In the first part of this article, we discussed four rules that make a great Web site and they are:
- Good Sites Are Rich In Content
- Good Sites Have Great Homepages
- Good Sites Are Easy To Read, and
- Good Sites Are Easy To Navigate
We conclude this article below
Good Sites Are Good Communities
Good Web sites are usually good communities. The notion of selling a product online must include community building and vice-versa. The logic is simple. People want to belong to a community, and commerce will flourish in places where a community settles in, regardless of whether these places exist in cyberspace or in the real world.
An online community dedicated to a specific target audience can play a very important role in arousing its members' awareness and interest in specific products and services. These highly qualified prospects will then be more receptive to seek information about related products and make purchases subsequently.
Studies in the United States have confirmed that relevant content adjacent to merchant or product links helps to trigger impulse buying. On average, they reported six times higher than average click-through rates for these links.
Good Sites Mimic The Real World
You should create virtual community that mimics the real world community. It must be relevant to the members' lives, works or hobbies. Your contents and information should be restricted to those that your community wants.
You must pay constant attention to changing visitor demands and interests, or your site will die. When you upload your pages to the Web, your job does not end there. On the contrary, it has just begun. You have to continue to update your content regularly to keep them current and relevant to your visitors' needs.
Good Sites Encourage Interactivity
People have a natural urge to share ideas and stories. Make your visitors feel that they have a vital role to play in your Web site, and they will be encouraged to share their ideas and stories with you. If possible, you can provide interactive features such as chat rooms or bulletin boards that allow online exchanges of ideas and views.
To adapt a well-known phrase, "A web community that clicks together sticks together." Studies have shown that good Web sites that last for years have operated on the basis of sharing free information, helping each other and keeping their contents current and relevant. The idea is to build a community with the intent of including other like-minded people and then let it grow on its own.
Good Sites Do Not Stand-Alone
Good sites also do not stand-alone. You must create outgoing links that are complementary to what you have to offer. It will be a win-win situation for two related sites to share content, exchange links and cross-reference each other.
The idea is simple. If you do not have what your visitors want, then help them find what they want in another site. If your outgoing links are comprehensive enough, you may actually end up attracting more people to your site as a one-stop, quick reference source for everything they need.
Final Considerations
The above guidelines are meant for designing third-generation Web sites. Conceived by design, these Web sites focus more on styles, functionality and contents, and less on technological features.
Unless necessary, you should avoid using Java plug-ins, multimedia, shockwave, flash, animation and large, useless graphics in your site. They load slowly and make no significant contribution to the overall effectiveness of the page.
Ideally, you should keep the file size of your web pages below 60K bytes to facilitate fast loading time. Remember that web surfers are very impatient people. They would be more than happy to "click" to another site if your site takes more than 10 seconds to download.
Patrick Tan, MBA, offers a range of affordable and easy-to-use e-business solutions to help SMEs build and manage a successful business online.
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