Web 2.0 Ideas for Canvas website

18May08

After analysing the ‘web 2.0′ ideas of The Times Online, I have developed some ideas on how we can make the features of web 2.0 be beneficial to our own Canvas website. I feel the benefits of web 2.0 – community, interactivity, accessibility, customisation, feedback – are essential for a website that targets students, and the implementation of these ideas could be the major factor in gauging how successful our site will be.

Possible web 2.0 ideas include: RSS Feeds, Flash, Comments, Blogs, E-mail & text alerts, Social bookmarking and Multimedia.

RSS Feeds

We could incorporate RSS feeds along the sidebar that are relative to each section, i.e. student news, sports news, entertainment news etc. In terms of having our own feeds, I think it would be good, but only appropriate if we updated content daily. If we were to stick to our original plan which was to update the site weekly, then users who would want to check for new content could simply check each week, rather than subscribe to a feed which they would ideally want to check daily. If implemented however, the feeds would help to keep users coming back to the site. One lesson learnt from my analysis of The Times site would be to stick to the conventional ‘orange feed icon’ and put it in a prominent place, to make it clear and accessible for users.

Flash

We decided as a group that we would use a flash sideshow on the homepage under the ‘Your Union’ section in the sidebar. A picture gallery of student pics will grab users’ attention as soon as they hit the site. Flash could also be used to create ‘photo-essay’ style features and to make a scrolling headline of latest news at the top of the page. The general benefit of using flash would be that it makes the site more attractive and student orientated.

Comments

It would be useful to incorporate comment boxes at the end of each news piece or feature. Allowing comments gives users a chance to give feedback to the articles and feel part of the Canvas community. This increased interactivity may also keep them coming back to the site. It would make sense not to have a forum for commenting, as this would be hard to maintain. By keeping all comments on the corresponding content pages, it can be easily managed and ensure all comments are associated with the article. Obviously this feature is open to abuse, so a form and a regulator are needed.

Blogs

I feel blogs can be extremely useful to our site, and possibly deserved a section of their own. There could be a blog for each section that is updated once in the middle of each week, half-way between update days, e.g. if we update content on a Friday, then post on the blogs on the Tuesday. They could be used to comment on latest issues/events/stories for each section, or as a personal thing to let users know how working on the site is going in, possibly acting as a preview to the ‘new content’. Targeting Farnham students specifically, we could ask each course to run their own course blog, which we could then link to from the site. The blogs would now have to be accessed on the sidebar. There is also a possibility of including a collection of user generated blogs, akin to Comment is Free, on Guardian Unlimited. We could have a blog section homepage linked from the homepage sidebar, and section specific blogs linked to from each section homepage. I would suggest hosting the blogs on external blogging platforms such as wordpress or typepad and linking to these. The benefits of adding blogs would be to generate more interest, more debate.

Social Bookmarking

We could make use of bookamarking, as it could seriously increase traffic to our site. Based on the assumption that the content is good enough to want to share to others and that our users would be bothered to bookmark it, it could help us reach a different user that may not have visited our site. People can use sites like del.icio.us to search for specific content, such as sport or entertainment news in Surrey and be directed to our site, where they may have previously just visited the Surrey Ad website. It could be an idea to focus social bookmarking efforts on content that we think would be worthwhile.

E-mail and text alerts

Obviously the amount of content on the site currently does not warrant this treatment. However, if it was updated regularly, an e-mail updating students on the latest content could be worthwhile. Thinking of UCCA student specifically, an all-campus email could be sent around letting students know what is new on the site, and could link out directly to the site. This would help generate more traffic, and be an excellent way of retaining readers.

Multimedia

Multimedia is one of the main benefits of accessing news content online. By adding audio, podcasts, embedded video and flash, we can re-purpose material from the newspaper and make it worth reading online again, or even better for a first time reader. As a group we decided that a Canvas Podcast would be appropriate, and this could be linked to from the homepage. Embedded video and audio could be place in the sidebar to compliment re-purposed or original copy, and increase interactivity on our site.

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