This presentations is designed to help small business who are about to build a new or modify an existing website. Using some examples from websites built using the Anicca Solutions Reflex website and content management system. This is a seminar presented by Ann Stanley on behalf of Business Link at the HM Customs and Revenue business roadshow in Northampton.

1. eBusiness Programme workshop programme
BEST PRACTICE
WEBSITES
Presented by: Ann Stanley
MD of Anicca Solutions

2. Agenda
• How important is your website?
• Design & Layout
• Good and bad examples
• How design effects usability?
• Tools to improve your design
• Content
• Functionality
• Is your site accessibly & search engine friendly?
• Is your site performing?

3. How important is your website to your business
Score Customer types Purpose of website Offline
equivalent
0-3 Majority of regulars, repeat & Business card:
recommendations (R-Factor) •Contact details & Map
Passing trade
4-5 Large R-factor Brochure site:
Some new customers (eg from •Credibility
advertising) •Check out offer
<50% enquiries or bookings have •Contact details & Map
seen or used the website
6-7 Small R-Factor, so rely on new Shop-window:
business •Lead generation & enquiries
Need to advertise regularly •Most customers use &
>50% enquiries & bookings have enquire through the site
seen or come from the website •Credibility & information
8-10 Mainly new customers Transactional:
Current customers also use •Lead generation & online
website to book marketing
>80% of enquiries and bookings •Enquiries, registrations &
come from website booking engine
•Email marketing
•Integration with back-office

4. “How to look good naked” beauty parade –
most people have the wrong image of
themselves (and their websites!)

5. Score your site as compared to others
SCALE
1-4 = you consider the site poorly designed or unprofessional
5 = you would not bother to browse the site
6 = you would browse the site
8 = you would consider buying or using the service from this site
5 8

6. Importance of your website vs how you
perceive the site (performance)
10
Best Plot your
importance
No more
score vs your
effort
quality score
required
Site 5
Performance
Need to
Quality matches
develop a
importance –
new site
not worth
investing
Poor 1
1 5 10
Importance to
Not Very
your business
important important

7. The 3 “conflicting approaches” used in web design
Design – first
impressions
counts
These approaches are
often used by different
types of web designers
or developers and can
conflict with each other
Content – what Functionality –
the site says to what the site
the user and does for the
search engines user and your
business

8. Design & Layout

9. User-Centred Design
“Unless a website meets the needs of the
intended users it will not meet the needs of
the organization providing the website.”
Jakob Nielsen
• Who is your audience?
• What are their demographics?
• How will they use the site?
• What technology do they have?

10. Target audience - site aimed at parents and kids

11. Target audience - site aimed at techies

12. Branding – lifestyle & aspirations

13. Branding – lifestyle & aspirations

14. Branding – design & imagery

15. Effective well laid out web design

16. Poor Web Design

17. Usefulness: Good Example

18. Usefulness: Bad Example

19. Building Trust: Good Example

20. Building Trust: Bad Example

21. Building Trust: Bad Example

22. How design effects usability

23. Usability – Common Problems
• Confusing navigation/links
• Breaking the Back button
• Pop-up windows
• Page elements that look like adverts
• Ignoring common conventions

24. Liquid Layout

25. Liquid Layout

26. Navigation: Good Example

27. Navigation: Bad Example

28. Navigation: Breadcrumb Trails

29. Navigation: Sitemaps

30. Tools to improve your design

31. Layout Planning: Wireframes

32. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
• Enables different style elements to be controlled
across the site:
• Typography
• Backgrounds
• Borders/margins
• Structural elements, e.g. navigation
• Benefits:
• More control over layout
• Quicker loading pages
• Quicker development & updates
• Easier to support multiple platforms eg pda
• Allows use of different font sizes and colours for
accessibility
• Better for search engines (page layout data
stored in CSS not diluting page text)
www.csszengarden.com

33. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)

34. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)

35. Website Management Systems –
that allow you to modify elements of the layout, design, menus & footer

36. Website Management Systems –
that allow you to modify elements of the layout, design, menus & footer

37. Website Management Systems –
that allow you to modify elements of the layout, design, menus & footer

38. Try it for yourself – www.anicca-web.com

39. Try it for yourself – www.anicca-web.com

40. Try it for yourself – www.anicca-web.com

41. Content

42. Images: no text = no keyphrases

43. Images: no text = no keyphrases

44. Multimedia - Flash
www.mowbot.co.uk

45. Too much text!

46. Typography

47. Nottingham City Council – Text Size

48. Nottingham City Council – Text Size

49. Content Management System – DIY changes

50. Edit the page content

51. See changes on the live site

52. Multi-lingual content management system

53. Functionality – what the site can do for
you and your customers

54. Features of a property website
“Calls for
action” –
registration
Log-in
& latest
deals
Search Search on
results every page
from
property
database

55. Registration form

56. Using your site as a sales tool – searching the
customer database

57. Clicking into a customer profile
Customer databases
and profiling –
should be modified to
meet your specific
needs

58. Ability to create your own customer registration forms
(with the corresponding database)

59. Ability to create your own customer registration forms
(with the corresponding database)

60. Is your site accessible
and search engine friendly?

61. Accessibility
• Risk of excluding large audience:
14% of the UK population registered
disabled
• Accessible sites work better in less
popular browsers/platforms/sizes
• Accessible sites are more flexible
• Accessible sites are more search engine
friendly
• It’s the law! Disability Discrimination Act
1999 (2002)

62. Accessibility Guidelines

63. How design, functionality & content influence
visibility in the search engines
• Design
• Images can’t be indexed
• Certain technologies such as Flash, Frames and JavaScript can’t be indexed
• Design can limit the space for optimised text, or too much text can spoil the
design
• Functionality
• Certain database functionality such as dynamic urls, ecommerce sites and
some content management systems can’t be indexed
• Content
• Amount, structure and keyphrases within the content (on-page factors) all have
significant influence on positions achieved for keyphrases used by searcher
• Content consists of the visible content (ie elements seen by the user) and the
content in the code and tags (meta-data) both are important for search engine
optimisation
• Search engine optimisation is the process used to build or modify a site to
improve its rankings in search engines for the keyphrases used by customers

64. Is my content listed in Google? – Yes!
This technique also allows
you to see how your web
developer has set-up your
urls, titles and descriptions
for your site (key for being
found in the search engines)

65. Is my content listed in Google? – No!
These sites have been
constructed in Frames
and Flash, technologies
which can't be indexed
(or spidered) by the
search engines

66. Is your site performing?

67. Do you need to invest in your website?
Offline Online
advertising advertising
No traffic due to
poor search
engine positions
Website
<1% call
or email Less than
50% browse
>50% exit
due to poor
No online
design or
Enquiry/
usability
Booking/Shop

68. Get free site metrics from Google

69. Pulling it all together!
Getting
traffic to your
website
Quality &
performance
of your
website

70. Improve Your Search Engine Rankings
Presentation: email ann@anicca-solutions.com
Workshops & events: www.ebusinessclub.biz
Further support:
eBusiness Programme:
Workshop programme advice: Joanne Mobbs:
joanne@emcc.org.uk
Business Link Business Support Adviser
appointment:
0845 058 6644