This week the blogosphere has been full of posts and comments about the changes to the whitehouse.gov website which went live immediately after Barack Obama’s inauguration on Tuesday.
The new site features a blog, a number of RSS feeds, and YouTube video clips – which all reflect the new administration’s focus on communication, transparency and participation. The design looks great too – fresh, clean, and easy to navigate (with some nice design features, like gradient shading for backgrounds and borders). For the more geeky readers, kottke.org notes another ‘small and nerdy measure of the huge change in the executive branch of the US government’ are the changes to the whitehouse.gov robots.txt file (which tells search engines what to include and not include in their indexes).
The prompt and obvious re-design of the whitehouse.gov site is a good reminder of how important it is for your website to reflect your own values, culture and goals (not those of a competitor, previous owner or website designer). If your business or organisation has a change in leadership, direction or the products and services you offer, don’t let updating your website be something you get round to doing later, make it a key part of your communication strategy from day one.
