Ensure Your Website Is Effective With Enterprise North East Trust

The growth of the internet has created a new and exciting platform for businesses to not only promote their organisation to existing and potential clients but has also allowed companies to sell their products to a worldwide audience.  As a result of this nearly all companies now have their own website, either created by themselves or with the assistance of a web designer or developer.  However according to Enterprise North East Trust, for businesses that launch a website without careful consideration to its function, the resulting site can be useless or, in a worst case scenario, can damage customer relations.

Joyce Duncan, director of operations at Enterprise says, “The internet has opened up a wealth of advantages for many companies, as it allows them to reach a worldwide audience at the click of a button.  A small firm that invests in a website can secure the same exposure as a multinational company, allowing the company to expand its customer base on both a national and international level.  However, the desire to have a presence on the web can sometimes be at the compromise of clear objectives, effective design and good presentation of key content.  As a first point of call for many clients or customers, it is important that your website gives an accurate impression of your company.  Therefore think carefully about what you want your site to say and how you expect it to look, before embarking on the design and development of a website.”

Joyce advises considering:

• What do you want your website to do?
Before getting into the design and content of the website it is important to identify exactly what you want the site to do.  Websites can take two forms – a marketing site, which is devoted entirely to promoting the business to existing and potential clients or a trading site, which will promote your company as well as selling your products to customers online.  Once you have a clear idea of the function of the website, you will be able to start thinking about the type of content you will need to accomplish this objective of the site and how to present the necessary information.  It can be useful to look at other websites to get some ideas.

• Know your audience
Understanding what your audience will want from your website can help you to think logically about the type of content required and how it should be displayed.  Developing a good understanding of your users will ensure that you attract them to the site and if they can find what they are looking for with minimum hassle or fuss; they are very likely to return to the site again and again.  If you also bear in mind your user’s internet connection speeds, you should be able to create a site that they can access without having to wait a long time for lengthy sections of text or large images to download.

• Getting the message across
Consistency is the key in effective web design.  Ensure that your website conveys the same key messages as any other piece of marketing material about your business.  Explain what your business does on the home page, as this should be the first page that your clients will see when they access the site; it can be quite annoying if they have to search around to find out what you do.  Product or service information and contact details are a must, but it is also worth including other information such as recent news, client testimonials or staff profiles.  Staff profiles will present the human face of your business so include photographs and information about your management team. 

• Structure and Tone
To make the most of the content, it is very important that it is well written and holds the users attention.  Keep sentences short and punchy and limit paragraphs to three or four lines only.  If you want to shorten sections of lengthy text, incorporate the main points in bulleted or numbered lists.  Remember that a picture is worth a thousand words so you might want to consider using a table or graph if this will illustrate a point better than using words.  Avoid information spilling over onto more than one page, as users prefer not to have to scroll too much.  The tone of the writing should speak to your audience in their own language, so avoid jargon and keep the message simple.  Instead of just listing the features and products that you offer, include some additional information, it only needs to be one line, such as benefits or unique qualities.

• Plan your site
When planning your site you should always keep your target user in mind; if you have a good understanding of what they will be looking for you will be able to use good design techniques to ease navigation.  Hyperlinks can help to organise related information and topic groups but it is important not to make users go through pages and pages of the site to find what they are looking for.  Also rank information in order of priority, so the most important should be centralised, next important across the top and least important in the left margin.  To get an accurate idea of how the site will flow, it can be useful to create a diagram showing the logic of the content, presentation and navigation your site will follow.

Wireframing is a method which allows you to create a skeleton outline of the site and the basic elements to be included.  Each box is labelled to illustrate how things will be set out and will identify the blocks of content that each webpage will contain.  Wireframes can be drawn using word, powerpoint or illustrator and can be very useful to gain feedback from customers or friends to get a representative perception of how your intended audience would respond to the site.

• Designing the site
Good web design is crucial, as this will ultimately influence how efficiently and effectively users can get what they need from your site.  Using a wireframe diagram will firstly allow you to plan the theme and structure of the site, to ensure that all pages are held together neatly and professionally.

Again with the design, consistency is key; the look of the site should reflect the company branding visual guidelines, using the same logos, taglines and colours to let customers know that they are in the right place.  For example, if they type your company name into a search engine and retrieve a website that bears no resemblance to your company’s branding or operations, they will assume that they are not in the right place.  You can achieve good design without using spectacular graphics or transitions, simple and elegant touches can be more effective.  Create smooth transitions from page to page by keeping certain elements of the design the same, repeating colours, fonts and borders on every page will reinforce the identity of the site.  Also, to help the user navigate around the site, keep menu bars in the same position on every page.  Cramming information onto the same page will make the design look fussy and cluttered, if possible try to define areas of the page using sections of white space. 

• Ensure the page is legible
Good design can be compromised if the user cannot read the information clearly; therefore you must choose your fonts carefully.  To emphasise subject or topic headings, bolden text or use a different colour, this will make it stand out in comparison to the body text.  Keep the font size the same throughout the site, as varying sizes will make the pages look messy and unprofessional but make sure that the size is big enough to read online.  Also choose a font that is widely available because different browsers and operating systems determine how the site is displayed and if you have chosen a unique font that isn’t available on all browsers, then it will divert to the default font – possibly at the detriment of your site design.

• Key considerations
Even though you have followed strict guidelines for accurate design, all can be lost if you don’t take other factors such as differences in screen displays and browser layout.  To ensure that your website can be accessed properly by all of your users worldwide, you need to firstly consider browsers.   As your site will be accessed by users with different web browsers; it is worth making sure that your site can still be displayed correctly by testing the web pages in as many browsers as possible.  Similarly, differences between screen resolutions can affect how information is displayed.  If you design your site based on higher resolution displays, when it is accessed by a user with lower resolution settings, all of the content may not be shown. Users with disabilities should also be considered. Something as simple as allowing a web sites text size to be altered can aid the visually impaired.

For further advice on developing an effective website, Enterprise North East Trust is holding two seminars on ‘6 Steps To An Effective Website’ in conjunction with Business Gateway.  The events will be held on Wednesday 23 November 2005 at the Crichiebank Business Centre, Mill Road, Port Elphinstone, Inverurie from 12noon and Thursday 1 December 2005 at the Ellon Business Centre, Broomiesburn Road from 12noon.  To book a place at either of these events contact Karen Clark at Enterprise North East Trust on 01467 672535 or email Karen.clark@enetrust.com.

Ends

For more information contact

Laura Cox
Senior Account Executive
Tricker PR
Telephone: 01224 646491
Direct: 01224 654081
Email: lcox@trickerpr.com