Cooking up a Great Web Site

Posted by Tanya Crawford on: 2006-09-10 17:04:06

The elements of a website; Would you leave out the eggs when making cookies?

It is important to add all of the ingredients to a recipe in order for the end result to come out how it should, the same goes for making a website. It is important to have all of your elements in place, i.e. navigation, content, promos etc.Too often I have had clients all wrapped up in the ‘pretty’ and look of thiee site and not the functionality. They have lots of images, pretty flashy scrollers, wonderful, but it takes you a few minutes just to figure out where the navigation is, or where the heck you are on the site.

There are several ‘ingredients’ to making a ‘good’ website, I have taken what I think is the Top 5 Most Important Elements of Making a Good Web Site

Easy Navigation and Easy to Read; Poor organization is a dead give away of a poor site. Have you ever noticed when you read the news paper, all the ‘juicy’ stories are at the top, you know, above where the fold is? Well, this is how you have to think when you are presenting information on your site, you want the most important info to be right there, up top, front and center to the viewers eye. Navigation should be user friendly and visitors should find it easy to get around your site. Let’s not make them dig for that important information they are looking for.

• Fresh Content; You wouldn’t serve stale food at a party would you? Well, not if you wanted your friends to come back to the next gathering. It is important to keep your site fresh for your visitors, and for engines actually, but on my note, it again, gives them reason to come back to your site, if you are offering quality content, then they will be eager to come back and see what’s new in your world. This is where a newsletter might come into consideration also, but again, that is not my topic at hand. ? To learn more about fresh content and the effects on engines see my friends SEO Articles.
• Smart use of Graphics
The average surfer wont wait more than 20 seconds, if that, for your page to load, so yes, images are nice, but if used execessively, or in large file size, by the time it loads, the viewer will be gone. This doesn’t mean you have to have an essay of text, I mean, yes, we want to keep them at the site, but not by result of them falling asleep from boredom. You want to add images, just enough to catch attention, keep them interested. Yet, not over done to the point that that message you are trying to get out is being blind sided
• Interactivity Encourages viewer participation.
Whether its filling in a simple contact form, or having a weekly poll. You could certainly go into more depth, like forums and the like, but even the small simple things work. You want your visitors to feel they are ‘part’ of the site; they have a purpose to being there.
• Your own Content No parrots or carbon copies please. Always craft original and embracing content. It is YOU and your personality that will build the brand of your website.

Spend a lot of time trying to learn how to capture you're audience, what is it that will make them remember you and more importantly, want to return to your site. Don't present your site as you would a business idea to one of your buddies at the water cooler, you need to really stop and think how the customer is looking at it. This is one of those times you need to think outside the box. Once you feel you have conquered this obstacle, grab a coffee, sit down and write it out, or, if you prefer, you can higher a SEM team to do the work for you.

Well that sums it up for my cooking lesson of the day. Remembering, conjuring up new design ideas (recipe) is great, just make sure you use all of the main ingredients correctly.

About the Author

Tanya Crawford has been building Affordable Custom Websites for more thna 8 years and is currently the President of Verve Developments.

Print this article

Tell a friend