Yes, today is a great day. For several reasons. Not only is it two years ago, the Swedish original edition got released, but also that the English book is released – Web Strategy for Everyone. The icing on the cake, May 17 is also the neighboring country, Norway’s, national day which makes this date quite easy to remember.
You can lay you hands on the e-book today, it is sent to you shortly after you check out your order. The printed book, though, will take a few weeks before it is sent. The e-book’s formats are ePub, PDF and Mobi, they cover virtually all mobile phones and tablets, and Mobi is specifically for you with an Amazon Kindle. If you’re looking for a different format I can recommend that you download the program Calibre, then you can convert to many more formats yourself.
The best offer is, I think, to purchase both the e-book and the printed book. It costs about 25 $ + VAT. Then you get 90% discount on the e-book.
Order the book at Intranätverk – from 10 $ + VAT ›
What is Web Strategy for Everyone covering?
It is 60,000 words and 80 pictures spread over 212 pages. The amount of images and the layout makes it not so burdensome to read, like many other similar books. At the same time it is written in a very ”condensed” manner and to the point, so it’s like most Swedish literature – rarely repeating itself over and over again. Or, as one reader put it:
”Recently read your book and it is an achievement how much value you have managed to put between the covers. Very good!”
– Håkan Liljeqvist, founder at Kreejt
The subject of the book may seem obvious given the title, but at the same time there is no real definition for what is meant by ’web strategy’. So I chose to make the book to cover the fundamentals in many areas a web strategist must know about. Partly, the Web’s history, a lot on information architecture, different approaches to web design, some about the increasingly hyped topic of web performance and last a do-it-yourself with hygiene factors to check on your own website.
Not just a translation from the Swedish original
The book is not really just a translation of my Swedish book. The English book has more international image examples and it turned out to be unexpectedly many cultural references that non-Swedes would hardly understand. So pretty much of the book is rewritten for an international audience.
Interestingly, several Swedish friends and acquaintances are waiting to buy the English book, despite the fact that the second edition of the Swedish book have been out for several months. Many Swedes, myself included, are probably more used to read in English and may have more benefit of an English version when in a multilingual business environment.
Better English in the book compared to what I write in the blog
A first turn of the translation work was done by a Englishman who is very knowledgeable in web development and intranets. After that, a language agency also had their way with the book to raise the quality even further.
Needless to say, my publisher has really invested in the book and I think it’s going to be great even for you guys having English as you with English or American as your native language. For obvious reasons we can not afford to make the same effort with every blog post I write in this blog, so do not be too quick to review its language if you find peculiarities in my blog posts.
Table of Contents
Since we’re not going to judge a book by it’s cover over the Internet I’ll share the ToC. Perhaps this content gives you an idea if you’d make use of reading the book.
- 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…
Check out the Web Strategy for Everyone by the publisher Intranätverk. It costs from 10 $ + VAT ›