A beginner’s guide to website options, features, and services.

10. USER-FRIENDLINESS

Good web design.

It’s a good thing to have a web site that’s easy to use and works the way people expect it to. It’s also a good thing to have a web site that looks great. The best websites combine a good visual design with a good functional design. What’s the point of having the most cutting edge visual design if no one can figure out how it works?

This isn’t to say that you should strive for a simplistic design. By all means color outside the lines. Just be sure you do a bit of testing before launching the site. Show it to some friends and family and see what they think. One good test is to see if your parents or grandparents can figure out the site. If they can, it's probably easy enough to use.

Site statistics.

After the site has launched, take a look at your statistics. They tell you how many people have looked at your site, among other things. Statistics are available through your hosting service. Don’t use third-party page counters—they look tacky and often act as “spyware”.

If you see in your statistics that 10,000 people came to your home page last month, but only 20 of them went to your “buy now” page, you might want to reconsider the way your home page is designed so as to make it more effective at leading people to the buy now page.

Statistics will also tell you which pages in your site are the most popular. You can then modify your site to emphasize these pages.

Different browsers display the same site differently.

It’s often the goal of visual designers and site owners to get the website to look “just so”. Unfortunately, this is often impossible to do all the time. Web sites look slightly different in different people’s browsers. The same site may have smaller text when viewed with a Mac and LARGER Text when viewed with Windows. A site may look great in Internet Explorer 6 but look horrible in Internet Explorer 5.

A professional web designer should be able to minimize most browser quirks, but you should know that this will be impossible to do 100% of the time. Aim for 90% to 95%, which is realistic. If you absolutely must have close to 100%, expect to pay a premium.

STYLE SHEETS

There's a new way of building web sites using what are called style sheets. These sites are built to standards and should look good in the browsers of the future. Unfortunately, building sites this way sometimes makes them display wrong in browsers of the past. This site is built this way, so if it looks good to you, you must be using a newer browser.

If your site's audience will probably have mostly newer browsers, you should consider having your site built this way. It will make your investment last a bit longer.

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