Web Design and Marketing – lecture notes – week 4

Site Content – Establishing a Relationship with the Customer and Providing Time/Place Utility for Information

1. Utility – the want-satisfying power of a good or service
   Web site is a service, determine what the user wants from it
2. Time/Place Utility – when and where is the information available
   Web sites provide information 24/7/365 and user can access with any web enabled device
3. Web Site Content
   Research needs to be done to determine what your user wants and develop the content for the site from that research
4. Content Research Indirect Approach
   Ask questions of the people who do support about the questions they get. Look at advertising for the sites to see what content is available.
5. Who writes the content for a web site.
   Ideally the client will write the material
   You may have to rewrite for good web usage
   Let client know that there may be changes
   At minimum get logos, etc. in digital form from the user
6. Benchmarking – what do users use
   Ask potential users what they look for in this type of site and take notes. Find out what sites they use now and see why and what you can use from it.
7. More benchmarking information
   Look at things about the site including color, graphic use, layout, organization, content and functionality. Determine who links to the site (popularity) by googling link:www.domainname.com .
8. Multimedia – Usage
   Multimedia can add to download times so think about how you are going to use it. It needs to be used in advertising to get the user away from other content and to your ad. Multimedia can also add visual interest to a site.
9. Multimedia Considerations
   Download times
   Animation distraction
   ADA accessibility
   Overuse leads to unprofessional look
   Time v. rewards
   User may not have plug-ins
10. Links
    Links to other sites move user away from site so be sure that they lead to parent organization or to important information
    Check links to be sure that they are not broken
    If you move to new domain, keep old one for a while and redirect to the new one
11. Reading Web Content
    25% Slower because:
    Visual clues of content length are minimal or non-existent.
    Font choices and screen resolution make it harder to read.
    Users do not like to scroll but prefer to click to move on (scrolling means they have to find out where they left off).
12. Reading Web content
    Most people skim site and view it for less than 30 seconds. Get your information to the fast.
    Pages will be indexed so information should be independent of other pages.
13. Writing guidelines
    Limit content to 50% of what it would be in other media
    Summary and important information should be first. Detail the information in the rest of the article.
    Make sure anything on the first screen is important, anything ‘under the fold’ may get lost.
    Limit content to a single page of no more than 3 to 4 screens. Split long pages as necessary. Exceptions are FAQs and glossaries.
    Make the page content stand alone from other pages.
    Simple sentence structure works best.
    Keep content updated.
14. Use of graphics
    Do not overuse
    To reduce download time use the same graphic where appropriate as it will be in the users cache and load from there.
    Use white space if needed to help readability.
15. Scannable pages
    Use emphesis to help keywords and ideas and topics be noticed
    Use bullets/numbering to organize ideas
    Start the page by telling them what you are going to tell them, then tell them the information in more detail.
    Use short paragraphs covering one topic.
    Do not use underlining as users think it will be a link and wonder why it does not work.
    Use heading tags to identify key content for the user and search engine spiders.
    Keep content viewable in a 1024 X 768 browser window. If you do not the average user will have to scroll across the screen and get upset.
16. Links (internal)
    Put your important information high in web hierarchy and link to subordinate information.
17. Search engine optimization
    Think of keywords that a person would search to find your site. When possible use those words early in the page. Also use them in metatags, page titles, and content titles.
    Use different good descriptive page titles for each page.
18. Grammar
    Have someone other than yourself proof read your site for you.  If you have mistakes it will reflect on you and your user.

 

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