Should I Create a Web Site?

September 16, 2006 | Leave a Comment

Do I Need A Web Site? Should I create one?

Web sites have become a necessity for almost every kind of business. Companies, businesses, and individuals need a web presence to show that they are “up to date.”

Sometimes, the web sites are designed for e-commerce, the selling of goods via the web site. Other times, they’re designed to guide prospective purchasers into buying the seller’s goods off-line or to provide technical and customer support after purchase.

Individuals of almost all ages have created personal web sites with their respective purposes, be it for profit, or for entertainment.

However, before creating a web site, we have to consider a number of issues, such as purpose, design cost, site maintenance, use of the site, and a web hosting service.

Cost is often a very important issue. We must find an affordable web hosting service, not spending too much, nor being too frugal. A cheap host may damage your site’s credibility via poor service or poor uptime. On the other hand, and expensive host may provide the features you need, or they might be just high priced.

Search the web for comments on individual web hosting companies. When you do that, consider that negative postings are more likely than positive ones. After all, who is reading the review sites and newsgroups and posting? Mostly, the people who aren’t happy!

Also consider personal recommendations from others that have or manage siimilar sites. It’s easy to advertise services, while it’s much harder to actually deliver them.

Could hiring a design professional be affordable? Is it the best option? For simple web sites, we could always pick up the coding, or even use free or inexpensive WYSIWYG design programs such as NVU (www.nvu.org) or Microsoft FrontPage.

While many hosts provide a “web page builder” wizard, designing your site this way will likely make it appear non-professional and also make it very difficult to move to another host.

When it comes to more complex web sites, when you want it to do even a little more than just providing static information, hiring a designer may be the best way. Not only in terms of design, but security is also a key factor in assuring a quality web site.

If the web site also acts as an e-commerce portal for businesses or individuals, security of visitor/customer information will be a critical issue.

So, having considered the things to do before building a web site, do we actually NEED one?

If creating a web site will create or boost sales, then by all means, go ahead.

If your web site can be a positive reflection of your self, don’t be stopped by the efforts — you might find that you’ll like the creation process. Depending on your needs, a blog at a free blogging service may give you all you want or need.

Above all, design a good looking, functional site.

Not too cute. Not too stark. Just right…

Posted by Terry Stockdale | Filed Under HTML, Usability, Visitor Experience, Web Hosting 

Improve Usability of Your Website

September 15, 2006 | Leave a Comment

No matter how brilliant your website design is, if your visitors have trouble reaching your content, then your site then your site is as useful as an empty shell.

Here are some usability tips to improve the design of your website to ensure it serves its functions optimally:

First, check the typography of your content

If you have large blocks of text, make sure to use CSS to space out the lines accordingly. The longer a single line of text is, the greater the line-height of each line should be.

Second, make sure the font size of your text is big enough to read easily

Some sites have 10-pixel-tall text in Verdana font. While that may look neat and tidy, you have to really strain your eyes to read the actual text.

On the other hand, usability studies have shown that visitors actually read smaller fonts more carefully, while they will skim over large fonts to see if there is any “good” content.

Third, make it easy for visitors to find content that they want on your site

You may have dozens, hundreds or thousands of articles on your site. If a certain visitor wants to find one single article from that pile, you have to provide a feasible means to enable visitors to do that without hassle.

Whether you use an SQL-driven database search engine or just a glossary or index of articles that you have, providing such a feature will make sure your visitors can use your site with ease.

Fourth, ensure that your site loads fast if you do not want to lose visitors

Most internet users will leave a website if it doesn’t load completely within 15 seconds, so make sure the crème de la crème of your website is delivered to the visitors as soon as possible to retain their attention.

Last of all, test each and every link on your site before it goes online

There is nothing more effective in tarnishing your professional image than broken links, so be very careful about them.

Recommended Resource: Don’t Make Me Think

Technorati Tags: , , ,

Posted by Terry Stockdale | Filed Under CSS, HTML, Usability, Visitor Experience, WYSIWYG Editors 

« Previous Page