website.qxd  4/9/2003  11:52 AM  Page 22

Website Development & Hosting

a

Use  reputation  management  to  predict  who  will  write  the  best  contributions.  If

somebody  was  highly  rated  in  the  past,  then  their  new  material  deserves  featured

placement. 

a

Simply highlight the most popular items in a list that is sorted by another criterion.

a

On slowly changing pages, mark new items with a little  new  glyph. This is not necessary

on pages that change all the time (say, newspaper homepages) since the assumption is that

most items will be new on such pages. 

There are two main types of prioritisation: 

1.

In lists of items, make sure the ones the user is most likely to want come out on top or

stand out. 

2.

Content that is deep within the site sometimes needs to be brought out and featured at

higher levels to make users understand what s new or hot. 

The goal is to give users more of what they need. And easier access to what they need. This is

not always the same as giving people what they want.

Copyright  NESIS 2002

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