Critique for Website of IBM

In the most of the web designers' thoughts, it's difficult to establish a fabulous web site. To assess whether a web site is good or bad, we often consider from the following strategy: purpose, information architecture, usability, design, quality, and the big picture.

IBM (International Business Machines Corporation) is a very popular company and it is a multinational computer technology and IT consulting corporation headquartered in United States. To know how good a web site should be for such a big company, we can start to look at its home page.

From my first impressions of IBM.COM, it tells me that the index of the IBM page, which includes all the supplies of IBM. However, without reading more about the page, if I am a person who does not have the knowledge of IBM, I will not know this web site is for a computer technology and IT consulting company.

1. Audience/Purpose
The primary audiences of the website is the people who wants to get help of computer technology or IT consultation, and the purpose of the site is to help the audiences to solve those problems. The audiences can find the technology they want to know and searching for the products. The website is trying to accomplish people to know how the products of IBM can help people get advantages of their IT life, and it enhances more people to use its products. It is an example of B2C (Business-to-Customer).

2. Information Architecture/Navigation
IBM’s website does a good job on the information architecture. The information of the whole page is organized very well. It sets the main navigation on the top of the page, and there are 6 categories in the navigation bar. The drop down menu help you get to where you want to go easily. In the middle of the page, there are some advertisements which advertise the ideas from IBM that can help you get a better life in IT field. Below the main navigation bar, they are the second level supplies which help you to learn more about the IT knowledge. At the bottom, they are extra help information. Overall, the architecture of this web site is findable and professional.

3.Usability
I have watched three of my friends used this site. Only one person could use the site flexible, and he was also the only one who is knowledgeable in IT technology. The other two took a little bit longer time to find the answers. As a result, the usability of a website is also depend on the different people, the knowledgeable IT people are always get easier to find what they want than the poor knowledge people in the website.

4. Construction and Design
The construction is complete and clear. It is a professional design. The pages are not luxuriance, but simple and explicit. The main color is deep blue and it makes the page looks comfortable. On the whole view, the design is appropriate for the target audiences.

5. Content Quality
The content in the site is brief and to the point. The content always lists the keywords first, and then the details. Moreover, the tone of the content is suited for the business.

6. The Big Picture
In conclusion, I think this is a good website because it does a good job on information architecture, construction, design and quality. For the usability, there may be too many information in the website, and it is a little bit difficult for the new users to find what they need. Instead, the words of the content are short, and they always point out the key ideas in a short word, so it helps to get back from lost.

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Web Content Mining

The meaning of web content mining:

Web content mining is the process to discover useful information from text, image, audio or video data in the web. Web content mining sometimes is called web text mining, because the text content is the most widely researched area. The technologies that are normally used in web content mining are NLP (Natural language processing) and IR (Information retrieval).

If you are interest in the WEB CONTENT MINING, here is an article to help you learn more!
Or you want to go to Wikipedia to see what is Web Mining .


Finding Web Content Mining Software

Good Web Content - Interesting

• Types of interesting content can include: telling a story, a reflection about how I helped a customer, feedback about a service or product and reference material that I have found useful
• Do not just provide dry information and facts on the page.
• Use humor and make yourself likable.
• Put yourself into your clients shoes and try write your content as if you were trying to convince yourself to buy.
• add some appropriate pictures
• updated regularly with information that your customers will find interesting

How to write effective web site headlines - Continue

The different between headlines and contents is that a good headlines should keep it simple and direct, but contents should be detailed.

• Use the active voice
• A “capital” idea: The first word in the head should be capitalized as should all proper nouns, but do not capitalize every word.
• To the left
• Present tense: do not make the readers confuse!
• Punctuation normal — mostly: Headline punctuation is normal with two significant exceptions: Use periods for abbreviations only, and use single quotes where you would use double quotes in a story.
• No “a” or “and” or “the”? Avoid the use of the articles a, an and the unless they are needed for clarity.
• Subject and verb, please: Don't write headlines in which nouns and verbs (other than “is” or “was”) are assumed. And don’t start a headline with a verb.

Examples:
Good Headlines: go to http://web.ku.edu/~edit/headgood.html
Problem Headlines: go to http://web.ku.edu/~edit/headproblem.html

Good Web Conent - Keywords & Phrases

A good web content is not only compelling, but also searchable. When you writing the web content you should know what are the keyphrases you are going to target. Search Engine Spider depend on the keywords and keyword phrases to find your site, and if you have not targeted specificly for your site, it's different for search engine users to find.

Brainstorm for Keywords and Phrases

keyword tool

• Digital Tracker Keyword Suggestion: Digital Tracker is absolutely invaluable.
• Free Keyword Suggestion Tool:Displays how many times a certain keyword was searched for in a given month. Shows all related searches for the entered keyword.
• Google Keyword Tool: "The Keyword Tool generates potential keywords for your ad campaigns and reports their Google statistics, including search performance and seasonal trends."

All of above help you get a clear idea that what keywords and phrases you can use in you web site.

where to put keywords?

As you got the basic keyword research started, you should know where is the best place to put thoes words.

• Title Tag: It's great to put the keywords in the title tag. The title tag consists of those words you see at the top of your browser window in the blue space, and it is what search engines grab for the title display in their search results
• Headline: The headline give the users first sence if they look the pages quickly. It's also the key for users get the main idea of the page. So, the headline is a good place to put your keywords.
• Content : This is the place you write the most amout of keywords, and the keywords support the main ideas of the content.
  

How to write effective web site headlines

1.Let the users to believe they go to the right place

When the users are linking a page, they want the page in the right place they are looking for, and especially for the new visitors. Therefore, headlines give users the best answers. Matching the headline to the reader's expection is a powerful way to hold users attention, and to drive them to continue read the page.

2. Make the reader feel good and want to continue

Headlines not only to give the readers ideas of the content of the page, but also has to make a "sale". So, it should not just be attractive, also has to selling the readers on the benefits of reading the page, and promote them willing to read continued.

3. Appeal to the search engines

Writing good headlines is one of the most effective factors that help you web site appeal to the search engines. There is no reason not to write a "good" headline to enhance the possibility of search. Now, what's a "good: headline mean? It means your headlines should covering the most relevant and profitable keywords and phrases, and that are the key points to help you get "good" headlines.

4.Satisfy the needs of the company or organization

Sometimes the web site is for the readers, otherwise, the web site represent the company. If it is for company or organization, the headline need to be written in a commercial style. Also it should become a powerful advertisement. Make sure no errors in it!