Web Site Design and Evaluation

So You Want to Build a Web Site

• Step one.– Plan, plan and then plan some more– Get your domain name! Now!– Questions to ask yourself

• Understand your audience– What do you want to say

– What do you want your customers to “hear”

• What do you want to spend

• How often will the information be updated

• Do you have technical resources available

• Where will the site “live”

Design Tips

• KISS* rules– Keep it simple

• Graphics are pretty; they are also slow

– Design for the lowest common denominator• Not everyone has a fast Internet connection

• Not everyone has a large or fancy monitor

• Some people have trouble seeing certain colors

– Keep your site interesting• Add something that changes, like a newsletter, or

“favorite site of the month” to draw return visits* Keep it simple, silly

More Design tips

• Don’t cram everything on the first page– Add “links” to other pages on your site– Draw them in. If you build it they will follow

• (and follow, and follow).

– Add links to other favorite places. Link pages are interesting to people searching the Web

• Warning - put this at the end of your site or you’ll lose people as they wander off to your favorite sites too.

Top Ten Design Mistakes

• Slow download times• People hit Escape quickly rather than wait.

• Frames• Oh, how I hate frames!

• Outdated Information• Very unprofessional

• Sends a strong “we don’t care” message

• Bleeding edge technology• Shockwave, sound, movies

Top Ten Design Mistakes - part 2

• Scrolling text and animations• Bouncing balls and banners

• Complex URL’s• If they are too long, people won’t bother typing them in

• Orphan Pages• Where do I go now? How do I get back.

• Scrolling Navigation pages• People generally scan, not read

• What they see in the immediate area is what they go away with.

Top Ten Design Mistakes - part 3

• Lack of Navigation support• Again, which page am I on; where’s the home page

• Every page should have links to your other pages

• Try to keep them in the same location.

• Non-standard link colors• Not a biggy, but annoying to seasoned surfers

www.useit.com/alertbox

Where to Start

• HTML literacy no longer a pre-requisite– Both Internet Explorer and Netscape come with

tools to help you design and compose pages– Tools like Publisher step you through web

design using Wizards and design tools– Microsoft Office products (especially Office

2000) save files as HTML and are designed with the Web in mind

• You can even use an Excel spreadsheet as an HTML page.

After you build it

• Once you have built your site, make sure people can find it.

• Use services that post your site on search engines– Some are free; most have a nominal fee

• Make sure you put information in the page titles that send your message clearly

Tips to help people find you

• Title keywords• Quality Printing vs Acme

– Does the searcher know who Acme is?

• Meta tags– description

• “The best Print Shop in Chattnooga”

– keywords• printing, brochures, mailings, copy setup, full color

press Chattanooga quick

Use an evolutionary approach

• Start simple– Use a free Web site service like Angelfire, Excite, Yahoo,

AOL,etc.– Most services have wizards that step you through the design

of a web site

– Use your ISP, like CDC, Virtual Chattanooga– Some ISP’s will set up a root domain name for a set price

– This means people find you by your company name not by the name of the Hosting ISP

• Example: www.acmeprint.com versus www.cdc.net/~acmeprint

– Grow your site slowly – Use “Under Construction” to let people know it’s coming

How did I start?

• Design– Used Frontpage to get a feel

– Researched what other people did

– Searched the Web for advice

– Switched to Publisher and now use Netscape Composer or an editor and actually code in HTML

• Set up a free website on Angelfire– Did my family home page first, then set up business

page

• Submitted my sites to a Search company

What’s happening now

• Run my own server– www.egenconsulting.com

• Continually updating my site

• Get an average of two business leads a month– Server is hit on the average of 10 times per day

• Still learning every day

Places to go for information

• Web Design sites• Create a successful website:

– http://www.hooked.net/~larrylin/web.htm

• CNET Web design tips:– http://builder.cnet.com/Graphics/Design/

• Search engine Submittal companies• Submit-It.com

– http://submit-it.com/subopt.htm

• There are literally hundreds of companies– Go to these sites and search there

• http://www.looksmart.com• http://www.about.com

More places to go

• Free web site organizations– Free Sites Network

• http://www.fsn.net

– Homepage.com• http://www.homepage.com

– Bizland• http://www.bizland.com

– 411Web• http://www.411web.com

A Bit of Whimsy

• "Everything you know is wrong." > Inside Macintosh, 1984

• "Colored or textured backgrounds, weirdly colored text or links, and a preoccupation with appearance over content are sure signs of a 'first generation' web site." > Pablo PigCasso

• Although art can be created with a chainsaw, this is hardly a justification for giving every would-be artist a chainsaw.” > Vincent van Gui

• "In a successful advertisement it's the graphics that grab you, but it's the text that does the selling." > Pablo PigCasso

• "Before you put a really dark background on your web page, ask yourself this: Why is it so much harder to drive at night than in the daytime?" > Henri de Toulouse-LaTech

From the Art and Zen of Web Sites (www.tlc-systems.com)