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| What Will The View
Be From Your Site? |
| Reprinted from
MyComputer.com |
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Step One: Planning Your Site
A few weeks ago, I visited a
friend's cabin up in the mountains near a ski resort. For as long as I can
remember, he's been bragging about the view he has from the cabin's large
picture window of the valley below and the ski runs off in the distance.
I decided to see this view for myself. It was a beautiful drive, and
the cabin was everything he had bragged about. Once inside, he led me to the
picture window. The view was spectacular--however, you barely noticed it. The
inside of the window was dusty and there were fingerprints all over. The
outside of the window was a target for bird droppings. It was difficult to
ignore the window in order to appreciate the view.
Your Web site might
have much in common with this window. Visitors come to most sites to accomplish
something--to buy, to learn, to be entertained or enlightened. Your site's goal
should be to become transparent--just like a clean, well-built window.
A window that's cracked, or dirty, hung too high or too low, crooked, only
calls attention to itself and the poor workmanship or maintenance. It doesn't
allow people to see past it and fully appreciate the view.
A Web site
that's inadequately planned and poorly executed, or a mystery to navigate,
doesn't allow visitors to accomplish what they've come to do. The site calls
attention to itself and not the view it's offering. Visitors stop returning
because your site may not be helping them accomplish what they came to do.
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You Are Your Web Site
Your site is your business. A
frustrating experience with your Web site tells visitors that they'll probably
have a frustrating experience doing business with you. A clean, efficient site
tells visitors that you have a clean, efficient business.
Making your
site transparent, or fully usable, begins before you write your first line of
code. It begins with planning. The more time and effort you put into the
planning stage, the better the experience will be for your visitors.
Words On Paper First
First, write down exactly what you're
trying to accomplish with your site. The more specific you can be the better
you'll be at deciding what needs to be included in your site, and what should
be left out. Ken Hablow, a Web site developer and designer from Weston,
Massachusetts, recommends: "Think through what you want the site to
accomplish." He recommends that you write down very specific answers to these
questions:
| 1. |
What do I expect from my Web site? |
| 2. |
What do I want my clients or customers to gain from my site? |
| 3. |
Is this site for marketing purposes, to sell products and/or services, or
manage customer service? |
| 4. |
What type of information will it have? How can it be informative to site
visitors, but important to my own customers? |
| 5. |
What incentive(s) can I provide to keep people on the site and keep them
coming back? |
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Who's There?
Decide exactly who will visit your site. Even
though most everything on the Web can be accessed by almost anyone around the
globe, your site will not attract them all.
Who is your target
audience? What are they trying to accomplish when they visit your site? How
will your site help them accomplish their goals?
Visualize It
Not just in your head--put your site up on the wall or a white board.
Use sticky pad notes or index cards--one for each page. See how your site will
be organized and how it will flow.
Write the page names on each card.
You might want to start with page names such as Home, About Us,
Products/Services, Why Us, Contact Information, and Other Resources. Organize
the cards in the order that makes the most sense for your visitors.
Ken Hablow advises: "Don't travel without a roadmap. The initial organization
determines the nature and complexity of the site navigation and the layout of
the home page. This is not the time to worry about graphics, just the
mechanics.
"Start with an organizational chart or an outline. All the
main headings should be "top level" links; that is, the links that appear at
the top or in the left column of every page. Then there are the sub-pages;
those are the ones that are one more click down from another page. For
instance, if you are a service company, the main Services page may contain a
brief overview and links to pages that describe each service in more depth. You
might have a page of product categories, then sub-pages describing the actual
products. Each sub-page needs to be linked back one level, but you should also
be able to get anywhere on the rest of the site without going back.
"In short, make it as easy to navigate your Web site as it is to switch
channels or channel-surf on your television."
Thoroughly planning
your site is perhaps the most important step as you build your Web site. Plan
on giving your visitors a great view.
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