What’s New

You probably read in the newspapers or Web, or saw on TV, the report on a recent study that indicated student-aged young people who used services such as Twitter and Facebook were better prepared to use computers than those who did not use the services. The inference made by the news outlets is that “kids” who use Facebook and Twitter are better prepared for the workplace because they can use “computers.”

I put the word computers in quotes because there is a flaw in this thinking. One’s proficiency in Facebook has almost nothing to do with the machine. In actual fact, those of use who work with students nearly every day know that while they can Tweet and blog, they tend to be woefully uninformed about how their computers work. Why is this?

The ability to use a service successfully, such as Twitter, Facebook, or Blogspot, is based more on the good design of the user interface of the service than on the ability to press the buttons on the machine. In other words, a poorly designed Web site with complicated navigation and instructions will result in user difficulty, while a well designed site will give the user a greater chance of success.

Compare this to the pencil. Most people can use the pencil, but when it comes time to fill in the infamous 1040 IRS form most people have trouble. Is that because people have problems with the pencil, or is it because the form is poorly designed and the questions complicated?

What we find, in fact, is that students who can Tweet all day and IM all night do not understand how to organize the folders on their computers, do not back up their work, and are without the ability to solve simple problems if their software hangs. A person who doesn’t understand how to keep his or her computer free of viruses but can send instant messages isn’t particularly “computer knowledgeable.”

What does this mean to you and your Web site? It means that when you are reviewing your site you should examine it for its ability to provide an acceptable user experience. Like Facebook, Twitter, and Blogspot, your site should be easy to use and navigate. You cannot assume that your visitors are “computer literate” because the ability to revive a computer after an operating system crash and the skill to get around a Web site are two different things. Your message must be clear, easy to understand, and readily accessible to those who visit your site.

In case you don’t know it yet, the well-known local business person Lissa D’Aquanni has started a great new business blog at http://blogs.timesunion.com/microbusiness/. Lissa created the Chocolate Gecko in 1998 and grew it into the most successful gourmet chocolate operations that you can even imagine. Year after year The Gecko won awards for best chocolate.

Lissa is an entrepreneur who really knows “which end is up” and I highly recommend making her new blog a regular stop.

The joke answer is that your New Years Web Resolutions are 96dpi.

That is very humorous to Web designers, but, we must admit, lost on most other folks. Seriously, now is the time to work on your resolutions for the New Year. Here are my suggestions that will help make your site better:

• Hereby resolve to make use your Web site is optimized for the search engines. After all, you want to be found in 2009!
• Hereby resolve to make sure you site is actually submitted to the search engines. SEO won’t do any good unless you are indexed.
• Resolve right now to check your site to be sure all the data is correct. Is the info recent? How about your phone number and address>
• Are you meta tags correct? That means your titles on your pages should be good, page descriptions, and even keywords.
• Did you check your spelling recently? If not, you must resolve right now to peruse your site for spelling and grammatical errors.
• Resolve to start a blog! That’s right, blogs are easy ways to help get you information out and improve your search engine standings.
• Resolve to totally update your site if you have not done so in the last 3 years. Don’t let time pass you by.
• Today is a good day to resolve to check your competition’s Web sites. Find out what the “other guys” are doing so that you can do it better.

How’s that for a great start? Make 2009 a winning year by using your Web site to its fullest advantage.