10 Harsh Truths About Large Websites

From Smashing Magazine, a very good article to help large organizations--like governments--focus on how to build and maintain a good web site.

The 10 Harsh Truths About Corporate Websites from Paul Boag (my comments in parentheses) are:

1. You need a separate Web division. (not IT, not marketing)
2. Managing your website is a full-time job. (if it is a collateral duty, it will be treated like collateral)
3. Periodic redesign is not enough. (maintenance is more important than starting again)
4. You website cannot appeal to everyone. (man who chases two rabbits catches none!)
5. You are wasting money on social networking. (remember how I said Twitter is not a strategy?)
6. Your website is not all about you. (if users need a secret handshake, they will go where they are more welcome)
7. You're not getting value from your web team. (let the professionals do their jobs)
8. Design by committee brings death. ('nuff said)
9. A CMS is not a silver bullet. (bad content that is easier to publish is still bad content)
10. You have too much content. (prune, don't let the jungle choke out the information people actually seek) More from 10 Harsh Truths About Corporate Websites.
    

Boag's post is very complimentary to the Federal Web Managers white paper, Putting Citizens First: Transforming Online Government. [full disclosure, I participated in the development of this paper]

This is an article that you might want to clip and pass around.

[note: more on the Collaboration Project paper later this week]