21. The link is the fundamental unit of thought on the Web, therefore richly link-enable your applications.
Links are what make the Web so special and fundamentally makes it work. Ensuring your application is URL addressable in a
granular way, especially if you have a rich user experience, is vital to participate successfully on the Web. The Web's link
ecosystem is enormously powerful and is needed for bookmarking, link sharing/propagation, advertising, makes SEO work,
drives your page rank, and much more. Your overall URL structure should be thought out and clean, look toFl ic k r and
del.cio.us for good examples.
22. Create an online user community for your product and nurture it. Online communities are ways to engage
passionate users to provide feedback, support, promotion, evangelism and countless other useful outcomes. While this is
usually standard fare now with online products, too many companies don't start this early enough or give it enough resources
despite the benefits it confers in terms of customer support, user feedback, and free marketing, to name just three benefits.
Investing in online community approaches is ultimately one of the least expensive aspects of your product, no matter the
upfront cost. Hire a good community manager and set them to work.
23. Offer a up-to-date, clean, compelling application design. Attractive applications inherently attract new customers
to try them and is a pre-requisite to good usability and user experience. Visual and navigational unattractiveness and
complexity is also the enemy of product adoption. Finally, using the latest designs and modes provides visual cues that
conveys that the product is timely and informed. A good place to start to make sure you're using the latest user experience
ideas and trends is Smashing Magazine's 2009 Web Design survey.
24. Load-time and responsiveness matter, measure and optimize for them on a regular basis. This is not a
glamorous aspect of Web applications but it's a fundamental that is impossible to ignore. Every second longer a key operation
like main page load or a major feature interaction takes, the more likely a customer is to consider finding a faster product. On
the Web, time is literally money and building high speed user experiences is essential. Rich Internet Application technologies
such as Ajax and Flash, albeit used wisely, can help make an application seem as fast as the most responsive desktop
application. Using content distribution networks and regional hosting centers.
25. User experience should follow a "complexity gradient." Novice users will require a simple interface but will want
an application's capabilities to become more sophisticated over time as they become more skilled in using it. Offering more
advanced features that are available when a user is ready but are hidden until they are allows a product to grow with the user
and keeps them engaged instead of looking for a more advanced alternative.
26. Monetize every page view. There is no excuse for not making sure every page is driving bottom-line results for your
online business. Some people will disagree with this recommendation and advertising can often seem overly commercial early
in a product's life. However, though a Web application should never look like a billboard, simple approaches like one line
sponsorships or even public service messages are good ideas to maximize the business value of the product and there are other
innovation approaches as well.
27. Users' data belongs to them, not you. This is a very hard strategy for some to accept and you might be able to get
away with bending this rule for a while, that is, until some of your users want to move their data elsewhere. Data can be a
short-term lock-in strategy, but long-term user loyalty comes from treating them fairly and avoiding a 'Roach Motel' approach
to user data ("they can check-in their data, but they can't check out.") Using your application should be a reversible process
and users should have control of their data. SeeD at aPor t ab il it y.or g for examples of how to get started with this.
28. Go to the user, don't only make them come to you. The aforementioned APIs and widgets help with this but are
not sufficient. The drive strong user adoption, you have to be everywhere else on the Web that you can be. This can mean
everything from the usual advertising, PR, and press outreach but it also means creating Facebook applications,Ope nSoc i a l
gadgets, and enabling use fromm as hups. These methods can often be more powerful than all the traditional ways combined.
29.SEO is as important as ever, so design for it. One of the most important stream of new users will be people coming
in from search engines looking for exactly what you have. This stream is free and quite large if you are ensuring your data is
URL addressable and can be found via search engine Web crawlers. Your information architecture should be deeply SEOfriendly
and highly granular.
30. Know thy popular Web standards and use them. From a consumer or creator standpoint, the data you will
exchange with everyone else will be in some format or another. And the usefulness of that data or protocol will be in inverse
proportion to how well-known and accepted the standard is. This generally means using CSS, Javascript, XHTML, HTTP,
ATOM, RSS, XML, JSON, and so on. Following open standards enables the maximum amount of choice, flexibility, time-tomarket,
access to talent pools, and many other benefits over time to both you and your customers.
Next
Links are what make the Web so special and fundamentally makes it work. Ensuring your application is URL addressable in a
granular way, especially if you have a rich user experience, is vital to participate successfully on the Web. The Web's link
ecosystem is enormously powerful and is needed for bookmarking, link sharing/propagation, advertising, makes SEO work,
drives your page rank, and much more. Your overall URL structure should be thought out and clean, look toFl ic k r and
del.cio.us for good examples.
22. Create an online user community for your product and nurture it. Online communities are ways to engage
passionate users to provide feedback, support, promotion, evangelism and countless other useful outcomes. While this is
usually standard fare now with online products, too many companies don't start this early enough or give it enough resources
despite the benefits it confers in terms of customer support, user feedback, and free marketing, to name just three benefits.
Investing in online community approaches is ultimately one of the least expensive aspects of your product, no matter the
upfront cost. Hire a good community manager and set them to work.
23. Offer a up-to-date, clean, compelling application design. Attractive applications inherently attract new customers
to try them and is a pre-requisite to good usability and user experience. Visual and navigational unattractiveness and
complexity is also the enemy of product adoption. Finally, using the latest designs and modes provides visual cues that
conveys that the product is timely and informed. A good place to start to make sure you're using the latest user experience
ideas and trends is Smashing Magazine's 2009 Web Design survey.
24. Load-time and responsiveness matter, measure and optimize for them on a regular basis. This is not a
glamorous aspect of Web applications but it's a fundamental that is impossible to ignore. Every second longer a key operation
like main page load or a major feature interaction takes, the more likely a customer is to consider finding a faster product. On
the Web, time is literally money and building high speed user experiences is essential. Rich Internet Application technologies
such as Ajax and Flash, albeit used wisely, can help make an application seem as fast as the most responsive desktop
application. Using content distribution networks and regional hosting centers.
25. User experience should follow a "complexity gradient." Novice users will require a simple interface but will want
an application's capabilities to become more sophisticated over time as they become more skilled in using it. Offering more
advanced features that are available when a user is ready but are hidden until they are allows a product to grow with the user
and keeps them engaged instead of looking for a more advanced alternative.
26. Monetize every page view. There is no excuse for not making sure every page is driving bottom-line results for your
online business. Some people will disagree with this recommendation and advertising can often seem overly commercial early
in a product's life. However, though a Web application should never look like a billboard, simple approaches like one line
sponsorships or even public service messages are good ideas to maximize the business value of the product and there are other
innovation approaches as well.
27. Users' data belongs to them, not you. This is a very hard strategy for some to accept and you might be able to get
away with bending this rule for a while, that is, until some of your users want to move their data elsewhere. Data can be a
short-term lock-in strategy, but long-term user loyalty comes from treating them fairly and avoiding a 'Roach Motel' approach
to user data ("they can check-in their data, but they can't check out.") Using your application should be a reversible process
and users should have control of their data. SeeD at aPor t ab il it y.or g for examples of how to get started with this.
28. Go to the user, don't only make them come to you. The aforementioned APIs and widgets help with this but are
not sufficient. The drive strong user adoption, you have to be everywhere else on the Web that you can be. This can mean
everything from the usual advertising, PR, and press outreach but it also means creating Facebook applications,Ope nSoc i a l
gadgets, and enabling use fromm as hups. These methods can often be more powerful than all the traditional ways combined.
29.SEO is as important as ever, so design for it. One of the most important stream of new users will be people coming
in from search engines looking for exactly what you have. This stream is free and quite large if you are ensuring your data is
URL addressable and can be found via search engine Web crawlers. Your information architecture should be deeply SEOfriendly
and highly granular.
30. Know thy popular Web standards and use them. From a consumer or creator standpoint, the data you will
exchange with everyone else will be in some format or another. And the usefulness of that data or protocol will be in inverse
proportion to how well-known and accepted the standard is. This generally means using CSS, Javascript, XHTML, HTTP,
ATOM, RSS, XML, JSON, and so on. Following open standards enables the maximum amount of choice, flexibility, time-tomarket,
access to talent pools, and many other benefits over time to both you and your customers.
Next
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