10 Guidelines For An Effective Website

There are hundreds of rules and best practices for creating not only a good website – but a successful one. In a recent presentation for the 2008 Non-Profit Forum we discussed what we believe to be 10 of the most important elements that go into designing an effective website, including strategy, design principles, content, marketing your site, metrics and more. Check out our 10 and let us know your thoughts. 1….

1. Have a Good Strategy

• Defining your target audience(s)
• Visitor needs
• Establishing vision
  • Purpose
  • Objective
  • Measurements & Goals
• Outline website sections and sub-sections
• Content producers
• Resource allocations
• Design criteria
• Website marketing
• Budget
• In-house or outsource

2. Research Other Websites

• Competitors’ websites
• Industry websites
• Websites you like
• Look at content, function, and design

3. Content is King

• Properly name meta tags
• Keywords and phrases (keyword selection tool: Google Keyword Tool)
• Voice, Tone, Person
• Format text
• Prominent contact information
• Important sections –Home, About Us, Products & Services, News & Announcements, Events, Photo Gallery, Resources (Links, Articles, etc.), FAQs, Contact Us…
• Update often
• Provide value
• Calls to action

4. Design

• Prominent, logical navigation
• Simplicity
• Quality photography
• Meaningful graphics (quick to download)
• Limited flash
• Good use of color
• Consistent layout
• Text that is easy to read
• Minimal scrolling
• Cross platform browser compatibility

5. Good Home Page

• Most important page on the entire site – 1^st impression
• Answer basic questions for the visitor
  • What does the company do?
  • Who is the site intended for
  • Why should it matter to me?
• Download quickly
• Establish corporate image
• Communicate information and services available
• Keep users interested and direct them where to go next
• Not too text heavy, 250-350 words
• Load Home Page copy with key words and phrases
• Links to important sections and sub-sections
• Dynamic content that regularly changes
• Sign up forms
• Special offers, special feature, special event, highlight area

6. Calls to Action/Conversions

• Start with objectives (Contact you? Make a purchase? Bookmark the site? Sign up for a newsletter?)
• Make it clear and consistent
• Can it be on every page?
• Make it easy

7. Great Landing Pages

• Think of every page in your site as a doorway
• What do they want? Send a user to it
• Banner Ads/PPC/Emails can all include links to unique pages

8. Market Site for Traffic (What good is a site that no one comes to?)Email

• Only email to people who have indicated that they want to hear from you (PBM)
• More than 25 emails to send, use a service (free: Yahoo Groups, Low Cost: Constant Contact, Campaign Pro, Campaign Monitor)
• Keep message simple and clear
• Think of your elements (return email, subject, greeting, body) and keep them consistent
• Why send them?

Search Engine Optimization

• How do people find you? What words do they use?
• Keep your text fresh and use keywords in text (html)
• Think of your site as a book. There will be a title, chapters, sections. These elements should contain keywords
• Have unique title tags, headlines
• Encourage and pursue inbound links to your site
• Submit to search engines, local search engines and directories (google.com/addurl.html)

Pay-Per-Click Marketing

• How do people find you?
• Don’t overspend your budget
• Specific keywords are valuable – misspellings, competitors, and exact phrases can be very rewarding vs. general, generic terms (Sony flat screen TV vs. TV)
• Special offers, you can control it
• Send visitors to a landing page!!
• adwords.google.com

Offline

• Make sure your Web address is in all of your print ads, radio ads, and TV ads
• Include it also on your letterhead, emails, and outgoing phone message
• Put it on your press releases, in fact, send them to your site for more information

Online Advertising

• You can look for online classified listings and directories
• Banner ads are also worthwhile

9. Metrics

• Use Google Analytics (google.com/analytics), it’s free
• Consider # of visits
• # of visitors (new or repeat)
• Average # of page views
• # of inquiries, sales
• Revenue

10. Refinement

• Never think of your website as being completed
• Try new things
• It is better to start simple with the ability to modify your content than to think that you are done when you launch it