by guest blogger,Barry Parham, web application developer and witty wordsmith
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Barry walks us through some of the basics of website development. Your site will be your "face on the internet", and it should look like you and sound like you and the business that you represent. Your website should be consistent with all of your other marketing efforts. Barry has done this many times, so save yourself and your business a little time and apply what the seasoned site developer, Barry Parham, recommends, including some of his "insider" tips.
If you find that it's all too much, or that you don't have time to do this yourself, give barry a call and see if he might schedule in a little time to work with you. And, don't forget that I'm always here to help you with marketing strategy and with writing content for your website and all of your other marketing materials.
The bizbuzzz, according to Barry Parham:
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The answer is “Yes.”
If you have a business, then “yes,” you should have a website. Even if it’s one page, with your company name, address, phone number, and 2 lines of good copy about what you sell. Yes. Many people don’t even remember anymore that they HAVE a copy of the Yellow Pages -- they search for what they want on the web.
Disclaimer: I am no expert. I’ve been involved with websites for longer than I care to admit, and they’ve been my career for nearly as long, but I am no expert. “Internet Expert” is very much a moving target. Okay, enough said.
It’s all been discussed and re-discussed and disclaimed and argued and counter-argued, in thousands of books. Not much for me to say or add. But it never, ever hurts to stress the simple, non-technical, you-can-absolutely-do-this-too basics. I’ll go with that -- plus a little insider info on an oft-ignored topic: what really ticks off website visitors.
The first four rules are the most important:
1) Proofread
2) Proofread again
3) Get somebody else to proofread
4) Proofread what they proofread
And don’t just check spelling, check grammar, too. The best spell-checker will never notice the difference between “she is sane” and “she in sane.”
Beyond that, here are some general, and highly recommended, guidelines:
1) Be honest.
2) Be prepared to respond to emails, at least -- at least -- as quickly as you would respond to a phone message.
3) Pick a font or two, and stick with them. Pick a color or two, and stick with them. Your website should not look like a ransom note.
4) Confirm that all your links, both internal and external, work. Then check again. Next week, check them again. Some studies show that broken links are the single most irritating technical shortcoming of a website.
5) Avoid navigational dead ends. If you have content that links to another of your pages, then another, then another, etc., make sure to include very visible, obvious ways to move backward, to move forward, to get back home.
6) Avoid underlining words for emphasis. People have been trained to think that underlined words, at a website, mean that the words are clickable, to go somewhere else. For emphasis, try bold, italic, a slightly different color, a different font size if you must - but only if you must.
7) Avoid what I call the “256 Crayola Syndrome.” There are literally thousands of visual things you can do with a website, but that doesn’t mean you should figure out how to use them all. Just because you have 256 crayons doesn’t mean you need to use all 256. Blinking text, in particular, is almost universally despised. I’ll say it again. Despised.
I put websites into three broad categories:
1) Content: just that: a lot of content. This could be your personal site, a collection of documents or pictures, 50,000 pages of jargon, whatever. Consistency is most important for this category: navigation, page layout, colors, fonts - they should all be similar, or be used to clearly differentiate between content sections.
2) Billboard: an advertisement for your service or product. In this category, be more liberal with colors & graphics, but minimize fluff, diversions, sidebars. Remember that, like an ad, every word matters, and 2 words are better than 3. People are in a hurry. Include every possible, sensible opportunity to provide contact info: phones, emails, hours, locations if relevant. Also, be careful where you place links to other websites: remember, when they go to that site, they’re leaving yours.
3) Workspace: this is generally a form, collection of forms, lots of fields, lots of typing to do, lots of time to be spent by the visitor. Avoid flashy colors: nobody wants to (and few will) spend 30+ minutes typing purple text into a yellow box on a black screen. Generally, workspaces are complex, have databases behind them, require design / maintenance / monitoring / security. But the main thing to remember, for your visitors, is that they’re going to be staring at it for some time. Be kind.
Your website’s pitch is very much like any other standard public speaking or discourse:
1) Tell ‘em what you’re gonna tell ‘em
2) Tell ‘em
3) Tell ‘em what you told ‘em
This is not only to get your point across. The repetition will help search engines rate your site’s content.
Start small. Manage your site (like every other aspect of your business, this never ends), and manage your expectations. One estimate calculates that there are over 185 million websites. You will have 1.
Me, too.
Good luck!
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Barry Parham, the owner of PM Productions, is a freelance web application developer and, when time allows, the author of humor columns, essays and short stories. He is a music fanatic, a recovering Southern Baptist, and is very pleased to be a resident of South Carolina. Barry can be reached, at the most ungodly hours, at barry@pmwebs.com, and he maintains an online catalog of his work at http://www.associatedcontent.com/user/502451/barry_parham.html.
For an example of Barry's work, visit http://www.unitrends.com/
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