Giraffe Forum

Of all the things that make the Web different from print, linking is the most important.
Are we tool-making animals or are we animals made by tools? It’s an old question. How much did the quill shape our minds and worlds? We invented the printing press which then invented a new society, a new way of […]

There is probably no worse strategy for an intranet or public website than content migration. It is doomed to failure from the very start.
Joe the manager picks up a jug. Inside that jug is milk that is curdled, sour and foul smelling. As Joe shakes the jug the solids and water separate and slosh about […]

The more you delete, the more you simplify. The more you simplify, the more you increase the chances of your customers succeeding on your website.
I recently worked with an organization that had managed to delete a substantial quantity of content from its website. It was not an easy process. In fact, it took years of […]

Listening to customers is not enough. You must listen to the right ones.
Is the feedback you are getting for your website truly reflective of the needs of the majority of your customers? Too often, websites get feedback that reflects the ’squeaky wheel’ syndrome. (The squeaky wheel gets oiled.)
Are the customers who give feedback […]

It often seems that the primary purpose of localization is to create unreadable English that is cheap to translate into unreadable German.
A great many organizations do not believe content has any real value. They see it is as a cost, a necessary evil. Thus, they want to produce content for the lowest possible cost.
This […]

We don’t scan a webpage. Instead, we scan a particular block or section of it.
I was working with a company who, based on research, had discovered a top intranet task. It was interesting that the web team initially had no idea what this task was about, even though there was huge demand for it in […]

On the Web, nothing is more damaging to your organization’s reputation and brand than out of date content.
On Monday September 8, 2008, a story about a UAL bankruptcy began circulating on the Web. (UAL is the parent company of United Airlines.) Within hours of the story’s being released, UAL’s shares had dropped by 76 percent. […]

Low-value content is destroying the usefulness of intranets and public websites. It needs to be stored separately.
Andrew Leung is a computer science researcher at the University of California. His team analyzed a large data/content environment over a three month period. Their findings included the following:

More than 90 percent of the files were never accessed.
Of those […]

Giving control of a website to a communicator can be like giving a pub to an alcoholic.
Writers and communicators have many of the skills needed to achieve great things on the Web. Public websites and intranets run on content. Writers and communicators have been trained in creating content. There should be a natural fit.
However, when […]

Press releases are a form of propaganda. Publishing them on your website shows your customers how you are attempting to spin the media.
The Web is where we go because we don’t believe the hype, because we don’t like being spun. The Web is the land of the thinking customer. So, why do so many […]