what makes a good website

1
What Makes a Web Site Great? AIDA Model
2
Web Sites Should Accomplish 2 Fundamental Goals

• Communicate the message
• Foster the development of relationships

3
The AIDA ModelHow to use Web Sites to Reach
Communication Goals

4
Attention

• Challenges in E-Business
• Target audience unaware of business facet,
  existence of an e-business or its Web site, what
  they do or sell
• Audiences are passively exposed to traditional
  media such as billboards, commercials it
  requires an active approach to end up on a
  certain Web site
• Opportunity
• Gain attention to site by including address or
  URL in other media
• Include Web address in advertising copy and
  layouts, business cards, banner ads located on
  other Web sites
• Utilize direct email and other directed media
• Design site to optimize hits by search engines

5
Interest

• Challenges in E-Business
• Must offer compelling reason to stay the the Web
  site.
• Homepage is first impression, but offers limited
  space
• Site should be constantly upgraded
• Length of time to load home page
• Visitor should find information easily
• Interface should appeal to target audience
  www.disney.com vs www.cnn.com To prompt audience
  to take action, communicate unique selling
  proposition and competitive advantage
• Maintain high-involvement visitors by updating
  information often
• Opportunity
• New technology such as frames, banners, animated
  GIF files, Java script, sound etc allows for more
  creativity, but requires more bandwidth. (Goal
  should be to load home page in 7 sec on 56K)
• Homepages can be designed with options such as
  high or low graphics, high- or low bandwidth
  sites, non-framed and Flash or Shockwave sites
  allowing for sound, video, animation etc
  (www.macromedia.com) Kleindl, p66

6
Desire

• Challenges in E-Business
• In order to have audience take action, must
  create desire
• Average cost of obtaining a new Web customer is
  34 incentive to have repeat customers.
• Site needs to be one click away from customers
  needs
• Could benefit from insights from sales people or
  the very people who could perceive they are being
  replaced by a Web site
• Opportunity
• Targeted-email, permission marketing, push
  technology www.entrypoint.com and
  personalization strategies (ex. www.dell.com and
  www.aa.com) , Webcasting, cookies and tailoring
  web site on the fly
• Can and should include a means of obtaining
  feedback from customers (email, comment section)
• Tracking software can be used to look at where
  people go on the site, how long they stay, idea
  of active and dead areas on the site
• Can include FAQ section Kleindl, p. 67

7
Action

• Challenges in E-Business
• Getting people to go to your Website
• Holding and enticing viewers to action
• Opportunity
• Banner Ads, Pop-up ads etc. will only get you so
  far
• Encourage action by providing strong updated
  content, quick downloading, easy-to-use site
• Online promotional incentives coupons,
  frequent-buyer programs, loyalty programs and
  special offers (ex. www.coolsavings.com offering
  personalized coupons for more than 130 national
  retailers to over 6 million registered
  households)

8
Reasons for Using Favorite Site

• Ease of use 66
• Quick download 58
• Frequent updates 54
• Coupons and incentives 14
• Favorite brands 13
• Cutting-edge technology 12
• Games 12
• Purchasing capabilities 11
• Customizable 10
• Chat 10
• Kleindl, p. 70/Forrester Research NUA
  Internet Surveys

9
How to Get Searched

• It is important to have key terms placed into the
  HTML meta tags indicating the reference heading
  for a page.
• Some search engines such as Yahoo! use human
  interfaces to place a site into categories, so if
  a business tries to spam a search engine by
  submitting multiple listings, it may be kicked to
  the bottom of a list of 2,000,000 hits and never
  seen.
• Dont count on the search engines to be found
  URL rules determined by search engine management
  determine criteria for top of search placement.
  Rules such as number of hits, time spent at site,
  how often updated, number of hyperlinks, or what
  the whim of the day is etc.
• www.Amazon.com uses links on the search engine to
  present books related to search topic.
• Who is Searching Who? (Google Article) Kleindl,
  p. 62

10
3 Types of Search Engines

• Search directories require that Web sites be
  submitted for cataloging. Often list most
  relevant and popular sites but have limited
  listings. www.yahoo.com
• Search engines utilizing Web spiders or Web bots
  collect information from sites, finding
  information for narrowly targeted searches but
  can return a very large number of hits (millions)
  ex. Google, AOL, MSN, Lycos
• www.webcrawler.com or www.altavista.com
• Metacrawlers use the databases of multiple major
  search engines. These are good for power
  searches, built combining multiple results can
  lead to repetitive hits. metacrawler
• Resource Search Engine World, History
• Kleindl, p. 62

11
Web Site Design Resource

• Communication Arts Site for identifying design
  trends and learning what works and what doesnt
  on the Internet. www.commarts.com/index.html
• Web Pages That Suck Examples of good and poor
  Web page design. www.webpagesthatsuck.com
• NewMedia Invision Awards Good examples of Web
  page and multimedia design and past award
  winners. www.invisionawards.com
• Kleindl, p. 66 and Frentzen, PC Week, p.
  141

12
Search Engine Optimization Strategies Common
Mistakes

• Flash and Shock Wave
• Because older browsers will not contain the plug
  in needed, these may hurt sales.
• May be good for entertainment sites.
• Flash and Shock Wave is very impressive to see on
  a web site, but cannot be indexed by search
  engine spiders.
• Dynamic pages
• Spiders cannot index some content on pages using
  ASP, CGI or other dynamic languages.
• Make sure important pages are built only of HTML
  - no dynamically generated content.

• Frames
• Avoid them, older browsers cannot see frame
  pages.
• Search engines do not like them and may not index
  your information properly.
• PDF Files
• Do not use them on your important pages like your
  home page or any other pages you want indexed.
• Dedicate a special page just for them, or avoid
  them all together

• Graphics
• Use no more than three images on one page,
• Page should load in no more then 7 seconds on a
  56k modem,
• Use .jpeg or .gif files for images when possible.
  

13
Search Engine Optimization Strategies

• Goal Because of popularity of these sites,
  strive to be favorably listed by Google, Yahoo
  and Inktomithe rest will trickle in. Article
  Google is god. Dont piss her off.
• Additional  Tips

14
Goals For a Great Web Site

• Keep it simple.
• Be consistent.
• Provide clear, but unobtrusive navigation
• Organize around the customer
• Make the shopping experience effective
• Minimize unnecessary inputs from the user
• Avoid excessive download times
• Make the site visually appealing
• Design for common screen sizes
• Keep the site updated.
• The above vary in degree of importance and
  intensity depending on sites audience. Atler,
  p. 256-7