sites designed by men, women prefer sites designed by women.

Stuff it full of content

One of the big things to come out of the requirements gathering process was a big bag of content ideas.

We define content as something that isn't an application built into the site. So product information, flash animations, videos, downloadable brochures and a WRC calendar are all content.

The following are applications that are either built in the site, or hosted within the site structure: dealer locator, configurator, e-Profile, Features and Specs etc.

So it turns out that everyone is an expert at producing ideas for content. The surprising thing is that many of the ideas could be executed on today's site.

I'm wondering what's stopping us from executing these ideas. Are the people with the ideas in the wrong place to make it happen. Do the people with the ideas and the responsibility lack budget or time?

If we have a budget and time issue then we need to know about it now because there's no point in having the best website ever, if nobody has the budget to create the content.

In attaempt to prevent this from being a problem we plan to have a Content workshop. The idea will be to consolidate all of the content ideas and do the sift we used for requirements: TBD and AIB and then to prioirtise the ideas and see what we think we can accommodate and afford ready for launch.

There will be some things that are likely to be a constant feature on the site and then there will be items that are bespoke for a particular campaign, things that have a shelf life.

Either way we need Juergen Teubenbacher to be fully integrated into this part of the process, because the vision is that content for the NWP will be an integral part of the work of Juergen's team.