Six considerations for a successful website

Thankfully websites have come a long way since the days of gratuitous graphics and animations flashing all over a homepage. This is mainly as a result of web designers realising that users are not looking to see examples of the latest design technology, but want valued content that is of some use and interest to them. Bad designs aside, there are a number of principles anyone taking their business online should consider first.

1. Know your audience. Who is going to be using the website? Why are they going to visit the site? What are they hoping to find on your site? These are the key questions anyone designing a website, however large or small, should ask themselves before creating even one page. Without knowing the answers to these questions your time is going to be wasted on designing something, which unless you are very instinctive or lucky, will be of limited use or interest to anyone.

2. Plan, plan, plan. Having decided who your target audience is, your second task should be to define your goals and objectives. Excluding personal homepages and a few other types of site, a website should generally have a well defined purpose which will help you decide what it is you are trying to achieve by going online. If you are a commercial organisation creating a web store then your main objective will be obvious: to start generating X amount of sales within a certain timeframe, but remember to keep targets realistic. Even charities and not-for-profit organisations must spend time thinking about what it is they are setting out to achieve with their website and why – perhaps it is to generate more members, or to reach potential sponsors, or simply to just spread the word about your work and achievements. Whatever your objectives, make sure that you define them at the outset, and build a business plan and website to meet them.

3. Provide something unique and worth visiting. Simply put, this answers the question - why should I visit your website? Internet users, no matter how un-savvy they are, will only visit your site and stay on it if it does something useful. This might be providing them with information they are interested in (e.g. online newspapers) or allowing them to carry out transactions (e.g. online banks), but without a reason to visit, people won’t. Make sure you know what it is that your site has to offer and then concentrate on getting this part of the site working perfectly as it will be your unique selling point.

4. Make it useable. Once you’ve created some great content for you site and decided who will use it, you need to make sure that once on your site users are able to find their way around easily. It is possible to write a whole book on important usability tasks, but some golden rules are: group information in logically structured sections; keep pages small; don’t repeat information; avoid unnecessary graphics and provide some kind of search facility on larger sites. You also need to make sure that your site is accessible for users with disabilities. A good place to start if you want further information is the RNIB’s Campaign for good web design: http://www.rnib.org.uk/xpedio/groups/public/documents/publicweb site/public_goodwebdesign.hcsp

5. Test, test, test. There are a number of strategies that should be used to test a website before putting it live, which one you choose will depend on a number of things including the size and amount of dynamic content within your site. This is not the place to enter into a discussion on the various ways of technically testing a website, however, there is one important test that all designers should carry out before go-live: watch someone use the site. This is the only way to find out how people will really use a website and can provide very interesting insights into how you might improve its design and structure. The obvious thing to do is to get your colleagues to try it out, but unfortunately they already have too many preconceptions. If possible it’s best to try and get some of your customers to try out the new site. Watch and learn, and make sure that you implement any changes that they suggest - ignore this at your peril.

6. Contact Us. Don’t forget that even with a fantastically thought out and designed website, many people will still want to speak to you before actually doing business. The web is a great new sales channel, but it’s extremely important to remember that a large majority of users won’t carry out a transaction without speaking to you first. Therefore, make sure that it is possible to find your contact information easily and if possible include your address, email and phone number somewhere on every page so that you don’t make users search around for it.