Make Your Website Better

Last month I received an email from someone pointing out many mistakes on my own web site. A couple of these were really bad mistakes. I have a section describing classes I’m offering at PVCC, our community college. I gave the same description for two entirely different classes, and got the date wrong on one of them.

It brought home the importance of having somebody else look at your site, or any new content that you’re publishing. It seems like such a no-brainer, but in the jet-stream of business, which moves so fast, it’s tempting to just get it done and publish it. That’s something I never do when the project is being printed, where mistakes are permanent. For print, at the very least I ask someone to proofread. It’s vital to do the same thing for electronic.

That’s because credibility is at stake. Studies done at Stanford showed that typographical errors erode the credibility of a site. Typos raise questions–”If this business can’t be bothered to proofread, what else are they sloppy about?” I covered this study at greater length in an earlier blog post.

In the class I recently taught on web site best practices, students, all of whom were owners or stakeholders of business sites,  reviewed one another’s sites. Having a fresh pair of eyes looking at their sites revealed things they’d completely missed. They found the experience highly valuable and identified changes that needed to be made.

So, if you’re not ready to do user testing on your web site, ask a friend or colleague to take a look and tell you what they see.

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