Bright Ideas # 39 – How to Make Your Website Work for You
Have you ever been inside an old house that was literally built room by room over the course of many years?
You know…the kind of home where you find rooms and bathrooms in odd places, or random nooks with no real purpose.
I was looking at a house like that recently, and I swear every room I walked into held a surprise. One room in the basement had a giant, ugly furnace in it. The two attic rooms were tiny, ridiculously low-ceilinged, and had a mostly useless empty space in between.
And the main floor was odd shaped because someone had removed part of a wall closing off the one bedroom on that floor. Unfortunately, that meant they left a partial wall which split up the already small room.
The whole layout was confusing and unappealing. Nothing was where I thought it would be. And the only way to fix it, or turn it into a house worth living in, would be to tear it down and build a new one. Needless to say, I didn’t buy it.
Now, you’re probably wondering what this funky old house has to do with Websites. Well, sadly, a lot of Websites are built very much the same way.
Links connect to information you’re not looking for. You end up on dead-end pages, or can’t return to where you started. Or you suddenly find yourself on another site entirely.
Then there’s my personal favorite…Websites where every page is so different—including the main navigation links—you can’t even tell you are still on the same site.
The result? You can’t find what you were looking for, so you click away.
Because most people don’t have the time or patience to navigate a confusing, poorly designed site.
So how do you create a welcoming, effective and easy to use Website? With proper planning!
You see, building a Website is a lot like building a house. And most people wouldn’t even think about breaking ground on a new home without a professional building plan in hand.
Because if you just started building one room at a time, before long your house would be a confusing hodgepodge of rooms and corridors. And you’d probably realize later you should have put the bedroom over here instead of there.
And the same holds true for your Website. If you just keep adding pages whenever you need them, chances are your site will become a confusing hodgepodge of information.
So—just like with building a house—you need to create a plan before you start.
A well thought out plan ensures your site will be easy to navigate and designed to create the results you want. Plus, it lets you build a site that can grow along with your business.
It’s so important that before I ever begin writing text, I ask all my Web copywriting clients for their site plan. If they don’t have one, then we work together to create one.
Luckily, coming up with a solid site plan doesn’t have to be hard. It just takes a little bit of time and thought. And these five steps should get you started…
1) Decide what you want your site to do for you. Do you want it to sell products or services, provide information, position you as an expert, drive people to events, develop a contact list, manage projects, improve client retention, etc.?
2) Make a list of all the content you’d like to put on your site. Keep in mind content isn’t just the written message. It also includes photos, graphics, audio, video, etc. Be sure to consider what information your potential clients find important.
3) Now list any additional types of information or interactivity you might want to add—either now or down the road. Things like blogs, questionnaires, helpful articles, and press rooms increase stickiness and encourage return visits.
4) At last it’s time to create the actual plan—starting by listing out your main pages and navigation. Most sites have at least Home, About, Product and/or Services, and Contact pages. Beyond that, it’s up to you. Keep in mind you want your navigation links to be intuitive for the visitor. So avoid overly quirky or creative names.
5) From there, create a flow chart showing how the different pages connect. Make sure anything important is just two to three clicks off the home page.
The beauty of Websites is that they can grow and change over time. But in order to do that easily, you have to start by thinking about what you really want your site be and do down the road.
So when you begin planning, do it with your dream site in mind, not just the site you can afford right now. Then you can build a framework to support the growth of your site—and your business—for years to come.
©2002-2006 Success Stream. All Rights Reserved. www.success-stream.com
Do you have a marketing, advertising or writing question you’d like to have answered? Email me and you might see the answer in a future edition of Bright Ideas.
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