A Persona usually includes:

• A name and picture.
• Demographics (age, education, ethnicity, family status).
• Job title and major responsibilities.
• Goals and tasks in relation to your site.
• Environment (physical, social, technological).
• A quote that sums up what matters most to the persona with relevance for your site.

How do we select a name and photo?

You make up the persona’s name. Select one that resonates with the team as representing that user group. Be relevant and serious; humor usually is not appropriate here.

For a picture, you can buy or license stock photography, although a more casual photo often resonates more with development teams. Don’t make it a picture of someone the team knows. Make sure you have permission for the photo that you use. You can tell that you have a good picture if the team sees it and says “Oh, yes, that would be Jim, the Press Guy” or “Oh, yes, that’s just what I see when I think of Rebecca, the Program Officer.”

We believe in creating a successful linking plan that can transport you targeted traffic and qualified prospects. A successful linking strategy also enhances your expert reputation, raises your Page Rank and propels you to higher search engine rankings. Link building is economical; it can give you an online competitive edge over your competitors without having to use grave marketing money. Having a successful linking strategy in place means you can give valuable information to your users, since your users are directed towards pertinent information-rich sites.

The goal of heuristic evaluation is to find usability problems early in the design of a Web site so that improvements can be made as part of the iterative design process.

Heuristic evaluations usually are conducted by a small set (one to three) of evaluators. The evaluators independently examine a user interface and judge its compliance with a set of usability principles. The result of this analysis is a list of potential usability issues or problems. The usability principles, also referred to as usability heuristics, are taken from published lists. Ideally, each potential usability problem is assigned to one or more heuristics to help facilitate fixing the problem. As more evaluators are involved, more true problems are found.

Some evaluators try to estimate the degree to which each usability issue potentially could impede user performance or acceptance. This is done to help set priorities for making revisions to the system. However, judging the severity of proposed usability issues has been shown to be very difficult to do. More information: usability.gov/methods/heuristiceval.html

A content inventory is a list of all the content on your site.If you are revising a Web site, start with a content inventory of what is now on the site. Then, use your Web site requirements to create a planned content inventory for the new version of the site.

If you are developing a new site, of course, you will only have the planned content inventory.
In any situation, you have to know what you are working with. The content (the information) is what your site offers to your users. You have to know what you are now offering and decide whether each piece of it is still needed; still accurate; and still written in the right level of detail, the right tone, and the right language for your users.

Many Web sites grow by accretion. People keep adding pages to the Web site, but few pages ever get taken away. After a while, if you don’t keep a content inventory, no one knows what is on the site. It could have outdated and inaccurate information. It could have pages that contradict each other. It is very hard to maintain a site if you don’t have a content inventory.

If you are developing a new site, setting up a content inventory at the beginning puts you on a good path. If you keep up the inventory as the site matures, you will continue to know what is on the site, how old each page is, when each page has been revised or needs to be reviewed, and so on. For more news: usability.gov/design/inventory.html

A prototype is a draft version of a Web site. Prototypes allow you to explore your ideas before investing time and money into development.

A prototype can be anything from:

• A series of drawings on paper (called a low-fidelity prototype)
• A few images or pages that a user can click through
• A fully functioning Web site (called a high-fidelity prototype)

Prototypes can be built at any time but you should create them as early as possible.

You can start with a prototype of the home page and a few navigation pages to find out if the information architecture you planned will work for your site’s users. To learn more, see the article on how to define information architecture. You may also want to base your prototypes on the designs that you are creating by using Parallel Design.

Here are seven keys to writing clearly for the Web

• Put the main message first.
• Cut out words.
• Keep paragraphs short.
• Keep sentences short.
• Use fragments.
• Use the user’s words.
• Give examples.

Put the main message first

What’s the key message that you are trying to convey? Figure that out and put it first.Next put what will interest most users below the main message. Put further details that only some users want on other pages that are linked from the main message.

Cut out words

You can often convey the essential message in half as many words as you originally wrote.Revise. Revise. Revise. Do not assume that your first draft is the best you can do. Write a draft. Leave it for a day or so. Go back to it and try to make your point even more succinctly.

Keep paragraphs short

A one sentence paragraph may be fine.

Keep sentences short

Users need to grasp the meaning quickly. You can often put secondary information in another sentence, in a table, in fragments, or leave it out entirely.

Use fragments

In frequently asked questions (FAQs) for example, you don’t have to repeat words from the question in the answer.

Use the user’s words

Think about these points:

• The Web is available globally. Should you change words to reach a world-wide audience?
• Even if you are writing for a United States government site, don’t you want people outside of the U. S. to understand your content? Even if your audience is only U. S. residents, consider how many of them speak English as a second language.
• For your broader audience, should you translate the Web pages into other languages? Short sentences, simple words, and consistency all contribute to easier translations.
• Did all users understand the language in your paper documents? Even your traditional audiences may be better served by plain language.

Give examples

Users love examples. They often go to the examples instead of reading the text.

Many sites will undergo major changes periodically, but in most cases the same content will still be available from each iteration. Search engines typically rank pages on a per-page basis,where the URL is the unique identifier, so changing URL means losing any rankings that page may have previously had.

Sites should not move to new domain names often, but if they do, a 301 redirect is the best approach. Note that it may take up a year for a relocated site to rank well again in search results.Disruption to search engines from site changes can be greatly minimised by following the advice given earlier on URL schemes and correct use of redirection codes.

Another issue is that of sites that are available on multiple domain names. Best practice is to redirect all alternate names to a common domain using 301 redirection. Failing to do this can cause each of the domains to be indexed separately and to compete against each other for search engine rankings. In a worst-case scenario, the pages of the site may be placed into “supplemental indexes”, an area where search engines such as Google place pages that appear to contain no original or useful content.

This includes normalising whether your site’s URL has a www prefix or not. Search engines may see http://www.example.govt.nz and http://example.govt.nz as different sites, so it is best to choose which is the preferred form and issue a redirect to visitors using the other.

For more information : e.govt.nz/resources/research/SEO.pdf