10 Best Practices For a Better Website

Reposted from The SMB Research Blog…

Have you read enough pieces yet on what makes a great website?

You have probably seen quite a few articles and posts addressing this.  We here at SMB Research know we have seen a lot of material. (SMB Research includes at least one fairly good article on SMB Research’s Top 20 Favorite Reads of 2010.)

Many of these articles seem to take a cookie-cutter approach:  it should go without saying at this point that a website needs to have good navigation, and that a website needs a “Call to Action”.

We think there are a number of other critical website features and best practices that get too little attention.

Steal This Blog Content

SMB Research, where I spend much of my time these days, has now had our blog content illegally copied multiple times, and we are, sadly, hardly alone.  It seems apparent that too many people either do not bother to learn the ins and outs of intellectual property and copyright, and how to properly blog, before they start blogging, or people are so utterly incapable of creating their own website content and disrespectful of other people’s intellectual property that they simply covet and steal other people’s IP.

Passwords (Not) As Easy as 123

Wired’s Kim Zetter reports over at the Threat Level blog (“Most Common Hotmail Password Revealed!“) that “a researcher” did a study of the compromised Hotmail, MSN, Live.com passwords and found that “123456” was the most common password.

Are you kidding me?  C’mon people, we can do better than this. If this wasn’t so damn pathetic, it would be funny.

Boston Red Sox on Twitter

The Boston Red Sox may have gotten the better of the Baltimore Orioles this weekend, but the twitter bird is doing our beloved Boston Red Sox no favors.

LinkedIn Needs To Do Something With Groups

Of all the things that there are to like about LinkedIn (and there are many), LinkedIn’s groups and group discussions are not near the top.  I won’t pretend to know what is going on behind the scenes at LinkedIn, but I sincerely hope that someone there is looking at figuring out what LinkedIn users really want, and how to make groups and group discussions more attractive to and inviting to LinkedIn users.