Cartwheels from the edge of reality

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1 Three Elements of WWW Site Success

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Cartwheels from the edge of reality

Three Elements of WWW Site Success

From: Bob Novick
Subject: Three Elements of WWW Site Success

In the past two weeks we have been searching for a design firm to work on our own site. I've visited dozens of web-designers' home pages, as well as hundreds of commercial sites, all with the eye of a critic.

(By the way, I agree with Glenn that Voyagerco and CMDesigns are both excellent sites: I bought or downloaded something at each site, and remember them both very clearly.)

As a result, I've formulated three principles of a good Web site. I believe that all three are required for long-term success and that few sites now can claim excellence in all three areas. More importantly, I believe that there are few, if any, Web design firms which are equally capable in all three areas. In order of importance:

1
Excellent content. This means that for your target audience, the site must contain material of value not more easily available elsewhere. You are competing with others for the attention and $$ of this audience. What you offer: information, recreation or merchandise must strike the target audience visitor as uniquely worthwhile. Of course this implies that you know who the target audience is and that you understand what they want/will respond to.
2
Excellent design. Your site should be easy to access, pages load quickly, be easy to navigate and as simple as possible and free of errors. Using your site should require a minimum of instruction and you should not be wasting words on how to use or navigate your site. Most importantly, your product or service should be the "hero" of your site - it should be promoting and enhancing what you have to offer, not detracting from it. You have only a relatively few seconds (usually at the first page) to convince a visitor to look further and be led to your merchandise. I think that for any site I visit, if I don't "buy" or try or download or sign-up for something, they've screwed up.
3
Excellent graphics. Graphics serve two purposes: they can assist in the design of the site, making it easier to navigate and reducing reliance on written instructions. However, graphics have a second important and often overlooked value - to make your site memorable so that it stands out in the visitor's memory afterwards. The goal should be that each visitor remembers where he or she got that widget or piece of information. A memorable graphic can be a big help. I am not advocating big, slow-to-load graphics since that is a bad design principle.

Another purpose of good graphics is to make the visitor's stay at your site more pleasurable so that they feel more inclined to stay longer and therefore have more likelihood of buying.


I invite comments and critique. How many of you feel that your own site measures up to all three criteria?

Bob

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Bob Novick
Impulse Research
Los Angeles, California, USA
bnovick@netcom.com
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Cartwheels from the edge of reality

1 Three Elements of WWW Site Success
Bob Novick
Impulse Research
Los Angeles, California, USA
bnovick@netcom.com

0 Thurs Jun 8 1995
clburke@carolyn.org
Finite Systems Consulting


Cartwheels from the edge of reality