Level2wo

Successful websites can work in many capacities: as a marketing tool, for lead generation, a presentation, or to share media, to name a few. Whatever the case may be, they all share one thing in common: great design. The following list is a basic checklist of the minimums you should at least be aware of when designing your corporate website, or any other website you’d like to see the light of day.

Color
When devising or approving a color scheme for your website, you must take into account several considerations:

• How will your logo fit into the color scheme?
• Does the color scheme reflect the image of your company?
• Does the color scheme connect emotionally with your customers?
• Do you have a proper balance of contrast?
• Is the color usage consistent throughout the website?
• And on and on…

Color is tied to emotion, so careful choice of color is important. Use color sparingly. Color should not even be apparent; instead, color should be used subconsciously to complement your message. Use color to bond emotionally with your customers. Here is an excellent article on color theory.

Navigation
People usually come to your website looking for something. They could be looking for information, your product, a manual, etc., but whatever it is that they are searching for by going to your website, your website must present a clear path to what someone may be looking for. Your website must accommodate for every scenario, and in turn, there may likely be more than one path to the same solution. Your users, however, should never find themselves lost when navigating your website; prominent, easy navigation should always be available. A search function on your website is a great tool for lost users, and Search can act as a life-vest in the sea of information on your website.

Whatever the case may be, you do not want a frustrated user to get lost and hit that ‘X’ button in the upper right hand corner. Always provide a way out for your users, or a way back to the beginning, or Home page of your site. Usability testing usually exposes areas that may be confusing to end users, so it is vital that you test your website with someone other than yourself.

Legibility
How many times have you found an informative website, only to realize your eyes are hurting after the 4th paragraph? I’ve actually copied and pasted articles into Word just to be able to read it. White font on a dark background is the worst offender. It is so offensive that one must wonder if the designer planned on blinding his or her users. Another faux pas to look out for is font being placed directly over an image. If your site is the latest trendy webzine, ok, but if you’re trying to communicate with your user base, they simply won’t read it, or find some other website with similar information to bookmark.

Information Hierarchy
Information Hierarchy is part of an Information Architect’s job. Good IAs analyze all the information at hand, and they organize it into a properly formatted schema. Laying out all the information into a hierarchy is the basis for your navigation and site layout. Due to the organic nature of a website, an open architecture must support future information in order for your website to maintain its usability, i.e., extensibility is key. This important aspect of website development is often overlooked by large and small companies, and it’s one that needs to be addressed before the site is even built, if possible. Information Architecture provides the blueprint for your website. It ensures nothing is missed or lost when transferred to the live site. It is a means of taking a large amount of data and mapping that data out to support your users’ needs. By systematically organizing your site’s information hierarchy (also known as Information architecture), gaps in usability will be exposed and easily corrected before the first code of your website is even written.

Sitemaps
One reason for creating a website in the first place is for exposure, and the best way to get exposure is to have search engines index your pages. One way for a search engine to index your website completely is through the use of hyper links; however, this does not guarantee your entire site being indexed. You may, in the process of creating your great site, miss a link. An easy way to control how search engines will index your site is through a sitemap.xml file. This is a search engine specific file, used by the search engines to index your site. You control what is indexed and what extra information is passed to the search engine. This file sits in the home directory of your website and is automatically referenced by search engines once a spider hits your site. It is not a guarantee your site will be indexed, but once it is indexed, you can rest assure that all your pages listed in the sitemap.xml file will be considered.

Quick loading pages
This is a more important characteristic of your website than you may think. Heavy multimedia downloads, insufficient server resources, poor, inefficiently coded pages, all contribute to slow loading pages. If you are going to throw at your customers everything but the kitchen sink, be sure your ISP has plenty of bandwidth and processing power to back up the loads you will put on it. For end users, there is nothing more annoying than waiting for a flash presentation to load just to access your website. With quick loading pages, website users can get to the information and carry out their tasks with minimal effort. You do not want to scare away customers and have them running to your competitor because it takes too long to load the first page your users lands on.

Images
Images break up long text and allow you to reinforce your marketing message. One of the first forms of communications was through the use of images. Think cave drawings and hieroglyphics. Use that innate ability of familiarity with images to trigger a connection with your audience. We are, after all, visual beings. By using well thought out, compelling images alongside content, your customers will be more receptive towards your message. You can also use images as a way to illustrate complex concepts. The phrase “A picture is worth a thousand words” absolutely holds true in web design.

Using Templates
There are a plethora of templates out there for building websites. And many are good; however, you will always find limitations with templates. Templates also require a pretty knowledgeable coder to go in and hack the template to meet your requirements. Templates may cost you less initially, but in the long run maintenance, customization, and updates will offset your savings. Another issue you risk running into is that same template being used by many other websites. Here at Level2wo, marketing is about standing out with your audience, building up and maintaining the perception (and hopefully reality) that you are a leader in your market. Using a cookie cutter template that Acme Inc. used for their website, dilutes your brand, and may even be detrimental to what you are trying to achieve.

The Scripts
Scripts, as we will refer to them, are installed Content Management Systems (CMS) and Blogging software like Wordpress and Drupal. These systems are great for maintenance and great as a platform to build your website upon. We definitely recommend a custom theme for your website in order to stay away from the Template look described above. These platforms are easy to get up and running and also allow a non-coder to contribute content as well. Furthermore, by separating the style from the content, these systems can easily be transformed to coincide with your branding strategies without reinventing a complete CMS from the ground up. The best scripts are usually open source, have a huge community behind them, and consistently release security updates and fixes. You will want to stay away from proprietary scripts released by small companies due to their lack of support and inability to keep up with spammers and security issues.

As you can see, great website design consists of a variety of expertise. As an extension of your business, and often being the first impression of your company, a website with great design can win over customers who may be on the fence in terms of choosing you or your competitors. Don’t risk losing your prospects due to a poorly designed website. Wow them immediately with your professionalism, not only in person but online.

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