Make Your WebSite Work

Your web site's layout and visual design should largely be dictated by its content. Many people decide how their website will look before they consider what content it will contain. That’s backwards. It is likely to create a site long on looks and short on functionality. It might look great, but it is not likely to work well. Is that the site you want for you business?

An effective, productive website is based on the purpose and the message, not the (visual) design. It makes more sense to create content to convey a specific message than to create content to fill a specific space.

Today's web is user-centric as opposed to designer-centric. It is supposed to comply with the needs and wishes of the visitor, not the whims of the designer. Competent designers make every reasonable effort to design & build pages that display well in a variety of browsers and devices at a variety of text sizes.

When a client tells me, “I want to use this because it’s cool” or “I want to use this because I like it” I know their first concern is not their customers. Their first concern is their own vanity. I find it hard to satisfy a customer like that because I believe the web site visitor — customer or prospect — should come first.

Just supplying the information your visitors' seek is not enough. You have to make it easy to find. That requires clear, consistent navigation throughout your website. There is far more to navigation than fancy looking buttons. Your visitors wil care little how cool your menu buttons are. They will care if the menu is logical, clear and easy to follow.

Never Require the Back Button

This is website design 101. You see it all too often. You're on a website. You click on a page link. That page has a menu offering four links. Call them Options 1, 2, 3, & 4. You click on Option 3. You read what you want on that page. Now you want to go to the page for Option 1. Guess what? You can't. There is no link. You have to click on your browser's back button to return to the previous page, the one with the 4 Option menu.

Later you find yourself in a different part of the website. You want to refer back to something on the page linked from Option 3. You have no direct way to get there. You have to remember what specific page the 4 Option menu was on. A little more of this and you are completely exasperated. If you wanted an Easter egg hunt you would have gone to one. Frustrated you leave the site vowing to find what you need elsewhere.

If you spend much time online you have experienced something like this. Do you want your website visitors, your potential customers, to experience it?