Overview: Online Architecture

Great case study of how shallow A/B testing can send you in the wrong direction: "...there are a few things to watch out for. The first is statistical significance ... Another is the common mistake of assigning a goal that measures the short-term effect of a test rather than the long-term effect on your business. We made this mistake at Segment.i…

Sometimes long form content helps with conversions, and sometimes it hurts, and sometimes, long form content is better for SEO, but other times it’s worse" Read the full article to understand why ... and how, and when. Key point: " the best long form content marketing doesn’t make one feel like they’re being marketed to...." - Why Long Form Cont…

You've probably seen "articles that seamlessly transition to new content, without requiring readers to click or tap headlines and then wait for new pages to load." Time seems to be using it to bait-and-switch - bring in users using social-optimised content, and then present the 'serious' news that they 'should' be reading: "World news typically …

"Any time something as complex as SEO is painted in such broad strokes – which many blogs do in order to appeal to a larger audience – there are going to be things left out. And unfortunately for many marketers trying to improve their search rankings, they’re often very important things." Good guide. Particularly like: "Your first priority shoul…

"Creating a beautiful presentation requires a symphony of visual elements to work together for a “big picture.” Designers seek to make the entire vision work together in terms of how each part interacts. This includes layout, typography, and imagery, which all add up to a cohesive set of design elements. So, how can you orchestrate the chaos of de…

"1. Expert credibility comes from having knowledge others do not. People want experts they can understand and trust, especially when trying to understand complex or ambiguous topics like new technology, engineering, advanced science, or law... 2. Harness hierarchical credibility 3. Seek referent credibility 4. Take advantage of associative credib…

@baekdal explores "a complete and total blind spot in the newspaper industry ... based on a business model that used to work in the old days of media, but was as a result of scarcity." Newspapers, he argues, are "the supermarket of news ... [but] upermarkets only work when visiting the individual brands is too hard to do... But on the internet, e…

"what type of organisation gets a presence on GOV.UK - and what sort of presence they get. " Interestingly similar model to the E2G 'variable geometry' portal architecture developed around 12 years ago, albeit with additional features - notably Groups, recently made more flexible. - GOV.UK organisation types: a user guide (updated June 2014)…

"Here are some quick tips to help you conduct a basic SEO audit in 30 minutes which you can use to improve your site’s performance."

"A single +1 from an authoritative Google+ account can propel a brand new site to a top 10 ranking with no other promotional activity involved, as long as the site being promoted is in the same niche as the Google+ account" - 8 Reasons Why You Need to Establish Authority on Google+

Good insights on combining editorial, programming and visual experts from NPR: "The multimedia crew wanted to make pictures and video that were truly web-native, which required web makers. And our news apps lacked empathy — something we’re so great at on the radio. It’s hard to make people care with a chart. Pictures were the obvious missing piec…

"marketers need to shift their SEO strategies to focus on user intent rather than keywords ... will have to consider their information architecture and the relationship between sections of their websites in relation to the intent of web users (i.e. is the search navigational, informational or transactional?) in order to deliver the most valuable c…

More titbits from that internal NYT digital report: "There are about 14.7 million articles in the Times’ archives back to 1851 ... We can be both a daily newsletter and a library — offering news every day, as well as providing context, relevance and timeless works of journalism.” " - The leaked New York Times innovation report is one of the key d…

"The New York Times lost 80 million homepage visitors—half the traffic to the nytimes.com page—in two years.... this will make the news more about readers ...[because] homepages reflect the values of institutions, and Facebook and Twitter reflect the interest of individual readers [who] aren't interested in hard news, but rather entertainment, se…

Nice approach to design work, as applied to Prismatic's homefeed: "Design is the process of creating a solution that balances the goals of both the user and the creator. User goals include both tasks people need to get done and psychological wants. Creator goals include qualitative and quantitative goals that we call “design” and “data” goals, re…

A study by Guardian, but applicable, I suspect, to just about every site out there: "trying to make theguardian.com load a lot faster in its new, responsive design, and there are a lot of ideas in here ready to be stolen by other news site developers. ... of 17 key product drivers, the speed of the site ranked No. 2, behind only whether content w…

Interesting approach to covering a story from a site known for long-form, no-click content: short-form, multi-click content: "Content is broken into small parts, and many of the main points are expandable ... This is mostly quick-hit aggregation ... a stream of posts that don’t require clicking to separate pages. " - Quartz launches Glass, a “no…

Deadtree media to do more with legacy content than paper birdcages! The latest high-profile move into explanatory journalism is New York Times' The Upshot: "offer a combination of data journalism and explanatory reporting ... head-to-head with Ezra Klein’s Vox and Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight ... a kind of internal aggregator and explainer for…

Great example of modern US longform content from Vox, where they use a specific style to link to one of their 'content cards'. Plus a killer quote on the 'blame Brussels' syndrome: "... banks that owned eurozone government debt were saved, and so were institutions around the world ... Meanwhile, politicians got to take credit for keeping their c…

Building links to your site is a critical part of online promotion. A good article on some techniques *beyond* blogger outreach: "Here are just some of the wealth of link opportunities that are out there in almost every market: Resource pages Forums Directories Professional organizations Events Submission-based Press"…

"There's no such thing as "perfectly optimized", but I took a stab at drawing up the mythical beast anyway: "... I first saw the "perfectly optimised page" infographic on Twitter, but discovered a much richer, larger article on Moz. In itself, this is a great use of infographics and data visualisation - the infographic stands on its and has bee…

We wanted to see where Americans think Ukraine is and to learn if this knowledge (or lack thereof) is related to their foreign policy views

And not just journalists. New generation news sites are redefining news and, by consequence, rethinking information architecture, content strategy and CMS. I only hope the results filter through to everyone else, and sooner rather than later. "... a moment when young talent began demanding superior technology as the key to producing superior jour…

A new generation of companies, like CIRCA, are redefining the structure of how information is treated, and building new CMS to support it. Their approach will inevitably feed into a new generation of CMS for whom the 'article' and 'page' are, if not meaningless, at least optional. And I for one can't wait. "what we’re really doing at Circa is a…

Social media 101 perhaps, but worth sharing: "So what can you do to improve your SMO strategy and start generating some positive social signals that will produce powerful results for your business or brand? ...: - Reputation – building a strong reputation online that will have visitors viewing you as a trusted, reliable source. - Engagement …

Excellent tool for explaining "the difference between Adaptive, Responsive, Static and Liquid sites ..." - Liquidapsive (Liqui-dap-sive)

"In order for a smartwatch ad message to work, it has to be delivered at just the right time, place and location that makes sense. What's more, a user has to have opted in to receive such a message. The only way this could happen is via advanced hypertargeting."

Surprise surprise... "Circa is developing two types of ads: magazine-style full-screen banners, like Flipboard, and sponsored posts... which look and feel like editorial, created by a separate staff.... One future revenue possibility would be licensing access to Circa's article data to other publishers," - News App Circa Looks to Na…

"Here are seven great solutions to help you quickly and cost-effectively develop a mobile version of your site."

Damn, some of these ideas I implemented 12 years ago for the EC's thematic architecture. Nice to see them in a different context: First, the problem with current news journalism: "The column inches devoted to the new are column inches not given to the important... this stress on novelty is a holdover from when the cost of making and moving paper …