How to build a business website – Part 2
Website Planning
Before starting to build your website you should first develop a plan in line with your online objectives, target audience and resources. You can write your plan thoroughly as a storyboard. A storyboard is something similar to a flowchart of all the website components you deem necessary. Once you have a clear picture of what you are going to build, sit with your developers and create a technical scope of the project. This is absolutely necessary! In most of the cases your entrepreneurial vision will differ drastically with the way a programmer looks into your requirements.
While working on your scope, or even after publishing your website, bear in mind the following crucial aspects of effective websites:
Page loading time
In the euphoria of having a great slick website, often we use images that make the pages too heavy. A page which takes just one second to load with T1 speed will need a full 55 seconds to load with a 28.8 modem. Web surfers are an impatient bunch of click-happy people; they don’t like to wait too long! Make sure you optimize each and every page of your website before launching the site! Otherwise, you will lose a large portion of your would-be visitors for nothing!
Look at your pages from a visitor’s perspective:
- Eliminate all images that are not so important to deliver your messages.
- Optimize the remaining images with available tools.
- Don’t use Flash just because it’s cool. Use it wisely. [Flash is slow to load, and will add nothing to your search engine rankings, as it's virtually invisible to the spiders. ed]
- Host your website on a server with good bandwidth.
Navigation
Your website’s links should be well-defined, persistent, and easily visible. If the site is large with many pages, you must have a sitemap page. Remember that not all visitors will land on your homepage, in order to keep them browsing through your site make navigation from your internal pages as easy as possible. Try giving them compelling reasons to do so by using catchy links. Also, make sure that all your links work correctly and take a visitor to the right place.
Webpage consistency
All your web pages should have one consistent look. This will give your website a professional appearance, and visitors while browsing through your site will always know that they are still on your website.
Content is the King
If you want your visitors to return to your site, regularly add fresh, relevant and quality content to your website. Internet users are information hungry people, feed them with fresh information on a regular basis and you will have a good number of loyal visitors to your website.
If you already have a website make sure you optimize your website from the user’s point of view. According to Gartner, a market research company, even a minor investment in improving the usability of a company website will yield an annual return of 10 to 20 per cent. It increases brand awareness, leads to higher user adoption rates and possibly more transactions per user. Average order size starts to rise and the site generates more return visits from customers.
Resources
Website Performance Tool and Web Page Speed Analysis: www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze
Check your web pages for bad links: www.siteowner.com/badlinks.cfm
Webmaster resources: bignosebird.com
Nowshade Kabir is the founder, primary developer and present CEO of Rusbiz.com. A PhD in Information Technology, he has wide experience in Business Consulting, International Trade and Web Marketing. Rusbiz is a Global B2B Emarketplace with solutions to start and run online business. You can contact him at nowshade@rusbiz.com ezine.rusbiz.com
October 28th, 2009 08:48
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November 25th, 2009 22:45
Good advice. I really like the part about adding new content each day. I hat sites that don’t update daily. I stop visiting those after a while. You got to keep your reading coming back for more.
November 28th, 2009 04:54
Admiring the time and effort you put into your blog and detailed information you offer! I will bookmark your blog and have my children check up here often. Thumbs up!
December 15th, 2009 22:25
Web sites should be designed consistently, so navigation models should follow the flow of the site map. Therefore, the first section in the site map should be the first link in the navigation bar.
December 16th, 2009 17:37
Yes, I agree. However, you’ll most likely find this logic is not followed on a great many sites. To me logic rules. Other people have different viewpoints.
December 29th, 2009 05:22
Advantageously, the post is really the freshest on this worthy topic. I agree with your conclusions and will thirstily look forward to your coming updates. Saying thanks will not just be enough, for the fantasti c clarity in your writing. I will immediately grab your rss feed to stay privy of any updates. Fabulous work and much success in your business dealings!
January 15th, 2010 00:36
Hello, been visiting your website regularly and admire what you have done very much. Though, if I am truthful, I am somewhat green with envy of your position in Google
you are ahead of me all the time lol. I have a fairly new blog, and hope you don’t mind me asking, but would you use the method they implement here? ht tp://webmasters-tools.info/i/linkbuilding.php I’ve been using it, and been getting pretty profitable results so far, but just curious what else to do in terms of link building and promotion. I know it’s cheeky to ask, but can you advise anything? Thank you.
January 18th, 2010 03:27
Im new to your blog and I just bookmarked it for me to read your upcoming updates. Im so motivated with your writing style. My apologies for being off subject but can reccommend books about writing, Ill be truly grateful if you can share where you learned from. Thanks in advance. – Sam
January 20th, 2010 14:40
Yes, I agree. However, you’ll most likely find this logic is not followed on a great many sites. To me logic rules. Other people have different viewpoints.
Thanks very much
January 23rd, 2010 08:41
I’ll give you a pat on the back just for the utter endeavour in this post.
January 28th, 2010 16:49
I learned to write at school. However, I used to be an avid reader, and my parents were on the stage and made me do stuff like learn poems off by heart. Perhaps this helped.
The thing you need to do is to write as if you’re talking to a friend, or maybe sending them a letter or email. Then once you’ve finished, go back and make sure there’s nothing that is difficult to understand or that might be misinterpreted. And that’s it!