"Web Site
Design: How Do You Want To Communicate?"
by Richard Lowe Jr.
By this point you know what your web site is
about, you've got a good idea about your audience and you know
what you want to tell them. Now it's time to figure out how you
are going to get that message across to them. What is the best
way to deliver your thoughts to the people who want them?
The first step in this process is to ask yourself
if a web site is the best or only way to reach your audience.
This is useful as there are many different ways to communicate
on the internet and a site is only one of those methods. You could,
for example, create an electronic book (ebook), electronic magazine
(ezine) or even an egroup (an email discussion list). Each method
of communication has it's pros and cons, and they are by no means
mutually exclusive.
On our web site (Internet Tips And Secrets) we
use some of the above mentioned methods to communicate our message
to our readers. We have a web site and two ezines (a daily and
a weekly version). In the future, we will probably create a discussion
list and several ebooks.
Web Site
A web site is a great way to communicate. First,
they are easy to promote and are highly visible. They are generally
straightforward to create and hosts are easy to find. They are
also highly configurable - you can do almost anything you want
with a web site. In addition, a good web site can be used to promote
the other methods used to communicate your message.
Ebooks
Ebooks are very good ways to deliver information
to people. They are almost as flexible as a web site, and only
slightly more difficult to create. They have an advantage over
a web site in that it is usually easier (in my opinion) to sell
an ebook than access to a membership site. Ebooks are great when
you have a message to deliver that once finished does not need
to be changed.
Ezines
If you want to deliver periodic information to
someone an ezine is perfect. You can, for example, create an ezine
for daily tips or jokes, weekly updates, email courses and many
other things which are useful to people.
Email Discussion Lists
An email discussion list is great for delivering
periodic messages to your audience, as well as getting information
from them. Email lists are good for keeping an audience interested
in your message day in and day out.
There are, of course, other ways to communicate
with people. These are just some of the more popular methods.
Once you have decided on one or more methods,
it's probably a good idea to begin thinking about which technologies
you want to use to deliver your messages. For example, if you
have a web site will it be mostly static (straight HTML) or dynamic
(changing regularly) or even database driven? In the case of an
ezine, will it be HTML, text or both?
Other questions to answer may involve interviewing
or surveying your intended audience. I cannot over emphasize how
important it is to get feedback from these people before you begin
writing your specifications or a single line of code. You have
no idea how many times developers think they know what their end
user needs and wants turns out to be completely different than
their actual requirements.
You also need to consider your own skill set
as you go through this exercise. You may want to create a fully
dynamic database driven web site, but if you don't have a clue
how to do it you will either (a) have to learn, which will delay
your final product or (b) hire someone to do it for you at a significant
expense. So be careful to make sure that you are creating something
that you are capable of creating.
Another variable that may limit how you deliver
your message is finance. If, for example, you want to include
some interactivity on your website requiring CGI, you must understand
that this is usually not available for free. Database driven web
sites are even more expensive, at least in time, to maintain.
This is a great time to start considering how
graphical your finished product will be. Will you create a web
site which contains a large amount of beautiful graphics or a
fairly plain, content oriented encyclopedia? Will the web site
have animation and other dynamic elements or will it be fairly
static?
Again, this is a thought process not a writing
or coding process. The more of these types of questions you can
answer near the start of a project, the smoother your project
will be and the happier you will be with the result. In addition,
the more time you spend ensuring that your message and the way
you deliver it matches your audience, the more likely they are
to read that message.
Be sure and tie every single answer back to your
earlier stages of design. Ask yourself: does this help me with
my original goal? Is it something of interest to my audience?
and does it fit into the type of information that I want to deliver?
I know this all seems like a lot of work to do
before writing a single character of code (after all, that's the
fun stuff), but it will save you an incredible amount of time
later on. It's trivial to change your mind now, as you have not
created anything permanent. As you proceed through your project
it will become more and more difficult to make changes, until
it becomes virtually impossible to modify anything significantly
without starting over.
Remember, your goal is to communicate (and possibly
to sell something), not to code a website. |
