Continued from page 1
WEBSITE PLANNING
Before starting to build your website you should first develop a plan in line with your online objectives, target audience and resources. You can write your plan thoroughly as a storyboard. A storyboard is something similar to a flowchart of all
website components you deem necessary. Once you have a clear picture of what you are going to build, sit with your developers and create a technical scope of
project. This is absolutely necessary! In most of
cases your entrepreneurial vision will differ drastically with
way a programmer look into your requirement.
While working on your scope or even after publishing your website bear in mind
following crucial aspects of effective websites:
Page loading time In
euphoria of having a great slick website, often, we use images that make
pages too heavy. A page which takes just one second to load with T1 speed will need full 55 seconds to load with a 28.8 modem. Web surfers are impatient bunch of click-happy people; they don’t like to wait too long! Make sure you optimize each and every page of your website before launching
site! Otherwise, you will loose a large portion of your would-be visitors for nothing!
- Look at your pages from a visitor’s prospective. - Eliminate all images that are not so important to deliver your messages. Optimize
remaining images with available tools. - FLASH images are may be cool, don’t use them just because they are cool. Use them wisely. Host your website in a server with a good bandwidth.
Navigation Your website’s links should be well-defined, persistent, and easily visible. If
site is large with many pages, you must have a site map page. Remember that not all visitors will land to your homepage, in order to keep them browsing through your site make navigation from your main landing pages as easy as possible. Try giving them compelling reasons to do so by using catchy links. Also, make sure that all your links work correctly and take a visitor to right place.
Webpage consistency All your web pages should have one consistent look. This will give your website a professional appearance, and visitors while browsing through your site will always know that they are still on your website.
Content is
king If you want your visitors to return back to your site, regularly add fresh, relevant and quality content to your website. Internet users are information hungry people, feed them with fresh information on a regular basis and you will have good number of loyal visitors to your website.
If you already have a website make sure you optimize your website from user’s point of view. According to Gartner, a market research company, even a minor investment in improving
usability of a company website will yield an annual return of 10 to 20 per cent. It increases brand awareness, leads to higher user adoption rates and possibly more transactions per user. Average order size starts to rise and
site generates more return visits from customers.
RESOURCES
Website Performance Tool and Web Page Speed Analysis: http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze
Check your web pages for bad links: http://www.siteowner.com/badlinks.cfm
Webmaster resources: http://bignosebird.com

Nowshade Kabir is the founder, primary developer and present CEO of Rusbiz.com. A Ph. D. in Information Technology, he has wide experience in Business Consulting, International Trade and Web Marketing. Rusbiz is a Global B2B Emarketplace with solutions to start and run online business. You can contact him at mailto:nowshade[at]rusbiz.com http://ezine.rusbiz.com