Custom RSS
Related Resources
Get your content to your users.
RidgeWorth Capital Management, along with many others in the financial services industry, needs to provide time-sensitive content to their clients as quickly and efficiently as possible. And while almost every site offers an RSS feed. RidgeWorth offers more than 40, with most of them specifically tasked to deliver targeted information about an individual fund.
Here's where the problem lies: most of the people who need to access that information can't get to it... many are hamstrung by corporate IT restrictions that block them from using modern social media sites and tools -- like an RSS aggregator (e.g. Google Reader or my.yahoo.com). And there's no way that they have permissions to install one on their corporate computer even if this is a perfect example of how a tool can help improve their productivity.
Further complicating the issue, is that a number of these people are still (stuck?) using Internet Explorer 6 -- which is not only slow, buggy, and vulnerable, it also can't read an RSS feed.
There's more than one way to skin this cat.
As with most problems, there are a number of solutions. ddm developed a tool to simultaneously work within and around these restrictions.
1) Allow users to create a custom, personal RSS feed
By enabling users to consolidate the content they wanted from the different feeds available, users could consume a single feed and get all the information they want from RidgeWorth.
This single feed is much more easily accessed and read (likely via a web browser) than having to track 4-10 different feeds.
2) Provide a different way to read
Though often hampered by IT policy, users are still able to create bookmarks.
ddm created a method for allowing users to read the their custom feed via a bookmarklet. A bookmarklet appears as a link in the Favorites (IE) or Bookmarks area of your browser. However, instead of going to a particular page when clicked, uses javascript to pop up a box on your screen. This makes the feed content available at any time... regardless of what page the user is currently reading.
3) Accommodate groups of users
RidgeWorth's information is frequently required by multiple people from the same institution. One way to deliver content to these user groups was to allow them to embed a content-display widget in a shared location, possibly as a small addition to the corporate intranet.
While this isn't expected to be a frequently-used option, all the code was readily available, putting this third output option within easy reach.
Beyond content customization
Adjust the color
The bookmarklet and the embedded widgets both allow for visual modifications, we've allowed for some minor modifications to be made... mostly involving text color.
Multiple Feeds
There's no reason to restrict users to just one custom feed; make as many as you need.
Working to accommodate users
RidgeWorth was already providing their content via topical RSS feeds. By adding this new functionality to their website, RidgeWorth has taken an additional step in accommodating their users.
Providing different options and working around known restrictions makes it more likely that users will get the content.
And the easier it is for people to get your content, the more likely it will be to get read.
Test it out
Check it out (http://ridgeworth.com/rss/custom), and let us know what you think.
