Introduction

These days having a website for your business is almost a must, as it is one of the easiest and most efficient ways to get your business noticed. It seems that everyone has a website for their business: for sales, advertising/marketing, information, etc.

A website also creates an image and a presence for your business, which means it is very important that the website is designed in the best possible way, offering information in an efficient manner. There are key areas in which your site must excel in order to be of great benefit to your business:

Design

Structure & navigation

Accessibility

Technical quality

Content

Each of the five key areas above must be considered when designing a web site in order to make an impact, provide for various users and browsers, and do its job in the best way possible. Each area is as important as the next, so it is vital that every one is met.

Design

The design is one of the first things that hits a reader when looking at a website. It is important that the appearance of the site and the display of text and images are well thought out. Readers need to be able to find their way around a web page and site easily and efficiently. Choosing a colour scheme is a must, preferably something light and easy on the eye, and which most resembles the type of business you are in.

Wide use of images and graphics really help to boost the image and presentation of a web site, but it is important to consistently place the images on the page; this can also aid in creating structure for your page. If you build a strong structure then the pages will be consistent and more efficient to read and extract information from.

Structure & Navigation

User-friendly menus that are clear and easy to understand and which show readers their position in the site will help them to quickly see the structure and where they would expect a link to take them. A menu is also a good means of displaying which page the reader is on and even how far they have drilled down into the site. By incorporating some kind of animation, such as a roll-over image, navigation can add that little bit more visual impact and help to make your site stand out.

When designing the pages of your website, having a structured menu with many reciprocating links helps to bind the whole site together and allows readers to get to the relevant pages quickly. It is good to introduce a site map that the reader can use for navigation, especially with large sites. This needs to be structured well and easy to use (a site map within a new window allows readers to see the map and page at the same time).

Headings help to describe the page and give a clear indication of the position within the website. They also help with the hierarchy of the page, and aid in search engine rankings if they are if encased in heading tags within the code.

The page and its structure should be designed to accommodate different screen sizes, so ensure that the positions of your menus and headings can still be viewed along with all other information on the smaller screen sizes. Take a look at your site and see whether the position of the menu can be easily viewed at small screen sizes such as 800x600.

Accessibility

There are a small percentage of text-only browsers out there that need to be considered. Therefore simple page design, alt tags on images, structured paragraphs and the avoidance of frames all aid the browsers in displaying your site as well as possible.

As well as text-only browsers, there are also other standard browsers like Internet Explorer, including Mozilla, Opera and Netscape. Each of these browsers reads a page in different ways and also the code behind it. Try to check your pages in these browsers and see if any differences occur.

Technical quality

Large images don't help the reader much as they take a long time to download. Offer thumbnails or very simple pictures that won't affect performance. Each image also needs alt tags, which help to identify the image when a reader has images turned off, while the page loads, or where a reader is using a text-only browser.

If your site takes a long time to load then the average reader will leave and go somewhere else. Your page should download in a few seconds. Try and keep the page sizes to a minimum, for example less than 10k - the smaller the better.

To help with reducing page size, a style sheet can contain much of the code and the basis of page structure so that the pages themselves are smaller. As these files are very small in size, the browser can sometimes download pages in just over a second.

Content

Content is important in meeting your readers' needs, although this will vary according to the type of business you are in. Make sure your content answers your customers' questions, allows people to make contact with the company, and meets any legal requirements you may have (e.g. for terms and conditions).

Graphic content can help to define your business and break up the design of the site, while text content is essential in portraying the personality of your business and your customers. Quality is more important than quantity, so try to provide text that is brief and to the point rather than a mass of text that may not be of interest to the reader.

Another key ingredient with search engine rankings is the wording of your content. Well-written text contains words that match page description and keywords, and this will boost ranking dramatically.

There are also many ways to expand your site's presence with more interactive content, such as user registration, email marketing and comprehensive contact options.