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Five Tips on Building a Better Web site

posted by - scott larson

Web site owners always ask me what they need to do to build a good Web site. Without revealing all our deeply held design secrets, like the recipe for Bush Beans or Crabby Patties, we’ll give you just enough to get you started. So here are five tips to get you moving. Whether it be for business or personal use this top tips may help you get moving.

1.       Be Prepared

I'm Scouter.  A Scout Master, Venture Crew Leader and also a passionate outdoorsy type. Our mantra is “Be Prepared”. Being prepared however is a process that includes many steps and it starts with planning. Comprehensive planning! Without planning how can you be prepared for anything? You can’t.

In web design a comprehensive planning process is the single most important factor in the success of a Web site online. In fact we find it to be the most common reason that Web sites do not succeed in meeting goals. Planning is a multi phase process and takes into account not only designing the site but also post launch issues such as web maintenance and ongoing SEO. Starting with a solid base of goals/objective you’ll keep your project on track both before launch and after.

2.       Customer Centered Design

As web designers we are not the customer and as business/Web site owners either are you. Our customers are the customers. We build our Web sites to meet our corporate goals but the site must address our customers’ needs online. Sites must be user friendly, be able to get the information your customer need to them in a sensible and efficient way, provide quality interactive design that provide customers with the ability to communicate and interact with you 24/7. I cannot stress this enough, if you are not engaging in customer centered web design. Stop. Re-think you entire project!

3.       Be Accessible

Web accessibility means that people with disabilities can use the Web. More expressly, Web accessibility provides people with disabilities the ability to identify, comprehend, navigate, and interact with the Web, and that they can play a part on the Web. Web accessibility also benefits additional individuals, including older adults with changing capability due to aging.

Accessibility is one of the items where many Web sites simply fall short. With specific guidelines that are going to become more important and in many cases almost mandatory you better get on board with this one.

Just remember Target Corporation was sued in 2006 by The National Federation for the Blind (NFB) for their site not meeting California & Federal Law. The retail Giant eventually agreed to pay 6 million dollars in damages to the NFB which was distributed to individuals affected by the inaccessibility of the target site.  

4.       Be Lean

Slow page loading is one of the top reasons that potential customers will click away from your Web site. You have about 15 seconds to grab a visitor’s attention, if 10 of that is spent downloading a page you have a problem! Ecommerce sites lose billions of dollars in sales due to click-a-ways due to slow page loading.

Factors including large amounts of html, too many graphics or large file size, pre-loading scripts, and java script will slow loading. A page should not be any more than 30 kilobytes total including text, graphics, html, JavaScript, etc. Even though browsers have made great progress in loading pages individual users still posses operating systems and internet connections (i.e., dial-up) that will minimize the browser effect.

Using Cascading Style Sheets, optimizing images, using external JavaScript files (.js) and other techniques you can speed page loading times.

5.       Write good content & lots of it

I’ve seen too many Web sites that get too caught up in the keyword game. Yes, picking and targeting various keywords & phrases are important decisions but it should not be the singular focus in your content writing. As search engine algorithms become more “intelligent” they will be better able to “read” your site’s content like humans do. Keyword stuffing is a no-no. It will can get you penalized and hurt your search positions.  

The worst situation would be being removed from the data base, rare but it happens. Stay away from this black hat form of SEO. Google reduced the auto giant BMW Germany page rank to 0 in 2006 for using a gateway page that was keyword stuffed  for the term “used cars”.  It effectively took BMW out of the top positions and sent it to obscurity.

Writing for your visitor simply makes sense. In the end it will help them get the information they came for and probably improve conversions.

If you’re interested in getting the attention of the search engines write lots of good content. Expand your Web site with lots of it on a regular basis. Search engines like content and larger Web sites simply have more of it. The bigger the net the more fish you’ll catch.

There are many other factors in good web design but these are a good place to start. Check back for more tips and articles on this subject.