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YOUR
WEBSITE -- FROM HEAVEN OR HELL?
Imagine this, if you will. You walk up to a department store called - shall we say - Inter+Net Universal Superstores Ltd. It doesn't look much, but you go inside anyway. There is no proper sign-posting, and you can't find an information desk, nor any staff to help you. You go looking for your favourite monthly magazine, and what do you find? Hundreds of magazines, newspapers and paperback books all mixed up, regardless of type or category. You give up and go looking for a loaf of bread. But again, there are no signs, and when you eventually stumble across the bread shelves, most of them are empty. Well, let's try the clothing department. But where is it? In the basement or on the top floor? You turn the corner and trip over a trolley dumped in a darkened corner. You come across the big sign. "Grand Sale Next Week - 50% Off". Great. But you check the dates underneath and realise that "next week" has long passed. You've had enough and feel angry and want to tell you the manager how annoyed and disappointed you are. But where is he? No-one knows. Now, it hardly seems necessary to ask whether you would ever dream of returning to that store. Of course not. And to be honest, few shops outside the Third World would ever be that bad. Yet, cyberspace is splattered with the Internet equivalent of our fictitious Store from Hell, many of them put there by people who ought to know better. Microsoft heads my list of Those Who Should Know Better. Its Year 2000 Bug site was a nightmare - everything a website shouldn't be. It was cluttered, repetitive and profoundly confusing. A few days before the old millennium became history, I discovered that some of my Microsoft software was not as Y2K complaint as I had thought and so needed patching and repairing. Four hours were spent downloading the various upgrades, and I do not complain about this. But I most certainly do complain that I had to spent almost as much time attempting to navigate around the various Microsoft sites looking for the correct upgrades. It was a spectacular example of a website with no care or proper thought given to the user. A close second on my list of website horrors was the site for the Millennium Dome. The site was a disgrace. If anyone felt that the bad press coverage heaped upon the Dome was unfair, a visit to the website would suggest that, if anything, it had got off lightly. Certainly, the website did nothing to suggest that I should drag myself across London to Greenwich.When I checked it, it hadn't been updated for six weeks, and so committed the serious website offence of being seriously out of date. Example: "the party definitely starts on 31 December 1999 - be here!!!" Let's put aside the excessive use of exclamation marks - always an unprofessional sign, in my view -- and ask the Dome management this simple question: "Do you not know, sitting astride the Greenwich meridian, that December 31 is past?" There are just two examples of a Website from Hell. But there are plenty out there that are a joy to visit. Two fine examples of big websites getting it right are those produced by deadly rivals, the BBC and CNN. They each have thousands of pages, yet the layouts are logical and usually easy to follow. The sites each project a clearly-defined corporate image, updating is a constant process, and above all, the content is comprehensively excellent. But a website doesn't have to be big to be beautiful. I give just one excellent example: The site established by the Ealing & Hanwell Allotments Association in London. Someone there was smart enough to grab the URL (Unique Resource Locator, or address) www.allotments.org and has produced a site that is amusingly appropriate, brightly illustrated and packed with gardening tips, information about allotment availability, upcoming lectures and general allotment association news. [Sadly, this site no longer exists] The purpose of this feature is to help you design and maintain the Website from Heaven, whether it be for your business, your hobby, or simply because you fancy being out there on the Net. + Why have a website? There are all kinds of reasons for wanting to establish a website. Maybe you want to do business (eCommerce), selling your products. Maybe you want to just want to establish an Internet presence to publicise your company, your charity, or your hobby. Or maybe you just want to have a personal site for your family and friends to see. All are perfectly legitimate and equal reasons, provided none of your activities are immoral or illegal, of course. + DIY -- or do you call in the professionals? Do-it-yourself websites are getting easier to produce and overwhelmingly outnumber commercially-produced sites. The majority of Internet Service Providers happily provide a limited amount of free website space for their customers. Many also provide basic software and templates that take much of the pain out of producing a simple website. Some are not particularly flash, but they do the job all the same. And if you feel confident enough about your software and design skills, you can always move onwards and upwards to something like Dreamweaver, one of the industry software standards for website production. It also helps to have a little understanding of HTML (HyperText Mark-up Language). There is no need to be a HTML expert, but it is useful to know the principles behind its use and to recognise some of the basic codes. Try John C. Gilson's HTML tutorial site for some plain-English information and instructions about the use of HTML. Websites for commercial companies, government departments and large non-commercial organisations, require an entirely different approach. These call for help from a professional. But beware. There are as many cowboy web designers as there are dodgy plumbers, electricians and roof repairers. Ask for examples of recent work , and take note of the language used when designers sell themselves and their work to you. If you find yourself being baffled by web-speak and other jargon by some techno-freak, look for someone else. After all, if your prospective web designer and manager can't use plain English, what hope is there that your site will be understood by its visitors? + Is your site friendly? A website has to be welcoming, otherwise all is lost. A badly-designed, inappropriate home page has the same effect on visitors as a shabby shop front, a house for sale with the paint peeling from the woodwork, or a pub with empty crisp packets and drink cans littering the floor. Your home page is most likely to be a visitor's introduction to your site. It must say "come inside". Try to avoid great slabs of text on your home page. This can be very off-putting. The home page must be like a shop window, or the front page of a magazine or tabloid newspaper. It should be a taster or tease for all the goodies you have on other pages in your site. + Style, Tone and Your Home Page Initial impressions count, none more so than the appropriateness of the style and tone. A fashion site that has no style is immediately dead in the water and won't be visited again. A toy site, to give another example, has to be attractive and entertaining to children. Naturally. But don't forget the parents. If they don't like the site, they are less likely to want to reach for their credit cards to make a purchase. Nor is it likely a funeral director's site will do much for business if the designer couldn't resist sticking in some little graphics of coffins with animated lids. (An extreme example? Perhaps, but I would make a modest bet that somewhere out in cyberspace is just such a wildly-inappropriate site, created by a funeral director transfixed by gizmos.) By all means, amuse and amaze your website visitors, but not at the cost of losing your credibility. In other words, think carefully about the image you wish to project. + The Content Belately, the website production industry is addressing the matter of content, but it still has a long, long way to go. Content can be just about anything: simple information in text form, an animated drawing, a pretty photograph, sound effects, a clip of speech, music or video, a booking form, an events list, a list of goods on sale, or a visitor's book or chat room for comments and debate. There is truly no limit. The greatest danger is a web designer so much in love with the whizz-bang technology that the content almost becomes irrelevant. There is a Texan saying: "Big hat, no cattle". I have a similar saying: "All neon lights and empty shelves". In other words, is your site all glitz and big talk, and no content? It can be enormous fun to have a site that is awash with flashing gizmos and fun things to do - my favourite site for this is the wonderful www.yukyuk.com with its interactive cartoons and nonsense speech - but is that sort of thing appropriate to your own needs? Will your visitors think it worth bookmarking your web address to make return visits? Try to put yourself in the position of your potential website visitors and ask yourself honestly what you would want from the site. Should it amuse? Should it be serious and informative? Should it be an easy way to do business? Should it be merely a hobby site about your favourite interest? Whatever, there is little point in going to the trouble of building a website that you alone visit. Make a few notes for yourself - and for your web designer, if you are using one - clearly setting out what you want the site to be and what you want it to achieve. + Does the website work? Many is the website that fails dismally because not enough thought has been given to its structure. I have two key bits of advice here: 1) think your site through very carefully, and 2) get it thoroughly checked by a variety of people not involved in its design and construction. Focus groups are a much derided means of market testing, but that is usually because the testing is ill-judged, not because there is anything wrong with the principle. Every website should be carefully tested before being launched into the outside web world. If you are a company, organise focus groups of potential customers and get them to try using your site - unaided, I must stress - to discover any design flaws. If it is a site for yourself or for a small organisation, ask a few friends to experiment with it. And please don't help them find their way around your site. That defeats the purpose. Sit back quietly and observe how they use the site. Your site testers - whether they be a formal focus group or a few helpful friends -- must be encouraged to speak honestly. Don't get the hump and flounce out of the room if you are told an unpleasant truth. Better a little embarrassment now, than to have your site launched containing serious flaws. If you are tempted to think this is all a bit unnecessary, then I suggest you visit a few sites at random and discover for yourself just how confusing and impractical some sites can be - all for the lack of careful thought or testing. A friend involved in a British charity recently proudly showed me their new website. He was embarrassed to have me point out that once you left the home page, there was no easy way to get back. The web designer had forgotten to put a home page link in any of the sub pages. And another thing: check that the site works well on current and recent releases of the main browsers, Internet Explorer and Netscape. What works well on one may not work well - or at all -- on the other. + · Does it download quickly? Some further words of caution about whizzbang sites: The more graphics and bells and whistles you add to your website, the longer it will take to download. Work hard to keep GIFs (for illustrations with flat colours) and JPEGs (for photos) at the minimum definition needed for a sharp screen image. A computer screen has 72 pixels or dots per inch, so it is a waste of memory and download time to illustrate your site with images of a higher definition. + Website Maintenance Well, now. You have your website up, you have done all the right things, it looks great, and everyone tells you it is wonderful. But how is it going to be maintained? Surprisingly, many website owners never give this a thought. Or if they do at the beginning, it soon slips to the back of their minds. Even the most basic website needs to be checked periodically to ensure its material is current. There is no greater giveaway of a poorly-maintained sites than "coming events" announcements that are out of date, or telephone and fax numbers showing old phone codes. Another giveway is a links page with links to dead web addresses. Beyond such basics, it is important to keep the content fresh. Think also about updating the appearance of your site periodically. What may have seemed attractive at the time the site was built, might easily begin to look stale after six months or so. + Can you be contacted? You wouldn't think that website operators would forget to include a means of contacting them, but they often do. It is as bad as sending a letter, placing an advertisement, or issuing a brochure without a return or contact address. So, make sure your website visitors have an easy means of contacting you - and that the necessary information is not hidden away in the darkest recesses of your site. + Publicising your site. If you want the world to know about your website, the cheapest - if not necessarily the simplest - way is to ensure that you have appropriate metanames (also known as metatags) in your site. These are hidden within the HTML, but are seen by the search engines. So, if your website is about, say, photography, the metanames should include your name and/or the name of the site, plus such keywords as "camera", "cameras", "photos", "photographs", "photography", and so on. Google, now the world's favourite search engine, works on a different principle. It scans sites for key words, ignoring the metatags, and is very much influenced by how many links there are to a site. Given enough time, the search engines could find your website of their own accord, but it is much better to get busy and alert them to it yourself. Most search engines will tell you how to do this. It is also worth tracking down directories such as Yahoo and Dogpile and submitting your site for consideration. But be patient. Search engines and directories can take months before they start directing a significant number of visitors to your beloved site. However, if your are prepared to pay a fee, you can often be jumped to the front of the queue. A speedier, often more effective, way of attracting visitors is to publicise your web address in press releases, advertisements, news letters or brochures, and on your letterheads and business cards. If you belong to a news group or news list and think your website may be of interest to your fellow listers, tell them about it. If they like it enough, they may bookmark it to their list of favourites and keep coming back. (First published in @Demon, official magazine of Demon Internet, UK, Summer 2000) BACK TO TOP.................................. ARCHIVE INDEX |
