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Title: How To Start An Internet Business - Designing For Usefulness
Author: Halstatt Pires
Article:
The first step to starting any Internet business is conducting
keyword research to determine if there is any interest in your
idea. Once you identify a need, it's time to consider what your
site should look like.
What Is The Goal?
In considering the look of your site, you first need to
determine what elements are needed to promote your service or
product. There are endless books, forums and people with adamant
opinions on the subject. Some opine a site should be all about
linking, while others opine creating a community through message
boards is the key. A third set righteously point out a site
should be slick or cool, while a fourth group will argue just
the opposite. So, who is right and who is wrong? The answer
is…all of them.
When developing a site, the goal is actually very simple. Your
site should be useful. That's it, the big secret. The problem,
of course, is "useful" means different things for different
sites.
A site that provides a service to businesses, such as
consulting, should focus on content and linking. A site that
promotes something related to entertainment should have an
element of cool and have message boards to discuss rumors, etc.
A site that sells products should focus on linking and loading
quickly, i.e., a simple, clean design. The point is that each
site is unique and there is no universal answer. Whatever the
particular direction of your site, simply make sure it is useful
to your users.
Site Examples
Let's use Google as our example. What does Google do? It gives
users the ability to search and find relevant information. So,
should the home page of Google look "cool"? Should it have a lot
of content on how to conduct searches? Should it have forums to
create a sense of community? No, the home page would be most
useful if it simply let you search without bombarding you with a
lot of clutter. Indeed, the Google home page is just that.
What about a product site? Let's use Nomad Journals –
http://www.nomadjournals.com - as our example. The site sells
writing journals for outdoor activities such as hiking, travel,
rock climbing, etc. The site is simple, clean and loads fairly
quickly. Unlike Google, the site immediately needs to convey an
outdoor impression to visitors. This is accomplished with three
outdoor images, a graphic of a "nomad" and images of the
journals. The text is keyword dense, but compact and to the
point. The page conveys the nature of the product and the "vibe"
of the business.
On the other end of the spectrum, consider an entertainment site
such as American Idol – http://www.idolonfox.com. The site is
slick, offers polls and has community message boards where fans
can post messages about the competition. This is a very good
layout for this site, but would be horrible for Google or Nomad
Journals.
Don't Rush
From the above examples, you can see that there is no
universally correct design for a site. Before charging off to
build a site, spend at few days considering what it should look
like and WHY. Visit sites that you use frequently. Why do you
keep going back? What annoys you about other sites? How do these
factors translate to your site?
Once you have the answers, you will be on your way.
About the author:
Halstatt Pires is with <a
href="http://www.marketingtitan.com"><strong>Marketing
Titan</strong></a>- an Internet marketing and advertising
company comprised of a search engine optimization specialist
providing meta tag optimization services and Internet marketing
consultant providing internet marketing solutions through
integrated design and programming services.
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