About the book

Web Strategy for Everyone on Ipad Mini“Highly recommended for anyone working with strategic web matters for medium to large companies and businesses.”

– Anders Lövkvist, Brand Manager at RLVNT Distribution

This is the book focusing on the necessary skills of developing, and taking care of websites. What you need to know to work more strategic with your website. The introduction reflects the Web’s history and how it connects to the web we see today. Followed by what ought to be common knowledge on information architecture, such as tagging, metadata, digital asset management, URL strategy and the like.

Obviously, web design strategies are discussed at length, including responsive web design and how to design with persuasiveness. Next to last topic on how to optimize the performance of a website and last but certainly not least, the do-it-yourself section where you can test a variety of quality factors of your site based on usability, search engine optimization and more.

Originally, the book were written in Swedish, which, compared to most American books on the subject, is more condense. More knowledge and insight, less repetition, or waffling. But don’t worry, we hired a professional language firm to proof-read the entire book. Therefore, you’re not supposed to make judgements on the book’s contents from blog posts or the texts of this website – fortunately.

Where to buy the book

Buy the book at Intranätverk – starting at just 99 SEK + VAT (about 10 $ or €) ›

Also available as a Kindle-edition at Amazon ›

Facts about Web Strategy for Everyone

About the publisher Intranätverk

Intranätverk is a small independent publisher of books mainly on the topics of intranets, governance and web development. They also organize conferences and networking in Scandinavia.

Check out intranatverk.se ›

About the author

Marcus Österberg has worked with the Web in one form or another since 1998. In all kind of professional roles with web as a prefix. Web designer, web application developer, web editor-in-chief, web analyst, web strategist, web evangelists, and some to which not worth to remember.

During these years, Marcus have worked as a consultant, teacher, and client. In the private and the public sector. In addition to this, up until 2009 he had his own company developing and managing a, for that point in time, relatively large website he had developed over a number of years.

On countless occasions, Marcus’ colleagues and managers jokingly (?) said that he ought to write his own gospel so that they could take on some of his ideas when they had the time. Especially considering that, sometimes, his point came across after he moved on to another job.

This is that book. The book that makes you well prepared to run into Marcus in a work situation. To know what his agenda is, and your chance to prepare your counterarguments 🙂

Order the book at Intranätverk – starting at just 99 SEK ≈ 10 $ + VAT ›

Web Strategy for Everyone’s Table of Contents

  • Before we begin
    • Why you should read this book
    • About me
  • The Web’s history and future
    • Web 1.0 – a network of documents
    • Characteristics of Web 1.0
    • Web design 1.0
    • Web 2.0 – the engaging web
    • Characteristics of Web 2.0
    • Web design 2.0
    • Web 3.0 – a network of data (also known as the semantic web)
    • Characteristics of Web 3.0
    • Web design 3.0
  • Information architecture
    • Content choreography
    • Examples of poor content choreography
    • Master Data Management prevents unnecessary duplication
    • The importance of marking up information with metadata
    • Metadata specification makes your data more standardized and interchangeable
    • Controlled vocabulary
    • Folksonomy
    • Architecture using APIs and open data
    • Public APIs, open data and the PSI Act
    • Background to the European Union’s PSI Act
    • Some take issue with the PSI Act – cumbersome access to data
    • What then is open data?
    • The benefits of an API for a startup business or when building anew
    • Design a public API with the developers’ experience in mind
    • Friendly terms and a free license
    • No surprising the developers with unforeseen breaking changes
    • Provide data in the expected format and in suitable bundles
    • Error handling and dimensioning of the service
    • Provide code samples and showcase success stories
    • Promote via data markets and API directories
    • What is the quality of data needed?
    • Microdata – semantically defined content
    • So, what is the problem?
    • The potential of semantic information
    • Microdata standards such as Schema.org and Microformats
    • Digital Asset Management (and Adaptive Content)
    • Adaptive Content
    • Image and media banks in your publishing system
    • Personalization of information
    • URL strategy for dummies
    • Common excuses for breaking established URLs
    • Ok, how to then?
  • Web design
    • Gov.uk design principles
    • Start with needs
    • Do less
    • Design with data
    • Do the hard work to make it simple
    • Iterate. Then iterate again.
    • Build for inclusion
    • Understand context
    • Build digital services, not websites
    • Be consistent, not uniform
    • Make things open: it makes things better
    • Keep it simple, stupid – KISS
    • Do not break the web
    • Persuasive web designs (PWD) – design that convinces
    • Be clear in everything
    • Be very careful of what is the default setting
    • Visual hierarchy is important
    • Focus on the common goal you and your visitor have
    • Try not to overexert your users’ attention
    • Responsive web design
    • The mobile moment
    • The elements of responsive web design
    • Arguments for responsive web design
    • Notes on responsive construction
    • Responsive typography
    • RESS – Responsive Server Side
    • Adaptive web design
    • Design with data – a data first-approach
    • Get started with design with data
    • What you know about your visitors
    • Continuous A / B testing
    • Examples of A / B tests for monitoring the website, and other communications
    • Mobile first
    • Mobile first vs. responsive web
    • The mobile opportunity
    • Mobile restrictions
    • The mobile moment – when mobile users are in the majority
    • SPA – Single Page Application
    • Design of SPA websites
    • Challenges of SPA
    • Web standards, and usability
    • Progressive enhancement and graceful degradation
    • Usability vs. accessibility
    • Gamified design
    • Design and plan for errors that will occur
    • Your website is a magazine, not a book!
  • Web performance
    • Planning for the unplanned
    • Performance optimization of databases, web servers and content management systems
    • General troubleshooting
    • Planning for high load – use cache!
    • Content Networks (CDN – Content Delivery Network)
    • Databases
    • Web servers, content management, own source code and external dependencies
    • Measuring and improving interface performance from the user’s perspective
    • Helpful tools
    • Editorial performance impact
    • Technical settings for performance
    • Recoup an investment in web performance – is it possible?
  • Test your own website
    • How to document your test
    • SEO
    • Indexable for search engines
    • Duplicate content
    • Page title’s length is under 60 characters
    • Page title is readable and understandable in the search engine results page
    • Page title contains relevant keywords that describe the page
    • Correct headings are used
    • Search engine friendly URLs
    • Descriptive text on all important pages
    • Reasonable number of links
    • Pictures have alternative texts
    • Structured description of the information
    • Web analytics
    • Current visitor tracking scripts
    • Tracks the use of website search
    • Performance
    • Reasonable time for loading the page
    • Compression of text files
    • Usage of the browser cache
    • Scripts and style sheets are sent in a compact format
    • Images are optimized for fast transfer
    • Reasonable number of background images, scripts and stylesheets
    • Requesting files and pages that do not exist
    • Minimal amount of scripts and CSS in page code
    • Images are not scaled down using CSS or HTML
    • Identical files are not referenced
    • Reasonable amount of scripts in the page head
    • Content networks are used when necessary
    • Accessibility and Usability
    • Website validates the chosen code standard
    • Using correct header structure
    • Anchor-texts are descriptive
    • Link titles not used for non-essential information
    • Favorite icon is present
    • Possible to navigate with keyboard
    • Texts are written to be read by a human – not with exaggerated SEO
    • Language set in the source code
    • Not depending on browser features
    • Specifies image sizes in HTML
    • Works with and without the www prefix
    • Only one domain is used for the website
    • RSS subscriptions can be detected
    • Useful error pages
    • No surprises when scrolling
    • Enough distance between links, buttons, etc.
    • Acceptable text size
    • Zoomable, also on mobile
    • Icons for the website
    • Useable printouts
    • Others
    • Forms and other sensitive information is sent through a secure channel
  • Tips on in-depth reading
  • Sources & references
  • Thanks goes out to…