Websites are living, breathing and need to be fed

To remain the premiere source of information and knowledge on a given topic, managers of web technologies are increasingly recognizing that their websites need to be living, dynamic tools which must be “fed” very regularly with the best and most current information.

These websites must be so useful to visitors by allowing efficient access and discovery such that their audiences and stakeholders continually want to return to retrieve information or offer new information to keep the website populated, dynamic and continually living, taking in and breathing out new knowledge and insight.

Finding and accessing website content

There are three fundamental ways that people find information and reports on a website:

1. By Navigation, i.e. a website's information architecture
2. By search
3. By an A-Z index

The secret is to ensure each one is properly configured and optimized.

One of the best search panels I have ever seen was used by the Centre of Disease Control (CDC) in the US.  I had the privilege of creating a search panel for another client pictured here and used some of the basis of the CDC's usability research into search best practices to create it: