Vince Lombardi described football as a simple game: “You block, you tackle, you win.” Creating a patron-friendly Internet communication process also boils down to simple fundamentals. Here are the top five “friendly” criteria that most patrons apply in choosing one site over another.

1. Is the site easy to reach?

Your goal is to make it easier for your patrons to link to your site than to Amazon or Google. The first step is to acquire “mindspace” or brand awareness. When patrons read BookLetters e-newsletters, they find links that take them directly to the library site. The repeated exposure to these e-newsletters over time should result in increased patron awareness of your site.

2. Is the site easy to read, navigate, and understand?

Since the BookLetters communication process starts with an e-newsletter, your library can direct the attention of the patron to your strengths. This information can increase patron familiarity and comfort with your services. BookLetters allows the same header, logos, navigation tools and images to be carried on your existing site and all BookLetters pages. Consistency will reinforce patron identification with the library website.

3. Does the site have interesting and useful information?

BookLetters combines library announcements with lively book information tailored to the patron’s interests. The foundation of the service is new content from BookPage, including book reviews and author interviews. BookLetters’ recommendations on new books in various genres are both informative and entertaining to readers. One popular feature is Meet the Author, in which readers get personal glimpses of well-known writers. BookLetters also provides links to BookWraps (multi-media presentations), RealRead (look-inside features), and publisher promotional features such as photo galleries, recorded author presentations, and online activities. We try to focus on “dimensional” content for a select number of current titles.

4. Is it fast?

The e-newsletter is ready to be read once it hits the patron’s mail browser. The patron can link directly to the library site using any of the links on the navigation bar. Once in the library’s web site, the browsing speed will be affected by page layout, amount of content, and bandwidth on both the server side and the client side. The easiest way to increase speed is to reduce the amount of graphics, content clutter, and number of pages needed to navigate to reach the final destination. BookLetters features link directly from the e-newsletters making information access a speedy one-step process.

5. Was the session useful?

Most patrons will continue with a service and return to a site if they found their previous visits useful. They expect to (a) easily find what they need, (b) get new recommendations, or (c) be entertained. The more often a patron visits, the more comfortable they will become with the navigation and terminology used by the library. BookLetters primes the pump by sending out links to your site in the e-newsletters, encouraging patrons to visit and learn how to best use the library’s e-resources.