"How to Plan your Website" by Dipen

The Unique and important information this article contains,

• 01)The Fundamentals—Objectives, Target Markets, and Products and Services 

• 02)Common Objectives 

• 03)Advertising Your Products or Services 

• 04)Selling Your Products or Services Online 

• 05)Providing Online Customer Service and Support 

• 06)Providing Product or Corporate Information 

• 07)Creating and Establishing Company Identity and Brand Awareness 

• 08)Other Primary Objectives 

• 09)Other Objectives to Consider Up Front 

• 10)Designing Your Site to Be Search Engine Friendly 

• 11)Including Repeat-Traffic Generators on Your Site 

• 12)Getting Visitors to Recommend Your Site 

• 13)Using Permission Marketing 

• 14)Creating Loyalty among Visitors 

• 15)Including “Stickiness” Elements

• 16)Including Interactive Elements 

• 17)A Final Word on Objectives

• 18)Target Markets 

• 19)Products and Services

• 20)The Fundamentals 

• 21)Using Competitor Sites to Your Advantage

• 22)Storyboarding Your Web Site

• 23)Detailed Web Site Planning 

• 24)Content Notes 

• 25)Text Notes 

• 26)Color Notes

• 27)Navigation Notes

• 28)Graphics Notes

• 29)Visual Notes

• 30)Other Notes 

• 31)Internet Resources for Planning Your Web Site

           There are millions of Web sites, selling millions of products on the Internet every day, and they are all competing for viewers; many of them are competing for the same viewers you are! How do you get the results you’re looking for? When asked if they are marketing on the Internet, many people and organizations say, “Yes, we have a Web site.” However, having a Web site and marketing on the Internet are two very different things. Yes, usually you need a Web site to market on the Internet. However, a Web site is simply a collection of documents, images, and other electronic files that are publicly accessible across the Internet. Your site needs to be designed to meet your online objectives and should be developed with your target market in mind. Internet marketing encompasses all the steps you take to reach your target market online, attract visitors to your Web site, encourage them to buy your products or services, and make them want to come back for more.

         Having a Web site is great, but it is meaningless if nobody knows about it. Just as having a brilliantly designed product brochure does you little good if it sits in your sales manager’s desk drawer, a Web site does you little good if your target market isn’t visiting it. It is the goal of this article to help you take your Web site out of the desk drawer, into the spotlight, and into the hands of your target market. You will learn how to formulate an Internet marketing strategy in keeping with your objectives, your products or services, and your target market. This article introduces you the importance of:

• • Defining your online objectives

• • Defining your target markets and developing your Web site and online     marketing strategy with them in mind

• • Developing the Internet marketing strategy that is appropriate for your    product or service.

The Fundamentals—Objectives, Target Markets, and Products and Services

        Things have changed dramatically over the past several years in terms of Web site design and development methodology. Back in the old days—a couple of years ago in Internet years—it was quite acceptable, and the norm, for an organization to pack up all of its brochures, ads, direct-mail pieces, news releases, and other marketing materials in a box, drop it off at the Web developer's office, and after a short conversation, ask when they might expect the Web site to be “done.” The Web developer would then take the marketing materials and digitize some, scan some, and do some HTML programming to develop the site. By going through this process, organizations ended up with a Web site that looked just like their brochure—hence the term “brochure-ware.” Brochure-ware is no longer acceptable on the Web if you want to be successful. Sites that are successful today are ones that are designed around:

• • Objectives of the organization

• • Needs, wants, and expectations of their target markets

• • Products and services that are being offered.

        Everything related to Internet marketing revolves around these three things—objectives, target markets, and products or services. It is critically important to define these things appropriately and discuss them with your Web developer. It is your responsibility, not your Web developer’s, to define these things. You know (or should know) what your objectives are more clearly than your Web developer does. If you don’t articulate these objectives and discuss them with your Web developer, it is impossible for him or her to build a site to achieve your objectives!

        You know your target markets better than your Web developer does. You know what your visitors want, what they base their buying decisions on, and what their expectations are. You need to provide this information so that your Web developer can build a Web site that meets the needs, wants, and expectations of your target market.

      Let’s spend the remainder of the article on these fundamentals—objectives, target markets, and products and services—so you can be better prepared for the planning process for your Web site.

Common Objectives

       Before you even start to create your Web site, you must clearly define your online objectives. What is the purpose of your site? Brainstorm with people from all parts of your organization, from the front-line clerks, to marketing and sales personnel, to customer support, to order fulfillment and administration.

      Generate a comprehensive list of primary and secondary objectives. If you’re going to build this Web site, you might as well build it to achieve all of your online objectives. If you don’t brainstorm with your stakeholders, document the objectives, and discuss these objectives with your Web developer, it will be impossible for the Web developer to build you a Web site that addresses all of your objectives.

       Every element of your site should relate back to your objectives. When you decide to update, add, or change any elements on your Web site, examine how these changes relate to the primary and secondary objectives you have identified. If there is not a clear match between your objectives and your intended changes, you might want to reconsider the changes. It’s amazing how many Web sites have been developed without adequate planning or without ensuring that the Web site ties in with the corporate objectives.

       Some of the most common primary objectives include:

• • Advertising your product or service

• • Selling your product or service

• • Providing customer service and support

• • Providing product or corporate information

• • Creating and establishing brand identity and brand awareness or company identity and awareness.

Advertising Your Products or Services

      The objective of some sites is simply to promote but not directly sell an event, product, or service. The objective is to create awareness or a “buzz” about the movie, generate interest in the film, and, ultimately, have a large number of people attend the movie when it is released. This type of site might include multimedia clips of the movie, pictures and stories of the actors in the movie, viral marketing (“Tell a friend about this movie”) elements to encourage wordof-mouth marketing, an intriguing story about the film, press releases for entertainment writers, and other elements to help them achieve their objective with their target market in mind.

Selling Your Products or Services Online

      Selling products or services online is a common objective. The Internet provides a broad geographic reach and a huge demographic reach. Often businesses combine the objectives of advertising their products or services with trying to sell them through their Web site. This works well because visitors not only receive information about your products and services, but they are given the option of easily ordering and purchasing online. The easier you make it for people to make a purchase from your company, the more likely they are to buy. You will have to provide detailed information on your products and services, your return policies, guarantees and warranties, and shipping options. If you are planning to sell directly from the site, you also need to address security issues.

Providing Online Customer Service and Support

        You might decide that the main reason for your business to have an online presence is to provide more comprehensive customer service and support.A great benefit of a Web site is that you can provide customer assistance 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. If your company develops software, it is a good idea to include downloadable upgrades as well as an FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) section where you can provide solutions to common problems. By providing an easy way for your customers to solve their problems, you increase customer loyalty. Include the appropriate contact information for customers who have more complicated problems and need to talk to a human. There are even companies that you can outsource this to if you are a singleperson operation.

Providing Product or Corporate Information

      Some organizations simply wish to provide information on their products or services to a particular target market. Others might want to provide corporate information to potential investors. Information-driven Web sites tend to be textoriented,with graphics used only to accentuate the points being made and to provide visual examples. These types of sites usually have an FAQ section that provides useful and pertinent information on the company and its products or services. If the organization courts the media, it might include a Media Center, which can include all its press releases, corporate background, information on key company officials, articles that have been written about the company, and a gallery of relevant pictures that the media can use, as well as a direct link to the company’s media person.

Creating and Establishing Company Identity and Brand Awareness

      Another objective might be to create and establish company identity and brand awareness. Based on the success of companies such as America Online, Yahoo!,Travelocity, Amazon, and eBay, it is apparent that branding a company or product on the Web can occur swiftly. Although they all had significant financial resources, each company used a combination of online and offline advertising to meet its objectives. Each of the sites features a prominent logo, consistent imagery,and a consistent color scheme. There is a lot we can learn from them.

       When trying to establish corporate identity, any graphics developed for your Web site must be top-notch and reflect the colors associated with your corporate logo. A catchy slogan further promotes corporate identity. Your Web site must have a consistent look and feel, and all offline promotional campaigns and material must be consistent with your online presence.

Other Primary Objectives

      Brainstorm with all the stakeholders in your organization to come up with other primary objectives for the organization. This process is critical to the organization's online success. Everything else revolves around your objectives the elements included on your site and the Internet marketing techniques you use. If you were building new office space, you would want to include the input of all people working in your office to ensure that their needs were taken into consideration and the office was designed appropriately. The same is true when building a Web site—everyone must be included in the brainstorming session.As much time should be spent in the planning stage as in the construction phase. By going through this process, you will be able to develop the best blueprint or storyboard for your proposed Web site.

Other Objectives to Consider Up Front

      Although setting your primary objectives is vital, it is just as important to identify your secondary objectives. By setting appropriate secondary objectives, you will be more prepared to achieve all of your online goals. Many companies identify only primary objectives for their Web site and completely neglect secondary objectives that can help them succeed online. Following are some common secondary objectives to consider:

• • Your site should be designed to be search engine friendly.

• • Your site should be designed to encourage repeat traffic.

• • Your site should have viral marketing elements that encourage visitors to recommend your products or services to others.

• • Your site should incorporate permission marketing, where visitors are encouraged to give you permission to send them e-mail, newsletters, and    e-specials on a regular basis.

• • Your site should be designed to encourage customer loyalty.

• • Your site should incorporate stickiness, encouraging visitors to stay a while and visit many areas of the site.

Designing Your Site to Be Search Engine Friendly

       Creating a site that is search engine friendly should be an objective of every company that wants to do business on the Internet. Search engines are the most common way for Internet surfers to search on the Net. In fact, 85 percent of all people who use the Internet use search engines as their primary way to look for information. By using keywords relating to your company, and your products and services, in appropriate places on your site, you can improve how search engines rank you.

        You want these chosen keywords in the domain name if possible, your page titles and page text, your Alt tags for graphics, and your page headers and keyword meta-tags as well as in each page’s description meta-tag. Many search engines place a lot of emphasis on the number and quality of links to a site to determine its ranking. This means that the more Web sites you can get to link to your site, the higher your site will be in search engine results. (See my next blog article for more information on designing your site for high search engine ranking.)

Including Repeat-Traffic Generators on Your Site

        Every Web site should be designed to entice its visitors to return again and again. Generating repeat traffic to your site is a key element of your online success and can be accomplished in a number of ways. Using contests and competitions, specials, packages, games, advice columns, a calendar of events, and many other techniques can increase your Web traffic.The next other articles describes many of these repeat-traffic generators in much more detail.

Getting Visitors to Recommend Your Site

        The best exposure your Web site can get is a recommendation by a friend or unbiased third party. It is critical that you try to have elements of your Web site recommended as often as possible; therefore, you should have a way for people to quickly and easily tell others about elements on your site.

       The best way to encourage people to recommend your site is to include viral marketing techniques such as a “Tell a Friend” button on your site. You might want to include some variations on this as well. Under articles or press releases, you can have an “E-mail this article to a friend” button for people to refer their friends and associates to your site.

        Virtual postcards are also a good way to get visitors to send more people to your Web site. There are many ways to encourage viral marketing. These are discussed in detail in one of my next articles.

Using Permission Marketing

       You always want your company to be seen as upholding the highest ethical standards and being in compliance with anti-spam legislation. Do not send out unsolicited e-mail—known as spam—promoting your products or services. This is why it’s important to develop a mailing list of people who have given you permission to send them messages, including company news and promotions.

      When you’re developing your Web site, an objective should be to get as many visitors to your site as possible to give you their e-mail address and permission to be included in your mailings.. You can do this by having numerous ways for your visitors to sign up to join your e-club and to receive newsletters, notices of changes to your Web site, weekly specials, packages, coupons, or new giveaways. My next article has many examples of ways to encourage visitors to request to be added to your e-mail list, and the next articles provides all the details on permission marketing.

Creating Loyalty among Visitors

        The way to create loyalty among visitors is to provide them with some incentives for joining your online community, and provide them with proof that you really appreciate their business. You can do this by having a members-only section of your Web site or an e-club that has special offers exclusively for them, as well as discounts or freebies. People like to do business with people who appreciate their business. We are seeing a real growth in loyalty programs online.

Including “Stickiness” Elements

        To get your target market to visit your site often and have them visit a number of pages every time they visit, you need to provide interesting, interactive, and relevant content. You want to have your site visitors feel as if they are part of your online community and to want to visit your site every day. You create “stickiness” by including many elements that keep your visitors’ attention and by adding new content on a regular basis.

       Your site can have a daily advice column, descriptions of your many products, a discussion forum with constantly changing interesting conversations relative to your products, a news section that is updated daily, as well as a weekly contest that site visitors can enter. The combination of these elements makes a site sticky. You want your site to be a resource people return to often, and not a one-time event.

Including Interactive Elements

          The longer people stay on your site and the more pages they visit, the more your brand is reinforced. By utilizing interactive elements on your site, the more likely you are to engage your visitors and keep them around longer. The longer they stay, the more they feel a part of your community. The more they feel a part of your community, the more likely they are to give you permission to keep in contact with them, or to tell a friend about you and your site, and the more likely they are to do business with you; people like to do business with people they know and trust.

         Interactive elements include such things as videos or virtual tours, podcasts or videocasts, or interactive maps. Check out your competition and see how they incorporate interactive elements on their site. Whatever you decide to implement, make sure it relates to your target market. 

A Final Word on Objectives

           Setting your Web site’s objectives before you begin building your site is essential so that you can convey to your Web developer what you want your Web site to achieve. You obviously will have a number of different objectives for your site, but many of these objectives can work together to make your Web site complete. 

           Whatever your objectives might be, you must carefully consider how best to incorporate elements in your Web site and your Internet marketing strategy to help you achieve them. Successful marketing on the Web is not a simple undertaking. Before you begin to brainstorm over the objectives of your Web site, be certain you have read and studied all the information that is pertinent to the market you are attempting to enter. Read everything you can find, and examine the findings of industry experts.

            Your Web site objectives form a critical element in your Web site design and development, as you will see in the next section.

Target Markets

           It is important to define every one of your target markets. If you’re going to build this Web site, you might as well build it for all of your target markets. For each and every one of your target markets, you need to determine:

• • Their needs

• • Their wants

• • Their expectations.

           For each and every one of your target markets, you should also try to determine an appropriate “WOW” factor. What can you provide for them on your Web site that will WOW them? Your objective should be to exceed the target market’s expectations.

         Your main target market might be your potential customer, but other target markets might include existing customers, or the media, or those who influence the buying decision for your potential customers.

         When you look at—really look at—potential customers versus existing customers, you realize that what these two groups want and need from your Web site is probably different. Someone who is an existing customer knows your company. Learning about your products, services, business practices, and the like, are not a priority for this person. A potential customer needs to know about these things before giving you their business. “Customer” is such a huge target market; it needs to be broken down into segments. If you were a hotel,

for example, your customer target market might be broken down further into:

• • Business travelers

• • Vacation travelers

• • Family travelers

• • Meeting planners

• • Handicapped travelers

• • Tour operators

• • Golfers

• • Outdoor adventure enthusiasts

• • Eco-tourists.

        You get the idea. You need to segment your customer target market and then, for each segment, you need to do an analysis of needs, wants, and expectations. If you intend to market children’s products, your Web site should be colorful and the text simple and easy to understand, in keeping with what appeals to your target market. Chances are that fun-looking graphics will be used extensively on your site to draw children further into it.

        Another aspect to consider when designing your Web site is your target market’s propensity to utilize the latest technologies, and the configurations they are likely to be using. Or it might be that your target market has yet to embrace the latest technologies and is still using a dial-up connection to the Internet, slower machines, and older software. They might still be using the Web browser that was originally installed on their system, simply because they are uncomfortable downloading the latest version of the browser, are unaware of the more recent version, or are uninterested in downloading a large file. If your target market includes this demographic, be careful with your use of Java, Flash, and large graphic files.

Products and Services

       It is important to define the products and services you want to promote online. Sometimes the products and services you offer offline in your physical store are the same as in your online store, but quite often there are differences.

       Business owners that have a bricks-and-mortar location sometimes assume that their online storefront is an extension of their offline storefront and that they will provide exactly the same products and services online as offline. In some cases, fewer products are offered online than in the physical store. This is often the case if you are test marketing, but also if some of the products you sell in your physical location are not appropriate for online sales because of competitive pricing or shipping logistics.
        In other cases, your online store might offer more products or services than the bricks-and-mortar location. For example, your offline bookstore might not offer shipping or gift wrapping. If your online bookstore does not offer these services, you will lose a lot of business to your online competition. When a site’s product offerings include items that are appropriate for gift giving, it is essential to also offer wrapping, customized cards, shipping to multiple addresses, and shipping options. The consumer is “king” and is very demanding. You have to meet and beat your consumers’ expectations online to garner market share. People shopping for gifts online are looking for convenience, and the site that provides the greatest convenience and the greatest products at the lowest prices will be the winner.

       Web sites and Internet marketing strategies differ depending on the product or service being sold. A company that markets toys, for instance, has to develop a fun and interactive Web site that is attractive to children. The Web site should also give children a way to tell their friends about the site as well as a reason to return to the site. The toy company might want to offer an electronic postcard service whereby children can send a colorful and musical message to their friends and tell them about the site.

      Another idea is to provide a “wish list” service. Children can make a list of the toys they want, and this list is sent to their parents via e-mail. The parents can then make better-informed purchasing decisions and might become loyal to the toy company’s site. Likewise, some toy companies offer reminder services that send an e-mail message to visitors who have registered and have completed the appropriate questionnaire to remind them of a child’s birthday and to offer suggestions for gift ideas. Once again, this promotes sales and repeat traffic and increases customer loyalty. 

          As another example, a software development company might want to provide downloadable demo versions of its software products and allow people to review its products for a specified period of time before they make a purchasing decision.

             A travel agency's Web site might include features such as an opt-in mailing list to send people information on weekly vacation specials or a page on the site detailing the latest specials. The travel agency’s site might also want to include downloadable or streaming video tours of vacation resorts to entice visitors to buy resort vacation packages. Another idea is to have a system in place to help customers book vacations, rent cars, and check for available flights. The travel agency might also want to store customer profiles so they can track where particular customers like to sit on the plane, the type of hotel room they usually book, and their credit card information to make bookings more efficient for the customer and the agency.

             If you are marketing a service online, it is difficult to visually depict what your service is all about. Visitors to your site need some reassurance that the service you are selling them is legitimate and valuable. Therefore, you might wish to include a page on your site that lists testimonials from well-known customers. This gives prospective customers more confidence about purchasing your service.

The Fundamentals

             Once you have clearly defined your online objectives, your target markets, and the products or services you want to promote online, you are ready to move on to the next phase of planning your Web site—doing your competitive analysis.

Using Competitor Sites to Your Advantage

             You have to realize that your online competition is different from your offline competition. Online, you are competing with all organizations that have an online presence and sell the same types of products and services you do. When doing your competitive analysis online, you want to select the “best of breed”— those fantastic Web sites of the organizations selling the same products and services you do—no matter where they are physically located.

                  One of your Web site’s objectives is to always meet and beat the competition in terms of search engine rankings and Web site content. To do so, you must understand exactly what it is your competition is doing. Take the time to research competitors and compare them on an element-by-element basis.
                 There are a number of ways you can identify your competition online. You can find them by conducting searches with the appropriate keywords, seeing which competing Web sites rank highly in the major search engines and directories. Similarly, there are many other online resources you can use to research your competition, including industry-specific Web portals and directories.

                  Once you have gathered a list of competing Web sites, analyze them element

by element to determine which Web elements your competitors include on their sites and how their sites compare to one another. You want to look at what types of content they are providing to your target market. Other components you should analyze include the visual appeal of your competitors’ sites, content, ease of navigation, search engine friendliness, interactivity, and Web site stickiness, or what they do to keep people coming back to their site. This information can provide you with details on what you need to incorporate into your

site to meet and beat the competition.

            When we do a competitive analysis for clients, we reverse-engineer (or dissect) the competing Web site from a number of different perspectives. Generally, you will choose five or six of the absolute best competing Web sites. Then you start to build a database using Excel or a table in Word.
            Start with the first competing Web site, and from your review, start to add database elements to the first column. Note any types of content, target markets defined, repeat-traffic techniques used, viral marketing techniques used, search engine friendliness features used, download time for different types of Internet connections, cross-platform compatibility, cross-browser compatibility, and innovative elements. When you have dissected the first competing Web site and have noted appropriate database elements for comparative purposes, move on to the second competing Web site. Go through the same process,  adding those elements that are new or different from what you already have in your database. Continue building the first column of your database by continuing through all the sites you want to include in your competitive analysis.

           The next step is to develop a column for each of the sites you want to include in the competitive analysis. Then add two more columns—one for your existing Web site, to see how your site stacks against the competition, and the second for future planning purposes.

          The next step is to go back and compare each site against the criteria for column 1, noting appropriate comments. For content information, you want to note whether the particular site has the same specific content, and how well it was presented. For download speeds, note specific minutes and seconds for each type of connection. For each repeat-traffic generator, you may choose to include details, or just Yes/No. Continue with this process until you have completed the database, including your own existing site.

            By this time, you should have a good feel for users’ experiences when they visit your competitors’ sites. Now you are ready to do your planning. In the last column of your database, review each of the elements in the first column, review your notes in your competitive analysis, and, where appropriate, complete the last column by categorizing each of the elements as one of the following: 

• • A—Need to have; essential, critical element; can’t live without

• • B—Nice to have if it doesn’t cost too much

• • C—Don’t need; don’t want at any price.

          Remember that when users visit a number of sites that have certain elements incorporated, such as a virtual tour, that element becomes the norm. If your site does not have that virtual tour (or whatever that certain element is), they may feel as if you are not keeping up with industry standards, that you are not meeting their expectations. The bar is constantly being raised. Once a person sees something on three or four of your competitors’ sites, it becomes an expectation. The Internet has helped create very demanding consumers with very high expectations.

           Having completed identification of your objectives, target markets, products and services, and now your competitive analysis, you are ready to develop your storyboard or architectural plan or blueprint for your site.
Storyboarding Your Web Site

             Before you start construction on your Web site, there are many steps to be taken. First you must have the storyboard, or the blueprint of your site, developed. In Web development, the majority of the time should be spent in the planning stage—integrate your objectives, your target market information, the findings of the competitive analysis, and your own ideas as well as those of others. This is done through the process of storyboarding.

              The storyboard is the foundation of your Web site. Consider it the architectural

plan or blueprint of your site. It should show you, on paper, the first draft of the content and layout of your site. It gives you the chance to review the layout and make changes before development begins.

               A Web site storyboard can be thought of much like a hierarchical organizational

chart in a business. In a typical business structure, the executives sit on

top, followed by their subordinates, and so on.

             Think of your Web site storyboard like this: You begin with  your main page or home page at the top. Under the main page you have your central navigation bar. Each of the navigation options should be available on each page, regardless of where the user is on your site. Within each of the sections listed on your main navigation bar, you’re going to have subsections, and so on.

              The storyboard can be created with a software program like Microsoft Visio, with sheets of paper, or with any other mechanism. Quite often when we begin storyboarding a project for a client, we’ll start with yellow sticky notes on a wall. Very low tech, but it works! It is very easy to get a visual of the navigation structure and easy to fill in the content pages (one per sticky note) in the appropriate places. It is also very easy to edit—simply move a sticky from one section to another or add another sticky note for a new page.

In this section of the article we cover:

• • Detailed planning of your site before a line of code is ever written

• • Content guidelines

• • Text guidelines

• • Color guidelines

• • Navigation guidelines

• • Graphics guidelines

• • Visual guidelines

• • Other guidelines.

Detailed Web Site Planning

          In the previous section of this article you learned how to develop your storyboard. Now you need to develop the specific content, text, and graphics for each page of your site.
         The first draft of the text, for each page, should be developed by you. You know your target market better than anyone—you know what makes them buy, you know what they want, and you know the buzz words for your industry far better than your Web developer.

           Once the first draft of the text is done, you want to have this text reviewed and edited by an online copywriter. Your online copywriter can be a person from your own organization, someone from a Web development organization, or an outsourced third party. Online copywriters often have a background in PR or advertising, and they know how to get the message across in as few words as possible. Online copywriters know how to grab your readers’ attention and get them to do what it is you want them to do. Internet users don’t want to read pages and pages of text—they want to get what they’re looking for quickly. Online copywriters know that the text should be short, to the point, and written so it can easily be scanned.
            Always review what the online copywriter has done. You want to make sure that the substance of your text has stayed the same and only the form has been changed. After you have reviewed and approved the online copywriter’s work, you want to have the content reviewed and edited by an Internet marketer. Again, the Internet marketer can be a person from your own organization, someone from a Web development organization, or an outsourced third party. Be sure that the Internet marketer you choose has expertise in search engines and their ranking criteria, repeat-traffic generators, and viral and permission marketing, as well as the latest trends in online marketing such as podcasts, blogs, and

interactive maps.

          The Internet marketer will review and edit the text and graphics, making sure that the keywords are used in the appropriate places for high search engine ranking. The keyword assigned to a particular page should be used appropriately in the page title, the text throughout the page, the meta-tags for keyword and description, the headers, the Alt tags, and the comments tags. There is a real science to this, so be sure to choose your Internet marketer carefully. You’ll learn more about designing your site to be search engine

friendly in my next blog article.

           The Internet marketer should also ensure that you have used the appropriate repeat-traffic generators, appropriate permission marketing techniques, and appropriate viral marketing techniques. Again, you need to review and approve the changes to make sure your message is still presented appropriately for your target market. 

            Once you are satisfied with the Internet marketer’s work, the next step is graphic design. The graphic designer will develop the “look and feel” for your site—the navigation bar, the background, and the separator bars. The graphic designer knows that your online and offline corporate identity should be consistent. Again, you will review and approve the graphic design.

            Once all this is done, and everything has been reviewed and approved, you are ready for the programming to start.

Content Notes

              Make all of your contact information readily available and easy to find and access. You always want to include your contact information on every page. Be sure to include your physical or mailing address, phone and fax numbers, and your e-mail address. It is important to make it easy for people to get in touch with you through every means possible.
                 Avoid “Under Construction” pages on your site at all costs. First of all, they are of no value to your visitors. When you have information, post it. Until then, don’t mention it. Second, “Under Construction” pages can actually hinder your search engine placement with some of the more popular search engines and directories.

                 Be sure to include security information. Explain to your customers that when transactions or exchanges of information occur on your Web site, they are secure.

                 Be sure to include your privacy policy as well. By telling your Web site visitors how their personal information (e.g., their name, e-mail address, etc.) will and will not be used, they will feel more comfortable and be more willing to submit inquiries to your site or join your mailing list.
              Minimize use of background sounds and auto-play sounds. Some people surf the Web from their office and wish to go discreetly from one site to the next. Background sounds and sounds that load automatically can compromise their discreetness. Give your visitors the option of listening to a sound, but do not force it upon them.

Text Notes

            To convey your intended image, your Web site uses the tone of your text and the design of your graphics. When determining the text content for your site, be mindful of excluding information on your site that is second nature to you but important for your visitors. Review all text content on your site to ensure that you have not omitted anything crucial. Better yet, have your target market review and provide feedback—sometimes you are too close to the forest to see the trees.

            Keep text brief. Almost 80 percent of Web users merely scan online text as opposed to actually reading it. Make your key points quickly and succinctly, and use lots of bulleted lists, headers, and horizontal rules to create visual breaks in the content. This helps keep visitors interested enough to read the information on your site. If they are faced with huge blocks of text, most visitors are overwhelmed by the quantity of the information and either are too intimidated to read your message or do not want to spend the amount of time it will take to read your message. Write for scanability.

              Don’t set your text size too small, as this is too hard to read. However, if your text is set too large, it looks like you are shouting. Also, avoid using ALL CAPS, WHICH ALSO COMES ACROSS AS SHOUTING.
Color Notes

             Keep your online and offline images consistent. Logos, corporate colors, and other marketing collateral associated with your company should all be consistent.
            Choose your background and font colors carefully. You want to provide a pleasant viewing experience for your visitors, so be sure to use backgrounds that are not too busy and don’t obscure your text. Only certain colors show up properly on certain backgrounds. A light background with dark text is easiest on the eyes, which is why most sites these days opt for a clean white background.
            Use the default colors for links whenever possible. It is common knowledge by Web site visitors that blue text indicates an unvisited link, while purple, maroon, or darker blue usually represents a link that has not yet been visited, and red is the color of an active link. It should not be difficult for visitors to identify your links, so if you decide not to use the default colors, you must emphasize your links in a consistent manner through font size, font style, or underlines.

Navigation Notes

           Ease of navigation is very important to your site. You must provide a navigation bar in a consistent location on every page. You must make it easy for Web site visitors to get from one page to another, so be sure to provide links to all of the major pages of your site on your navigation bar. Search engines can index any page from your site at any time, so your home page may not necessarily be the first page visitors come to. Never have dead ends. When viewers scroll down to the bottom of a page only to find that they must scroll all the way back to the top to move on (because you have no links at the bottom of the page), this is considered a dead end. A consistent-looking and well-positioned navigation

bar with functioning links is the key to efficient site navigation.

           A good rule of thumb is that your visitors should be able to get anywhere they want to go on your site in three clicks or less. This is why it is important to develop an effective navigation bar as previously described. For very large sites (sites consisting of more than eight to ten major sections), it is a good idea to include a site map. Site maps, are usually text-based lists that name all of the site’s pages and their content. Site maps make it easy for users to access the information they are looking for without causing them much frustration—which is why it is important to make site maps accessible from any page on your site. Include a link from your main navigation bar to the site map for the easiest possible reference. Site maps are also great for submission to the search engines as they provide links to every page of your Web site, ensuring, as much as possible, that every page of your site gets included in the search engines’ database.

          An additional feature you might wish to include, if your site is fairly large, is an internal search tool. Internal search tools allow users to enter their query in a search box and have all relevant matches returned. This is a particularly useful feature if you sell many products directly on your Web site or if your site contains many pages of content. It allows the user to quickly search for the desired item or information using the product’s name or a relevant keyword. Again, keep the design of your site consistent. Font types, headers, footers, navigation bars, buttons, bullets, colors, and so on, should be consistent throughout the site to maintain a polished, professional look.

Graphics Notes

           A good rule of thumb is to keep the combined size of the text and graphics, on any Web page, no more than 50 KB. Graphics that take too much time to download can cause visitors to leave your site before they get a chance to see it. 

          Some people even turn graphics off in their browsers to save time when searching, so you should provide all of your information in text format as well as graphics. To do this, use descriptive Alt attributes in your image tags. If for any reason the graphics do not display, the Alt text will load in place of the images. So visitors who choose not to browse with graphics turned on will have an easier time navigating your site. Another important reason for using descriptive attributes in your image tags is that Alt text is spidered and indexed by many of the major search engines. Therefore, using keywords in your Alt text for your image tags will improve your ranking in search engines and will provide a description of the images in the event that they are not loaded.
         Use thumbnail graphics where applicable. Travel and tourism Web sites that have a page with a lot of large images should create small “thumbnail” versions of each image, then give visitors the option of clicking through to the larger versions they are interested in seeing. This is far superior to making your visitors wait for a series of large images to load.

            Be careful with the use of image maps as well. Image maps are large graphics

with clickable “hot spots.” Image maps are typically used for navigation

purposes and usually have text embedded in the graphic. Search engines cannot read text embedded in a graphic, so from the standpoint of search engine friendliness, if you use image maps always ensure that you provide your appropriate text and Alt tags for the search engine.
            Very often, when Web sites use a large graphic for an image map, visitors must wait for the entire image to load before it is apparent where they must click to begin navigating. Instead of using a large image map, it is a good idea to break the image into smaller sections so that visitors receive faster feedback without having to wait for a huge graphic to load. Also, always provide an alternate text link navigation system to assist people who surf with their graphics turned off.

           It amazes me how often I see Flash intros as the home page for a Web site. The Flash intros are basically videos, and the search engines have a difficult time indexing them as there is no text on the page, no Alt tags, no meta-tags, no headers, nor any of the other elements in the search engine ranking formulas.
Visual Notes

         Check your site using different browsers. What viewers see when your site is downloaded depends on what browser they are using. Different browsers display the same Web site differently. Before you post your site online, check your Alt attributes Descriptive text associated with respective images on a Web site.

site with the most popular browsers. You might want to check your Web traffic

analysis to see what browsers your Web site visitors are using.

         Also make sure that you review your site on both a Mac and a PC, as sometimes your Web site looks different depending on the platform.
         Design your site for various screen widths. Try to accommodate visitors regardless of the screen resolution they use. Some Web users still run their systems at 640 pixels by 480 pixels; keep this in mind when designing your site. Use your Web traffic analysis software to determine the screen resolution preferences of your visitors. (See next articles for more information on Web traffic analysis software and the reports you can access.)

          Your Web site should steer clear of scrolling marquee text. Scrolling marquees are difficult to read and are not compatible with all browsers. Simply post text directly on your pages if you have something important to say.


Other Notes

           Your home page should be 50 KB or less and should be displayed on no more than one or two screens. Studies have shown that visitors rarely wait beyond 15 seconds to download a site. Test the download time of your site using different connection speeds to ensure that it is reasonable for all users.

          Also avoid dead links. These are links that don’t go anywhere and the viewer usually receives a “404—File not Found” error message from the Web server after clicking on a dead link. Ideally you can designate your site map, if you have one, as the default page rather than a “404—File not Found” error message. Verify periodically that all your links are still active.