Usability Will Be The Focus in 2008

When you are the only person working on a website you are required to wear lots of hats (i.e. Webmaster, Product Manager, QA, Customer Service, etc.). When you wear all these hats at the same time it is very easy to get off track in terms of development.

Coding is done by the seat of your pants and what gets your precious few hours each day is usually decided by what sounds cool or what you feel like working on at that moment. This means that areas truly needing your attention can easily be overlooked. For years I've added a lot of new areas to TrailCentral, but it has come to a point where the number of hours I dedicate to the site does not allow me to properly maintain them all.

Well, in 2008, that is going to change a bit.

During the winter months I will be spending a lot of hours on TrailCentral. That time will not be dedicated to new development. Instead I'll be looking back at what I've created and work to make it better.

Making it better may come in different forms. In order to make some things better I may need to re-write the code or it may mean that I have to remove an entire section of the website. Don't worry, I won't be doing this willy-nilly, but with a close eye on usability.

For instance, when looking at TrailCentral analytics I can easily see a trend. Visitors really enjoy the trail information on TrailCentral.com. However, uploading photos does not interest them much. So my initial reaction is to spend time making my trail pages and GPS maps as usable as possible and possibly removing the photo gallery. Truth be told, I've had this goal for a while and I have already started to make changes.

I'm taking a much different approach to my development this year and I'm really looking forward to the end result. I truly think by the end of 2008 I will have a paired down version of TrailCentral, which is incredibly interesting, and more importantly; relevant and usable.

The way I figure it; I can create a good website that covers many areas or I can have a great website that focuses on a couple areas. I choose the latter and will post to this blog many of the changes you will see in the days/weeks/months to come.

Happy 2008!