A recent discussion about the FVRHS touched on website design and how some folks can't find things that seem to be obvious.

Instead of further hijacking that thread, I thought I'd start a new one.

I've run website for years, and I also run an index of railroad related websites. That has allowed me to see a wide variety of websites and designs. Some are excellent, others not so much.

For the most part, the good ones are easy to find. Pick any large and well known operation. Chances are that they also have a top notch website. Take a look at it, learn from it, see what you like, and see what you don't like.

Poorly designed websites are also easy to find unfortunately. For my index, I list the railroad's name and location. It is truly amazing how hard that info can be to locate on some website. I have actually found some sites that just plain don't have the location listed at all. Usually those are old and out of date sites, and I think the designers simply didn't think about it. Another very common mistake is to list the town but not the state. "Come and visit the Springfield Model Railroad Club! We're located on Main Street next to the bowling alley." Gee, that's nice. Care to tell me what state? For that matter, did you ever consider it's called the WORLDWIDE Web for a reason? Maybe tell folks what country you're in as well.

It's probably due to me being unfamiliar with them, but I find many websites in the UK to have location descriptions that I cannot understand. Of course lots of US sites omit the country as well, but since I'm familiar with states it's obvious. The same may not be true for a UK visitor.

I've said it before, but I think it bears repeating. Once your museum website is built, bring in some volunteers and have them use it. Ask them to find a map of how to get there. Ask them to find the museum's contact info. Most important of all, ask them to book some tickets, and make them complete the entire process, at least a time or two, to make sure it's working.

If you have the chance, bring in somebody's grandmother. Ask her to book tickets for the Easter Bunny Train (or whatever) as well as one of your regular trips. Force yourself to sit there and watch IN SILENCE, while she completes the task. You don't get to coach your normal website visitors, so no cheating by saying "Click here" or "It's on the left". See if the site is being used in the way you anticipated. See how difficult it is to book tickets and find info. Most of all, after it's done, ask what the most frustrating aspects were and what they found challenging.

It's a good thing making websites good is so hard, otherwise I'd be living under an underpass.

Building good sites really IS a professional skill, and usually takes a team:
Strategists, information architects, designers, developers, and content authors.

In smaller organizations, that's often done by a single person, who may not be that great at more than one of those things (if that).

If you're trying to put on a professional appearance, do yourself a favor and treat your web presence like any other professional service and find someone who can do a quality job of it.

You may get lucky and have a lawyer in your volunteer ranks, but if not, you wouldn't assume that the guy who edits the newsletter could do as good of a job. Don't do the same thing with the web.

Don't forget to consider mobile users when designing your web site. There are a number of web sites in our field that look nice on a computer but horrible on mobile. I maintain a museum web site and always test major updates on mobile. I compress graphics too, so pages still load quick on slower connections.

You just pushed my button! "location". Singular.

Speaking of "singular", you come to our website with a singular purpose. Most people do. Here's the thing. If you put a location on your web site, people go there expecting a train ride.

"Hello, Foo Heritage Railroad? We're HERE, and the building is locked and no one is around." "That's because you went to the address that's plastered all over our website, Twitter, Facebook, Yelp, and every business listing on the web. You should have come to the address mentioned once on the event page."

Weren't we just discussing bad web design? ^_^

Like I say, people are singular in their search for information. They will grab the first plausible answer and use it. If it's not on the homepage, they'll bap "contact us" and the first address they see goes into the TomTom. Often their phone helps them by making the warning text unreadable and the address clickable. They may go to external sites, or Google search or maps may "help them out". Because Google also is single-minded and operates on the same principle: find first plausible answer and declare victory.

<img=mission_accomplished_banner.jpg>

This drove us bonkers at the Southern Michigan Railroad. I decided to see what could be done to minimize this problem.

- stopped using addresses that didn't work in in GPS's.
- eradicated all street addresses from the site and social media
- Each event's page lists street address and links to the directions page
- Home page links to currently running event pages.
- Contact-us page says "Train departure location: see event page"
- Contact-us page shows a PO box only
- ask questions when asked for our address via phone.
- changed venue name on the tickets to street address. Looks ugly but works.

This has reduced wrong-station incidents to almost nil. You can't fix stupid, but you can make it harder to get any traction.

Ed:

What connection does a lawyer have with a web site? If for editing content, that may or may not work depending on what the lawyer's skill level is.


I've found that sending the drafts out to a number of designated 'eyes' you can get at least 2σ quality. Naturally, the 'eyes' are the only ones doing the work since the unwashed masses of the organization deem it 'not my yob mon' and expect results without the effort.


In closing, the most annoying thing for me on the website other than not knowing where the location is, is the Adobe Flash, flickering .gifs and/or marquee graphics. Annoying and childish to boot.

(PS. this happens on this forum too, I think).

Lawyers provide a professional service, as do skilled, talented web developers.

A lot of the problems that folks here mention are ones that crop up because of amateur web work. It works in the same way that having "someone's nephew" review a contract does.

Yes, many people can perform some of the tasks, but if you want real quality, you need to go to someone who knows what they're doing.

While I have very little experience in web design aside from perhaps being an admin on a railfan-based humor page on facebook, there are several things that are definite "don'ts" when it comes to designing a webpage.
http://starr.pausd.org/~lgoldman/webdes ... index.html

But I thought we were required by law to add animated GIFs of a choo-choo crossing the page to our websites.........



NOTE: I'M JOKING AND BEING SARCASTIC!!!! PLEASE STOP DOING THIS!!!!!!

That requirement has been noted and will be included in the next round of revisions... lol.

You pay a professional for professional-level results largely because they (supposedly, presumably, etc.) have the experience to know what works and what doesn't, and use that experience to present you with the best alternatives, or use the best options available out there to resolve your needs with the minimum or elimination of problems.

A professional photographer, for example, has all the lenses and flash gear at his disposal to handle every situation, from too many in the wedding party to the sudden rainstorm. The pro painter will tell you the walls need a coat of primer and that the centuries-old woodwork should be refinished instead of painted for best results. The pro artist can draw something better than a stick figure.

Ever been in a house with a horrible clash of furniture and decor, or eye-blistering color clashes in decor, into which they put much effort? Those poor folks simply can't tell how bad their choices are. They are to be pitied, not condemned.

In that spirit, I present another website that started as just mockery years ago, but gradually mutated into a VERY useful guide to avoiding problematic website design:

http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com

"Bad web design is like pornography—you know it when you see it. Unless the bad design is on your web site." Exactly. Just like you don't expect the state tourism consultant or county commissioner to understand why you run that expensive, difficult-to-maintain steam, you don't expect a gift shop manager to understand why the website designer is saying "for the love of Jobs, don't use those pop-ups!!!"

http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/bad-web-design.html

I regret to say that I just recognized one "worst of the year" nominee from past years as one done by a friend-of-a-friend--not a rail site, thankfully.

I used to worry about the design of www.steamlocomotive.info. I worried about its usability, its appearance, and an assortment of other things. Then I asked a web designer whose work I admired what it would cost to revamp the site. And he replied, "Much more than you'll want to spend. Why worry about it? It works."

And I accepted that.
WYSIWYG

Exactly, Steaminfo. Don't overthink it. Don't listen to these people who tell you your website is not complete until it has a bunch of bells and whistles that, gosh, they just happen to sell. Present company excepted, of course.

Look at two of the most popular AND useful sites on the Internet. Craigslist and Wikipedia. Or for that matter, RyPN.


Hear that? It's your old brick sized analog cell phone ringing. It's Geocities. They want their website back!


I just saw a great ad for a gaming school, "Choose your class". Instead of warrior, wizard and thief, the classes were Designer, Artist and Coder. Yeah, it's like that. Also with content expert (e.g. Owen Paulsen), writer (Sandy), photographer, video editor, social media specialist, integrator, SEO and promoter.

But you don't need all of them at the same time, or even very often. Design, art, coding, integration are one-time things. What makes your website a living, dynamic thing is content, and between your inhouse experts and writers, you can handle that. Adding content to a website isn't much harder than posting to RyPN.

Don't do like XXRM, where the track foreman's efforts to write a monthly blog resulted in the webmaster charging them $100 per "website change". Needless to say, he was in no hurry to recommend blog software! Typical "conflict of interest blindness" of a professional. Eventually the track foreman and other departments gave up, resulting in a stale, blogfaded site. Meanwhile, in Illionis… http://www2.irm.org/blogs/