Building a better website | Livelink New Media

The process of designing or reworking a Web site can be a long one, and it shouldn't be rushed. Tackling these criteria before and during the site's development will save you time and help keep you from making costly mistakes.

Define Your Goals
There are user goals and then there are business goals. User goals are often defined by your content, what kind of people you want to attract to your site, and the kind of experience you want to deliver for them. Business goals, well, they're often about making money. As much as you can, define the expectations for both these areas up front.

Identify Your Audience
You may know your site and its content better than anyone—and you should—but, remember, you're likely not the target audience. Identifying the user, or site visitor, should be one of the first things that you do. One way to do this is by developing personas for the types of visitors you have and want to attract. Give them names and some personality traits. Define their Internet habits (what they do online, how they might get to your site, how much experience they have navigating Web sites, how they may use your site...you get the picture).

As you develop the site, click around the preview pages and ask yourself if you're satisfying the needs of those personas.

Develop a Project Plan
If possible, all parties should know what's going on with the project. Most important, a project plan lets the key players know the schedule for "deliverables" (deadlines for design, usability testing, templates, development, beta testing, launch dates, and so on).

Design and Development
Design is just as much about the organization of content as it is about color schemes, font sizes, and compelling graphics. Everyone will have an opinion about what should be included on your main pages and on individual article pages. And you'll be tempted to integrate all of that new technology you've been hearing about. Start with everything but the kitchen sink, prioritise elements, and then remove the extraneous.

Consistency is the name of the game here, and nowhere is this more important than with your site navigation. Navigation bars need to stay in the same place—typically at the top or left—and look identical regardless of which page a visitor is on. Keep it tight, too—provide all the navigation buttons a visitor should need, no fewer and certainly no more.

Employ the same consistency for your search box. Page elements, too, should be as consistent as possible. Disorganized, cluttered pages will only frustrate visitors.

Make Pages Usable
Yes, your home page is important. It's the front door to your site, but it's not the only way people enter. Visitors will often find their way to your site via a search engine. That means that individual pages are just as important as your home page. Each page should be a destination, with easy access to related content as well as to the rest of the site.

Define Success
Is it all about money? Or are you interested in delivering a good user experience? Maybe it's both. Set goals. These may include fast page-load times as well as the expected number of page views, unique visitors, and pages viewed per visit.

It's simple, really. Get them there. Keep them there. Everyone's happy.