Does Your Website Suck? Fluid Fusion, a Website Design and Development Company, Provides a Five-Point Checklist That Reveals the Secret to Successful Websites
Learn the 5 things every site needs to be successful and be ranked at the top of the search engines.
Mentone, AL, April 24, 2009 --(PR.com)-- After 12 years of experience as a web designer and online marketing specialist, Susan Lee thinks the answer is probably YES. For those that say, “Not my website!” it is time for a reality check.
According to Lee, “Most people have no idea what it takes to create and maintain a winning website. It isn’t that difficult once you know what you’re doing, but most people just aren’t aware of what it really takes.”
To help businesses find out if their websites are ineffective, Lee has created 5-point checklist. “If your site doesn’t have these 5 things in place,” Lee says, “your website sucks.”
1. Content
2. Code
3. Design
4. Navigation
5. Visibility
1. Content
The most important component of a successful website is well-written content (the text in your website). And it is also where most websites fail.
“Web content is what separates a lucrative site from a failure and it also seems to be the hardest thing for businesses to generate,” Lee says. “When creating a new site or recreating an existing one, a majority of clients appear stumped when I ask them for content.”
Lee continues, “Clients seem to have no problem paying me for a site design, but when I suggest they need professionally written web content too, they usually resist. Yet they might be better off having me write the content and designing the site themselves than vice versa. It is that important. Web content needs to be written in a different way than content for print. It is a mistake to think you can just copy the text off your brochure and paste it on your site. That just doesn’t work. Websites are about immediate gratification and content needs to be written in a way that fulfills that need.”
Content checklist:
• Is it fresh and relevant?
Content should be up-to-date and constantly evolving. Think of it more like an online newspaper that is updated daily, weekly or at least monthly. Some information doesn’t change very frequently (about page and contact page, for example) but everything else should be fresh, relevant and accurate.
Remove dated references and either delete them if they are no longer applicable or place them in an archives folder (for older articles, news, etc.).
• Is it concise, yet specific?
A site has just a few seconds to grab a reader, so the content should read like an ad not a novel. By creating links to more information, websites allow readers to access more content without feeling overwhelmed.
Specificity is vital in web content writing. “For example,” Lee says, “It is better to say you are an African wildlife photographer working in Kenya than to just call yourself a photographer. The web is all about niches; find out what yours is and write your content accordingly.”
Does it solve problems and answer questions your readers have? If a website’s content is geared from the website owner’s point of view, instead of their customer’s point of view, the site is a failure. Websites are about their customers. “About” and “Media Kit” pages are the only two places where websites speak from the owner’s point of view. Everything else should be written for the customer.
• Is it written in a friendly and informative fashion? Business jargon and big words do not make the sale. Use friendly, yet professional language that targets the website’s particular market.
2. Code
Code is the programming language (usually html) that creates a website. Susan Lee says, “Web designers concerned only with visual impact may not give this much thought, but this is a huge blunder. Code is the backbone of any website and should comply with the current standards, allow your site to be seen correctly by all major web browsers and search engines and it should employ SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques such as meta tags, descriptions, and alt tags.”
3. Design
With the emphasis people place on the visual appeal of a website, one would think most commercial websites would at least “look” good, but that is not the case. “At least half of my business is website redesign or ‘site makeovers’ as I like to call them. Websites with outdated visuals or annoying pop-ups and animations are red flags to visitors. These barriers send them running out of your website. A site design should reflect the type of business you are and must be created with customers in mind. An effective site design is uncluttered and focused; text should be easy to read and the colors should be pleasing to the eye.”
4. Navigation
“It doesn’t matter how beautiful your site is or how well-written the content, if I can’t find anything on it,” Lee says. Poor navigation on a website causes frustration from site visitors who just want to get to the page they are looking for in no more than 3 trouble-free clicks. Lee explains: “Your navigation structure-your main menu or top menu links-should contain links to your home page, an about page, and a contact page. In addition to those standards, websites should have no more than 6-8 other top-level links. Anything more and you’re overwhelming your visitors. If you have extensive content on your site, use subcategories on your main menu items and consider providing an internal search engine.”
5. Visibility
“Even if you execute the first 4 parts of a successful website, if you fail to take the final step, your website will be invisible to search engines and, therefore, to most of your potential clients,” Lee says. “It still amazes me that people forget to submit their sites to the major search engines and update those submissions every 4-6 months.” Lee goes on to say that providing an xml Sitemap and a robots text file to the search engines is also important. “Most search engines crawl websites looking for data to build their results from. The easier you make it for them, the better they’ll rank you. A Sitemap lays out the structure of your website for a crawler or spider showing them what pages and folders are relevant on your site. A robots.txt file does the opposite-it lets search engines know which folders and files are not to be searched (like your private folders or notes).
“If your website doesn’t meet these 5 criteria, then your website sucks,” Lee says. “The good news is that hiring a professional web designer/developer who can write effective web content and understands SEO and online marketing techniques, can put your website on the right track to success.”
###
About Susan Lee
Susan Lee started Fluid Fusion to meet the needs of small to medium-sized businesses that wanted quality design services without the high cost. Lee has over 21 years of experience in print design and over 12 years of web design experience. In her diversified career she has worked as a Creative Director, Art Director and Presentation Specialist, before starting her own business.
Even though Fluid Fusion designs for both print and web, they have been specializing in websites for the past 8 years. Fluid Fusion can design a site, write the content for it, optimize it for search engines, and create marketing plans and techniques that bring traffic to the site.
According to Lee, “Most people have no idea what it takes to create and maintain a winning website. It isn’t that difficult once you know what you’re doing, but most people just aren’t aware of what it really takes.”
To help businesses find out if their websites are ineffective, Lee has created 5-point checklist. “If your site doesn’t have these 5 things in place,” Lee says, “your website sucks.”
1. Content
2. Code
3. Design
4. Navigation
5. Visibility
1. Content
The most important component of a successful website is well-written content (the text in your website). And it is also where most websites fail.
“Web content is what separates a lucrative site from a failure and it also seems to be the hardest thing for businesses to generate,” Lee says. “When creating a new site or recreating an existing one, a majority of clients appear stumped when I ask them for content.”
Lee continues, “Clients seem to have no problem paying me for a site design, but when I suggest they need professionally written web content too, they usually resist. Yet they might be better off having me write the content and designing the site themselves than vice versa. It is that important. Web content needs to be written in a different way than content for print. It is a mistake to think you can just copy the text off your brochure and paste it on your site. That just doesn’t work. Websites are about immediate gratification and content needs to be written in a way that fulfills that need.”
Content checklist:
• Is it fresh and relevant?
Content should be up-to-date and constantly evolving. Think of it more like an online newspaper that is updated daily, weekly or at least monthly. Some information doesn’t change very frequently (about page and contact page, for example) but everything else should be fresh, relevant and accurate.
Remove dated references and either delete them if they are no longer applicable or place them in an archives folder (for older articles, news, etc.).
• Is it concise, yet specific?
A site has just a few seconds to grab a reader, so the content should read like an ad not a novel. By creating links to more information, websites allow readers to access more content without feeling overwhelmed.
Specificity is vital in web content writing. “For example,” Lee says, “It is better to say you are an African wildlife photographer working in Kenya than to just call yourself a photographer. The web is all about niches; find out what yours is and write your content accordingly.”
Does it solve problems and answer questions your readers have? If a website’s content is geared from the website owner’s point of view, instead of their customer’s point of view, the site is a failure. Websites are about their customers. “About” and “Media Kit” pages are the only two places where websites speak from the owner’s point of view. Everything else should be written for the customer.
• Is it written in a friendly and informative fashion? Business jargon and big words do not make the sale. Use friendly, yet professional language that targets the website’s particular market.
2. Code
Code is the programming language (usually html) that creates a website. Susan Lee says, “Web designers concerned only with visual impact may not give this much thought, but this is a huge blunder. Code is the backbone of any website and should comply with the current standards, allow your site to be seen correctly by all major web browsers and search engines and it should employ SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques such as meta tags, descriptions, and alt tags.”
3. Design
With the emphasis people place on the visual appeal of a website, one would think most commercial websites would at least “look” good, but that is not the case. “At least half of my business is website redesign or ‘site makeovers’ as I like to call them. Websites with outdated visuals or annoying pop-ups and animations are red flags to visitors. These barriers send them running out of your website. A site design should reflect the type of business you are and must be created with customers in mind. An effective site design is uncluttered and focused; text should be easy to read and the colors should be pleasing to the eye.”
4. Navigation
“It doesn’t matter how beautiful your site is or how well-written the content, if I can’t find anything on it,” Lee says. Poor navigation on a website causes frustration from site visitors who just want to get to the page they are looking for in no more than 3 trouble-free clicks. Lee explains: “Your navigation structure-your main menu or top menu links-should contain links to your home page, an about page, and a contact page. In addition to those standards, websites should have no more than 6-8 other top-level links. Anything more and you’re overwhelming your visitors. If you have extensive content on your site, use subcategories on your main menu items and consider providing an internal search engine.”
5. Visibility
“Even if you execute the first 4 parts of a successful website, if you fail to take the final step, your website will be invisible to search engines and, therefore, to most of your potential clients,” Lee says. “It still amazes me that people forget to submit their sites to the major search engines and update those submissions every 4-6 months.” Lee goes on to say that providing an xml Sitemap and a robots text file to the search engines is also important. “Most search engines crawl websites looking for data to build their results from. The easier you make it for them, the better they’ll rank you. A Sitemap lays out the structure of your website for a crawler or spider showing them what pages and folders are relevant on your site. A robots.txt file does the opposite-it lets search engines know which folders and files are not to be searched (like your private folders or notes).
“If your website doesn’t meet these 5 criteria, then your website sucks,” Lee says. “The good news is that hiring a professional web designer/developer who can write effective web content and understands SEO and online marketing techniques, can put your website on the right track to success.”
###
About Susan Lee
Susan Lee started Fluid Fusion to meet the needs of small to medium-sized businesses that wanted quality design services without the high cost. Lee has over 21 years of experience in print design and over 12 years of web design experience. In her diversified career she has worked as a Creative Director, Art Director and Presentation Specialist, before starting her own business.
Even though Fluid Fusion designs for both print and web, they have been specializing in websites for the past 8 years. Fluid Fusion can design a site, write the content for it, optimize it for search engines, and create marketing plans and techniques that bring traffic to the site.
Contact
Fluid Fusion - Where Design Means Business
Susan Lee
256-634-4000
www.fluidfusion.com
Susan Lee
256-634-4000
www.fluidfusion.com
Contact
Categories