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This question recently came up in a conversation about a credit union website. So my simple question, in reply, is this:

What if instead of looking for zany animations, a website that plays rock music, or any other of the latest hippest coolest fads…what if the “wow factor” was that your credit union’s site was accessible and easy to use?

If you’re designing a site, or managing the process, ask yourself why your users are coming to your site. Make that experience as close to perfection as possible. Businesses who pay a mind to solid user-experience – scannable content, attractive design that looks consistent across browsers, simple navigation, copywriting that sounds like a human – these are the Wow Factor.

And here’s another question that tends to come up in tandem with the former: “What do young people want in a web site?” As a young person, I can say this: We are impatient. We want what we want, and we want it now. We do not want to have to wade through all the fluff that you think is “neat” to get to the bottomline.

I hereby rename the traditional “Wow Factor” the “Neat Factor.” Because that’s what happens, users will say “oh that’s neat,” and then go back to wanting your site to just work right, please.

If you haven’t yet read Dave Armano’s BusinessWeek article, “It’s the Conversation Economy, Stupid,” kindly stop what you’re doing, take the phone off the hook, give the kids some Benedryl, and do so.

Here’s a taste:

One of the engines that is driving “2.0” growth is the fact that communities are forming around popular social platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, Ning, Twitter‚Äîthe list goes on and on. These platforms facilitate conversation. Conversation leads to relationships and relationships lead to affinity.

Brand affinity, as companies such as Harley-Davidson (HOG) have proven, often drives communities to form around them. This is why anyone who plays a role in branding needs to become a conversation architect. Marketers, businesses, and designers must have an intimate understanding of how these platforms are evolving and influencing human behavior. There has to be an in-depth understanding of why some us of love to incorporate these services in our digital lives.

I like that Armano emphasizes people over platforms. It’s very easy to get caught up in technological possibilities while not paying due diligence to the conversations you’re working to incite. Each social media platform enables conversation in a very specific way, and none of them work independently.

As a business, before blogging or Twittering or Yelping or any of these other verbs that didn’t exist a few years ago, don’t stop with the knowledge that these create dialogue. Understand how and why as well.

I just received this email from Apple:

Apple TV is here, and podcasts are making a big move into the living room. We want all of them to look as good as possible, so we have three video formatting recommendations for you…

Recommendations for Formatting Video Podcasts

1. If you’re encoding your video podcast at 320×240, please increase the resolution to either 640×480 or 640×360 (depending on the aspect ratio of your source files). Why? Because video podcasts at this resolution look great on Apple TV and still port to video iPods. Lower resolution podcasts might also work on both platforms, but they don’t look nearly as good on a widescreen TV. As always, make sure to test any encoding changes you make to ensure device compatibility. QuickTime 7.1’s “Export to iPod” function will ensure that a video file is encoded at a width of 640 and is iPod-compatible.

2. It’s best not to create two different podcast feeds for different resolutions. By doing so, you dilute the popularity of your podcast and reduce exposure in our charts. It’s better to have one feed high in the charts than two that are lower.

3. If your source files are 16:9, stick with that aspect ratio. Don’t add letterboxing to make them 4:3. By doing so, you prevent the video from expanding to fill a 16:9 widescreen TV and instead end up with black space on all four sides. Also, your original source files should be at least 640 pixels wide.

Of course these are just recommendations. We understand that there are good reasons for 320×240 (bandwidth bills) and 720p (looks fantastic). Do whatever makes the most sense for your show. For more information on formatting video, see the recently updated spec:

http://www.apple.com/itunes/store/podcaststechspecs.html

Podcasts are no longer handcuffed to computer screens and ipods. Now anyone with a camera, a computer, and a great idea can be broadcast on TV sets in living rooms globally.

If you’re considering getting into video podcasting, keep these specs in mind as you produce your show. Television-accessibility opens up a lot of doors for podcasting, and will help bring it even more into the media big leagues.

What’s more, online communities are creating entertainment together. Check out this fantastic piece of kids’ programming that Charlie is working on with the Vimeo community:

We live in a time where you can create your own TV show with people thousands of miles away that you’ve never met and distribute it to audiences across the globe. Heck. Yes.

Media consumption and interaction are no longer linear. What in the world does that mean? I’ll tell you -

With the accessibility of on-demand media, it means that from the content-producer perspective, time is no longer a huge factor in consumption. To use our own Matt Dean as an example, it means that he doesn’t watch The Office on TV at 7:30 on Thursdays. He downloads it through iTunes and watches it whenever he pleases.

Meanwhile, consumers themselves are creating distribution channels through blogs, podcasts, bittorrent networks, text messages, YouTube, water-cooler conversations, the effects of links on search engine results, and a slew of other things I haven’t thought of. The majority of this consumer generated content is on-demand too.

Because of this, communications do not move along a specified path, they bounce around willy-nilly. Marketers, this is especially important to you because you can no longer think in terms of top-down distribution for your marketing. When you speak, it’s important to understand (and capitalize on) the channels that message will fly through.

We’ll call this “sideways marketing,” and it involves viewing and reaching consumers by recognizing their distribution channels, and making yourself accessible and deliverable through those.

A few examples

Campbell-Ewald’s Chief Contact Officer (cool title) Ed Dilworth (less cool name) gave a session at ad:tech entitled “Navigating the Current of Participatory Communication” that broke down how his firm was flipping clients on their sides.

For their clients, it means everything from setting up corporate blogs to asking consumers to create an ‘07 Super Bowl spot to setting up farmer’s markets throughout the U.S.

Separately, Jay-Z and Coca-Cola distributed a live performance video, embedded with promotions for Coke, through illegal file-sharing networks. Jay-Z’s stereotypically-named lawyer, Mike Guido, said this about the strategy:

“The concept here is making the peer-to-peer networks work for us. While peer-to-peer users are stealing the intellectual property, they are also the active music audience…this technology allows us to market back to them.”

On your own site

Because many search results point directly to internal site pages, the homepage is less significant. People are gaining sideways entry into your site, and your design should reflect this. Embrace this by:

• Tracking the search results that are pointing people to your site using tools like Mint.
• Tracking which internal pages are receiving the most traffic.
• Making sure your internal pages have calls to action and links that cross pollinate the rest of the site.
• Design a clear information architecture that is easily navigable even in the deepest reaches of your site.

Listen

Step one in all of this is to listen to and understand your consumer. How else can you understand how they’re communicating, where they’re creating content, and how they’re accessing and redistributing yours? Once you understand this, it’s simply a matter of working with them.

Web accessibility involves making sure your website is usable by anyone and everyone, especially those with disabilities. With such a broad and sometimes overwhelming spectrum to consider, including screen reader accommodation for the blind and speech recognition compliance for those who can’t use a mouse or keyboard, accessibility can be a very difficult thing to assess.

Web standards, accessibility, and usability specialist Roger Johansson has recently released part one of a three-part series explaining how to make your site the most usable for the widest audience.

From his introduction:

Many people, web developers as well as website owners, are new to website accessibility and find it difficult to evaluate. This three-part article series is intended to make it easier for non-experts to perform a basic accessibility check. I hope it will be helpful enough to make at least a few websites more accessible.

If you’re interested in allowing your site the farthest possible reach, but aren’t sure where to start, this series of articles is definitely worth checking out. Visit the link below for the full article:

Evaluating Website Accessibility Part 1, Background and Preparation