Creating a website that works for your business

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The corelink website is a good example of a website that is easy to navigate, quick to load and clear in its purpose. On various points in the site it also encourages the client to take action.

Most businesses these days have a website. But how many of these are actually producing the results that they wanted? All too often a pretty looking website is created that noone can find or when it does get found, it is left within seconds. So why is this? In many cases it’s because not enough thought went into the usability of the website.

An important advocate of usability was Jacob Nielsen. Some of his basic rules are:

• Ensure a quick download: that should be clear. If you website is too slow your potential customers will leave before they even saw a page
• Put the needs of the user first and beware of cutting-edge technology that does not enhance the usability of a site: you may want to show off your technical skills with scrolling text or constantly moving images but is this really helping the customer? Always ask: how is this going to benefit the user of the site?
• Always let the user know where they are in the site: this way you put the user in control and he will understand the site structure
• Make it easy to navigate: keep pages short and structure your content
• Keep standard operations intact: for example make sure that visitors are able to use the back button to go to the previous page and make sure that links have a different colour
• Keep it calm: focus on the content and don’t let the design distract too much from that
• Choose a simple address: something that people can easily remember
• Be consistent: don’t change the navigation around on other pages or change the design too much

purpose. On various points in the site it also encourages the client to take action.

These rules seem simple enough but all too often many designers can get carried away with the latest ‘gadgets’ or technology to show off their skills or because they like the way it looks. In many cases however these bells and whistles cannot only distract the visitor but will also make it harder or sometimes impossible for a search engine to find your site. A good example is the flash intro. It annoys more than it entertains and search engines can’t ‘read’ the flash content. So seldom will you see a top ranking site in Google that is built entirely with flash or have a flash intro.

However, if you want your site to be quick, consistent and calm does this mean that you need to have a ‘boring’ site. Not necessarily. In order to understand how many visuals you will need for your site it can be good to look at your intended audience. What kind of people are they and what would they respond to?

We will look into this in our next post: creating a website for your audience.