New and Featured Content

Choose the Correct Content

Try and put yourself in the mind of the people who come to your site. Ask yourself if the content or news you want to feature is beneficial to them. There are times when the goals of your site will supercede the needs of the user, but in most cases featured content should be of some benefit to them. If you are just featuring something to please one stakeholder, my advice is to talk to them and not feature that on the homepage.

Proper Placement of Featured Content

Depending on the type of site you have, featured content and news will vary in importance. How important this content is to your users and yourself should determine where the content, or links to the content in most cases, is placed. Take care to not overwhelm the homepage with features and news. That is unless yours is a news and feature heavy site, ala CNN.

Your features should be easily accessible, yet not interfere in anyway with the framework of the site. You need to take special care not to hinder your users getting to what they want. If possible your features should be designed into the homepage from the start, not designed around or added after the fact.

Master Blurb and Link Title Writing

Most likely your news or features will consist of a link with a short blurb if needed. You should keep these as brief as possible. Try to be descriptive, using keywords that will lead your user to where they want to go. If you are running a special on tennis shoes and want to feature that, make sure you include the words “tennis shoes” in the title of your link.

If you do need to talk a bit more about what is behind the link, try your best to keep it to one very short paragraph. This can be difficult, but do your best. Less is more in this case.

Separate Different Kinds of Features

Keep different types of features in different areas. If you have daily news, press releases and running spotlights for instance, try your best not to lump them all together in the same spot. This can become very frustrating, as users won’t be able to tell what they are getting. If you have to do this make sure and design some sort of label or identifier for your features. That way a user can tell if she is going to get a press release or a “blue light” special. Good link titles can help here as well.

Add Dates Wherever Possible

Last, but not least, make sure and add dates to your news and feature items. This is especially true if you have many return visits. People need to know what is new to them, and by adding a date they can easily filter out what they may have seen before.

There are some types of features that don’t work well with posted on dates. Thing that need to be updated and over arching feature content come to mind. If it doesn’t make sense try and use some kind of “last updated” date or if that doesn’t make sense, set the feature apart.

Be Flexible

This isn’t an exact science, and what works for one site might not work with yours. Try different treatments and see what works. Take the time to ask your users what they like and don’t like and be willing to change direction.