Our current homepage

The Pet Wiki has been doing very nicely over the last couple of months. It’s been really nice to see the growth. I like the way the site looks, but I think that it’s time that we go through a bit of a redesign. I think the site works well in general, but the homepage is a bit lacking.

What is the objective?

Before starting with a redesign, figure out what the goals are. The homepage is the entrance way into your website. Figure out where you want to direct your traffic to go. Don’t just shove a bunch of stuff on there because someone might find it useful. The Pet Wiki’s homepage is sending people all over the place. It’s time to reign it back in.

Make a list of what you got

The first step, before you remove anything, is to make a list of all the stuff you have on the page. You should make sure that you know what is on your page so that when you take it off, nothing gets lost.

Figure out what works

You should already be using Google Analytics. The cool thing about Google Analytics is that they give stats for how users actually use the page. It’s not the same as where the eyeballs go, but you can see where people are clicking. Don’t outsmart your users and try to assume that you know what they want. Check the stats and prioritize correctly.

Get Organized

Once you know what you want to promote and what’s important to your users, organize your page. It should be a blend of what pulls your users into your site as well as the specific area you want to promote. Don’t overdo it. More is not better, more can be just clutter.

These are the basic principles. There’s obviously a lot more to it, but this is a good place to start. I know that I have my work ahead of me!

I am in the process of creating a website for the JSPCA. To do that, after researching a bunch of different options, I decided to go with Drupal. Drupal is a very powerful tool for creating CMSs (Content Management Systems) and there are a ton of existing modules you can add to it to get the functionality that you need to make a great site.

In some ways its a lot easier than MediaWiki. There is a very simple interface for turning on and off modules. You don’t need to do a stitch of programming to get a pretty powerful site up quickly.

The  main reason that I chose Drupal was its extensive permissions system. With MediaWiki you can have group-based permissions for the site. In Drupal you can set permissions down to the page level. The site that I am in the process of creating is not a wiki site. It is a content site where some people can add articles, others can add new animals for adoptions, and others can read and comment on existing content. Did I mention that it also needs to have the ability to be trilingual (Hebrew, English and Russian)?

What I’ve been finding frustrating is the number of dependencies that you are expected to know about. I keep installing new modules, think that I finally found the one that will solve my problems, only to find that there are other modules that the ones I have to install to get it to work properly.

Drupal seems to be more powerful than MediaWiki, but it also seems to be a lot heavier. Since it’s a CMS, which includes Wikis, Blogs, Forums, Pages and user-created content types, you can mold it to do what you like.

Documentation is really hit-or-miss with the different modules. I am currently trying to figure out how to use date-range faceted search, and I have no idea what I’m supposed to do with it. I want to be able to allow people to select the search results for the animals by age, but I’ll be darned if I know how to get it working. This is just one example, but I seem to go on a lot of fishing trips. I’m sure that I’ll figure it out eventually.

JSPCA

I love working on The Pet Wiki. It’s really amazing how much incredible and useful information keeps being added. It’s a lot of fun watching the traffic grow and more users register with the site. It’s far from done, not that a website can ever truly be done, but there are some very major features that still need to be added.

In the course of my work, I’ve met up with some great organizations for helping animals. Although The Pet Wiki has a lot of information about different things that you can do help, it’s not really on the front line of really working with animals.

I recently adopted a dachshund/whippet dog from the JSPCA. Pretzel has been a great addition to our family. He’s the absolute perfect dog for a 3 cat house. He’s just so much fun! While talking to the volunteers at the JSPCA, I realized  that there is so much that I can do to help them.

I’m not physically close to the adoption center, so donating my time there would just not work out for me. I have been known to develop a website or two, so I’ll be spending some of my time getting a new site for them up an running. I find it very exciting.

I really think that it’s important to be involved with a specific cause, as opposed to the general animal welfare that I’ve been working on until now. I feel like I’ve really moved from the sidelines to the front line. I will be helping get pets in Jerusalem adopted.

This is something that is a bit new to me. I’ll be working on a platform that I’ve never tried before. I’m leaning towards Drupal to manage all their content. I’ve interviewed people to find out what features they need to make the site successful. It’s really cool. I feel like I’m on a new journey. I’ll make sure to let you know how it goes.

I was surprised how long I was able to hold off on getting my own server. I was able to use shared hosting for quite some time with only some mild headaches. Programming and modifying extensions for MediaWiki has been a lot of fun, but now the time has come to take it to the next level.

What is a Virtual Dedicated Server? A server hosting company partitions many of its servers into a lot of “virtual” servers, which each act as though they its a single dedicated machine. You have your own resources, just like a regular server, but the physical box is shared with other people. It’s a lot less expensive than having your own dedicated machine, but it still gives most of the benefits of having a fully dedicated machine. It’s also a greener option – instead of having a server and not using most of it, you share the hardware with others. Most importantly, you can install anything you like and have root access to your machine.

On a Shared Hosting plan, you get share space on a server too, but you also share resources, like memory, bandwidth and disk space. You also share the operating system. When using shared hosting, most hosting companies won’t allow you to do very much except let them install their programs that they have approved. They do this to protect everyone that shares. The last thing that they might want is for a mistake (or worse) that one person makes to effect everyone that shares the hosting.

When looking for Virtual Dedicated Server there are a few things to think about. You will be bombarded with questions about memory, CPUs, disk space and bandwidth. If you’re moving from a shared hosting environment, you might not have any way to know what you have been using until now. To get a basic idea of what you might need, think about what kind of disk space you are currently using and how much traffic you have. One really nice thing about going virtual is that fact that upgrading to more memory or disk space doesn’t require you to do all that much. All that’s needed is to ask your hosting service to just allocate more and its there.

There are a lot of different hosting choices to choose from. Most of the big companies that offer shared hosting also offer the virtual dedicated variety. There are also some companies that specialize in virtual and dedicated hosting, and nothing else. When I was looking around, I narrowed my search to two companies: HostGator and Linode.

Linode specialized in Virtual Dedicated Servers. That’s all they do. They have a great community behind them to help you set things up and answer your questions along the way. You are 100% in control of everything, including updates and patches.

HostGator has Managed Virtual Dedicated Servers. You still have 100% control to do with your server all that you’d like, but they help out with things like updates and back-ups. They also help you transfer you site from whatever hosting environment that you are using. They charge more for these servers, but for me, I felt that they were worth it.

I went for HostGator. They moved everything over for me, and have been extremely helpful in resolving issues that have occurred because of the move. The support has been fantastic. One other nice thing is that the hosting plan that I chose came with something called cPanel. It’s also extra, but, at least for me, it has been totally worth it. It allows me to do things like set cron jobs, and it has tools like a file browser that lets me get around without needing to know any linux commands. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t know them – hosting your own server is a lot of responsibility – it’s just that it makes things a lot easier.

So far, my growing pains have been totally cool. Everything was moved over without a hitch and now I get to do some fun stuff that I wasn’t able to do before. No more limitations on the programs that I can run. The sky is the limit!

Image by: torkildr

I find understanding what makes people do what they do fascinating. When it also falls in the realm of website usability, that’s even better. Reading: Neuro Web Design: What Makes Them Click? by Susan M. Weinschenk (Ph.D. in psychology) really reminded me about how little our conscious minds are in control of what we do.

The basic concept of the book is that you need to appeal to all parts of the brain, the old, mid and new brains in order to get people to find your site compelling and make them click. The old brain is the part of our brains that are necessary to stay alive. It takes care of the mundane things like breathing, digestion as well as stuff to keep us safe. The mid brain controls our emotions. That impulse buying that we do – that’s where it comes from. And then there’s the new brain. That’s the smart part of our brain that does all the thinking. It’s the concious part. If you can engage all three you have it made.

Social validation. A good example of how our old brain works against us is social validation. We are not the independent thinkers that we like to think we are. We are wired to want to fit in and belong. Even though we don’t even realize it, we look to others to try to figure out how to act.

• Where do you see this behavior on the web? Chat rooms. People will lurk before they participate in the conversation. If there are a lot of people hanging out, they will assume that other people will assist when questions arise. Surprisingly, the more people in the chat room, the longer it will take for questions to be answered.
• Do you listen to strangers? You do if you follow the information from online reviews. By adding voting to pages on your site, you just might be able to encourage people that what you have to say has more meaning.
• Like the user reviews you are reading? They can be even more believable with a story behind them. Knowing who is giving the review helps us feel more in tune with the review. The more they seem like we are, the more that we trust them.

Better to owe than not to give. Another way to get people to like you (and your site) is to make them feel indebted to you. Giving stuff makes people feel indebted to you. What can a website give people? The first thing that came to my mind was e-books. I recently got an e-book of bird treat recipes for signing up to something for Bird Talk magazine. Smart people. For consumer sites, things like free shipping can go a long way to good feelings.

Make it scarce. Scarcity makes us want stuff more. This works very well for sites that sell stuff. If someone comes to your site and sees that you’re almost out of a product that they want, it will make the customers want it all the more. This is especially good at getting people who haven’t made their final decision. This can push them over the edge.

Make it simple. Don’t give too many choices. Too many choices overwhelm us, and can nearly paralyze us from making our decisions. Barry Schwartz, who studies the link between economics and psychology, spoke at TED about the “Paradox of Choice“. Less really is more. Keep it simple and only give a few choices, not every choice under the sun.

Make it accessible. When I say accessible, I’m not talking about good website design (although you should do that too). People like immediate gratification. Since there is no way for people to actully see or feel their online purchases, get it too them as quickly as possible. iTunes (or Amazon.com’s MP3 shop) does just that. Buy it and get it. eBooks work well for this too.

Positioning. By putting the product that you’d like to sell in the first position on the page you increase your chances of selling it. They spoke about this for products, but I believe the same to be true about any type of information that you are trying to push. If you have stronger parts of your site that you’d like promote, display them at the top.

Talk to me. Instead of using the Queen’s English make it more conversational. We like it when people talk directly to us. By using the word “you,” you immediately give your users the feeling that you are communicating directly to them.

Talk to the old brain. The old brain is only interested in three things: safety, food and sex. By using images that scare, feed or turn you on, you get your users’ attention. The old brain is also always scanning. By using images that change, you’re more likely to get your users’ attention.

Get commitments. No matter how little the commitment that you get, it’s the stepping stone to something bigger. Try using surveys to get a little buy-in from your users. From there you can push for more. By answering the surveys your users are making a public statement about your site. The more public the better. They also have the extra benefit of social validation. If they are positive, they can be shared and enjoyed by others.

Use people. Use pictures of people to help your users associate with a person. The more the people look like your target users, the better. We naturally trust people who look like us. We feel more comfortable with attractive people. Narratives also help.

Tell me a story. Stories are natually engaging.  Adding a picture to your story helps engage all parts of your brain. Just hearing the word “story” helps perk us up for what we are about to read.

Get social. People like to find others out there that they can talk to. By allowing users to talk with each other, and by engaging your user in conversations, you are connecting with everyone’s need to be social.

These are my main take aways from this very enjoyable book. It’s a quick and fun read. I have some ideas on how to incorporate what I’ve learned on The Pet Wiki. It feels a little sneaky to actually follow everything that Weinschenk suggesets. I’ll let you know how it goes.