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Title: How to create a great website
Author: Patrick Tan
Article:
The web is a medium designed to communicate with people. As the
written words and graphics will be the main forms of
communication in a website, it is of utmost importance that they
convey your message in the most effective way without any
jarring expressions, omissions and complications.
The ultimate aim is to create a website that will attract
millions of visitors and have them returning to the site again
and again. From my observation, great websites, regardless of
their functions, seem to observe the following rules:
Good sites are rich in contents.
------------------------------------------- Before you set out
to design a website, you must first identify your purpose and
target audience. What do you want to do with your site? Who is
your target audience? Where can you find them? What are their
interests? What products, services and information will appeal
to them? Why should they visit your site? How are you going to
attract and retain your target prospects?
Getting the answers to the above questions would pretty much set
the looks, appeals and contents for your site. Whatever your
contents and resources, they must always share a common theme
and focus.
You may consider offering some free information and resources to
attract visitors to your site. It is a fact that most people use
the Internet first and foremost to search for information.
"Content is king" as witnessed by the successes of Yahoo and
America Online. Both started out as an information portal
providing value-added information and resources to millions of
users who flock to their sites every month.
Good sites have great homepages.
------------------------------------------------- The homepage
is the entry point to your site. If it does not appeal to your
visitors, chances are high that they will leave your site as
soon as they arrive without ever viewing a second page on your
site.
How can we create an effective homepage? There is no
straightforward answer. A directory-styled homepage may serve
the purpose well for web portals like Yahoo. In other cases, a
simple homepage with an enticing slogan and graphic may work
equally well. You may also consider setting up multiple entry
points if there are distinctive sections in your site.
Whatever your preferences, the key to designing an effective
homepage lies in determining the needs and wants of your target
audience and offering them the desired solutions in your site.
This concept should appeal to your visitors and generate enough
interests for them to start exploring your site.
Good sites are easy to read.
---------------------------------------- You are judged by how
well you write! I am not exaggerating. The ability to write
simply and clearly in an appropriate format and style is very
important in the world of business communication. A well-written
sales literature is usually what it takes to close the sales.
This is particularly true for a website, as the written words
are the only effective means to convey your messages to your
readers.
Your writing should be free from jarring expressions, spelling
mistakes and grammatical errors. If you do not have the ability
to write clearly and concisely, you should seriously consider
paying several hundred dollars for a freelance editor to
proofread and edit your entire sites. It would be money well
spent!
Good sites are easy to navigate.
--------------------------------------------- Good contents are
useless if visitors could not access the information easily. Web
surfers are very impatient people. They would simply go
elsewhere if they feel lost in your "maze" of information.
A simple rule of thumb is to present your information in easily
identifiable categories. You may consider color-coding your
pages according to their respective categories or sections,
particularly if you are designing a big and complex site with
more than several hundred pages.
At Aloha-City, we have color-coded our pages in various colors -
gray for Work@Home; violet for Home; gold for Fort Street Mall;
pink for Biz Connection and green for Utrendz. This methodology
let us maintain a consistent layout throughout our website,
while allowing visitors to identify and navigate from one page
to another easily.
Good sites are good communities.
------------------------------------------------ Good websites
are usually good communities. The notion of selling a product
online must include community building and vice-versa. The logic
is simple. People want to belong to a community, and commerce
will flourish in places where a community settles in, regardless
of whether these places exist in cyberspace or in the real world.
An online community dedicated to a specific target audience can
play a very important role in arousing its members' awareness
and interest in specific products and services. These highly
qualified prospects will then be more receptive to seek
information about related products and make purchases
subsequently.
Studies in the United States have confirmed that relevant
content adjacent to merchant or product links helps to trigger
impulse buying. On average, they reported six times higher than
average click-through rates for these links.
Good sites mimic the real world.
-------------------------------------------- You should create
virtual community that mimics the real world community. It must
be relevant to the members' lives, works or hobbies. Your
contents and information should be restricted to those that your
community wants.
You must pay constant attention to changing visitor demands and
interests, or your site will die. When you upload your pages to
the web, your job does not end there. On the contrary, it has
just begun. You have to continue to update your contents
regularly to keep them current and relevant to your visitors'
need.
Good sites encourage interactivity.
------------------------------------------------ People have a
natural urge to share ideas and stories. Make your visitors feel
that they have a vital role to play in your web site, and they
will be encouraged to share their ideas and stories with you. If
possible, you can provide interactive features such as chat
rooms or bulletin boards that allow online exchanges of ideas
and views.
To adapt a well-known phrase, "A web community that clicks
together sticks together." Studies have shown that good websites
that last for years have operated on the bases of sharing free
information, helping each other and keeping their contents
current and relevant. The idea is to build a community with the
intent of including other like-minded people and then let it
grows on its own.
Good sites do not stand-alone.
------------------------------------------ Good sites also do
not stand-alone. You must create outgoing links that are
complementary to what you have to offer. It will be a win-win
situation for two related sites to share contents, exchange
links and cross-reference each other.
The idea is simple. If you do not have what your visitor wants,
then help him find what he wants in another site. And if your
outgoing links are comprehensive enough, you may actually end up
attracting more people to your site as a one-stop, quick
reference source for everything they need.
A good example would be Web Tool Box at
http://www.aloha-city.com ools/. It contained hundreds of links
to web resources and tools that are useful to online business
owners, webmasters, designers and programmers.
Final Considerations. ----------------------------- The above
guidelines are meant for designing third-generation websites.
Conceived by design, these websites focus more on styles,
functionality and contents, and less on technological features.
Unless necessary, you should avoid using Java plug-ins,
multimedia, shockwave, flash, animation and large, useless
graphics in your site. They load slowly and make no significant
contribution to the overall effectiveness of the page.
Ideally, you should keep the file size of your web pages below
60 Kbytes to facilitate fast loading time. Remember that web
surfers are very impatient people. They would be more than happy
to "click" to another site if your site takes more than 10
seconds to download.
About the author:
Patrick Tan, a former journalist, entrepreneur and MBA degree
holder, offers a complete range of services at affordable rates
to help you set up your first Internet business. Visit his site
at http://www.aloha-city.com for more information. He publishes
a free newsletter to share his experience with you. Subscribe
now - mailto: basics@aloha-city.com.
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