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What Makes a Website Effective?

The World Wide Web has evolved to become an essential tool for marketing products and services. In today's marketplace, having a Website is almost a prerequisite for doing business. But the proliferation of sites makes it harder to stand out from the crowd.

How do you ensure that your site will be an effective vehicle for communicating your message to clients or customers? Start by focusing on these six criteria:

Usable

First and foremost, your site must be usable—clear, logical, and easy to navigate. The structure of the site must be coherent, pages must be well organized, and links must be consistent. Your site will not be effective if a visitor gets lost or confused.

Accessible

Your site is more effective if more people can use it in more situations. Many people with disabilities and functional limitations have increasingly come to rely on the Web to access information and buy or arrange to buy goods and services. If your site is designed to minimize access barriers, not only will it generate good will for your brand, but it likely will generate more customers.

Standards-compliant

Why spend money to design your site today, only to have it be obsolete tomorrow? Why design it for one computing platform, or one browser, when your customers and potential customers use an array of browsers on different platforms and devices? If your site is designed to comply with international Web standards, you are designing for the widest audience possible today and ensuring that your site will work well into the future.

Web-readable

Many sites that are otherwise well-designed lose credibility because they are poorly written or edited, or they are not written in a style suitable for reading on the Web. Studies show that most Web readers scan pages and that they understand information more readily if it is presented clearly and in small units. Your site is not successful if your message is not being read. Ensure effectiveness with a well written, Web-readable site.

Visually compelling

Your site's visual design plays a large part in attracting Web users to the site and retaining their interest. Graphics and images support the message, and they must be appropriate to the brand—a glitzy look will not support a conservative professional image any more than a subdued design will work for a hip brand. If your site looks good and the look supports your brand, your brand looks good.

Search engine friendly

Your site has no chance to enhance your brand if no one finds it. Most visits to Websites—at least most initial visits—originate from the user's search for information. Be sure that your site is found by optimizing your design for the Web search engines.

Ask yourself whether your current site meets these six criteria for effective sites, and whether it is bringing you the business results you want. Or better yet, contact me today to request a professional evaluation of your site and recommendations for ways to increase its effectiveness and produce results.