Developing an effective website captovate 2012_hs_v8

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Developing an Effective Website

Heather Sweeting

heather@captovate.com.au

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About Me

About You

What we’ll cover• Planning for Success

• Getting Started

• Recipe for an Effective Website

• The Science and the Art

• A Solid Foundation

• Design – More than Just a Pretty Face

• Functionality – Basics to Bells & Whistles

• Getting it Out There – SEO, Social Media and Mobile

• Content is King

• Writing for the Web

• Make it Last – Managing your Website

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Planning for Success

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Do I really need a website?

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Do I really need a website?

Over 2 billion internet users globally

89.8% of Australians (19.5 million) on the internet

88% of these use e-commerce

28% of Australian businesses received orders online,

worth $189 billion

Times are changing

It just keeps growing...Sources: www.internetworldstats.com & www.digitalbusiness.com.au

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Do I really need a website?

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Do I really need a website?

Source: www.outrider.com.au

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What makes a website effective?

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What makes a website effective?An effective website is one that meets the needs of your customers and of your business

It gets your visitors to do what you want them to do, by making it what they want to do

• Leads• Online sales • Offline sales• Customer service• High Google rankings• Reputation / trust• Distribute information• And more...

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To create effective websitesYou need to:

• Know your target market and their problems

• Understand your solution

• Nurture your relationships with your visitors

• Create more, better, optimised content

• Create more, better offers and calls to action

• Optimise landing pages

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Defining Your Website’s Purpose

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Defining your website’s purpose

• Brand awareness?

• Alternative to phone/store contact?

• Product and service details?

• Direct transactions and sales?

• Increase your audience base?

• Increase your digital footprint/SEO?

• Nurture Existing Relationships?

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The Elevator Pitch…Web Style

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The Elevator Pitch…Web Style

• Can you sum up your offer in 30 seconds?

• Ever heard of the Elevator Pitch?

• In 15 seconds?

• What about in five seconds?

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The Elevator Pitch…Web Style

The average user will spend less than five seconds on a web page before deciding whether or not to click the dreaded ‘back button’.

Can you capture them?

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Finding and Understanding your users

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Finding and Targeting your Audiences

• Who are your customers or desired customers?

• Who are your audiences online?• Where are they? Where are their ‘watering

holes?’ • Why would your audiences need your

information?• What do they already know?

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User Research

• Use web analytics and data

• Talk to your targets

• Develop a profile or persona

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Problems and Solutions

• Identify problems for your audiences

• What worries them? What do they need?

• Align your offerings with solutions for your audiences

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Your Website Strategy

Your Website Strategy• Purpose

• Goals

• Target Audience

• Style and Tone– Design, look and feel, language

• Functionality

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Setting goals for success

• What do you want customers to do with your website?

• What will they achieve through visiting it?

• Can you define/measure what success looks like to you?

• S.M.A.R.T. Goals

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Getting Started

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What Resources Do I Need?

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What Resources Do I Need?

• Budget

• Time

• Content

• Commitment

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How Do I Get A Website?

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How Do I Get a Website?Go to an agency

• Website design or digital media agencies should be able to help with all elements of

your website design and build

If you’re tech savvy you can:

• Download a free site builder such as WordPress

• Build one from scratch (a huge project)

Where do you want to spend your money?

Horses for courses

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Working with an Agency

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Working with an AgencyGood builder / bad builder

• Content Management System• Web Standards HTML• Cascading Style Sheets• Usability and Accessibility• Information Architecture• Intellectual Property

Service and Processes • Full design and build • A quick renovation• Variations• Maintenance

Track Record• Examples of recent work

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What Do I Need to Provide?

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What Do I need to Provide?What Agencies will expect of you

• Website Brief

• Logos, Images, Colours, Branding

• Professional Photography for top level pages • Content

• Review and signoff at relevant stages

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Recipe for an Effective Website

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Recipe for an Effective Website

• The Science and the Art

• A Solid Foundation

• Design – More than Just a Pretty Face

• Functionality – Basics to Bells & Whistles

• Getting it Out There – SEO, Social Media and Mobile

• Content is King

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The Science and the Art

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What is Usability?

How easy it is for people to understand and interact with your website

• Does everything work the way it should?

• Cognitive Load – Don’t make me think!

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(And Why it’s Different to Print)

Web content is usually read by users (as text)

Although it’s becoming more common to • Watch (video) • Listen (audio) • Interpret (images and graphs)

But the internet is not a book… …or a newspaper, magazine, brochure or report

How Readers Behave Online

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(And Why it’s Different to Print)

PRINT IS… WEB IS…

• Linear • Non-Linear

• Passive • Interactive

• Focussed • Disrupted

• Self Contained • Fragmented

Users read more slowly online, but they are more impatient and faster to act

How Readers Behave Online

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79% of readers SCAN web pages

Scanning is not random, it can be:

• Directed – looking for something specific– jumps all over looking for an indicator, then reads in detail just that part

• Impressionable– nothing specific in mind but open to key terms, phrases or ideas – scans whole area more consistently but might not read comprehensively

How Readers Behave Online

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• Web users look for certain markers when scanning:

– Headings– Links– Bold words– Lists– Numbers– Icons

• Users generally read in an ‘F’ shaped pattern, dipping in and out of detail at key markers like sub-headings

• When a user catches a marker that is relevant, they’ll stop and read the copy in a little more detail

• A user rarely reads a page of content through, word-for-word, from start to finish, but they do read longer and take in more when:

– Highly motivated – i.e. a news article they have selected – Page is easy to scan– Site is trustworthy– Content is printable to read later

How Readers Behave Online

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• We are all visual communicators at heart

• Aesthetics, trust and positive perceptions

Visual Communication: telling a thousand words

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A Solid Foundation

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Information ArchitectureInformation Architecture is the ‘structure’ of a website. How the pages are categorised and labelled, and how the user navigates between them

Imagine your website is a tree:

• Your global navigation is the trunk that holds everything together

• Each category is a branch with its own local navigation

• Pages are leaves

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Information Architecture

• All of the pages and content within your website should sit neatly within the information architecture

• A strong information architecture makes it easy and intuitive for users to follow an ‘information trail’

• A poor information architecture makes for a messy, disorganised site that users can’t easily make sense of

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Information Architecture

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What is UX?

Takes the focus away from technology

Defines what the user actually experiences in using the site

What they will see, how they’ll interact, how they might feel, the actions they can take, the outcomes

User Experience Design

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Why UX?Thoughtful UX design ensures that your website is squarely focussed on your user – NOT pretty design, cool functionality, or internal information

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WireframesDefine the presentation of content

inventory, priorities and real estate

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Navigation • Global and Local• Multiple pathways to knowledge• Expected locations • Proximity, similarity and boundaries

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Domain Name and Hosting• Always check to see if your domain is available• Register with a reputable Australian company or organise

with your website designer• Ensure the domain is registered in your business name

For Example use www.whois.com.au to check availability

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Content Management Systems: Why You Need One

Source: How to build a website & stay sane

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Content Management Systems: Why You Need One

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Accessibility • The world wide web consortium W3C sets the web standards

for the world. • Recently Governments and like organisations around the

world have put in policy to meet the W3C WCAG2.0 guidelines.

• Means people with disabilities have better access to information.

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Website Design - More than just a Pretty Face

Website Design - More than just a Pretty Face

• Guiding users to content

• Setting a mood and invoking emotion

• Clean white Space

• Style and consistency

• Appropriate Imagery

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What makes a good web image?• Why stock photos don’t work

• Size and resolution

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Functionality - Basics to Bells and Whistles

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Everybody loves news and blogs

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Sign me up! Gaining prosects through subscriptions

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Harnessing visuals with dynamic sliders

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Search, and you will find

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Events and Calendars

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Image and Video Galleries

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Online forms are good form

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Leading the way with Maps

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Making the Sale – E-Commerce• Placing an order

should be simple and straightforward

• Ensure trust

• What happens after order placement?

• Secure transactions

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Payment• Payment before delivery – big advantage!• The more options for payment, the more

sales• Merchant accounts – Visa, Mastercard,

Amex, Diners• PayPal, PayMate

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Getting it Out There

Getting it out there

• Search Engine Optimisation• Social Media• Taking it Mobile – Mobile Sites, Apps, Tablet, Phone

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Content is King

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All Kinds of Content• Educational• information gathering • Problem-solving• Get the best deal• Entertainment

Content You Can Trust• Benefits AND features• Case studies and clients • Contact Us, We're Real!

TextPhotosGraphicsVideo DownloadsAudio

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Writing for the Web

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How to Plan Content for your Audience

(Not your Organisation)

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(Not your Organisation)How to Plan Content for your Audience

• People use the internet for INFORMATION – they are here to find something out.

• Be generous with the information you provide.

• Making a web page simple and easy to read doesn’t mean reducing the amount of information you provide...

• it’s just about providing it in the right way

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(Not your Organisation)How to Plan Content for your Audience

Before you start to write your website’s content, you should have a good idea of:

• Who your audience is

• What the purpose of your website is (for you and for them)

• What the most important task or information is for your user

• What they want to know and what they already know

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(Not your Organisation)How to Plan Content for your Audience

Be wary of organisation-centric thinking:

• “Big words and formal writing makes us look important” • “Our audience is ‘everyone’, or the ‘general public’”• “This is our message, just put it on the web and people will get it”• “Our website is a reflection of our organisational structure”• “We should just put all our existing information on the web”• “It’s only the website, they can contact us for more information”• “Our website should reflect our print publications”• “Just make it look good, nobody reads it anyway”

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Plan Your Pages

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The Home Page

• Communicates who you are, what you do, what you offer and demonstrates trust, credibility and expertise

• Starting point for high-priority tasks (above the fold, users are less likely to scroll on a home page)

• Something new and current about you (builds confidence)

• Average time on home page is less than 30 seconds

Plan Your Pages

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Landing Pages

• The first pages a user ‘lands on’, whether entering different sections of the site, or from an external source (like a search engine)

• Section landing pages should give an overview of all the content within that particular section – Confirm who the section is for and what it’s about – Run through the options of what a user can find

out or achieve within the section (linking where relevant)

• All pages are potential landing pages , so always give enough context on the page to show the user where they are

Plan Your Pages

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Internal Content Pages

• The ‘nuts and bolts’ of your site , the pages within each section or category

• Where your core information is given in as much detail as necessary for your audience

• Don’t worry too much about page length on internal content pages. Users are comfortable with scrolling when the text is easy to scan and read.

• Scrolling is less labour intensive than finding the next thing to click on

Plan Your Pages

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Structuring Your Content for Easy Reading

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Structuring Content for Easy Reading

• Structure your content like an inverse pyramid, with the most important messages at the top.

• Cover all your most important information in the first two paragraphs, leading with the first two sentences.

• Give context and answer key questions near the top

• Break your content into bite-sized chunks. Keep your paragraphs short and messages concise. One idea per paragraph.

• Headings within a page help to break up your text, making it easier to scan and providing a quick outline of the information within each paragraph or section

• Draw the eye with lists, bullets and links

Remember the user’s scanning behaviour?

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Structuring Content for Easy Reading

• The styling of your content (fonts, sizes, colours etc) should be consistent throughout the site

• The user then knows what different styles indicate and that they mean the same thing everywhere

• Use ‘markup styles’ - the style settings built into your website’s code, such as Heading 1, Heading 2 and Paragraph

• Good styling ensures consistency for the user and helps with Search Engine Optimisation

Styling your content

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Structuring Content for Easy ReadingAnatomy of a page

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Your Voice and Writing Style

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Your Voice and Writing Style

• Your website, and the content within it, is an extension of your brand

• Your voice is the unique style and personality of your organisation

• Write in a way your audience will understand and relate to.

• Studies show that regardless of what level they’re at, ALL users appreciate and respond better to simplified language when reading online.

• Keep your language simple and jargon-free• Put yourself in the user’s shoes, and think about how words and phrases

sound when spoken out loud in their head.

• Use an active voice rather than a passive voice

• NOTHING kills your credibility faster than mistakes in your content, so PROOF, PROOF, PROOF!!

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What describes your website’s voice?

Your Voice and Writing Style

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Content that Sells

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Content that Sells• The art of sales copy • AIDA and the 7 point plan

• Give me some action!• Leads and prospects

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Content that Sells

AIDA

• Attention, • Interest, • Desire, • Action

Seven part structure• Attention• Problem• Solution• Product• Proof• Offer• Action

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Make your Words Work for You

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• Search Engine Optimisation (or SEO) is all about setting up your website and your content in a way that helps Search Engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing to understand what your site is about.

• Search Engine robots ‘read’ all the content on your website, and look for clues as to what your site is about

• When you write and format your web content, make sure you use the terms you want to rank for in Search Engines (called ‘keywords’ ) in the correct ‘clue’ locations to maximise your chances

Making your Words Work for You SEO and your Web Content

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Think about your keywords – use a variety of terms and configurations that your audiences might know

Use your keywords regularly in:• Headings • Links • Page titles • Beginnings of paragraphs • Page and image metadata

Add new content to your website regularly and link to it from other places like Social Media

Making your Words Work for You SEO and your Web Content

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Making it Last Managing your Website

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Monitoring with Web Analytics

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Metrics you can use• How many visitors?• How many leads?• How many conversions?• How long on site?• Which page did they

enter?• Which page did they

leave?• Etc.

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Don’t set and forget!

Regularly updated content is crucial for SEO and user confidence.

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• Peter Shepherd• Business & Community Developments

Pty Ltd

Pricing Costing QuotingQuestions?Heather Sweeting

heather@captovate.com.au