Stellar Web Works

Mind Maps – A great approach for planning a website

Aidan — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 00:30:14 +0000

The idea behind mind maps is that you start with a central concept, write it down in the middle of a page, then add nodes as you think of different ideas around that concept. You can further develop any of the ideas by branching out more nodes from these ideas and so on. On paper it might look something like this:

This approach can be used for planning a website – structure, functionality, features, content, business model and what ever else you can think of. While it can be done with pen and paper, a good software tool offers much more flexibility as you can easily move things around, change them and you never run out of paper.

I’ve started using a freely available took called FreeMind for website planning and I find to be ideally suited for the job. It’s a great way to start putting structure on your ideas and – you can keep adding ideas as you think of them, go back and reorganise and fine-tune them.

Here’s a screen-shot of it in action:

Bing allows you to target different regional search results on different pages of your website

Aidan — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 10:38:18 +0000

Finally, after a long wait of about 3 weeks, Bing indexed the page I created for my regional search experiment. And, as I anticipated, the page shows up in the regional search results for Ireland (with ‘Only from Ireland’ selected). This despite the fact that it’s a New Zealand top level domain and the server is physically located in New Zealand. So this confirms that all one needs to do in order to target a specific region is to set the lang attribute in the tag.

Another Bing regional search update and a new experiment

Aidan — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 22:47:31 +0000

Following up on my recent series of posts regarding my findings about Bing regional search results, this website is finally indexed in the regional search results for New Zealand and performing quite well in the search results for target keywords – e.g. it is listed fourth for the term “web design nelson” (and the first 2 results are still bogus):

So what did I do to get things back on track? Well the thing that did it was to change the lang attribute in the html tag to “en-nz”:

This, when set, appears to be the main criteria that Bing uses to determine which region the site should be indexed in. So it looks like it overrides server location and country code top level domain. My lang attribute had previously been set to “en-us” which got picked up from the default settings in Wordpress, the platform that my site is built with. After I made the change it took 1-2 weeks before things got sorted in Bing. The interesting thing is that Bing indexed a few of the internal pages before indexing the home page and other more important pages. So we had the strange situation where some of the pages of my site were showing up in the regional search results but the home page wasn’t.

Does this open up the possibility of being able to target different regions with different pages on a website? It appears that way but I’ll have to do another experiment to find out. So here’s the experiment: I’ve set up a page entitled Web Design Ireland and I’ve set the lang attribute to “en-ie” in order to see if I can get indexed in the regional search results for Ireland.

I’ll follow up soon to let you know what happens, it will be interesting to see. If you use RSS, you can follow my RSS feed from http://sww.co.nz/feed.

Bing Update

Aidan — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 22:47:04 +0000

Following on from my previous post, I’ve posted my findings regarding Bing’s regional failings on the Bing webmaster forum, which happens to be full of similar reports. I got a response back from Brett Yount, Program Manager, Bing Webmaster Center, which seems to acknowledge that Bing has some problems when it comes to regional indexing:

Aidan,

I’ve brought this up with our indexing team to see if we can find a solution. I’ll let you know as soon as I hear back.

~B

Yahoo & Microsoft Partner Up To Take On Google With Bing

Aidan — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 11:12:07 +0000

Yahoo and Microsoft announced a 10 year partnership on 29th July where Yahoo Search will be powered by Microsoft’s new Bing search engine. The agreement is currently in front of regulators and could take two years finalise. The move looks to be one solid step towards a merger after the failed attempt in 2008.

Google is still the King of search and this deal is not expected to de-throne it, but by combining their market share the Microsoft/Yahoo combo will make a more compelling platform for advertiser’s dollars.

Since it’s unveiling in May, Bing has been fairly well received. Personally however, I have no plans to switch. After trying it out a few times, it left me unimpressed with the quality of the search results. Take for example a search for “Nelson web design” (a term I check occasionally to see how sww.co.nz is ranking in local searches). Here are the top 10 search results that Bing returns right now (NZ only search):

No. 1 is a valid result, but nos 2 & 3, both from the same domain, are not at all relevant results. In fact they are just temporary development pages on the nelson.co.nz domain of our partner, Digital Promotions, and the real Digital Promotions website appears much further down at position 10. The nelson.co.nz domain crops up again in position 6, another irrelevant result, indicating an overly heavy emphasis on domain name over content. I count only 6 relevant results in the all-important top 10. Not a very smart result for an allegedly ’smart’ search engine (or ‘decision engine’ as Microsoft prefers to call it).

Here’s what Google returns for the same search:

Hey, that’s more like it – Stellar Web Works listed at a respectable 5th position (and even finds it’s way to no. 1 in the map results!). This time all ten results are relevant.

So, after this little test my faith in Bing is definitely a bit shaky. But with the recent Yahoo deal it looks like it is going to become part of the our web developer world and something we are going to have to work with from a SEO perspective. And if it gains traction, a bit of competition for the Google monster might not be a bad thing!

New WordPress plugin released – EZY Nav Menu

Aidan — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 20:26:23 +0000

I have made available another plugin for WordPress. It is a plugin that adds a template tag for creating a navigation menu from links added to the core WordPress links management facility. For more information about this plugin visit the EZY Nav Menu plugin page on this site or see the WordPress Plugin Directory.

WordPress Plugin Released – Flexi Quote Rotator

Aidan — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 03:51:16 +0000

I have made a WordPress plugin for displaying quotes, testimonials or other text snippets on a WordPress website/blog available for download on this website. In the past I have modified many plugins for my own purposes, but this is my first foray into releasing a WordPress plugin for public consumption. I had been looking for a plugin that would display testimonials on a client’s web site and came across Luke Howel’s quote rotator plugin. Luke’s plugin displays the quotes as a sidebar widget which was not suitable for my needs so I decided to have a go at expanding upon his plugin to offer other display options as well as add a settings admin menu and some styling features. The result is the Flexi Quote Rotator plugin. As with the original version that it is based on, it is licensed under GPL and free to download, use, modify, redistribute as you please.

Getting video from a DVD onto your web site – easy if you know how!

Aidan — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 01:19:44 +0000

Ok, so you’ve got some video on a DVD that you want to put on your web site – should be easy enough to do you would imagine, right? Well it can be easy if you know what tools to use but if you’re trying to search on Google to find out what you need to accomplish this task you can end up chasing your tail or chasing up on many bogus leads. The problem is the web is awash with stuff related to video conversion and so much of it is ‘search engine noise’ from all sorts of sources trying to flog literally thousands of different software tools. That makes it very difficult to know what source of information to trust and what products really do what you need. From my own experience I found it a very frustrating task but I figured out a solution that worked for me so I’m sharing it here as I’m sure there are many other people out there who are also trying to accomplish this seemingly simple task but also facing similar challenges in finding suitable tools for the job.

The Video Conversion Task

I already knew what tool I was going to use to display the video – since it was a WordPress based website I would be using a WordPress plug-in and from previous research I discovered the awesome WordTube plug-in which I have used on other sites and found to be really excellent for managing and displaying videos on a WordPress web site. WordTube is based on the JW Flash Media Player and so if you have a non-WordPress web site, you can use the JW Flash Media Player. Since this is a Flash based player the format required for the video is the FLV (Flash Video) format. So the video conversion task that we are dealing here with is: Convert a portion of video from a DVD disc to a FLV file.

Step 1 – Get the video off the DVD and into a file on your computer (Rip the DVD)

The problem here is that DVD ripping software has become associated with piracy and has been chased underground by the movie industry. This causes problems for legitimate users. Piracy is big business and there will always be plenty of vendors offering software for this purpose. But since much of this software is already on the fringes of legality you really have to be careful of what you download and install – I’m always wary of the potential for viruses or Trojans embedded in software, so I try to find out as much as I can and make sure the source is trustworthy before installing anything. To cut to the chase, the software I ended up with here was DVD Decrypter 3.5.4.0. This is a tool that was freely until 2005 when the developer was threatened with legal action and decided to cease development of the software to avoid the potential for legal trouble. Fortunately the software is still available through different sources (I found it here). DVD Decrypter did it’s job just fine and what I ended up with was the raw files from the DVD – VOB, IFO, etc. The important file here is the VOB file which is essentially an MPEG2 file (you can change the extension to .mpg and it will play in a media player such as Windows Media Player). With DVD Decrypter I was able to select only the chapters that contained the potion of video I needed but not the exact snippet since it was not contained neatly within a specific chapter.

Step 2 – Convert VOB (or MPEG) to FLV

When I found the Riva FLV Encoder, I thought it was going to be the only solution I would need for this part of the task. As it turned out, it wasn’t quite that easy. One of the input formats that Riva is supposed to work with is MPEG2. So I simply changed the .VOB extension to .mpg and tried converting it with Riva but Riva gave me this error: “The encoding of your video file has failed. This can be caused by a not supported combination of parameters or by a not supported video codec”. So I thought maybe the MPEG format wasn’t quite right. I found a convertor utility to convert from VOB to MPEG and created my MPEG file that way – that didn’t work in Riva either. I finally came across the open source WinFF tool (a GUI version of the command line FFMPEG video conversion tool). It converts between a wide range of formats including MPEG to FLV. Unfortunately, unlike Riva it does not have a simple option in the GUI for selecting just a portion of the source to convert. In Riva you can specify the starting point and duration in seconds which is great if you just want a portion of the original video in your final result. So what I ended up doing was using WinFF to convert the VOB/MPEG to AVI and then used Riva to convert the AVI to FLV.

An improved solution

While the approach outlined above does work, I was a bit concerned with the quality of the end result. Converting to AVI before converting to FLV seemed like it would have a negative effect on the video quality since AVI is a format with a high level of compression and therefore not ideal to use as the source for creating the FLV. So I dug a little deeper into WinFF and its backend, FFMPEG, and discovered the command line options –ss and –t which allow one to specify a start point and duration as in Riva. However, I discovered the seek option (-ss) didn’t work right on VOB files so I ended up converting to DV format first and then converting from DV to FLV with the –ss and –t options to select the desired snippet from the video. I choose the DV format because it is a high quality format and the extra step did not have any noticeable effect on the end result.

Summary of steps and tools I used to convert the DVD for viewing on the web

Extract the DVD files to hard drive: DVD Decrypter 3.5.4.0
Convert VOB to DV format: WinFF
Convert DV to FLV and extract the desired video segment: WinFF (with -ss and -t command line options)
Display the FLV on website: WordTube (for a WordPress web site) OR JW Flash Media Player (for any other type of web site)

I know there are many other ways to accomplish this task but one of the nice things about the solution outlined here is that it does not require any expensive software – all of the software I have listed here is free software and it gets the job done.

E-commerce credit card payment options for New Zealand online businesses

Aidan — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 02:40:41 +0000

If you are setting up an e-commerce web site (shopping cart, online store, online shop), one of the decisions you will have to make is what system you are going to use for collecting payment. Payment can be handled off-line (by bank deposit, cheque, etc.) or automatically at the time of purchase by real-time credit card processing. In the case of off-line payment, the customer is provided with instructions for making a bank deposit or posting a cheque and the order is processed after payment is received. It is the simplest and least expensive system to set up but may present a barrier to some customers who are looking for the instant transaction that can be had using a credit card. When it comes to collecting credit card payments online in real time, there are two main types of systems:

Third party payment gateways
Your own business merchant account

Third party payment gateways

These do not require you to set up a special merchant bank account. As a result they are quicker and less expensive to set up. For these type of systems the checkout takes place on the 3rd party web site and the name of the third party provider will appear on your customer’s credit card statement. The funds go into the third party’s account and afterwards are transferred to your own bank account. Paypal is the most widely used 3rd party payment processor. Other examples are Worldpay, Paymate and 2checkout. Google also provides one called Google Checkout but it is not yet available for New Zealand businesses (currently only available in USA and UK).

Your own business merchant account

A merchant account is a special bank account that allows you to receive credit card payments. A regular shop that takes credit cards will have a merchant account. For internet payments, a special type of merchant account is required; it is called a ‘card not present’ merchant account. Usually the fees for this type of merchant account are higher since there is more risk of fraud. Most New Zealand banks can provide merchant accounts. In addition to having a merchant account you also need a payment gateway. The payment gateway acts as a ‘middle man’ between your merchant bank account and your web site to securely complete the transaction. With this type of system you usually pay fees to both the bank and the payment gateway and there are usually setup fees involved. You will also need to go through an application process and meet certain standards (e.g. business credit history) to qualify for a merchant account. For these types of systems the checkout can take place directly on your own web site (although the payment gateways typically also provide an option for doing the checkout on their web site). Examples of payment gateways that can be used with New Zealand merchant accounts include DPS, ANZ eGate, Paypro, Paystation and BNZ Buy-Line

Not Sure Which To Choose?

Having your own merchant account will provide a smoother customer experience at the checkout because the customer does not have to get taken to a 3rd party web site. However, if your sales volume is on the low side, your costs are going to be significantly higher and you will have fixed costs regardless of whether or not you make any sales. This is why many new online businesses choose to go with a third party processor. Of the third party processors, Paypal is the most popular because they tend to be the most competative with their charges and they are widely known and understood by online shoppers. If you expect low sales volumes or are uncertain of the volume of what sales volumes you might expect Paypal is good option to go with. If you are more confident of of what you expect to turnover, you can do some maths and do a comparison of costs based on your expected sales.

I have put together a document containing a matrix of the different options (both 3rd party and payment gateway/merchant acct.) available in New Zealand. If you would like a copy, please feel free to contact me and I will email you a copy.

Our content management system of choice

Aidan — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 12:40:58 +0000

A content management system (abbreviated CMS) allows non-technical people to update and manage a web site without requiring technical knowledge.

At Stellar Web Works we specialise in building web sites on content management systems. We have worked with a number of different content management systems and have come to favour using the popular WordPress platform as our CMS of choice. WordPress is well known as the most widely used blogging platform but what is less well known that it is also an excellent general purpose content management system that makes a great platform for building a wide variety of web sites. WordPress, built with the PHP programming language and MySQL database platform, is very extensible and can be customised to add any special functionality and features that a web site might require. Here are some of the reasons why we think WordPress is a great choice for a CMS:

Easy to use – the administration interface is logical and intuitive. Even a person with very limited computer skills will have no problem using WordPress to update and manage a web site.
Search engine friendly – WordPress provides the tools and features that can be used to build a web site that is well optimised for search engines
Powerful extendible platform – WordPress is designed to be customised and extended by means of building ‘plug-in’ components that can add functionality to cater for the specific needs of a particular web site
A mature stable platform – WordPress has undergone more than 5 years of active development with new and improved versions being released on a regular basis
Large active developer community – Many developers create and make available plugins that add new features to the platform so for many special web site requirements, chances are that a plugin has already been created to handle it
Full flexibility of design and layout of web site – WordPress has a very flexible templating system that allows the web developer complete freedom in designing the web site.

Nelson Web Design Companies

Aidan — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 06:58:49 +0000

Stellar Web Works is based in Nelson on the top of the South Island of New Zealand. I’ve compiled a list of all the other web design companies located in Nelson. If I’ve missed any let me know.

A list of web design companies in Nelson, New Zealand

Stellar Web Works: Your best choice for web site design and development in Nelson (yeah of course I’m biased;), but seriously, do give us a look if you’re after professional results at affordable prices)
Baby-e: One of our partners, Baby-e is the web design company of Leon Dalziel. Leon has a flair for design. We work together on many projects.
Digital Promotions: Another close partner of ours. Digital Promotions do a lot of accommodation web sites. We have worked together on a number of sites. They specialise in an Apple based content management system called Manila and provide hosting for it.
Bounce Marketing: Bounce Marketing, the company of Katrina Lambert is also a partner of ours. Although not exactly a web design company, it is a company that can help you promote your web site, drive traffic to it and get results from it.
Andy McCubbin: Freelance web designer/developer who I’ve collaborated on a project with.
Graphic Flavours: Web site design by Ayelet Fleming. I’ve worked with Ayelet on a number of projects.
Nimbus Advertising: Nelson based advertising agency headed by Dave Knight and Jo Williams and offering web design as one of their services. I have collaborated with Nimbus on one of their web projects.
Thadeus Creative: Web and graphic design by Steven Hussey. I’ve developed a site based on one of Steven’s designs.
Cactus Software: Web site design and development and custom software application development
Blueflowers web design: Web design company of Mariska Noordik & Mike Widdowson based in Rai Valley
Hothouse: A larger agency that do web design, marketing and branding
@ web one: Two web design businesses, Peter Lowish Internet and Internet Specialists, joined together to create this one.
Sprocket Web Design: Web design company of Duncan Heal
Avoca House Design: Web design company run by Brendyn Montgomery (who is also an award winning traditional Irish musician that I’ve seen playing quite a few times)
Site Productions: Web design company of Rick Coleman based in Mapua
Web Kiwi: Web design company of Adrienne Ford
Net Maestro: Web design company run by Gareth Lawes
Seafront Web Design: Web design company of Wendy Whitehead in Ruby Bay
Purple Oar Software: Web site design/development company of Paul Roper
Dry Crust Communications: A Richmond based publicity company that offers web design as one of their services
Ruskiwi Design: Richmond based web design company of Andrew Bartlett
DevelopMental: The company of Nelson based developer, Steve Bryant, specialising in website and windows application development.
Fig Tree Design: Wendy Alessi’s web design company, Fig Tree, specialises in the design and development of gorgeous websites for small to medium sized businesses.

Choosing a web design/development company to build your website

Aidan — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 12:43:21 +0000

If you are looking for a web designer to build a website for your business, you will find no shortage of options to choose from. So what do you base your decision on when choosing a web designer? A small business with a tight budget might simply request quotations from a number of web companies and go with the one that supplies the lowest quote. This is hardly a wise strategy, you would probably not purchase any other product or service using this strategy. If you wanted to buy a car, would you just pick the one with the lowest price and buy it? Of course not, you would want to know exactly what you are buying, you would do some investigation, ask some key questions, determine if the car matches your needs and requirements. The same should apply when you choose a web designer to create a website for your business. You should do some investigation, ask some key questions and determine which web designer or design firm can create the web site that best matches your needs and requirements.

However, if you do not have any experience with getting a website set up and/or little or no technical knowledge of the workings of the internet, you’ll probably struggle with how to evaluate a web designer. The purpose of this article is to give you some ideas of what to look for in a web designer and to get you thinking about matching up a web designer with your own particular needs and requirements.

Questions to ask a web designer

What technologies do you use to build websites? e.g. static HTML, HTML templating system such as Dreamweaver, Content Management System, server side scripting languages
Will I be able to make updates to the website myself without any special technical knowledge?
What is your process for designing and building a website?
What is your approach to search engine optimisation (SEO)?
Do you provide training for managing the new website?

Questions to ask yourself about a web designer

Does the designer design sites that are intuitive and easy to use?
Does the designer do a good job of visually showing visitors how to take action?
Do they explain issues in a way I can understand?
Does the designer have the range of skills needed to build the website that I require?
What credentials and experience does the web designer have?

Comparing pricing from different designers

Does the price represent good value for my money? Keep in mind that a well designed website for your business is an investment that will pay for itself many times over in sales, while a poorly crafted site will drive away potential customers. A cheaply put together website may seem like a bargain at first but in the long run it may damage your business.

Price and quality often (but not always) have a direct relationship, i.e. you get what you pay for. Designers who are overly inexpensive often lack experience, don’t understand much about online marketing, or don’t truly have a grasp of good web design techniques. A website from such a designer may cost your business dearly in the long run.

When comparing quotations from different design firms, be sure to look carefully at what each designer is offering for the quoted price. Examine their portfolio to see what type of work they produce and ask to speak to some of their clients.

Consider too what happens after the website is built, who will maintain the site and keep it up to date and fresh? What type of analysis will be available for evaluating the performance of the site?

A poorly designed website can cost you money, drive away customers, and hurt your reputation.

Oh, and by the way, if you are looking for a creative, technically savvy, and cost-effective designer, check out Stellar Web Works!

Why you should choose a small business to work on your website

Aidan — Fri, 30 May 2008 00:32:11 +0000

Scanning through an industry newsletter that arrived in my inbox this morning I came accross an article that made me feel great about running my own small business. It got me thinking about the huge advantage a client has in choosing a small business like mine instead of going with a big web company. The big advantage? Easy. Small business cares. I care about my clients. I can’t afford not to care. If I don’t care, I don’t get paid, it’s that simple!

Big business doesn’t have to care; the guy on the end of the phone still gets his pay check no matter what happens with your web site. It’s all about accountability. To a big business with lots of clients, you are just one more drop in the bucket. It’s not such a big deal to them if they loose you. But to a small business you are their bread and butter. A small business cannot afford to loose a client and needs to make each client happy in order gain new clients and have any chance of success.

A small business is far more likely to have a finger on the pulse of your web operations and react quickly to your needs, because its service is more personalized. A small business will know what’s happening, who it’s happening to, and what to do to fix it.

Design and Enhance Your Website for a More User Friendly Experience

Aidan — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 01:12:30 +0000

When designing and maintaining a website, user experience is a simple, foundational concept that is often overlooked.

User experience is about how easy or difficult it is for visitors to your website to interact with the website to achieve their goals (and your goals). A good web site user experience requires:

easy to find and access content and use the functionality on the site (ease of use)
visual impact of the site is engaging and consistent with the brand identity
suitable functionality and features which engage the user and make it easy to complete the tasks appropriate to the site (e.g. purchase products, book a room, interact with other site visitors)
the website contains compelling, up-to-date content, appropriate to the needs and goals of the visitor

To get started thinking about user experience as it relates to your website, you should put yourself in the place of a site visitor. Think about your target audience, who do you expect them to be? Who typically is interested in your product or content? Are they tech-savvy or computer challenged? What languages do they speak? What are their interests? What impresses them? Once you have a good picture of your typical site visitors, start thinking about what they might be after when they come to your website. What are they looking for on your site? What do they want to achieve? How do this tie in with what you want them to do on your website? You will want to make it as easy as possible for them to fulfill their specific needs which are aligned with your goals for the website. This is called “conversion“, i.e. you are converting a site visitor into a customer or a repeat visitor. By ensuring that your web site provides a user friendly experience, you ensure that your users achieve their needs easily and feel satisfied with their experience. As a result, they will be inclined to return to your website, and ultimately become a loyal, repeat user. Ideally, user experience should be planned at the initial design stage of the website and the website designed around user experience, but if you already have a website up and running you should also examine your site’s user experience with a critical eye to see where improvements can be made. Now we are going to take a look at some important elements that contribute to a user friendly experience including the navigational ease of a website as well as the content. As you review the following elements, consider how they relate to your desired or existing web site and what you could incorporate in order to provide a more user friendly experience.

Main Navigation Menu – The navigation menu is what guides your site visitors and helps them quickly find what they are after. If your website is small, you will probably just have a simple single level menu linking to all your important pages. You must make sure that each item in your navigation bar is named appropriately and in a way that helps users easily find what they need. Where possible, stick with standard terms that are widely used. For larger sites, you may need a hierarchical navigation menu. Careful consideration must be given to the organisation of the navigation menu. You should be thinking in terms of what your site visitors would expect and develop a navigation menu that guides them to easily find what they need and accomplish the tasks you want them to accomplish. You will also need to choose the menu location. A horizontal menu across the top of the page works well when there are a small number (typically 5-8) of top level menu items. A vertical menu on the left or right of the page can accommodate more menu items. When you go beyond the simple single level navigation another important usability issue to consider is the number of clicks it takes to get to a given page, ideally it should not take more than 3 clicks. Another important usability issue is to keep menus consistent across the different pages of the site.
Footer Navigation Menu – It is often a good idea to repeat the navigation menu in the footer of each page. This helps the user because when the page is scrolled down they can click on the footer menu go to another page without having to scroll back up to the top. Typically the footer menu is displayed in a smaller font than the main menu and you can fit in additional menu items. This makes it a good place for adding menu items that would not be appropriate to add in the main menu. An example would be a link to log in to the administration area of the site. Another example is: you may want to support other related websites by having a links page but probably won’t want take up valuable space in your main menu, so you can put it in the footer menu instead.
Additional Navigational Aids – A site map is a page that provides links to all the important public pages on the website, organised to clearly show the structure of the web site to the visitor. A simple website may not need a site map but for a larger more complex site a site map helps some users to understand the site structure and layout and quickly gain access to what your site has to offer. For websites with a lot of content, a search box can help site visitors to quickly find what they are looking for.
Written Copy – The way the content on your web pages is written is one of the keys to defining the user experience. You need to bear in mind that a website is a vastly different medium than print or other mediums. The internet can seem like information overload so people have developed ways of coping with it by making snap judgments on the merits of a particular website. When we search for something in a search engine (also consider what the search engine displays on the results page when you are thinking about written copy), we make an initial decision on which results to click on after a very quick glance at the results returned. Almost on autopilot we filter out results that look untrustworthy. Once we decide to invest the couple of seconds it takes to click a link and view a web page, we make an instantaneous decision whether to spend a little more time checking to see if the website has something we are after, or cut our losses and hit the back button right away. If we decide to continue checking out the website, we don’t just start reading everything from the top left right down to the bottom right of the page; instead we scan the page in a matter of seconds, reading the snippets of text that jump out at us. So don’t make the mistake of pasting in a long passage of text on your home page. Instead design it for scanning, get your message across with as little text as possible. You can go into the details on lower level pages which your visitors can click on once you have them hooked. You can build a hierarchy of detail – large attention grabbing titles and headings that emphasize what you offer and why the site visitor should choose you over someone else, with sprinklings of further supporting details. More detailed information can be spread out over different pages. Always spell check your content and make sure it is grammatically correct. Spelling and grammar mistakes damage the image of trust and quality that you are trying to build.
Organisation and Detail – Keeping the content on your Web site well organized allows users to quickly find what they are looking for. If you sell products on your website, organise your products by category and keep your category listings organized in a logical manner. Use specific category titles and if you have a lot of products, break out categories into sub categories. If you have a blog (weblog/ news/articles), spend some time thinking about how you categorise and organise your posts. Online forums can be organised by creating different message boards for different types of conversations. It is important to try to avoid overlap so that it is obvious to a member which board is appropriate for the message they want to post. Creating specific message boards will also help to steer the overall conversation in the forum and may prompt members to post messages that they otherwise wouldn’t have posted to a more general board.
Branding – Branding is about creating the desired set of experiences or associations you want your customers to make with your products, services, or identity. In your website you reinforce your branding message through visual presentation, writing style, error-free delivery and the message you put across in written copy. Make it crystal clear, especially on the home page, what you are all about – what products or services you offer and what makes you stand out from your competitors. Make sure your website has a suitable look and feel for the product or service you are offering. E.g. if you are in the tourism industry you will want to whet peoples appetites for your activity or destination by incorporating suitable photographs and images and presenting an exciting, fun image. The web is a fickle place where the book is regularly judged by the cover in a split second so make sure the cover matches the book!

The next time you are surfing around the web, make sure to pay close attention to the elements you appreciate on your favorite sites, as well as elements that frustrate you, and apply your findings to your own website. Providing a user friendly experience is of utmost importance in creating a loyal user base and critical for driving sales. Offering your site visitors convenient and easy to use navigation, as well as organised, relevant and up-to-date content, will help users easily fulfill their needs and feel satisfied with their experience on your website.