A long time ago when I first started developing business web applications, my wife asked me about how things were going at work. I told her that one of the biggest challenges with our development team was making sure that our web applications were user friendly and intuitive. She shakes her head, turns to me and says "A website can't be intuitive!" When I asked why, she said it's because a website can't think or gain perception ... which is true, but my response was that it can help the visitor of that website to that.
For the next 30 minutes or so, we went back and forth on ways a website could or could not be intuitive. We finally looked up the meaning of the word intuition, and finally came to an agreement on what it means for a website to be intuitive ... "immediate apprehension". The websites that are able to provide a good user experience (UX) are able to help the visitor know exactly what the site is about and how to get the information they need quickly. We've all been to websites where we couldn't find anything, left, and never came back - confusion leads to visitors going somewhere else for products, services and/or information; and with business solutions, it leads to an application not being utilized.
So if confusion leads to the failure of a website, the opposite must also be true ... understanding leads to the success of it - which means more repeat visitors, more utilization, more revenue, or whatever the goal of your website is ... and the quicker they can understand what your website is doing the better. But I believe the days are gone where it is acceptable to simply throw a website together without any thought and expect people to automatically "buy into" what you're doing. Having a website is not enough, because the assumption in most industries is that you have; having a website that is intuitive is what will set you apart from the others.
First of all, Happy New Year to everyone. Everything's gonna be fine in 2009, son!
It has already started out to be a very busy year for me, including a side project that I helped to get off the ground for a gaming guild. Before I was asked by one of the leaders of the Sinister Society Guild to start a website for them, I had no idea what a gaming guild was (probably because I'm not a gamer!); however, I quickly learned through the building this site.
Along with the basics, they needed a forum, a blog, a way to see their member list (complete with avatars), and a way to secure their site where only their guild members could see the "members only" sections (especially the forum!) And of course, since they don't make any money from this organization - they needed this done as inexpensively as possible.
The first step was to create a new look-and-feel established in a new master page, complete with a brand new logo and flash navigation from my brother Sebastian (thanks, bro!) ... which wasn't easy since we don't usually hang out in "sinister" gaming sites, but we found a way to give 'em what they needed. Then I used the following to quickly build the rest of their site:
- JumpyForum - I started off by finding forum code that I could easily implement into their existing site without ripping out a lot of its code, and JumpyForum fit the bill. Once it was in place, I totally switched out the screens with regular gridview controls and used the same database structure to make it fit the guild's needs.
- CliqueSite® NewsBlog - I needed the same thing for their blog, and I used CliqueSite® NewsBlog for it. It comes complete with comments, archiving, and RSS Feeds.
- ASP.NET Security - Didn't need to create customized security for this, so I just used the ASP.NET security and membership database to drive their security with 4 roles: Member, Assasin (a special member), Moderator (for forums), Administrator.
- ASP.NET Profiles - For all of the extra member information that they wanted to collect (like name, contact info, Xbox gamer tag, Guild Ranking, etc.), I used profile objects.
- Gravatar - Avatars are very important for gamers on the Internet, and this guild needed them to make their site legit. Fortunately for me, I didn't have to program a way for them to create them; within minutes I was able to implement Gravatar for free, that are managed by the tools they provide for you. And with a nifty custom control that is provided by Fresh Click Media, all I have to is pass in the e-mail address, tell it what size I want and I'm done. I was also able to specify the image to show when there isn't an Gravatar setup for a particular e-mail address.
Unfortunately, you won't be able to see any of these goodies unless you're an active member of the Sinister Society. But if you into playing the new game Darkfall (due to come out in the states the end of the month) and feel like you're "sinister" enough to hang with the big boys, feel free to apply for membership that I created using the wizard control.