How to Design an Excellent Website
How does one go about designing a website that is easy to navigate, easy to read, easy on the eye and easy for search engines to index?
This article's intent is to demystify what to some, has become a black art.
The main tenet is to keep it simple, keep it relevant and keep your eye on the ball as regards the textual content. Textual content is the only thing that search engines can index so if you decide to have lots of images, use Flash for animation, and very little text, you will not be indexed properly or possibly left out of the search engines listings altogether. The inevitable consequence will be that you will lose viewers, lose visits, and lose revenue if your website is your source of income.
Navigation is probably the most important part of any website. The navigation should ideally be in the same place on every page of the website, should be obviously different in colour and form that makes it easy to spot and should be used to indicate section and subsection divisions with the use of colour changes.
Moving the navigation to different parts of different pages will add considerably to the user's confusion resulting in them spending large amounts of their time looking around for how to get to other parts of the site. And if you lose your user, they will look elsewhere very quickly. The attention span of people has shortened considerably over the past decade, and even with the advent of broadband piped into many homes, a typical user will move to another site rather than wait patiently for your website to appear in their browser no matter how important your information is.
Textual content is where the secret lies (real text rather than images of text). If your text is relevant to the tone of the site, separated into small simple sections, and sub-sections where necessary, this provides easy access to the information. If your user has to hunt around significantly for the subject of interest frustration sets in quickly and you will lose them. You say, Why not have search facilities on the site? This is definitely an option but only on sites of (say around) 50 pages or more.
With a properly designed navigational structure, the need for a search facility lessens. To have this on small sites may indicate to your user that you haven't taken the time to properly differentiate the information and may actually decide to discount the value of your content, and by association, you. Proper naming of sections and sub-sections is vital to the inherent search-ability and of finding information.
Blogs are somewhat different in form as they are there as a historical record of information added over long periods. In this case, a search facility is almost mandatory. You tend not to have to design the navigational structure as it is usually already there. These are usually divided into years, days, months and posts. Category keywords can be attached to posts to aid informational division and to assist search engine optimisation. Great consideration is needed in attaching correct keywords to posts to increase relevancy. You don't want your users to spend time wading through text that is not wholly pertinent to their choices.
Since the textual content is what search engines use, and by association what a user will utilize to find you, this is what you must concentrate on most. How would you find yourself in a search engine? The use of keywords in your content is essential. It is possible to overkill the keywords and make the text appear like a typical sound bite repeated ad infinitum. You must not miss the point that you are writing for a human being and not search engines. The words must then have meaning and flow and succeed in delivering your message.
Text can be written by a copywriter if you do not have the wordsmith skills, and a lot of people don't. A copywriter will still need to know about you and your preferences so it is essential to communicate clearly.
Writing about oneself is also a big challenge. Several of my clients have expressed trepidation about being visible and the web is definitely about being visible. Most people don't want to face the possible consequences, choices and responsibilities that come with being noticeable and exposed. This however, is the nature of the web and how global the content becomes.
In writing your text, you will need to be vulnerable, honest, authentic, reliable and truthful. Users will be subconsciously sensitive to any deceit and are more likely to move elsewhere if their trust is not nurtured. The text should be honed to the topic in hand, should be kept on track and on point and every effort made not to waffle. You may find that repeating a sentence is useful but using different words as people rarely understand concepts in a single sentence. This also aids defining more clearly what you are trying to convey.
In addition to writing the main content in simple human terms I have found that writing articles about your experiences a useful technique as, not only does this provide more textual content to the website, and index-ability, it gives the sense that you have the knowledge you are professing to offer. Been there, done that, got the tee-shirt sort of thing. This helps to increase the user's trust in the content but more importantly, in you.
Appropriate content is not always easy to structure. If for example, you are offering your skills as an accountant, what possible reason would there be to add music to the website. None. Not only would the music delay the appearance of your website in the browser, the user would ask why and if they find it an intrusion would want to be able to turn it off. The same goes for video that starts automatically in the browser. The user must feel in control so it is essential to give them control.
Video can be of use to emphasize your products and services and a way of adding relevant content but great care is needed to make it look professionally produced. Badly edited video will reduce the impact of your website, your products and by extension, you.
Along with your content, consider adding free products such as mp3 audio files detailing important information - perhaps an interview with one of your clients. This may not be relevant if you are an accountant but for a therapist's website, a recorded meditation would be a good choice as an offering.
There is also another important point about the design process. If you do not choose your web designer carefully, you can end up paying for facilities you do not need. It is easy for the web designer, particularly young web designers, to get caught up in showing how clever they are in using all the new technologies and making the site sing and dance. Invariably, your content's message will remain hidden behind the mask of cleverness of songs and movement resulting in lost revenue and visitors. It is the importance of the message that shines through. Users should see the message, not the messenger.
There is another web that is easy to miss. And that is the network of voice and human contact. If you endeavour to create interesting and engaging content, your users will come back often to read again and again mentioning their discovery to their friends. Your website then becomes a pebble thrown into the lake of the web causing ripples emanating in all directions.
It is very easy to get caught up in the need for a website just because everyone else has one. It may be that your business has no need for such an outlet and certainly not all will benefit from the initial outlay of expense, annual running costs and regular updates. Through my experiences in the broadcasting industry and software design and development fields, it is easy for a client to become committed with the notion that they know exactly what they want. Usually, this not the case as they do not understand the implications of their business model and how this relates to their requirements.
As a web designer, it is my role to tease out from you what it is you require that will enhance your business through the medium of the web. There are many tools available to streamline your work practices. Through discussion, we can discover what those requirements are and find the best route to meeting them. You may think you know what you want; my function is to provide you with what you need. The two are rarely the same thing.