Take your site from so-so to sublime with these dos and don'ts for the web.
by A.J. Kandy
February 2008
1. DON’T: Talk about yourself so much.
DO: Listen to your users. What are they telling you?
How many websites load the home page with meaningless puffery like “We are the pre-eminent provider of widget technology in the global widget marketplace,” and then provide no clue what to do afterwards?
The key lesson here is: The site is not about you, nor is it to impress your investors or board of directors. It’s for your visitors’ needs and to serve a particular business function—to sell, to inform, to connect, to encourage action. Those should be the bottom-line metrics for the site’s design and functionality choices.
Visitors come to your site looking to see what you can do for them. Think like the users; try to predict what they want to see. To a great extent, users want to see themselves reflected in the design; ideally, you should be providing what they want before they even know they want it. Help users to self-select what type of customer they are, what kind of product they’re looking for or the type of decisions they want to make.
Conduct research, surveys and focus groups. Use web statistics packages and clickstream tracking to see where people go, and determine if the findings measure up to your goals. Are those clicks translating into sales or other measurable actions? If not, refine the design accordingly.
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