CIL 2012 Day 1 - 7 Essential Elements for an Awesome Website

My first session of this conference was a presentation by David Lee King of the Topeka & Shawnee Public Library.  Mr. King is well respected and has published books on library topics and I've seen him speak before, so I was interested in what he'd have to say about the essential elements of an "awesome" website.

Here are the 7 essential elements King presented:

1. Customers want something to read, watch, & listen to when they visit the library. The real goals of users isn't to read about services, but to use them. Give your users something to do: provide ebooks, engage in social media, blogs, social book reviews, podcasts, videos.
   
   
2. Customers have questions and ask at the library. Spark (open source) instant message/chat messaging. Add Facebook & Twitter to the contact us section.
   
3. Customers need to know the normal stuff too. Address, contact, hours, phone.  Put these on every page in a consistent location.
   
4. Websites need actual staff. We wouldn't get volunteers to do a building addition, so we shouldn't use them to maintain or develop the website.
   
5. Have goals! (Here King provided a Venn diagram showing happiness at the intersection of Library Goals and Geek Goals). Develop goals for the digital branch/website. Measure success.
   
6. Reach beyond your webbish boundaries. Go where people gather (social media sites your users frequent). Find out if people are using Pinterest and establish a pilot project and see if there is interest. If no one is using it in 6 months, kill it. If it's getting use, expand it. Meet up with people in person as well. Topeka has an unconference where they invite people from the community.
   
7. Be mobile friendly. (Topeka is using Boopsie, although King also suggested designmodo.com/responsive-design-examples/) Brainstorm first before attacking mobile. Consider what people will want to do. “What's missing? Send a suggestion”

To wrap up King showed a sign that he saw at a Disney store saying (something to the effect of) “For an additional selection of [products we sell] visit our website.”  King mentioned that what this really means is "you can't see everything we sell by coming to the store, our website needs to be used if you want to see it all", or in short “the reality of our business is the website.”  I thought that this was a powerful realization and sentiment.  Excellent talk.