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Your website is not a murder mystery

Posted by Aaron Brockhurst on 23 July 2009

Tags: search, navigation, usability, content management systems, council websites

A couple of weeks ago I was fortunate to be able to take some time out from the business and spend the day at Building The Perfect Council Website.  It was the first time I had attended and I wasn't sure what to expect.  I had already done my research and knew that Ektron, Jadu and Sitecore were among the exhibitors and thought it would give me a good opportunity to  talk to them about what their products offered and to see how they stood up against Documentum Web Publisher and SilverStripe.

It also gave me the opportunity to talk with people within the councils about what was important to them and what the major challenges are. Unsurprisingly top of most agendas is usability and accessibility. Only once during the day did I hear someone mention Google during a discussion group, headed up by Marco Ranon from RNIB, which was looking at accessibility of PDF documents. Also on the agenda was location based services and the benefits of providing content relevant to the visitor's location, 3D websites and Social Networking.

One of the highlights for me was Gerry McGovern's plenary, The Story of a Web Site.  His opening, "Your website is not a murder mystery" was about making it easy for users to find the information they are looking for quickly and effortlessly.  According to Gerry's research the top three negative user experiences are poor search results, confusing menus and links and out of date content.

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