I’m pretty pleased with our strike rate when it comes to delivering our projects on time. It’s something I take a lot of pride in and do my damndest to protect. It’s a client’s prerogative to demand delivery dates that fit in with their schedules and not ours and we like it that way.
Lately though, I’ve begun to notice a bit of a worrying trend whereby we’ll deliver a site on schedule and then their lovely new web portal to the world will sit there bereft of content and feeling unloved for way too long.
What we try to get our clients thinking about, even before we’ve got to work on some very good website designs is what are they actually going to fill their site with. It’s an interesting question and is one you should really be asking yourself before you embark on any significant spend on a new website.
Here’s a few pointers – the list is by no means definitive:
DO’s:
- Try to summarise in one paragraph what it is you do. This is a handy exercise to carry out and the results might surprise you. As well as Google appreciating it, it’ll also look good on your homepage.
- Think about using the correct imagery. Simply nicking images off Google images will lead to inconsistencies right across your site. Enlisting the services of a professional photographer or graphic designer couldn’t be easier as are stock photography websites such as Fotolia and Big Stock Photo which offer affordable, professional imagery that is also mainly royalty-free.
- Think about your audience. Who are you trying to reach? What’s the best approach? How do you want to communicate with your customers?
- Think about who will be responsible for keeping your site updated. You should have a specific person or group of people in mind. Our content management system makes it VERY easy to update your site with relevant content, but if you can’t keep this content up to date, it will soon become fairly irrelevant and that’s a no-no for your audience.By properly allocating resources toward the upkeep of your site, you’ll ensure that it’s content is always evolving and improving whilst remaining fresh to your audience old and new.
DONT’s:
- Don’t just put your brochure online. Very few items transfer across mixed forms of media. Printed media can sometimes provide a great creative starting point for the development of your web presence but it is never enough to just slice up a brochure and stick it online. A good website that is easy to navigate works on way more levels than a brochure.
- Don’t assume that your brand alone will drive traffic to your website.
You’ve got to give your visitors something to make their visit worthwhile and then to make them come back. People have limited attention spans and even limited amounts of time to surf around – think about how you can add extra value to your site. - Don’t get carried away with fancy ‘toys’. Always try to put functionality ahead of gimmickry. I’ve seen so many websites with a very ‘cool’ flash intro that’s taken an age to play out when all I’ve wanted is a contact telephone number.
- Don’t misjudge time, allocate it! If you reckon you’ll be able to fit in updating your website along with all your other work then think again! Try to set aside a time each week when you can apply yourself properly to the task ahead.
What do you reckon?