Ten Ways to Improve the Enterprise Ireland Web Site

~ Joe

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!

Published by Joe

Senior Director of Developer Relations, MongoDB

9 thoughts on “Ten Ways to Improve the Enterprise Ireland Web Site”

  1. Events events events. I want a multitude of different ways of knowing about all of them. RSS, iCal, Upcoming.org. Google Calendar etc etc.

    I shouldn’t have to go looking to see what’s coming up and I shouldn’t need my D.A. to let me know about important ones or have EI staff being used up sending email reminders to thousands of people.

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  2. On a personal level, I think that you could add a few more ideas to the list

    – There should have more information about client companies i.e. if Putplace is EI supported, the it should be profiled and linked to from the EI site (another boost for the credibility / Google page rank)

    – I’d extend your comment about search engines, but bring it down to a sector level; you only want to see information relevant to your area and the stage in your companies development.

    I would have added Event RSS feeds, but Conor beat me to it 🙂

    Paul

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  3. Just as a quick response, I know that a group of Ireland’s top “web guys” (you know who you are!) have been brought in to review and create a strategy for the site. I expect great things….

    Also on a personal level, just in response to (1) above Joe, there is an existing extranet facility on the site, which could easily be built on to deliver the services you’ve mentioned.

    Dave

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  5. Well this is a start and Zircol allows irish entrepreneurs to setup their own social networks a bit like facebook groups but without all the vampire chumps.

    http://www.enterprise-ireland.zircol.com

    The objective of this network is to improve online connectedness between the ICT industry and the scientists and teams carrying out funded ICT research in Irish Academic institutions. If you’re interested in learning, networking and connecting with researchers and entrepreneurs, you should join up.

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  8. Joe,

    18 months since I last left a comment here (see response number 2); How many of the points does http://www.BestConnected.ie (Enterprise Ireland latest blog in the software area) address?

    By my count, it goes some way towards;
    1) Social – all the EI authors on the blog are available via LinkedIn (click on the Author Name)
    2) Blog and RSS feed – all on the site (uses WordPress)
    3) –
    4) Search – work in progress
    5) Feedburner subscription to mailing lists / RSS
    6) Enterprise Ireland people in US and Germany also posting to this blog, look forward to more from other locations.
    7) Events – big tick here!
    8) Works in Firefox (my own preference), Chrome and IE – let me know if there are
    9) Emphasis on using HTML, but uses PDF as format for documents (see software strategy on the ‘about’ page).

    It also highlights EI clients (see the company profiles section) and has channels for the software area(s) that you’re interested in (Currently Public Sector, Finance, Health & Life Sciences, Cloud, but open to suggestions!

    Let me know the next lot of ideas :-).

    Thanks

    Paul

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  9. Sorry Paul, but fragmenting EI’s main website into a bunch of Microsites and blogs does not address the fundamental problems of the main EI site which are all still there 18 months later.

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