Devices challenge accessibility
iPhones, laptops, PDAs, cell phones, PCs… the internet is now truly ubiquitous. No matter where you go, the web always seems to be right at your fingertips.
But for professional communicators, the rapid proliferation of web-accessible devices can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the public’s increased access to the internet can lead to more visitors to your website and thus a better return on your investment. On the other, the complexity of maintaining a consistent customer experience and brand identity across a growing number of platforms can quickly sap your resources and become a cumbersome burden.
For many organizations, there is no easy answer. Communicators will need to find a comfortable balance between maintaining an easily-accessible website and managing the host of other web priorities that drive their traffic and achieve their objectives.
Regardless of your current strategy, we have noticed a few trends that we’ve picked up from leading websites:
- Keep it simple: Don’t let your website get bogged down with long passages of text or huge pdf files. Remember that people may be accessing your site with different download speeds, screen colour capabilities, and data plans, so try to stick to simple text and lots of white space to enhance ease-of-use.
- Know your audience: While this may be a ‘no-brainer’ for most, it’s easy to get caught up in hype (or simply the desire to demonstrate your innovation to the world), and lose sight of the basic characteristics of your audience. Use your website metrics to understand how your most frequent visitors – or most valuable customers – access your site, and concentrate on improving their experience first.
- Seek value opportunities: Regardless of their popularity, many new technologies and devices perform unique functions that can greatly enhance your message. Try gauging the added effect of incorporating tools such as interactive charts, streaming video and real-time updates to illustrate your point and add value.
- Leverage free apps: Rather than spending lots of time and money deploying video functionality or other cool applications, consider harnessing existing free sites such as YouTube or Twitter to perform some of those functions. Not only are they extremely cost-effective, but they can also gain much wider viewership than your corporate site alone.
At the end of the day, it all comes back to the basic fundamentals of communications: know your audience, how to reach them, and what matters really matters to them. If you always keep that in mind, you can’t go wrong.
Devices challenge accessibility is one of our Top 10 Communications Issues for 2010. Next week we’ll look at #3 – Websites that work.
