Practical Strategies to Help Leaders Get Real Results
In truth, I realize you really don’t care that we transformed our web site.
You shouldn’t.
You should only care if you can find what you want when you want it.
I only care about what will really help YOU!
Yeah, I know that’s easy to say and you probably hear it from almost everyone.
But, think about it. I don’t need to visit my own website to find articles I’ve already written … and probably no one knows my website more intimately than I do. And, with the administrative dashboard, I can find virtually anything I want, anytime.
So, this really is only about you and I hope we’ve been successful at creating a rich and appealing experience … to help you find what you’re looking for … and to discover new and valuable materials you didn’t know we had.
We worked hard so that Exkalibur can become an even more valuable and trusted resource for you … just as you work hard to become a more effective leader and build a successful business.
[pullquote]Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value. ~ Albert Einstein[/pullquote]
Practical Strategies to Help Leaders Get Real Results
You might have noticed that we also changed our tagline.
It’s been an agonizing process … really … because it’s tough to come up with a short phrase that truly and completely summarizes our intentions.
But, we’ve always emphasized Practical Strategies and by including that goal in our tagline, it’s a constant reminder that we’re interested only in what works: What is practical, realistically achievable and can be immediately integrated into your daily decision making.
We’re also focused on leaders – helping you become more effective as you work hard to build a successful business.
And, to further emphasize our focus on achievement and performance, I added real results as the capstone to the goals we want you to achieve.
Here are the 5 Most Important Changes to the Exkalibur web site
This list represents the goals we set out to achieve with this transformation.
I hope we’ve achieved them to your satisfaction, but you are the ultimate judge, so I hope you’ll let me know where we’ve missed the mark and what we can do to make the Exkalibur.com site even better.
1. A significantly improved Navigation Scheme
As I said earlier, the most recent navigation scheme was too creative and not very functional. It was a good try but didn’t really work for many folks, so we have dramatically upgrade the entire navigation structure.
There are now two levels of navigation:
- The top level has changed to reflect more accurately the activities in which I’m involved and where I will be focusing my attention going forward.
- The second level blog category navigation allows you to pinpoint the subjects in which you are interested and to which we have devoted our most important writing objectives, as described just below.
2. Easier access to our extensive library of information
First and foremost, we were laser-focused on creating a viewfinder through which you could more easily access the extensive library of over 550 articles, podcasts and videos we have created over the last 6 years.
Since most of our content covers timeless principles that will never die, I identified 6 categories to which each of these articles can be assigned. I added a 7th category to separately collect Quotes that I think you’ll appreciate.
While there’s always going to be overlap as subjects bleed into each other within relatively broad leadership and business categories, I think each of these categories is clearly differentiated from the others to help you go deeper into the subjects in which you have a particular interest.
Here are the blog post categories you will find in the new navigation bar at Exkalibur.com.
3. Provide a clearer path to the most valuable posts
When we created each of these blog categories, I also collected a select number of Featured Articles in each category.
When you click on any of the blog post categories, you will see a link at the top of each page that will take you to the Featured Articles in that category, as well as display, in chronological order, all of the blog posts in that category. I hope this gives you a head start in identifying content that’s of particular interest to you.
4. Significantly improve the readability of posts and pages
We applied this concept to each post and page by adding more white space and larger and easier-to-read font choices. I sure find it easier to read … and I hope you do, too.
[pullquote]Get our practical tips and tools directly to your inbox.[/pullquote]
5. Create a stronger platform for audio and video resources
Next, we wanted to create a platform that was capable of handling our plans for significant growth.
That includes a very robust development plan to expand our library of video and podcast materials, along with some upcoming video courses, that will play nice with all browsers and email clients.
It also means we can more easily support a growing subscriber base at Exkalibur.com and a greater level of participation and engagement across all social media platforms. That’s why we also added the Disqus commenting system to encourage more active engagement and give us better tools for connecting with you.
There are other changes, too, that may not be as noticeable …
- We added a Start Here page to help new visitors find the most important and valuable materials. You may find it helpful, too, as an overview of the entire Exkalibur.com website.
- You’ll notice that the Exkalibur website represents the home base for a complete re-branding across all of the Exkalibur social platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube … with more to follow.
- It’s worth mentioning again that I am publishing many of the quotes that readers and visitors have asked for. Now, you will not only see more of those on the main page , but will find them aggregated in a separate Quotes blog post category.
- We added a Leadership Development category to organize the specific programs aimed at creating more effective leaders.
- The About pages have more depth and include What Do I Write About, which includes a short history of my writing career, and What I’m Sure About, both of which you may find of interest.
- The right sidebar contains more timely references to the most current or popular blog posts and comments, as well as my Twitter and Facebook feeds.
- We also added a Glossary. When you see words with a red jagged underline, hover over them to see their definition. While you will find this applied mostly to financial terms, I will use it whenever I think clarification of a particular term would be helpful to you.
- New content templates to make it easier to present different kinds of content, e.g., blog posts, quotations, podcasts, videos, etc.
- I am resuming my occasional Friday Fiction posts about the Mystery-Thriller-Suspense fiction genre, which many readers have asked for. You will also find these posts, and much more, on a special Mystery Fanatics fan page on Facebook.
Thank You to My Creative Team
[pullquote]Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success. ~ Henry Ford[/pullquote]
First, I want to thank Teddi Deppner at Creative Web Guru for her tireless efforts.
We tried to drive her nuts with all of the modifications of the new Woo theme we chose, but she didn’t let us. It’s incredibly tedious to do the coding and mess with all of the back end details and remain indefatigable despite all of the turmoil we created. Thanks, Teddi, for hanging in there with us.
Secondly, I want to thank Jon Clayton, owner of Big Mountain Internet Solutions. They have been hosting this web site from the beginning and if you can find a more gracious, helpful and responsive web host, I can’t imagine where. Jon always goes the extra miles to be helpful even if you didn’t ask. If you need a web hosting service, along with their many other services, I wouldn’t go anywhere else.
Finally, I want to thank Matt Clark of TweetPages for his help in coordinating our re-branding across the various platforms.
This design stuff also gets tedious but Matt’s gracious style and patience was really helpful as we fine-tuned the final products.
Question: What do you think of the new web site? Is there anything more we can do to make it more helpful to you?