Baby, remember my (page) name
June 12th, 2009
All you John Smiths and Davey Joneses out there should listen up…
Bright and early tomorrow, Facebook will start allowing members to “claim their name” for their profile page – i.e. http://facebook.com/roblandry.
Right now mine is http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=771569224 for example. Now who’s going to remember that?
We’ve all seen URLs like that. Here’s an MSN article on the Facebook change: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31212881/?gt1=43001.
Lovely.
Why is Facebook making this change? Usability, of course. It’s much easier to remember someone’s name than it is to remember their number. In the iPhone you dial a contact by their name, not phone number.
Why do people create Web pages with long lists of unintelligible numbers? It’s easier to program.
Whenever possible, make it easy for people to remember where when they were on your Web site. After all, the 48th state to join the union was Oklahoma, not “48″ and not “?state=oklahoma”.
If a page name is easy for people to remember, it’ll be easier for them to return, and easier to spread the word about it. You’ll see traffic and sales increase.
Recently at Pemaquid we’ve begun rolling out using tools like mod-rewrite to allow Clients who use apps like our Content Manager to have page names that are easier for them – and especially their customers – to remember.
