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Content Is King (and Queen and Prince). INFO 654 - Spring 2007. Sources and Credits for this Material. Used material from: Son of Web Pages That Suck (2002) by Vincent Flanders Designing Web Usability (2000) by Jakob Nielsen. What Is Content?.
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Content Is King(and Queen and Prince) INFO 654 - Spring 2007
Sources and Credits for this Material • Used material from: • Son of Web Pages That Suck (2002) by Vincent Flanders • Designing Web Usability (2000) by Jakob Nielsen
What Is Content? • It is what people are looking for (on your website) to solve a particular problem. • Content is generally information, but also: • Products • Games • Message forums • Cartoons
What is Content? Flanders, 2002: • “Content is whatever you have on your site that gets people to buy your products or subscribe to your belief system, or that makes them feel good about who you are and what you do so that they go back to your site again and again” • Can be as broad as Amazon “Recommendations” or as narrow as the anti-motivational product site http://www.despair.com
Nielsen: Content is Number One • Usability studies indicate a fierce content focus on the part of users. • When they go to a new page, they look immediately in the main content area of the page and scan it for headlines and other indications of what the page is about. • Only later, if they decide that the content is not of interest to them, will they scan the navigation area of the page for ideas of where else to go.
Heroin Content - the Best Content • In Naked Lunch, William Burroughs described heroin as the ultimate product. Why? Because people would crawl through the sewers and beg to buy it.
Heroin Content on Websites • Heroin Content’s characteristics vary by type of site, but “you know it when you see it.” Generally, tho, for Flanders it means: • Frequently updated content • Timeliness • Fair and impartial – (just kidding) • Example -More than just news (http://abcnews.go.com and http://www.usatoday.com) • Stories about subjects that you are critically interested in.
Good Content (but not heroin) • How Stuff Works: • http://www.howstuffworks.com • History Channel: • http://www.historychannel.com
Smack Me with Interactivity • Interactivity gets your customers to participate in your site: • E-mail and e-newsletters • Polls • Forums and bulletin boards • Free stuff • Contests • Risky content • Builds “community” and “experience”
Paid versus Free Content • There is so much free content on the web that paid content is a tough sell, but there are some successful categories: • Porn • Financial information • Sports information • Some sites try to sell content not in those categories, but it is tough: • http://www.inside.com (out of business) • http://www.salon.com (partly free, partly paid)
Odd Content Issues/Examples • Inappropriate content – don’t offend people • http://www.callahanonline.com gets away with it (most of the time) • Changing nature of good taste • http://www.boston.com/news/daily/27/logan_crosshairs.htm
Two-Minute Offense • Critique Content on Popular Mechanics: • http://www.popularmechanics.com/