DUE Tuesday, Jan 31 – 3 points
(Wednesday NOON deadline)

This week we will be reading the first chapter of the Website Owner’s Manual, looking at what exactly a web site owner is and what that person should be doing. You should read the About the Author blurb on page xxiii; the other front matter (Preface, Acknowledgements, etc.) is short and useful, but it is not required. (If you do not yet have the book, you can download the first chapter for free — but you really should have it already!)

Download Chapter 1

Once you have completed the reading, you will need to take a quiz of ten true-false questions. (These questions will be randomly selected from the questions below. You can retake the quiz up to five times. Don’t stress about getting 100% on these quizzes: if you get 80% or better, you will be ready to proceed to the next activity and I will give you the full 3 points.)

All questions should be prefaced with an understood, “According to the author of the Website Owner’s Manual …”:

1. T/F? Paul Boag works as a web strategist for IBM.
2. T/F? Paul Boag hosts an award-winning podcast about web design called Boagworld.
3. T/F? Web sites that succeed typically have a well-informed, passionate web site owner at the helm.
4. T/F? It is very difficult to find information abour running a successful web site: there’s so little of it available.
5. T/F? A great web site owner is a generalist instead of a specialist.
6. T/F? Being a great web site owner is primarily about understanding web technology.
7. T/F? You can never place too much emphasis on usability.
8. T/F? Web site owners in the late 1990s and early 2000s placed too much emphasis on aesthetics.
9. T/F? Web site owners don’t need to understand the complexities of web development and can safely ignore the constraints and challenges faced by web developers.
10. T/F? Writing good web content is easy and requires very little work compared to web design and web development.
11. T/F? An increasing number of web site owners are hiring experienced copy editors.
12. T/F? Paul Boag thought it was a good idea for one of his clients to require users to register before viewing a product demo because the primary site objective was to generate sales leads.
13. T/F? Web site owners should create their vision before hiring a web design or web development agency.
14. T/F? Stakeholders, people with an interest in a particular web site, may be both inside and outside the organization running that site.
15. T/F? The most important stakeholder should always be the person paying for the web site, typically the CEO or the Vice President of marketing.
16. T/F? Web site owners should include in their vision a roadmap for how the site should develop over the coming months and years.
17. T/F? A good web site owner looks at ways the web site can help others in the company.
18. T/F? Getting agreement on the graphic design is the biggest reason web projects fall behind schedule.
19. T/F? Web site management is an ongoing cycle of planning, building, and growing the site.
20. T/F? After a web site is launched, the web site owner must not change any of the content because site visitors will expect consistency.
21. T/F? Once content is added to a web site, it should never be deleted because site visitors will expect to find it there again.
22. T/F? The work of a web site owner is never done.
23. T/F? Promoting a web site with offline materials is ineffective because potential visitors rarely remember to visit a web site when they get back to their computers.
24. T/F? “Guerilla marketing” includes buying expensive advertising space on billboards and television.
25. T/F? The underlying objectives of a web site never change.
26. T/F? The number of visitors coming to a web site will typically decline if no one actively and regularly promotes it.

DUE Tuesday, Jan 31 – 3 points
(Wednesday NOON deadline)