5 Things You Care About That Your Users Don't

Posted by junger - 07/29/07 at 03:07:09 pm

Web publishing is almost the exact opposite of traditional print publishing.

On the Web, everything is connected. Your users are going from your site to other sites all the time. They haven't opened up your magazine and suddenly you have their full attention.

You don't.

So when it comes to publishing your Web site, you can't have an old media mindset about organization and presentation. Your audience certainly doesn't.

Here are five things you might care about but your users don't.

Date-based archives
Unless you're running a news site where the date really matters, your users aren't going to care when a piece of content was written. Don't bury your content behind a timeline that means nothing to them.
Categories
Your users are not going to always see eye-to-eye with you when it comes to categorization. You think a story should go in one category, while your users may not. Do you really want to lose customers because they can't figure out your organization system?
Navigation
Navigation is a lot like categories. It doesn't mean much to users because it requires them to figure out how your organization scheme works. It isn't worth the time to them — they'd rather click directly on content.
Where your content comes from
Again, the way you internally organize content should not affect the way your users find it. They want content, not drilldown menus or the life story of the content.
Your index page
Google. RSS. Newsletters. Technorati. Digg. Other bloggers. Rarely do these massive traffic outlets link directly to the front page of your site; rather, they link to a specific piece of useful information. Your home page isn't useful at all to a growing number of Web users.

That doesn't mean that you should completely forget about optimizing your home page, but it does mean that you shouldn't spend the majority of your time worrying about it. Your story pages are much more important than your index page will ever be.

Think Like a User

You surf the Web. You know what you like and you don't like. Take that thought-process into your next re-design or site launch.

The easier your users can get to content, the better off everyone is.

July 29, 2007 | In Web | No Comments

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Jason Unger