Five Ways to Prevent a Website Do-Over
Building a website takes time and effort, and you want to make sure you get it right the first time in order to avoid a “do-over”. Here are a few ways to prevent a website do-over.
1. Take the time to determine the purpose of your website. Rather than simply have one because everyone else has one, think deeply about what you want your website to do. Do you want to share information, communicate with clients, or sell products directly on your site? So if your business is plastic packaging then your site should be about that.
2. Determine who will be accessing your website, particularly who your target audience is. This will help you figure out the right look and content that will be most suitable for this target audience.
3. Planning is important. Map out the main content you want to include, and organize it in an easy-to-find way. You may already have a lot of content available that you use in print materials (brochures, publications, portfolios), and may also want to produce new exclusive web content.
4. Browse the web. Before beginning the actual building work on your site, make a note of sites you like on the web. You don’t want to duplicate another website in full, but there will be sites that have elements you admire, which you can refer to when working on your site.
5. Keep your site simple in terms of design and technology. Simple, elegant and classic always trumps trendy. While you should choose a technologically-sophisticated platform that allows you to easily update content (and even make simple design changes like color schemes and navigation elements) in order to keep the site fresh, stay away from flashy technological design elements, like Flash animations. The novelty of Flash wears off and you risk annoying visitors who just want to get straight to the content.
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