What Do YOU Think People Want From Your Site
Forever the thinker, Jeremiah Owyang posted about the future of corporate websites. He cites Kristie Connor and Christopher Smith, who won a contest for their efforts to describe such. It’s a great question. I’d recommend reading Jeremiah’s post and commenting on that, but if you want to talk about it more, it’s a great question.
People Want Information
Not marketing. When I go to Staples.com, it’s because I need a store locator, or the price of a USB drive. I don’t mind being sold potential values and bargains around the information I seek, but I sure don’t want to hear marketing-ese about whatever you think the summer value plan is going to be.
People Want Simple
When I go to GM.com, they give me three easy choices right off the bat: corporate info, vehicle info, and “experience GM,” whatever that is. That’s not bad, because they slot me pretty quickly, but the risk there is that the site is static, and definitely “cold” in color and experience.
People Want Connection
Want the real secret magic? People want to feel “seen.” There are ways to do that. One is something we do all the time on blogs: we comment back. Another is through polite (!!!) use of cookies to remember that you like things set up a certain way when you are visiting.
Further, people would like to connect with the people at an organization, not just through forms and chutes, but in as many ways as they can conceive. Know who does this well? Sun? Go to http://blogs.sun.com, and you’ll see that there are blogs to suit most every taste. That means, there are conversations to be had at lots of levels. Cisco and some other great tech companies are doing it. Are retail or consumer companies ready for this?
What do You Think?
You travel the web all the time. You need information from various companies. You visit sites to buy things, to learn about things, to make decisions. What do you think people want from your site?
The Social Media 100 is a project by Chris Brogan dedicated to writing 100 useful blog posts in a row about the tools, techniques, and strategies behind using social media for your business, your organization, or your own personal interests. Swing by [chrisbrogan.com] for more posts in the series, and if you have topic ideas, feel free to share them, as this is a group project, and your opinion matters.
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Social Networks- Time to Specialize
I’m looking at a new social network for writers called Protagonize. It’s a place where writers can come, register, add a picture, fill out a profile, type in the same stuff (granted, they’ve streamlined this a bit here), and then you can do the main core activities of the network:
- Submit stories or parts of stories.
- Collaborate on other people’s stories.
- Comment.
- Vote.
- Add friends.
It’s nicely made, has some reasonably interesting features, and if you’re a writer, it’s worth checking out.
And Yet
I want more. I want lots more. No, don’t come comment on my post and tell me that it’s coming. It’s not your fault, but here’s the thing.
We have the baseline functionality of account, friends, comments, voting, etc. That’s all done. There are hundreds of implementations of it. We get it.
At this point, I want someone to get smart like the ZLoop guys and figure out a centralized social networking profile repository that permits us to have multiple iterations, depending on the network.
For a site about stories and writing, I want MUCH more specialized tools. Maybe a floating ajax thesaurus. Could there be a visual storytelling tool that lets writers branch the story in multiple ways like a choose-your-own-adventure book? I want mark-ups and overlay editing features so that others can come in and give you edits and annotation to your stories.
For a site about music, maybe it would be different tools. Come to think of it, Flickr should buy Aviary and roll Picnik in tighter so that we get specialized tools there, too.
I think professional networks have the most opportunity in this regard. Businesses and professional organizations need tools that go beyond what LinkedIn have offered to date. We’re actually looking into that at CrossTech Partners, researching toolsets and building use cases for how professional networks can evolve.
If You’re Developing a Network
Don’t stop at the basics. Don’t just give me another place to make a profile and add friends. It has to give me much more than that before I care. And I think I’m speaking for the user base in general at this point.
Consider what might really make the software valuable and useful. Consider ways in which your targeted users might want to interact. Specialize instead of generalize. Give us VERY specific tools. What would librarians find interesting? What would educators need to take time away from their typical haunts?
And as for YOU, what do you want in your specialized social network? What can you imagine being a set of tools for growing out your human relationships?
Love your thoughts on some variations on the theme.
Tools Restrict Your Thinking
Never forget that the tools you use to think, to dream, to figure something out, are also opportunities to restrict the way you think about a problem. If you’re already thinking about using a wiki for a project, or a blog, you’ve already made some decisions on all the actions that take place thereafter. Deciding on audio versus video versus text early in the project means that you’re talking tools and not the desired goals of the project. Wherever you can, think with outcomes in mind, not which tools you can use.
Inspired by Jon Udell’s interview with Bill Buxton.
