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You have a new business to promote, a new hobby you’d like to share, or just some opinions and thoughts on a subject. These (and many more) are all good reasons to build a web site.

However, you don’t know where to start. The task seems pretty big and out of your range of expertise. You’ll need design, content, graphics, navigation—what about chat and message boards, and a web log? Relax. Not all web sites are created equal, and not all web sites have to have all the bells and whistles.

The goal of this article is to give you a place to start. By the end of it, you should feel comfortable with the notion of building a site—and you’ll also know where you’ll need some help.

First Things First

The first thing you need to do is figure out who your audience is. That’s right: an audience. A web site is like any other method of communication—you have to know who’s tuned in, or at least, who you want to reach. Communication without an audience is just talking to yourself (and even then, you still have an audience!).

The audience factor—and getting to know them—is crucial to your efforts. If your audience is made up of twentysomething extreme sports athletes who want to buy your company’s protein bar, then the resulting web site will be much different from a site whose audience is retired golfers or quilting aficionados.

You can figure out your audience in a number of ways:

1. Conduct focus groups. A focus group isn’t quite as scary as you’d think. Sometimes it just means having a bunch of friends over for beer and nachos and asking them what they’d like to see on your site. Or, if you’re a company, the focus group process can be more formal, with a moderator and trained observers.
2. Read some magazines. If you want to offer content for women who want to be fit during their pregnancy, then check out those magazines that already exist to serve the niche. You’ll not only get a good angle on the kinds of topics that are being covered, but also the way they’re handled (tone). You’ll also get a good bead on the kind of advertisers that run ads in the niche, which will help you fill in the audience picture.
3. Write what you know. If you’re a marathoner, chances are that if you start a web site that targets marathoners, that you’ll be spot on, or at least close. You’ll know what topics are hot, because you’ve probably stayed current with all the magazines and journals. Plus you will have experienced many issues yourself directly (injuries, runner’s high, etc.) and talked about these things with friends and acquaintances who also run (focus groups).

When do you know if you have a good audience for a web site—in other words, an audience that isn’t amorphous or hard to pin down? Your audience should fit both a census-taker’s profile (what industry people would call a demographic) as well as a psychologist’s profile (a psychographic).

In other words, you have to know how to isolate your audience from the regular population, and understand what motivates them to buy. A good example of an audience is “thirty year old executives who enjoy rock climbing because it keeps them fit and gives them the thrill and sense of accomplishment their jobs don’t.”

Understand your Motives

Once you understand who your audience is, you have to understand your own motives. Are you building a web site to share information freely? To sell products and services? To persuade or inform?

Once you have a motive fixed firmly in mind, you can bridge motive (sometimes called a goal by some communication experts) and audience to figure out content strategy. For example, if you are building an e-commerce site to sell gear to adventure racers, you may decide to have more than just a catalog. You might want to have how-to’s, tips and tricks, and real life stories of adventure racers as well—the more content, the more you will sell.

Have a Content Strategy

Now that you know who your audience and your motives/goals, you have to work on a plan to reach that audience and advance your goals. A good content strategy is all about delivering the right information to the right people at the right time.

• The right information. If you know that your audience is composed of CPAs who want to learn about the latest tax codes, then perhaps content about golf resorts in Scotland would be inappropriate (of course, if the article focused on CPAs golfing, then maybe you might have a good slant). If your motive is to sell products, then posting an article on your site that uncovers the ugly underbelly of your product line may be inappropriate.
• The right people. This can’t be repeated enough: always know your audience! Always know your audience! Always focus on the audience. Enough said.
• The right time. If it’s Christmas, don’t publish pieces on summer vacations in Tahiti. If it’s the summer lull, then a weblog entry about your cavorting on the sands is appropriate.

One thing that many people forget when they cast a strategy is to have some kind of policy. With personal web sites, this isn’t so important, but with company or organizational sites, a policy is a must. A good policy states what kind of content will and won’t be posted, and can keep all your content providers on the same page regarding acceptable content. For example, in most (if not all) cases, content that is racist, sexist, or can be construed as libel or slander is not a good idea, and should be part of your policy under the “no-no” section.

Gather Your Assets While You May

After you’ve figured out how to get your message out to your audience, you have to figure out whether to build or buy your content.

• Building entails writing your own articles and weblogs; taking your own photos and shooting your own video; drawing your own illustrations, and so on. This could be you directly or staff members that work for you.
• Buying means hiring other folks, like freelancers, to create content for you. It also means doing things like buying photos from stock agencies or hiring videographers to shoot video of company events.

Everything on your web site, from articles to navigation elements and photos, are known as assets. Each asset is therefore part of the communication puzzle being delivered to your audience. Any pieces of the puzzle that don’t fit or that are not like the others can cause your communication effort to fail.

For example, if you are selling skateboards to teenagers with an online catalog and articles and news about skateboarding, using assets that convey a corporate look and feel would probably be less effective than going for the skate rat look.

Put your Assets Together…Intuitively

Now that you have some assets pulled together, don’t just throw them all together and expect that your audience will work hard to have it all make sense.

You have to implement a design, which is a word that comes down from the Latin designare, “to mark out or designate.” In other words, design isn’t just about pretty colors and straight lines—it’s about marking out or designating a path that leads people to a certain goal.

There are two types of design that you need to focus on:

• Visual design. This is the most common form of design. Your visual design has to support your goal and be meaningful to your audience. If you’re running a personal diary site, then don’t make it look like a corporate site, and vice versa. See the resources list for visual design books and sites.
• Information design. This kind of design is less obvious than visual design. It involves the intuitive organization of information. For example, most corporate sites have an About Us and a Contact Us section. You would expect to find information about the company in About Us, and information on how to call, email, and write the company under Contact Us.

What if the About Us on company XYZ’s site were called Get to Know Us? You’d probably still know that it was really an About Us section. However, what if you went to an About Us section and got a product listing instead? You’d think that the web team had made a mistake. What if you didn’t see an About Us section at all?

If you know your audience (there it is again!) then you’ll know what kind of visual design appeals to them, and how content should be organized. Sites and magazines devoted to women’s issues use soft pastel colors and have topics like Sex, Careers, and Reading because these design elements and topics appeal to that demographic.

At this point, you’ll probably be making a decision about hiring a designer or programmers. On a personal site, you could probably handle all of the tasks yourself. On a corporate or small company site, however, it’s likely that you’ll need professional assistance.

Test It

Once you have things pulled together, take it out for a spin—with a small group of friends, coworkers, and if you can swing it, your target audience. You should test them one at a time, in one of two ways:

• Gather their impressions. Is the content what they expected? Is the site something they would use? Are the shopping cart and e-commerce features easy to use? Would they tell somebody else about the site?
• Go on a scavenger hunt. Have them look for answers to five or six questions. Don’t give them any help, as this will introduce bias. Also, don’t argue with them. Encourage them to think out loud as they search and navigate your content to find the answers. Time them to see how long it takes them to find the answer to each question—if they succeed at all.

The results of your testing will vary, but you don’t have to conduct hundreds of tests to get the answers you need. Usability experts suggest that testing your site with as few as seven people can uncover most problems.

The key here is to implement changes based on the testing. If your ego gets in the way, then there’s no point in having undergone testing. And think about it: your ego may be intact, but when you launch the site, it’s likely that other users will have the same reaction as the people you tested.

Launch it…but keep it up to date

Eventually, you’ll want to launch your site. When you do, be sure to run down a checklist to make sure that all your content and design elements are in place.

Once you launch your site, don’t just sit there—keep the site updated with new content. Also watch your site for broken links. If you have a feedback feature on your site, then make sure that you respond to your users—when they give you feedback, consider it a gift! It’s clear intelligence on what your site should be working toward.

Web Creation/Design Resources

Webmonkey has been offering visual design and HTML tips and tutorials since the inception of the Web.

Builder.com features an impressive archive of articles, tips, discussions, and other material on topics ranging from basic HTML to XML, Java, information design, and database marketing.

Robin William’s and John Tollett’s A Non-Designer’s Web Book (ISBN 0201710382) offers a gentle introduction to HTML, elementary design, and other topics like animated GIFs and creating backgrounds.

Jennifer Niederst’s Web Design in a Nutshell (ISBN 0596001967) is a good reference that provides lists of HTML codes, Javascript mouseover scripts, and more.

Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think (ISBN 0789723107) is probably the best introduction to web site usability in print. His humor and candor make it easy to understand some of the concepts involved in creating intuitive web sites.

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