I love the Web. I volunteered to re-design our corporate web site (one of the many pleasures of working for a start-up), and learned many things in the process. I thought of eight main points I wanted to share with you, but I think the thread that ties them all together is this: simplicity.
Make sure that everything on your site is there because it needs to be there. You don't need to impress your visitors but let them get what they need from your site without noticing it at all.
The Eight Points
1. Know Your Audience
Before you do anything, you need to know who you want to reach. Make sure you ask this question to many people as possible in your organization, including the CEO and top marketing people. (You may be surprised at the number of answers you get.) I know this sounds basic, but it is very easy to get involved with the design and only speak to those nearest to you.
For our last site re-design, I was in touch with everyone except the CEO. He was too busy to answer my e-mails, and I didn't pick up the phone (not wanting to bother him). Big mistake. My target audience (and consequently the concept for the re-design) was completely off. I understood we wanted to target potential customers: the CEO wanted to attract investors. Lots of work went down the drain, and I felt mortified. Make sure that all top management (including the CEO) agree on your target audience.
More: http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/design/site_building/tutorials/tutorial1.html
2. Choose a Voice
After you know your target audience, you need to decide how you want to come across: as a friend, an authority or just plain neutral. This point is that you need to decide this, and then make sure that the content of your site reflects this decision.
More: http://www.clickz.com/cgi-bin/gt/article.html?article=2660
3. Avoid "Marketingese"
Copy that is great for a brochure isn't necessarily great for the web. According to usability guru Jakob Nielsen, marketing copy slows people down because they have to sift through verbose hype to try to glean the facts. The best-received copy is:
- Concise.
- Easy-to-scan.
- Objective.
More: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html
4. Save the Flash
People usually go to the web to get something done. They don't want to spend time waiting for a special effect that doesn't add to their experience. Just yesterday, I went to a site that uses Flash as its only means of accessing the site. I only wanted to download a form for a competition but was stymied because the designers wanted me to have an artistic experience. (They even wrote this!) Flash is great if the visitor can choose to see the designer's creative work, but don't use it as a key part of your site. This same principle goes for fancy scripts and heavy graphics.
Mark Hurst from The Creative Good is one of the most convincing user advocates I've read. His site has many good resources and a weekly e-mail newsletter that is consistently informative.
More: http://www.creativegood.com
5. Give Signposts
Your visitor should always be able to know where he or she is on your site. Don't forget that many visitors will reach your site from links or bookmarks that are not the home page. So make sure your visitor always knows where he is in the site hierarchy and how to get back to the home page.
The Web Style Guide also recommends that every page includes the:
- Author of the web page.
- Copyright and revision date.
- Name of the organization.
- URL of the home page.
More: http://info.med.yale.edu/caim/manual/interface/navigation.html
6. Get Feedback
Make sure that as many people as possible read the copy for your site. This includes your grandmother and your cousin who is just starting university. In the same meeting with the CEO when I discovered that my concept was wrong (see point number 1), I also found out that my copy describing the company's technology was incomprehensible to anyone not familiar with imaging techniques.
How did the CEO prove this to me? He asked his assistant to explain the following sentence: "Spectral imaging is a technology that combines CCD-imaging with spectroscopy." She didn't have a clue. The bookkeeper was also at a loss. After getting over the (now familiar) feelings of mortification, I re-wrote the copy with my father and sister in mind.
Here it is: http://www.spectral-imaging.com/inner/fs_technology.html
7. Test
You need to test your site. Aside from making sure that there are no broken links and that your pages appear correctly, look at your site on as many browsers as possible. Don't forget about Mac versions of the Explorer and Navigator. Also AOL has its own browser. If you don't have access to all these platforms, then ask friends and family to help.
Here are a few online tools that I found useful:
http://www.websitegarage.netscape.com
http://validator.w3.org
8. Meta Tags
Meta tags are in the header of the HTML files. One of the ways search engines find your site is by using the keywords you include in these tags. It is very important that you include meta tags in the header of your files, and it is just as important that everyone (including the CEO) have a look at these terms and make sure that you have not overlooked anything. There are many online resources that can help you build your meta tags.
Here are a few:
http://www.metatagbuilder.com/
http://www.netmechanic.com/
I hope you found these points helpful. If you have any questions or want to give or get feedback, contact me at: laureng@iname.com.
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