Contents
Its
easy, right?
1. Defining
your site.
2. Who do you
want to visit your site?
3. Once we've got them, what do we
do with them?
4. How do we
get them to come back?
5.
Project definition for your site.
6. What are the key activities and
who can do them?
7. What
can we do ourselves, and what skills must we acquire?
8. Money money money...
9. How will we cope with the impact
it will have on the organisation?
10. Conclusion.
So, you want to set up a web site? You've spent some time looking around the Internet, first of all with an open mouth, swiftly followed by 'but there's so much stuff there' followed even more quickly by 'and its all rubbish!'. Finally, with gritty determination you say 'I can do better than that!'. Especially once you've taken a look at some sites which are not well written. If you want some examples of these, you might like to take a look at the examples given in my article on Creating webpages for information services.
Its easy, right?
Well, yes and no. Anyone
can put a web site together, and it seems that just about everyone has done,
with greater or lesser success. If you can use a word processor, you can create
a web site, I'll guarantee it. However, creating a good website is an
entirely different matter, and it starts with a lot of thinking. What I want to
do with this article is go into a little detail on a few of the things that you
are going to need to take into account. Most of the points that I make are
going to be appropriate to everyone, some just to commercial sites, others to
academic or library oriented sites. Take what you need and leave the rest, is
my advice.
1. Defining your site.
This starts with
defining who you are. What do you and your organisation do? Do you have
a mission statement, for example? Who are your key clients? What do they come
to you for? Do you sell a product, or a service? So, the first question you
need to answer is 'Should the image of our site be representative of who we are
now?' Alternatively, if you're forward thinking, it might be more appropriate
to ask 'Will the site be representative of who we are going to be?' When you
are starting out on the Internet you are starting with something close to a
clean sheet. With a few international exceptions, the majority of Internet
users probably won't actually know who you are. You can project any kind of
image that you wish to - its entirely up to you. Moreover, you can emphasis any
particular aspect of your organisation that you wish to.
Sit down with some colleagues and some paper and brainstorm until you come up with a series of points that match your organisation and what you do, or wish to do. Next, you need to match that to the kind of image you want to portray on your site. If for example, you are a library, you will want to ensure that the image you portray will be that of an organisation which knows the value of information and how to access it quickly and easily. Consequently, when it comes time to actually put the site together you can ignore the flashy graphics and animation's and concentrate on guiding the user quickly and effectively to the information that they need. On the other hand, if you are a high tech computer company, you'll want to demonstrate this to your potential users and the use of Java applets and so on may be rather more important. Use your site to display your particular abilities to their best advantage; in other words, play to your strengths.
Corporate image comes into play here as well. You will probably want to make sure that the image on the web pages matches that of the image displayed in other formats and media. However, don't forget you are starting from scratch here, so you have a free hand. It might actually make sense to have some subtle changes on the web site; if your corporate colour is blue, think about changing to another shade, or be radical and go for red! Decide on a theme and stick to it. Use the same logo on your pages, in the same position, in the same size. Alternatively, make use of different background colours to alert the viewer that they are leaving one part of your site and going to another part. When I worked for SilverPlatter Information (now part of Ovid Technology), the background for the majority of the site was a cream type marble background, to match a series of marble columns we were using for our logo. However, when users came to those pages which dealt with downloading software, I returned to the normal grey background instead. A subtle difference, but I think an important one.
2. Who do you want to visit your site?
This
depends very much on the answers that you have already come up with. Existing
customers and clients, potential customers, people interested in your subject
area who may never have heard of you, organisations, individuals, different
groups, and so on. If you are a large general library, with one or two
specialisms your groups might look a little like this:
and so on. Create your list, and then prioritise it. If you want to promote an image as a library specialising in the work of modern American poets, researchers may well take higher priority than casual users. Emphasis this in the structure of your pages, and the weighting that you give in your guidance.
How are these users going to know you're to be trusted? Don't forget what I mentioned earlier - you cannot take it on trust that your viewer knows who you are. You must hammer this home at each opportunity. Use your company logo, university crest and so on to reinforce this. If you've won the Queens Award for Industry, make sure everyone who visits knows this! You have to prove, then reassure your viewers that you are to be trusted, and that your data is reliable. You must also do this on every single page that you publish - there is no telling which page a user will arrive at first, so be consistent on the positioning of your logo, and put it on every page.
3. Once we've got them, what do we do with
them?
You've got less than 15 seconds to make an impact before
they're gone. You have to work very hard in this small window of opportunity.
Don't let them go quite yet! Don't have huge flashy graphics that take forever
to load. I don't wait for them to appear on my screen, and I'll bet that you
don't either. Get some information up there immediately for them to read while
your graphics are loading.
Make it quite clear what your site is for. If you don't know, your viewers won't. This is where the image business is vital. Give them enough guidance to let them work their own way(s) through your site. I've talked more about this in another article on my home page; do you want to have a narrow and deep site, or a broad and narrow one? (If this doesn't make sense to you, I suggest you take a quick side trip here to find out!).
What you do with them, or what they do with you is going to depend on what you want to achieve. If you want them to buy something, tempt them in, get them interested, and then go for the sell. If you want to give them information, get it to them fast.
4. How do we get them to come back?
A
successful web site is not an attractive one. Its not one full of the latest
web technology. Its not even (in most cases) how many people visit it. Its how
many come back, and come back time and time again. They may come back
because its attractive, or they want to see the moving animation's again, in
which case you've gone about it all the right way. However, you have to ask
yourself the question 'What can I do to encourage users to come back?' Take
another look at your image - what are you known for, and does your organisation
have any slight peculiarities? Does it sponsor a particularly
brilliant football team?
If you want a good reputation on the Web, take the time to establish a good launchpad. If you are known (or want to be known) for business information for example, put together a lot of links to business sites. People will come back to you because you've done the hard work for them, and it will also increase your authority as well.
You should create a list of the things that you do, and do well. Also make a note of what you are known for. Take a market research company for example. You could provide free samples of your latest reports. You might decide to carry out a monthly poll, and get people to fill out a form asking for their opinions (that's always a winner; I can't resist giving people my opinion, and I'm sure that goes for most of us). Provide links to current awareness services - if you are the type of market research company that works in the political field have links to the newspapers, political parties, information on elections and so on. Provide links to discussion groups and listservs.
If you do all of that, you should have a lively, interesting site which is a joy to visit, and an incentive to come back. Slip in some information about the reports that you have for sale, or a conference you are organising or whatever, people will be kept up to date, and as a result, may well buy a product or report you have for sale.
Above all, keep your site current. This is vital, so I'm going to say it again. Keep your site current. Update it at least once a week, or once a day if you can afford the staff time. If the site is old, or carries out of date information, it shows that you don't care. If you don't care, why should you expect your user to care? One of the sites which I look after is updated at least once a month with new details of courses taking place, and if a new one comes up at short notice, I'll update it there and then. Use graphics to show that something is new, revised, updated or whatever.
Right. That's enough of designing the page. If you want more, you are welcome to read my article on design elements that you need to take into consideration. What I'd like to do now is concentrate on the mechanics of the thing, and all the important behind the scenes work that you don't normally find out until you actually start to run a site. Make sure that you consider each of the following points and work out your own answers to them, because if you don't do it at the outset, you'll have to do it half way through the project, and that way lies insanity.
5. Project definition for your site.
What are
the stages you must go through?
Now, to do all of those things, you've got to decide who is going to be doing all this work. As important, what are they going to stop doing to let them take the project forward. (Of course, you could always outsource this work to an Internet consultant who can do this for you. I am an Internet consultant and end of advert).
6. What are the key activities and who can do
them?
7. What can we do ourselves, and what skills must we
acquire?
9. How will we cope with the impact it will have on the
organisation?
10. Conclusion.
I hope that has given you
some food for thought, and proved to be a useful starting point when setting up
or revamping your web site. This article isn't meant to be totally
comprehensive - if it was, it would be an awful lot longer, but I've covered
most of the major points you'll have to consider.
Above all, remember that
its actually an exciting and fun thing to do. If you are enjoying the job, it
will come through on each and every one of your pages. Should you have any
queries, questions, or anything to add which you think I've missed out,
Click
here to send me an email