The purpose of this page is to assist my clients in creating a vision for their website.
Giving thought to the concepts listed here will help you to quickly organize the information
that is necessary
to produce a superior web site that will be cost effective to create and maintain.
With so many Web sites so easily accessible, visitors to your site should not be expected to tolerate irritation resulting from just plain simple bad site design. Poor content or lack of meaningful content, slowly-loading pages, error messages and difficulties in navigation caused by hard-to-find help buttons should not be an issue. Your Web page must be a functional, user-friendly site that meets your customers' needs while presenting the image you want to put forth. Even the most otherwise interesting and informative site can be worthless when burdened by poor design and construction. The trick is to publish a Web site that will attract visitors, keep them interested on site, and make them want to come back time and again.
The key to creating a great site is creating a vision before creating a design. Ask yourself what the site's purpose is. When that has been determined, good design, content, smooth navigation and maintenance should come easily. Developing, growing and maintaining a site can most easily be done when these efforts all spring from a common vision that considers each of them. When the end result is clearly defined and communicated to your webmaster, the amount of effort and time, and therefore cost, will be significantly less.
Overall layout of the site
A website is more than just a Home page or introductory page. It quite often consists of any number of subpages, with content most commonly separated with a different category of content found on each page. Separating and systematizing your content makes it easy for the visitor to make choices and easily click into the pages of content that they seek.
As soon as you begin to deal with a number of subpages, a decision must be made on their appearance. Should there be a look of uniformity for all the pages in terms of colors, fonts, backgrounds, etc. or should each page have its own "personality"?
The most common and probably the most traditional method of structuring a website is a page by page format, which will change the content in the entire browser window as the visitor clicks on selections. A click may even open a new browser window, so that the original window remains available in the background and reemerges when the visitor closes the secondary window.
Using frames in a Web browser is a technique that divides the screen into sections that
can be independently controlled. This allows for links to other pages in your site, as well as other items such as your contact information, to remain constantly available and there is no problem with them scrolling out of sight while a visitor reads down the length of a long page. If the nature of the website lends itself to the use of frames, then the layout of frames, in terms of number, size and location in the browser window must be determined. The most common configuration is three frames, a header across the top, a frame on the left devoted to links and then of course the larger window for displaying subpages.
If you choose,
we can eliminate the header and just have two frames (left and right)
we can eliminate the left window, put the links to subpages in the header and just have two windows (top and bottom)
we could add a footer across the bottom (which would create a fourth frame) if there is a reason to do that.
Images and pictures
One of the important features of internet publication is that it is so easy to include and change out an endless array of images and photos. But it does require decisions on which pictures to use where and how they should be presented. That would mean:
how large each should be shown (or how much screen space they should consume)
their placement on the page and their relationship to any text
(is text above and/or below, left and/or right, or does it wrap around?)
do the images need digital manipulation (changing size or shape, color toning etc.,)
Design mistakes
Some design mistakes fall into the most basic category of problems and are therefore the easiest to avoid:
Remember that backgrounds can be a solid color, as it is behind the text you're reading now. The advantage is that it takes no time at all to load a color, as it might with an "image" background.
If you haven't already done so, visit the interactive color chart, which will allow you to see what a screenful of color looks like with text on it as you make your color selections.
It's a mistake to assume that visitors know as much about your site as you do. They should be supported with a strong sense of structure and place. If they are confused while browsing your site, they'll probably leave and not come back. A site map can give an at-a-glance view of an entire site and at the same time serve as the fastest route to any place in the site.
That 140K graphic image you created may look superb, but if loading it to your visitor's screen outlasts the visitor's patience and they click off before it loads up, what good is it really? Most images taken with a digital camera are larger than most monitors and cannot be seen all at one time anyway. They should be reduced in size with image editing software to a size appropriate for display before they are loaded to the server.
Technology can be wonderful, but.....
... some design mistakes are a direct result of internet technology. Not all Web browsers are created equal. What you see, is not necessarily what someone else gets. There are certainly differences in how browsers from different companies handle the HTML code that is presented and site designers need to take browser compatibility issues into account. Because of the vast array of systems and browsers used, there's a likelihood that what one visitor sees on their screen will not be the same on another user's screen. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that all the companies that produce internet browsers seem to be in a constant state of "improving" their products. Older versions of browsers are not able to deal with newer features in HTML coding. Using features in updated coding techniques may very likely exclude potential visitors who are using older browsers. Web site owners are now put in the awkward position of deciding "Do I want my site to be 'state of the art'?" or "Do I want to be sure that everyone who visits my site can access my message?"
Additionally, personal settings in browsers which allow visitors to control the style of how a Web site is delivered in terms of fonts and colors for example, all have an impact on the presentation of your site. It's an impact over which you have very little, if any, control.
And don't startle visitors with unexpected audio. A sudden burst of loud music can be unsettling for a visitor. If music is appropriate for your site, then your visitor probably should be able to choose with a clearly visible control panel, whether or not they want to hear the music.
"Under Construction" signs, because of their annoyance to visitors, are the mark of an amateur's Web site. As a living document, and we'll address that concept more, Web sites are continuously under construction. If a page in your site isn't ready, it shouldn't be made accessible.
Content and maintenance
Just as unprofessional, is a Web site with little or no good content. If it doesn't put forth your message, what value does it have?
Be sure to provide contact information. Providing information such as an email address or phone number should be continuously accessible, no matter where in your Web site your visitor might go.
Maintaining your site is an on-going process. Outdated content creates just as bad an impression. Web sites are not statues, unless the purpose of the page is to be a memorial. You should not expect to post a bunch of material to your site and leave it there indefinitely. Creating good content is only the start. To keep your site meaningful, it must be updated whenever it needs it, so that visitors never feel left out by reading about last month's special event. We must keep links current, remove outdated information and make sure your site functions as it's supposed to. Any links in your site that take a visitor to a site that is external to yours should be checked periodically to assure that the external location still exists and is relevant.
Increasing traffic to your site
Keywords
A website is not much good if people don’t visit it and in an effort to make your site more "findable" we should be taking
advantage of something called "keywords". A list of keywords will be in the code of your site but it will not be seen by visitors. Keywords are there for search engines (like Google and others) to find and use to connect possible visitors with your site. Here's an excellent example of a keyword list for a farm that does horse training and physical therapy.
<meta NAME="keywords" CONTENT="
horse, horses, horsemanship, equestrian, equitation, training, instruction, coaching, lessons, english, breeding, importing, jumper, hunter, dressage, harness, longline, longe line, lunge, 4-H, ponies, unicorn, tandem, four-in-hand, Dutch Harness Horses, DDH, pasture, indoor arena, farm, trails, trail riding, cross-country, boarding, hunter, carriage driving, combined driving, pleasure driving, competition, national, champion, Zionville, Pennsylvania, PA, aquatread, laser therapy, magnetic blanket, equine massage, human massage, conditioning, therapy, aqua therapy, hydrotherapy, aquaciser, treadmill, underwater treadmill, magnetic therapy, magnets, laser, health, antique carriage restoration, Twin Fancy Farm, Kendalwood Farm, Kendalwood, Kendal, antique carriages, carriage driving, Holland, The Netherlands, Dutch
">
Please notice that keywords are not necessarily single words. They can be phrases as well, such as “Twin Fancy Farm”.
As you develop your keyword list, please remember three things:
If you are having trouble getting started, contact me and I will try to help, but you need to decide what it is that your potential customer might be searching the internet for.
And this is not meant to be a stressful exercise. The list can be as long or as short as you want it to be. The example list is probably longer than average, but we can be sure that every keyword there is important to what they want to promote.
<meta NAME="description" CONTENT=" Kendalwood Farm provides premier riding and carriage driving instruction and specialized theraputic care for horses including massage, aqua-tread, laser and magnetic blanket. Specializing in importing, breeding, and training Dutch Harness Horses. ">
As you can imagine, your description is something that you would probably want a visitor to see, and we can certainly include it in your ‘home’ page, but it can also be included in the (under cover) code for search engines to find as well.
Other additional pages
Directions
If your business depends on personal visits from your customers, you may want a page devoted to directions with perhaps a map and even written directions from various points? Written directions can be developed in the same word processor you used to create your keyword list. If you want a map, what level of "zoom" is appropriate? Should it be a close view or should it be one that shows the closest major cities? Or both?
Other items
Obviously, as your webmaster, I can’t think of everything you would like, or if we're remodelling an already existing site and there’s something in the site now that you don’t like, please make a note to tell me about any of those items as well.