BUSINESS WEBSITE DESIGN December 15, 2008

A successful business website requires successful design planning. There are 3 critical factors to consider during the planning stage:

1. Content           What is you want to say.  What's most important.
   
2. Navigation        How easy will it be for a prospect to move around and get the information
                           they're seeking.
   
3. Look and Feel   How should your business be represented graphically

In my experience most business people look at design principles in reverse order for their website, starting with the look and feel and "fitting" content and navigation around the graphics.  Nothing could be more wrong.  I do my best to discuss the content and navigation but usually with little success.  I have to admit that I have thrown up my hands and given them what they want;  beautiful graphics that may or may not be usuable to the visitor of their website. 

Content Construction

Prospects come to a business website looking for answers about a product or service and they want that information right now.  Web based media changes traditional marketing. Communication today must be both very fast and interactive.  This speed and interactivity will separate a successful website from a not so success effort.  

11 Tips for Better Results

1. Try to believe that your website designer may know what they're talking about and at least consider their advice.
2. When developing content try to provide digestible chunks of information and glue them together with navigation that clearly shows users where they can go next. Keep information short and simple.
3. Don't create barriers with content.  Headlines should focus on your key points so a reader might scan just the headlines and understand what your content is about.  The sentences below the headline support the headline claim.
4. Keep sentences short and sweet.  Graphical rules are much more lax on the Web.  Professional copywriters obsess over sentence construction and often those sentences are just too long.  Poor grammer is not acceptable.  Rules do apply but limit information to the bare minimum.
5. Prioritize your information so the most important information of the page is "above the fold" or withing the area of the website that appears "on screen" when the page is opened.
6. Don't obviously highlight areas of text.  Highlighting can turn readers off if they believe it's trying to convince them of something
7. Use bullets, numbers etc. to list information rather than include it in the sentence; even if the list is only two items.  Anything more than one option should be listed in bullet point form.
8. Use short words if possible.  Visitors do not read online; they scan.  Reading speed is much slower probably due to the lower resolution so help them out, make it easy to read.
9. Say what you mean.  Quickly and with few adjectives.  Don't dance around the point, just say it and move on.
10. Use photo's where appropriate to make the website more interesting.
11. Read what you've written.  Is this interesting and easy to read to you?  If it isn't, visitors to the site won't like it either.

The whole idea of business website design is to construct a website that delivers valuable information quickly and easily to prospects.

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