Over the weekend, both Direct2Dell and IdeaStorm will get a facelift. With this change, we will join the Dell Community Forum and StudioDell in sharing a new design for a more consistent look and feel across your Dell community experience. These changes will affect Direct2Dell English, Chinese and Spanish blogs as well as Dell Shares. I would describe this as another step in the evolution of our community sites.
Update 11/19—Over the weekend, the decision was made to delay the visual updates on both Direct2Dell and IdeaStorm. I expect that the changes will go live within the next couple of days. My apologies for the inconvenience.
Several of you on Direct2Dell and IdeaStorm have made the case for more consistency across the sites, and the IdeaStorm folks even asked for a new design (check out davmcn’s idea to give IdeaStorm a new look). The consistent design, and the recent addition of IdeaStorm’s Ideas in Action and Talk with the Moderator pages to Direct2Dell, are all a part of our effort to better integrate our communities.
Beyond that, taking a page from the search engine optimization (SEO) guru Matt Cutts, we’re updating the subhead of Direct2Dell. Now it will say, “A blog about Dell products, services and customers.”
I know that’s something we should have done a long time ago, and for the folks that ask me what kinds of mistakes to avoid, this would be one of the lessons: If you want people to find your blog easily, then SEO matters—especially in the early days. Save the creative stuff for the content itself.
We’d love to hear your thoughts about the changes.