Archive for May 13th, 2008

The biggest lost art in building websites is building content.

There have been quite a few times where I invested a lot of time coming up with a web design or an information architecture, and at the end of that, the response was, “you’re supposed to come up with the content, right?”

The last thing I am, other than coming up with a few catchy headlines and some grammatically incorrect copy, is a copy writer. There should be a dedicated person to this, and there seldom is. Additionally, good writers that can influence are not only hard to find, but paid well — much better than most people are willing to pay, but not as much as their true value.

My advice to clients: great sites have great content. Create great content, and you’ll get more traffic.

By the time most clients get to the point of writing the copy after struggling with the information architecture and the design they just want the site to be done; unfortunately, that’s usually when the real work begins. If they care about doing it right, they’ll care about putting content out there that isn’t marketing speak but that really speaks to the user. Users can figure out when they are being talked down to. Or, as this article points out, passion sells because it connects.

Yeah, yeah, it’s political season, so there should be a few political sites, right? Freedom Speaks is a for-profit political forum that lets you send letters to your political representatives across the board. It has all the bells and whistles for a social website, and seems to be getting some traction, generating a few thousand visitors a month despite being launched just recently.

One of the best features is when you click on a profile, you can see all of the representatives for that person. Very cool.