Good grief. ... Here's another one of my perennial complaints.
I wound up on the site of
The Truth, a newspaper that operates
the site
etruth.com. Pretty standard site.
But where the heck is it?
The name of the newspaper doesn't tell me. The site doesn't tell
me. The "current weather" webcam doesn't, either. (It's probably downtown
somewhere. But where?) Why on earth should any site keep secret where it's
located?
It's typical of a newspaper mindset -- assuming that visitors to
our website know where they are. I didn't; I hit the site with a link from
a Google News alert that -- as it turns out -- identified the site as the
Elkhart Truth, from Elkhart, Indiana. But on the site itself, I clicked on
at least six pages before I found a "clue" -- and it was merely a clue --
that the schools listed were in Indiana, primarily Elkhart. (Even on the
"contact" screen, the street and mailing addresses are "below the fold," and
I didn't think to scroll to find them.)
Please, please, please: Make sure users of your site can tell
where it's located, or what "community of interest" it represents, if it's
not a geographic site. ("The best place for news on smokers' rights" or
"Everything you ever wanted to know about knitting.")
And while you're at it, remember that "yesterday," "today," and "tomorrow"
work on the Web only if the article or item is accompanied by a date.
Every newspaper online needs to add their city, state, and...
