Content matters! Unfortunately, when it comes to informational websites, content quality is often poor. There is no magic answer to fix that. However, there are practical techniques you can use to improve the copy on your websites and ensure your users find the content they are looking for.
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In this article, we’ll walk through the process of taking a seemingly simple design for a text-and-media component and deciding how best to translate it into code, keeping in mind the needs of both users and content authors.
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SEO is an ever-changing world. Blink and you’ll miss the latest best practices, thought leaders, and tools. Feeling out of touch is natural. This guide is your way back into the groove, baby.
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Writing for a publication such as Smashing Magazine can help to build your reputation as an expert. In this article, Editor in Chief Rachel Andrew explains how to pitch to publications, and how to have the best chance of an accepted proposal.
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Content marketing is tough, but with the right WP plugins, you can turn your website into a content marketing machine, one that actually performs for your business. Here are some stellar plugins that will ensure your efforts aren’t falling short.
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When designing a website, it’s important to focus on better understanding the folks who will visit the website. If you haven’t allowed user feedback to influence the design and content of your website, then it’s probably time you did. Paul explains why.
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Content is the core commodity of the digital economy. It is the gold we fashion into luxury experience, the diamond we encase in loyalty programs and upsells. Yet, as designers, we often plug it in after the fact. We prototype our interaction and visual design to exhaustion, but accept that the “real words” can just be dropped in later. There is a better way.
More and more, the digital goods we create operate within a dynamic system of content, functionality, code and intent. Our products and services drift and spill into partner websites, social media feeds and myriad electronic aggregators, all seeking to shape visitor behavior and understanding. Systems build on systems, and, in short order, we’ve cobbled together a colossus the breadth of which sends minds a-boggling.
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It’s not exactly a new subject, but lately I’ve had reason to revisit the skill of content modeling in my team’s work. Our experience has reached a point where the limitations of how we practice are starting to become clear. Our most common issue is that people tend to tie themselves and their mental models to a chosen platform and its conventions.
Instead of teaching people how to model content, we end up teaching them how to model content in Drupal, or how to model content in WordPress. But I’d prefer that we approach it from a focus on the best interests of users, regardless of which platform said content will end up in.
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Publishing is cheap. This seduces you, encouraging you to put more and more content online. But you will soon discover hidden costs. Costs that are crippling larger organizations. Dealing with ROT can feel intimidating on a large site. In fact, it can feel impossible. But it isn’t. Often it is just a matter of putting some processes in place to deal with it. If you create a prototype that gives people a sense of how much better the site could be, they are often more amenable than you think. Now is not the time to be timid. Now is the time to confront the ROT.
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