The Central Problem with SFWA’s Main Website, And Solutions

The cen­tral prob­lem with the func­tion­al­ity of SFWA’s web­site is that it doesn’t know who it is attempt­ing to com­mu­ni­cate with. This is under­stand­able, as there are sev­eral pos­si­ble audi­ences for the SFWA web­site: a poten­tial mem­ber, the mem­ber, and the gen­eral inter­ested pub­lic. You might argue that indus­try members/publishers/editors are also another audi­ence, but I would just group them in with the gen­eral public.

A lesser prob­lem is that the site is sim­ply dated in design. A quick look at the html code indi­cates pretty seman­tic mark-up, but an odd mix of inline styling and stylesheets. There’s a heavy dose of javascript required for the drop-down menus to func­tion, which I think is just fine. The links mostly lack title attrib­utes, which might cause prob­lems down the road with show­ing up prop­erly in search engines, but prob­a­bly not a huge deal there. But the real prob­lem is that it just isn’t very inter­est­ing to look at. This is the group of peo­ple that have inspired more big-budget amaz­ing action pic­tures with cool eye candy than any other genre of fic­tion. Their web­site should rep­re­sent this, while still being designed with acces­si­bil­ity in mind, of course. But there is a lot you could do to spice up the look.

The infor­ma­tion and tools are orga­nized in a fairly hap­haz­ard way. Why is the Search tool grouped with with the mem­ber login and con­tact infor­ma­tion? Why does the “Why should I join SFWA?” infor­ma­tion take prece­dence on the front page over the press infor­ma­tion? I would rethink the orga­niz­ing and impor­tance of infor­ma­tion here. The piracy cam­paign stuff? I would remove it entirely. It’s an impor­tant issue prob­a­bly, but does it really deserve such front page real estate? Also, I’m sorry, but web rings went out of style in 1998. This really serves to make the page look dated. Of all the pro­fes­sional writ­ing orga­ni­za­tions I looked at, the only one still fea­tur­ing a web ring is SFWA. That goes for the badge images as well. These are all signs of a designer that hasn’t really kept with the times, and are more indica­tive of a pri­vate web­site than a pro­fes­sional orga­ni­za­tion. If you dis­agree with me, just scroll down to the links entry on this blog from a few days ago and look at the other orga­ni­za­tions. Even the worst of them have this right. SFWA’s web­site should get it right too.

Among other sug­ges­tions I will be detail­ing in the future, I rec­om­mend chunk­ing the nav­i­ga­tional infor­ma­tion together bet­ter. Focus the outward-facing web­site for prospec­tive mem­bers and the gen­eral pub­lic and remove all infor­ma­tion for exist­ing mem­bers to the log-in sec­tion. Prominently fea­ture a log-in screen some­where on the page for mem­bers, but have the site behind that be designed to their needs. It’s a dif­fer­ent project and a dif­fer­ent site.

Also, I highly rec­om­mend using some of the wasted screen space now to include a side­bar that rotates on a ran­dom basis from a list of sub­mit­ted authors. Call this Featured Member and have it include 50 words on an author along­side a nice photo of the author or the cover of their lat­est book.

Junk every­thing in the right col­umn and start over, basi­cally. None of that belongs here. And it’s all ugly and out­dated in look.

So these are just a few of my ini­tial thoughts on the web­site. As I am not a mem­ber, I can’t really speak for the pri­vate mate­ri­als behind the login page, but I think there is plenty of work to be done on the public-facing side of things.

Tagged as: My Writing, SF, SFWA, Web Design