Little Web Tips

It's been quiet here lately, because behind the scenes, I'm in the final steps of updating the Guide to Social Media Analysis. If I'm counting correctly, it looks like the new edition will include 62 companies—double last year's count. So I'm seeing a lot of company web sites as I collect the information I need, and I keep running into a few familiar roadblocks. How many of these can you find on your company's site?

1. Dusty web site
   Have you updated your web site recently? Is your last press release more than a year old? Is a 2005 copyright notice sending the wrong message? If nothing is new in the last year or two, how will first-time visitors know you're still in business?

2. WWW required
   Is it really necessary to make me type four extra characters? Decide on whether your web site will be www.yourdomain.com or yourdomain.com, but both should work. I don't care which you pick, but too many sites return an error if I leave off the www. Tell your web guy to look up redirect; it's not hard.

3. No news feed
   Set up an RSS feed for your news page(s). It makes things so much easier. The point of your press releases is for people to read them, right?

4. Broken news feed
   A broken news feed is worse than no feed at all, because it sometimes tricks me into thinking that I'll get updates. If you have a feed for your news page, make sure that it matches the content on the page. If you change your web site in a way that breaks the old feed, communicate the change to subscribers.

   Tip: Subscribe to your own feeds to see what your subscribers see.

5. Our founder, Anon E. Mouse
   An About the company page that doesn't tell me the name and location of your company makes you look very small-time. The name of the company that provides a service shouldn't be a secret. Hiding the names of the people behind the company isn't a lot better.

6. Don't touch that logo!
   I include company logos with their profiles, and sometimes I need to get it from your web site. Please don't make me use a screen capture. If your logo always appears on a gradient background, I'm not going to be able to make it look good.