Sense and sensibility

DOTCOMS and the new media have spread out a canvas for creative minds to embellish, firing their imagination into taking up the creative challenges it has thrown open. Designing web sites and establishing a web presence thereby, however requires a lot more than plain creativity. The poor quality of a number of web sites in cyberspace betrays the fact that there isn't enough awareness about what actually makes a web site click.

For your website to serve its purpose, to accomplish what it set out to do in the first place, there needs to be proper planning. This would keep you on track, attracting the right traffic and making the odd surfer frequent the site on a regular basis.

Feel the pulse

Your website must work towards fulfilling some inherent need in the target visitor. It is best to lay down your aims and goals clearly, before you start out on building the site. Specialise in an area and make it your forte. Spell out clearly on your homepage, a few lines about your site. Create a niche, with a punch line that delivers your mission statement.

Cruising through

Don't make your website a maze. Let the navigation be simple. Your homepage should have all the important links to the main sections of the site. Have a site map, or a site tour where people can know exactly what's what and what's where. Hyperlinks should be provided judiciously and links to content of similar nature should be mentioned. Chart out the homepage links before you work on designing the site.

As the clock ticks

There's no point having a site up in cyberspace that no one can access! Having a heavy homepage is something that will surely drive traffic away from your site. Make sure the homepage is below 50 KB. The faster it downloads, the better it is for your customer especially since he will be paying for Internet time. Also optimise images so that the weight is reduced considerably. Program your site in such a way that the stuff you want the customers to see immediately, and keeps them occupied while they wait for the rest to download.

Picture perfect

Make sure your site is aesthetically designed. Keep it functional and not flamboyant. Visuals should convey and complement your theme. Heavy visuals and background images should be avoided. The colour scheme you choose should be easy on the eye. Outrageous colours are best avoided unless your site is meant to be funky. Try to match colours to suit your genre, for instance if it is a company site, make the colours formal, corporate tones that are distinctive to your organisation.

King Content

Don't take the matter of site-content lightly. An amateurish attempt can reflect poorly, so make sure you get the best minds working. Remember, Content is one thing that can ensure "stickiness" to your site.

Bond with the best

While designing the site it is best to allow a certain amount of interaction, suggestions and feedback that the users may want to give. If your site is an interactive one, then message boards, chats and community building should be initiated and encouraged. This adds value to your site and increases traffic. The webmaster should ensure that the site does not have any dead links and that all the sections are hyper linked correctly. Provide a local search facility for your site.

Need the dough?

With many dotcoms going broke, it is better to work out a revenue model before you lay the foundation for your website. You cannot survive by providing all your services free of cost. Although advertisers may be one source of revenue, you cannot solely depend on them.

Mission marketing

Have a specialised web marketing team in place to sell your product, establish mutually beneficial links and exchanges between sites. They should work towards increasing awareness and brand-recall of the site by the users. `Promos' and campaigns also help in increasing awareness.

Web marketing teams are also involved in selling advertising space on your site. A large part of the traffic can get redirected to your site through search engines. So make sure search- engine submission is a priority. It is a good practice to keep track of what's going on in the competitor camp. This helps you stay current, clued in and also aware of your position in the market and your shortcomings.

A word of caution

Before investing heavily in an e-commerce model, it is best to do some intense research to see if your model will have any takers. You can always add this feature later in the day too. Make sure the server you have your site on, is capable of handling a lot of traffic. Speed and efficiency should not suffer when Internet traffic intensifies.

Be flexible and don't let your ideas ``freeze'' Always keep adding improvements, updates and latest versions of the site. Your product should evolve, based on customer reaction. With all these checks in place, you can be assured of finding yourself a large and dedicated online following.

ARCHANA JAYAKAR

archana.hyd@careercommunity.co.in