GUIDELINES FOR AN EFFECTIVE BUSINESS WEBSITE

                            GUIDELINES FOR AN EFFECTIVE 

                                BUSINESS WEBSITE

                                   Prepared By

                                AMERICAN WEB PAGE

                              "Making the Web Work"

A site on the World wide Web can be either a very effective and low-cost 

marketing tool or it canbe a complete waste of time and money.

When properly designed a website can:

Increase your company's visibility among a growing and highly targeted 

audience of prospective customers; 

Enhance customer service through an additional feedback medium for 

current and prospective customers, allowing you to immediately answer 

their questions, offer feedback, etc.; 

Generate media exposure, since the press (the trade press in particular) 

now regularly monitor the Internet and the web for newsworthy 

information; 

Position your business as a forward-looking company on the "cutting 

edge" of technology; 

Communicate information about your company globally at a relatively 

low-cost (no printing or postage costs); 

Display you products or services in a more meaningful, informative and 

interactive way than possible with any other media; and 

Provide a discreet source of information about your competitors, 

customers and prospects. 

But if a website is designed as just a digital version of a print ad or a billboard 

on the information highway, then it will generate very little traffic and even 

less business.

KEYS TO AN EFFECTIVE WEBSITE

Our experience in designing and maintaining websites for business in various 

industries has repeatedly domonstrated the effectiveness of certain principles 

comon to websites that work:

1. USERS WANT INFORMATION. Save your advertising hype for other 

media. Don't make users dig through reams of material to find the gems 

they seek. Display the info you provide proudly or don't put it on the web. 

 

2. ORGANIZE THE CONTENT. If users access you through your home 

page, give them some clues as to where information lies. 'Click on' menus 

may not be original but they're fast. Small graphic representations also 

work well (large ones take time to download). Keep things together. Don't 

get so exotic with interactively that users can never find their way back. 

Provide navigation aids on every page. Keep similar sounding info pages 

in the same subheading; you may know the difference, the user probably 

doesn't. Downloading speed is directly tied to file size. If users access you 

through a particular page in your site, give them some help in navigating 

also. Navigation implies providing a map. That can be done graphically, 

by words, menus, or whatever seems to fit. 

 

3. USE REASONABLE LAYOUT METHODOLOGY. Don't make pages 

ten feet long so that scrolling becomes a marathon; make a page a page. 

Keep background files short and easy to download. Remember, AOL 

(Americal On Line) and some others do not pass backgrounds through to 

their subscribers (they can't see them) (see usr restriction also). A small 

graphic, properly designed, will be a small file and easily downloaded and 

transported on the web. The larger the file size, the slower the 

downloading will be and the longer it takes to traverse the web. Photos 

should be compressed ( a photo compression algorithm reduces the file 

size). In addition, reducing the size of the photo on the screen will allow it 

to be downloaded faster. Using 50% quality setting (in JPEG) for photos 

is a perfectly acceptable quality level and can cut the file size almost in 

half. 

 

4. USERS LIMIT YOUR CREATIVITY. The quality and capabilities of 

the user and his/her information service provider (ISP) is a limitation on 

how your web site is viewed. Remember, not everyone has the latest and 

greatest hardware and software. Some graphics break up on a 286 

machine. Some users still use an older browser which may not be 

compatible if you use a newer authoring software package for 

development. You need to decide, along with your developer, the 

minimum level of compatibility at which your site will be built. As 

mentioned earlier AOL does not transmit backgrounds to their users. 

Also, the individual user has the option to search without pulling up 

graphic files (text only) which is faster. If they do that, they won't see 

some of your beautiful layout. 

 

5. PASS ALONG THE HIGHEST QUALITY. Lots of sites contain non-

standard coding (HTML) which gives a jumbled look to the site. Test 

your site with three to four different browsers to insure it works on all of 

them. Check on how long it takes to download on each of them. Assume 

the worst looking scenario is what your best customer will see and you 

will insure proper quality. 

 

6. ALLOW YOUR SITE TO BE FOUND. Search engines and browsers 

can only find you if you allow them to. Browsers find you by your address 

(uniform resource loactor - URL). Some vendors you may use make the 

user enter their web site and answer a ton of questions before they allow 

the user to find you. People know that answering these questions puts 

them on a mailing list and they often refuse. Insure your site can be 

accessed directly from the web. Search engines find web sites by searching 

for word(s) and phrases describing topics, concepts, and ideas. Different 

engines search in different ways. There are three basic methods and your 

site must register the appropriate terms with each of the engines using the 

appropriate methods. Insure that the registering party knows how to do 

this. Also, insure you are registered with the most popular 12-15 search 

engines which cover 80% of all searches. 

Our intent is not to scare anyone about the web but rather to make you an 

educated consumer. We believe the more you know about this new marketing 

tool, (including both its benefits and limitations), the better qualified you will 

be to select a good webpage design firm and Internet service provider.

If you have any questions about what a website can and cannot do for your 

business, please call us at 1-800-953-4AWP and ask for either Herb Renter or 

Keith Reed, or send e-mail to renter@corp.awpg.com.

American Web Page is a professional website authoring and on-line 

marketing company that uses the latest computer and software technology to 

design and host websites exclusively for businesses. Please visit our website at

http://www.awpg.com/