@omic - Winning Web Sites

This page contains our tips for building effective web sites. We believe that by following this guide your web site will be more effective and more likely to win visitors and retain those visitors.

This article is a spin-off from our successful awards programme which rewards web masters / mistresses for their web design efforts.

Here's what we think you should consider when creating that killer web site:-

The audience

Consider carefully who you are trying to target in terms of audience and keep them at the front of your mind when you add content and build features into your site. It is not enough to simply throw a whole load of information you find interesting into one site. Make the content flow and make it relevant to your audience.

Some people find it hard to work out who their audience is. A tip here is to try and summarise in one sentence what your site is trying to achieve, from this you should get a good idea of who your audience is and why they will want to come to your site.

Content

The content of your site can be anything that will appeal to your target audience. This can be original images, articles, poetry, photographs - anything that will appeal. For the more adventurous / professional it will be an internet service for example free email or a calendar anything that people will come to because it's useful. Content can even be links to other resources on the Internet, there are so many web sites out there useful content can simply be pointing out the best related to your audiences interests.

Navigation

Navigation is the key to a successful web site. It's all about the content. Having identified your audience above, you create content that will appeal to them and then you create effective navigation which allows your visitor to easily move around your site. The navigation should be simple and clear and should be as intuitive as possible. Aimed purely at getting your visitor into that content as quickly as possible. Success for a web site is measured in hits or page views, the way to increase these stats is two fold a) get as many visitors as possible and b) get those visitors to stay on your site as long as possible and look at as many pages as possible. So your objective is to get the visitor into your content as soon as possible and hope that your content is interesting enough, and your navigation easy enough for them to stay.

Graphics

Animated gifs and colourful backgrounds images are fun but always consider what they add to your site. Are they helping support the content of your site and helping your visitor or hindering them? If in doubt leave it out!

Fonts

There are two types of fonts, serif and sans serif. You should never really have both on your web site. Serif refers to the little 'tails' on a font like we see on Times New Roman while sans serif refers to fonts that don't have it like this one. The theory is that serif fonts are easier to read because of the small 'tails' helping the eye. Pick whichever you prefer and stick to it. Use the same font in images which have text and in your html code.

One tip here for coding web pages and ensuring you have the fonts right is to set your default font to something you would never use. In this way you will see clearly where the font has been left to default and where it needs to be coded to your preferred style.

The font you choose will only display as you expect if you choose a font which comes as standard on most PC's. If the visitor doesn't have the font an alternative will be displayed by the PC. You can however tell the PC which alternatives it should try. Here @omic we use <font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">, this means if Verdana isn't available we'll try Arial, then Helvetica etc.

Colours

Colour can be a very effective tool in your web design tool box. You should choose colours which are 'web safe' most html editors will give you a pallet of colours that can be used. If the colours you use are not web safe they may not display as you intended on your visitors computer. Try and use colours which complement each other. You want to create an environment which visitors will feel comfortable browsing through. Striking colours will make your visitor feel uncomfortable and leave.

Technology.

Macromedia Flash.

Flash is a great technology but consider that our research has shown that only 13.56% of visitors to @omic have the flash plug-in needed to see it. So what happens? They get a redirect to Macromedia's web site to download the plug-in and you may never get them back. Even if they have the plug-in what is the flash animation actually adding to your content. Yes it's fun to code flash but if you want to generate hits you need to get your visitors into and exploring you content as soon as possible. A full screen flash intro, even if it offers the standard 'skip intro' link, is just a barrier to your surfer finding what they actually wanted which is your content.

DHTML

We love dhtml as you can probably tell from the @omic site but use it carefully. Think, does this add to the experience of the visitor or is it just getting in the way again? The worst case we've seen is a text mouse trail, which just detracted from the content and got in the way when surfing the site.

Sound

The WORST thing to have on a web site is background music. For some reason many new webmasters/mistresses think it's really cool to have sound on a web site But sound files can be big and in order to make them smaller you take a small sample and loop it. After about the third loop your visitor is sick to death of the sounds and will often surf off somewhere else just to escape it. If you want to build traffic to your site you want people to stay and wander through your site. Sound is the easiest way to get rid of people.

Community

For the more adventurous and really only once you've built a reasonable amount of traffic to your site, building a community is the secret to a successful site. This will generally be centred around a forum or message board. Where visitors to your message board can discuss issues which are of interest to them. If you've planned your site well, selected your audience your should be plenty to discuss.

Frames

We generally advise against using frames on a web site. They can be more difficult for search engines to index (list) and you'll need to consider how to deal with the content frame being loaded without the navigation frames (which isn't too hard but needs to be done). Only use frames when they actually add something to your website. Tables can be much better in most cases.

Meta Tags!!!

For many new web masters/mistresses this is the area where most fail. Meta Tags are used by search engines to index your web site, no meta tags no (or limited) listing on search engines. To find out more about creating effective meta tags read more here.

Promote your site

Read all about site promotion here.