Ten Things Your Site Should Be Doing

The festive season is upon us, and it’s the time of the year when thoughts turn to lists and predictions. Over at Digital Web magazine, Nick Finck has got a list of the ten things your website should be doing:

• Offering regularly updated information (blogs, CMSs, etc.)
• Increased efficiency in news and information distribution (RSS, ATOM, etc.)
• Alternative methods of information distribution (email newsletters, RSS, del.icio.us, etc.)
• Enhanced notification and announcement systems (pings, email alerts, etc.)
• A place for your site’s users to offer feedback and input (blog comments, forums, etc.)
• Improved performance and code optimization (CSS, XHTML, etc.)
• Multiple ways to access information (multi-faceted navigation, folksonomies, etc.)
• Intelligent system to system communication (XML, SOAP, etc.)
• Collaborative communication and documentation (Wikis, blogs, etc.)
• On-demand support feedback (user-driven FAQs, click-to-chat, etc.)

Clearly not all of these are going to be appropriate to every site and business, but there’s a lot to think about here. Perhaps most significant is that all of the functionality and technology that’s suggested above is interactive - which will have implications for the time and effort that will need to go into maintaining sites. And this in turn will make the differences between proactive organisations even more pronounced - is your site going to remain static while those of your competitors are constantly updated and refined?

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