Secrets of Internet Success

If you have been following the FREE REPORT series, you now know how important planning is to success...with the Internet, it's even more so.

Why?

Because, with tens of millions of web-sites available to the general public, your web-site has to be super specific, able to anticipate the user and be continually interesting. That doesn't happen by accident. It happens by design and on-purpose thinking and action.

In the first six months of 2001 over 500 dot com companies, employing thousands of talented people, went out of business because somewhere along the line they did not attract enough new customers...the number one reason companies go out of business.

This brings us to the first SECRET:

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS THE INTERNET BUSINESS!

That would be like saying General Motors is in the Highway business. They are not. They make cars and trucks that run on highways.

You don't go into the Internet business; you put your business on the Internet.

You must have a product or a service that is in reasonable demand by a specific or general market segment before considering the Internet. If you already have a viable business or service, the Internet should probably be your next step. However, before you take that step, read on and save yourself the potential heartache and frustration of opening your own web-site.

The Five-Step Cycle of Web-Site Development

1. PLANNING - This is where everything begins and re-begins. Whether you head a billion dollar company or a one-person business, planning is the most important activity you can be engaged in at any one given time. In this step you'll define the three most important beginning steps and consider a few other factors.

A. Goals: Define in as specific terms as possible the outcomes you want from your site. Is the objective to get the user to buy a product online or do you want them to get a coupon or some other promotional vehicle to drive them to your physical location? Is the object to get as many users to stay at your site for as long as possible so that you can sell advertising? Do you want to have information for sale so that the user has to sign up for a subscription? Do you want the site to serve as an order form for goods or services that will be picked up or delivered later? Be as specific as possible.

B. Target Audience: Who is your user? Describe them in vivid detail in your planning sessions. Are they primarily one age group or gender? Do they tend to be upscale or downscale? Describe the profile of the typical user you seek to attract. Again, take the time to be as specific as possible.

C. Driving users to your site: This absolutely must be decided in the Planning stage. From day one, you need to know how users are going to get to your site. Since you now know the goals of the site and the target audience, that information, in and of itself, will suggest some possible areas of promotion. At this stage, you'll also need to plan on a search engine strategy.

D. Site files structure, Browser capability and HTML: Organize the site on your hard drive right from the beginning. Set up a folder structure similar to Fig. 2. with a root folder and a logical hierarchy of sub folders before you make your first page. Thinking things through now saves time and trouble later on. This is also the time and place to consider what browsers you will be creating for. If your site is a library or reference site with little or no graphics and only text, a 3.0 version browser will work just fine. But, if you want to take advantage of frames, layers and later versions of HTML you'll want to design your site for 4.0 and later browsers. Finally, even if you have spent thousands of dollars on web-site creation software and image editing software, you still need to learn HTML and probably PERL, CGI, and JAVASCRIPT. Yes, it is technically possible to have a great site without knowing any programming code, but it's not probable nor is it wise. Know the code!

2. DESIGN - In the Design phase you'll define creative variables like the specific information you will present and how you will present it. This includes content, color and type style, layout and graphics, and navigation and interactivity. These design elements will deal with what is basically known as the Look and Feel of the site and the way navigation plays a part in the end users experience. Remember to keep the planning definitions in mind as you layout the information, graphics and navigation so that each element works in harmony with the other. This is very important. Sometimes the greatest plans get watered down, or lost entirely, in favor of flashy visuals or superfluous design that doesn't really facilitate the site's goals. Let the Plans be your guide to effective design.

A. Information flow: This is where you will set up the logical order of presentation and create an opening or Home page (usually named index.html) that the user will see first. This is your ONLY opportunity to make a first impression with the web-site. Consider download time as a big factor. Your homepage offers you the opportunity to be creative, compelling and specific in as small a file size as possible so that pages load quickly. Some industry experts say the user won't wait more than eight seconds for a page to load. That's an average of course and isn't always true. Especially for e-commerce catalog sites. The user wants to see pictures of the products and will usually wait for the longer page load. Generally though, faster is better. Your home page should be appealing to the eye while making sense to the brain. Some very classy sites have fast opening pages that have a logo, a selling proposition, and several hyperlinks that take you to fancier pages. Consider your customer's state of mind; if you have a travel agency site, your users are most probably in an excited, going-on-vacation, upbeat state of mind. If you have a site for a funeral service, your users are more than likely to be in a sad state of mind. Make sure you design the information flow to get the user to the pre-stated goal.

B. Visual Design Elements: This encompasses everything for the eye. Color, type font faces, graphics, animation, logos, and hyperlink presentation. This is where you decide to use rollovers, where the object the mouse pointer rolls over changes color or shape; or disjointed rollovers, where the mouse pointer rolls over one object and something elsewhere on the page changes. There are a lot of options. Bells and whistles that can easily be overdone. Try to be interesting and lively without being annoying, as continuously looping animations or several animations on one page can be. Use the target market definition to ascertain if you need to be classic or contemporary in design. Too many colors can be a turn off. A good general rule is to go for a clean and crisp page that conveys the necessary information and makes navigation crystal clear. One of the biggest problems people complain about is lack of clarity when it comes to navigation. Those are lost dollars and lost users. Use design to support the goal.

C. Navigation: Navigation could be described as the linking together of pages and the prominent display of the linking mechanism, i.e.; buttons, text hyperlinks, etc. Building the navigation for a web-site is like drawing a very detailed map. If the user come to a fork in the road there should be abundantly clear directions on, not only which way to turn, but what happens when you turn in either direction. Drawing out a navigational chart before you actually create the pages is really mandatory, even for a simple site. See Fig. 3 for an example of a navigational chart. When you have the information laid out in the right order, the visual design elements selected, and the navigation charted, you're ready to proceed to the next step.

3. PRODUCTION - This is where you will actually create the text files, visual images, and any other elements that go onto your pages. Then you will put the elements into the pages and link the pages together with hand coding or with a page generating program like Dreamweaver, Go Live or Front Page. Chances are you will use a program and hand coding. Many designers test a page in at least two browsers after adding each new element to the page. That way they never have to rip a page apart to correct more than one mistake. Make sure everything works toward the goal of the site as you link the pages together. If you find a design flaw at this point, go back to the design phase (the old drawing board) and correct the error. Sometimes, after re-design it's best to start all over with production. One reason for this is many designers create a master page layout and just copy and save the pages with different names. It's vital to have a clean coded page if it's going to be copied. One mistake on one page could translate to mistakes on every page of your site. Take a great care to test and retest the pages. When the bugs are worked out and the pages are linked together and working like you want, you're ready to Publish your site.

4. PUBLISH - By now you have signed up with an Internet Service Provider (ISP) and have a username ID and a password. You'll be using the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) program that came with your web-site creation software or another FTP program to upload your site to the server. It's important that the local root folder structure on your hard drive and the folder structure match exactly. Keep both folders free of unused files. After the site is uploaded, you'll want to test it on several different computers and several different browsers. Hopefully, everything should work as planned, especially if you were judicious in the production phase testing. If you need to fix just one or two files, you can do that easily enough and re-upload them. If there are numerous errors or links that don't work, you'll have to re-test the site on the local hard drive and replace the whole site on the server when it finally works. Getting to this point is quite an accomplishment, but it's not the end, in fact, it's just the beginning. You are now ready for the next step.

5. MAINTENANCE - This is where you analyze the number of hits, the number of sales or any other indicators that give you direct feedback on your goals. Are they being met? Does the design need to be refreshed? Have the goals changed? Here in the all important maintenance step you literally reinvent your web-site. Of course, you'll want to be careful to not interrupt the things that are working. When you do see the need to refresh the look and feel or update the goals, begin again at the Planning stage as if you were planning a new site.

There you have the Secrets to Internet Success. You can see that the 'secrets' are really an organized system of planning and devlopment. Follow the system and you'll be successful. If you'd like further information or help with any of the development phases of your web-site, the Cyber Pros at Ashton & Company would be glad to get involved with a no obligation assessment. See the Custom Service Request in the Service Center section of this web-site.

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