Copacetic

Knocked this search engine up for a previous post. It searches all the government websites an Entrepreneur might be interested in.

I love EI and both the development advisors I have had have been super, BUT, the web site still sucks. It has always sucked. Why does it suck? Because instead of being organised around customers needs (i.e. the Irish Entrepreneur) it is organised around EI’s needs to publish information on web.

So ten tips for EI to make its web site better,

1. Make it Social: Give you HPSUs a login and create a social network around startups in Ireland. Only you know about all of us. Better still start something on Ning or Facebook or Google Groups
2. Add a Blog: Add an Blog and RSS feed for breaking news that way everybody gets the news rather than the select few who make it through the venn diagram nightmare of EI mailing lists
3. Give Me The Money: We want your advice for sure, but first we want your money Rapid front page “give me the money links” would take visitors right to the core of the matter, CORD, Innovation Vouchers, RTI, Equity Investment, Seed Capital and BES
4. Search more than your Site: Put up a decent search engine that links all the relevant resources. Here’s one I made in ten minutes, Government Websites for Irish Entrepreneurs
5. Automated Mailing Lists: Using a mailing list manager so when I register interest I can also unregister interest without requiring some manual step to remove me from the list. And, wait for it, let me choose what I’m interested in
6. Show us the World: EI has fantastic resources overseas lets seem them on the web site, how do we engage with these people, what can they do for us?
7. Share the Success: EI runs great events all over the world, lets hear about them online
8. IE is not the only browser: Make it look right in Firefox, this is not rocket science lads. 90% of your visiting customers are using Firefox and the rest are using Safari
9. Word is a proprietary format: Stop publishing documents in MS Word. There are far better and more palatable alternatives including OpenOffice, PDF, HTML etc. etc. How long before somebody publishes a new document in Office 2007 and all us poor saps with Office 2003 get screwed?
10. Pick One: Pick any one of these and run with it, then ignore the rest for now

How would you improve the Enterprise Ireland web site?

BTW: All this goes double for the Irish Software Association Web site!

PutPlace is delighted to nominated in the category “Best New Web Application/Service“. There are some excellent competitors out there.

The other nominees are,

• Pix.ie
• Locle
• Mortgages and Loans
• Nooked
• Our Memory Of
• BookMeetingRoom.com
• Next Action
• Url.ie
• LouderVoice
• Twitterfone
• Zignals
• eWrite
• Album Shopper
• Edenbee
• PropertySwap.ie
• Poll Daddy
• Decisions For Heroes

I personally use several of these applications so I look forward to finding out the winner.

This particular award is Sponsored by InterTrade Ireland and their Seedcorn Competition.

All the other categories and nominees can be found at the Official Irish Web Awards web site.