There are many marketing medium available today, from door to door delivered flyers to television advertisements; all are cost effective in their own right. However today the Internet is probably the most cost effective of all, for a relatively low cost a product or service can be made visible to millions around the globe. The biggest question that arises from the use of the Internet is undoubtedly how to achieve the best results. This article will breakdown some of the basics that need to be addressed during the planning and designing processes; general design, colour schemes and navigation along with a brief explanation of SEO (search engine optimization).
The general design of any web site is a critical component in its effectiveness as a marketing tool. This sounds fairly obvious but the method of achieving has alluded many web sites. The general design not only has to visually (and acoustically) attractive but also usable to all visitors no matter their level of Internet computing skill (this is excluding Intranet sites where personnel using the site can be trained). The general layout must make sense to new visitors; thus encouraging them to return. It has to be remembered that reading from a screen differs from reading from paper where light is reflected, a screen projects light. This is one of the reasons for limiting the amount of text that should be displayed on any one screen, make use of plenty of white space; that is screen space that contains only the chosen background colour. When confronted with a screen full of text the general public will read only an abstract of what is actually there. This can cause the message to be lost, it is much more effective to summarise and get your message read. Scrolling is another basic design issue that should be addressed; when a page has excess scrolling then the visitor may well forget the content at the start of the page by the time they have reached the end. It is fairly good practise to keep your web page lengths to a maximum of two standard screen depths ( 2 x 768 including toolbars etc).
There are two basic rules that can be applied to colour schemes when planning and designing a web site; the first is the importance of contrast and the second it the relationship that can be associated with the product(s) or service(s). The reason for the former is quite simply legibility, it is no good having a wonderful site if it is difficult to read the text. There should always be a high contrast between the text and the background, be it a simple colour or an image. Colour associations is something that we all practise in everyday life, e.g. children's toys are bright reds, yellows etc, clinic scenarios tend to be associated with colours schemes that can be considered clean, e.g. midnight blue with white. It is important that when planning and designing a site that we take advantage of these inherent associations; it simplifies the marketing task.
One of the major downfalls of many web sites is their approach to site navigation. There are many methodologies that are employed in site navigation, it does not really matter which one is chosen as long as it is kept simple. The last thing a visitor to any site wants it to get lost down some deep ravine within the site. Always give the visitor a method to return to the previous level and a method to return to the home page. It is best advised not to allow them to navigate more than two levels down from the home page; with some fore thought that will be achievable on most web sites. One last point in regards to navigation, keep the visitor's view of the navigation simple; if they have to think about how to get where, they will soon lose interest in your site.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization), what is it and how does it affect your web site? The answer to the later is simple; it is your sites visibility on the Internet. Ask yourself, when you are looking for an item on the web and you search using Yahoo, Google or whichever search engine, how many web pages do you check the sites on for what you are looking for. Research tells us that in general people will not go beyond the 3rd page, in fact the vast majority will only look at the results on the first page. There is no short term solution to achieving SEO, it is a drawn out process, no matter what you may see advertised, the actual web page contents have to be optimized for each search engine before the long process of obtaining back links (links from other web sites to your site) takes place. If back links are accumulated too fast search engines will treat this as a form of spamming, they have to be accumulated steadily over a period of time, the search engine then has to find these links. Search engines complicated this process by giving different web sites different levels of importance, they refer to the sites that they consider important in back linking as quality sites (a list of such is unpublished). Without any SEO being performed on your web site you are basically discarding the site as a marketing tool.
To summarise the above points, take your time when planning and designing your web site; general design, colour schemes and navigation should be priority considerations. Never forget the importance of good search engine optimisation.
The general design of any web site is a critical component in its effectiveness as a marketing tool. This sounds fairly obvious but the method of achieving has alluded many web sites. The general design not only has to visually (and acoustically) attractive but also usable to all visitors no matter their level of Internet computing skill (this is excluding Intranet sites where personnel using the site can be trained). The general layout must make sense to new visitors; thus encouraging them to return. It has to be remembered that reading from a screen differs from reading from paper where light is reflected, a screen projects light. This is one of the reasons for limiting the amount of text that should be displayed on any one screen, make use of plenty of white space; that is screen space that contains only the chosen background colour. When confronted with a screen full of text the general public will read only an abstract of what is actually there. This can cause the message to be lost, it is much more effective to summarise and get your message read. Scrolling is another basic design issue that should be addressed; when a page has excess scrolling then the visitor may well forget the content at the start of the page by the time they have reached the end. It is fairly good practise to keep your web page lengths to a maximum of two standard screen depths ( 2 x 768 including toolbars etc).
There are two basic rules that can be applied to colour schemes when planning and designing a web site; the first is the importance of contrast and the second it the relationship that can be associated with the product(s) or service(s). The reason for the former is quite simply legibility, it is no good having a wonderful site if it is difficult to read the text. There should always be a high contrast between the text and the background, be it a simple colour or an image. Colour associations is something that we all practise in everyday life, e.g. children's toys are bright reds, yellows etc, clinic scenarios tend to be associated with colours schemes that can be considered clean, e.g. midnight blue with white. It is important that when planning and designing a site that we take advantage of these inherent associations; it simplifies the marketing task.
One of the major downfalls of many web sites is their approach to site navigation. There are many methodologies that are employed in site navigation, it does not really matter which one is chosen as long as it is kept simple. The last thing a visitor to any site wants it to get lost down some deep ravine within the site. Always give the visitor a method to return to the previous level and a method to return to the home page. It is best advised not to allow them to navigate more than two levels down from the home page; with some fore thought that will be achievable on most web sites. One last point in regards to navigation, keep the visitor's view of the navigation simple; if they have to think about how to get where, they will soon lose interest in your site.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization), what is it and how does it affect your web site? The answer to the later is simple; it is your sites visibility on the Internet. Ask yourself, when you are looking for an item on the web and you search using Yahoo, Google or whichever search engine, how many web pages do you check the sites on for what you are looking for. Research tells us that in general people will not go beyond the 3rd page, in fact the vast majority will only look at the results on the first page. There is no short term solution to achieving SEO, it is a drawn out process, no matter what you may see advertised, the actual web page contents have to be optimized for each search engine before the long process of obtaining back links (links from other web sites to your site) takes place. If back links are accumulated too fast search engines will treat this as a form of spamming, they have to be accumulated steadily over a period of time, the search engine then has to find these links. Search engines complicated this process by giving different web sites different levels of importance, they refer to the sites that they consider important in back linking as quality sites (a list of such is unpublished). Without any SEO being performed on your web site you are basically discarding the site as a marketing tool.
To summarise the above points, take your time when planning and designing your web site; general design, colour schemes and navigation should be priority considerations. Never forget the importance of good search engine optimisation.