Secrets to a successful website
02/08/2009There are many pointless and abandoned websites in the world. How do you make sure your next project isn’t one of them?
Decide on the focus of the website and stick to it.
It can be quite tempting to create a website that does everything in one place, however unless you are building a deliberately generic site like about.com or Yahoo then this is generally a bad idea. Creating a single focus for your site will enable you to target particular audiences with your marketing and focus your efforts on a particular area with the result that the quality of that focused content will be increased.
Plan and implement user journeys to ensure customers can complete the tasks that they set out to do in a logical way.
Most if not all websites can be analysed as a series of tasks that a user must complete, for example a shopper at Amazon in a very simple way arrives at the homepage, searches for a product adds the product to their basket and then goes through the checkout process. By creating user-journeys and site maps you can ensure that your users can do what they come to your website to do efficiently and without frustration. If they can do that, they are more likely to return in the future.
Test to make sure your end-users can access the website as well as you can.
Just because you followed the last tip, doesn’t mean your website is going to be easy to use. Once your site’s functionality has been built, you need to test it with users to be sure that your logic is common logic.
Add pretty styling and graphics after you have determined the content and structure of your site.
There are two distinct though dependent aspects to designing a website. The first is the practical side of laying out pages determining structure and overall communication. The second is adding the extra frills, spill and finishing touches that can make your site stand out from the crowd.
Don’t add flashy effects unless they add to the user experience in a useful and accessible way.
Following from the previous point, finishing touches like flourishes, patterns and Jquery effects should be a later part of the design process but they should be carefully chosen so as to not annoy the user and to not cause problems with usability or accessibility. Care should also be taken to ensure that they don’t cause the site to age faster than it otherwise would.
If you don’t know what you are dong, ask someone who does.
I am biased, but if you want a great website then you need to get a great web designer to build it. A web designer with experience may not come cheap but will be worth every penny.
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