Top 10 reasons not to manage your website

Here’s a piece intended as fun with a little bit of serious underneath. What other reasons can you think of to ‘not manage your website’?

  1. You don’t want to find out it’s underachieving
  2. You have better things to do with your time than formulate clearly defined goals
  3. You’d prefer not to spend time understanding your customers/users
  4. The organisational silos are working quite well, thank you
  5. You’re pretty happy to deal reactively when someone complains about your inaccessible website
  6. We have people for that, don’t we?
  7. You’re comfortable with the anecdotal data about the website provided by your Board
  8. You don’t have time to map the business and web touch points which could lead to more conversions/donations
  9. The internet will never catch on
  10. By the time we do a ‘redesign’, you’ll be long gone

How can you manage your website so that it isn’t a victim of any of the above?

 

Digital accessibility resources

user experience design accessibility humorous cartoon

Like the Daleks in the Punch cartoon, people with disabilities shouldn’t be faced with barriers to attaining their goals in life. This is as true in the digital realm as in the physical world where access should be improved for all who want to find and use web information.

At a time when understanding and promotion of accessibility is needed more than ever, Disability Discrimination Commissioner Graeme Innes has been sacked and the role to be filled part-time by another Commissioner without ‘lived experience’ of disability, as Mr Innes puts it.

Digital accessibility is a subset of usability in that it involves understanding and making online information and systems easier to find and use for humans.

As a small contribution, here’s a list of resources I put together to understand and apply digital accessibility principles and techniques.

Tools and tip sheets

This Vision Australia page has a great collection of tools, tip sheets and links to resources at Digital Access Resources Downloads.

Accessible web content

Melbourne web writing expert Dey Alexander has lots of well-thought-through articles and resources on web content accessibility.

Software

You may also want to check out SiteImprove; US software offers a holistic approach to accessibility and website management. They also have NFP pricing.

Accessibility specialists

Site search improves content & avoids mistakes

Visitors to your website who use the internal site search engine are offering you a gift; an explicit intention to find information.

It’s a gift I recommend you accept with grace.

Here’s 3 things you can do to benefit from your visitors’ largesse, using internal site search analytics.

First, understand what site search is and why you should be analysing it right now.

Continue reading “Site search improves content & avoids mistakes”