Gane.ca

I get asked this alot when people find out what I do. "What does my website really need?". Well that is a difficult question to answer, simply because like every business your website is unique to you and your target client base. We are far removed from the days that website were a luxury option for big businesses online, and are now considered a requirement for running a successful business.

As more people move towards doing research before every dropping a dime on a product or service, a strong web presence could make or break your company now like never before. And although you may not be at the stage that you want to offer your products or services online, your website is often the first interaction your clients will have with your company.

I am going to cover some basic elements and concepts that your website should have in order to be successful. My next article will cover some basic things you can do offsite to help your website be successful.

A couple things that should be taken into consideration immediately during the design process of your website, is ease of use and accessibility. To sum this up I refer to the Steve Krug's book "Don’t Make Me Think! A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability" in which he states 'the user’s reality is much closer to “billboard going by at 60 miles an hour.”'. The reality is you'll be lucky to have your users really read your content, vs scan it quickly or click the first link that interests them. If you have a website that is slow loading, looks bad, is hard to scan or read quickly - chances are, your losing valuable visitors.

Clearly content is king when it comes to websites, thats what brings the users to the site. Think about it, what takes you to your favorite sites? The content of course! Be it generated by a user base, like Facebook or Twitter, or by a set of writers like a Mashable. The reality is the reason your visiting these website, is because they offer content you are interested in. If you don't offer content that your clients are looking for, be it pictures of your products, or history or success stories or even simply contact information, your visitors will lose interest really quickly. Back to the other point, if that content is not easy to use, or accessible you're losing visitors, and potential business.

Contact forms should be an huge part of your website. Odd that I say this, because as I write this, my website doesn't have a contact form. The reason that I think your website should have a contact form is to promote ease of use when trying to contact you. It your visitor is using a shared computer, like at a library, they won't have a mail program setup, or if they use web mail solutions like Hotmail or Gmail the mail to links will not work for them. So why not make it easy for them? If it's hard todo, the majority of people won't do it.

Come back to Gane.ca later to check out the next article to complete the set, or subscribe to my RSS feed or follow me on Twitter to stay up to date and ensure you don't miss anything!