Client Resources

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW AND WHAT THEY ALREADY KNOW!
How to make your website shine.

What customers want: the short list

• Short lists
• The ability to search for information easily
• To offer feedback on what they like and don't like
• Scannable articles, with bullet-points and images (nothing gratuitous though… only if it serves the content)
• Humor (they don't want to have to take you, or themselves, all that seriously)
• Authenticity (phoniness on the Web is as obvious and transparent as that flash content that, come to think of it, seems to have died down…)
• They do not want to be condescended to
• You clients are incredibly sophisticated, increasingly impatient and skeptical audience.
  
• They expect to be written to (and understood) by their content providers.

• Minimize your graphics size to under 200kb, since graphics take so long to download.
• Every image on your website should contain text as an alternative to the image. This means that when a visitor looks at the site with graphics turned off, he or she can see what the images are about (such as, "picture of house in snow")
  (SEE IMAGE ICON IN YOUR CMS EDITOR -  UNDER "SOURCE" THERE IS "TITLE" ADD YOUR TEXT HERE!)

1. Navigation

   I see a lot of websites with terrible navigation. Navigation is very important. Why do people come to your website? Usually to find some information. How about making it easy for people to find what they are looking for?

   • Navigation should be organised. Divide your navigation up into sections when you can (such as by topic). Group together navigation items that are related to each other.
   • Navigation should be easily found. Place it somewhere users are expecting it... such as right below the header going horizontal or vertically on the left side of the page.
   • Navigation should contrast from the rest of the site. This will greatly help people to instantly find it. Positioning isn't everything.

2. Font and text

   If you want the content on your website to be read (which you probably do), you need to make it readable.

   • Don't have fixed sizes for fonts. Use % or em... not px for sizes. That way, people will see it just the size they want to see it at. If they have a low resolution, the font won't be too big, and if they have a very high resolution, the text won't be unreadable. Use 1em or 100% for your standard size for your body text. NOTE: this advise is for making your website work well in IE6. It's not really an issue otherwise (although I think it makes more since to use em and % or px).
   • Use good contrast. Have good contrast between the text and the background it is on. And for text that is read (not just scanned, like a navigation or product descriptions for example), use the color black with a white or very light colored background. It is OK to have not-so-good contrast on parts of your website if it looks good and there isn't a lot of text to read. Also make sure that the two colors you are contrasting actually look good together as well (don't put yellow text on a blue background please).

   You may think, "but now it doesn't look as good!" But think about this; What is more important, the 'looks' or the content. Regardless of your answer... people coming to your website for information care much more about the content.

   • Make it scanable. Make all your text scanable. Use short paragraphs (about 8 sentences), simple words, and contractions when writing. Write at an 8th grade level (without the misspellings). People don't read on the internet, they scan.

3. Content

   Content is very important. That's why people come to your website. But you need to make it good content!

   Answer peoples questions they might have. They will love you for it. If you don't know what your visitors are looking for, ask them!

   Take this real life situation for example:

   An entrepreneur was wanting to start an ISP in a third world country using WiMax technology. He did google searches to try to find companies that would sell him the equipment he needed as well as provide information on how to set it up. Almost all of the websites he went to were worthless. They had a little bit of bad copy on their homepage with nothing after it. Sometimes they would have links to go to for pricing... but for most you were left just hanging their. That's why with copy writing it is very important to tell the reader what to do at the end.

   Any way, he finally found a website that had a large manual in pdf format for setting up their equipment and running an ISP. But it was buried deep within the site and very hard to find. How much better if they had a link to it on their homepage for people like this entrepreneur to see.

   The entrepreneur ended up contacting the company for more information on their equipment and prices... but they never got back with him.