The Secret Rules to Building an Effective Website

There is nothing difficult about the rules for building an effective website. In fact the rules aren't even that secret - most of them are common sense.

Rule 1 - Keep it Simple

It should be obvious within first few seconds as to what your site is all about. Fancy graphics, mouse effects, drop-down menus and all the other bolt-ons may make a site look pretty but all they do is slow things down. It is possible to build a good looking site with just a few simple styles and one or two effective images.

Remember: you want your visitors to avail themselves of your services. So don't do anything to distract or confuse them. Keep it simple.

Rule 2- Don't make me Think

We don't read, we scan. We are looking for the nugget of information we need or the link that will take us to nugget of information. We absorb the information in bite sized chunks and expect to be lead by the hand to the next step in the chain.

If you have to stop and think about what to do next then the designer has failed in their task to deliver a usable website.

Make sure that the purpose of every page is clear and unambiguous. Make sure I can see all the important information. Provide titles, headers, descriptions and sensible links. And keep it simple.

Rule 3 - Tell me what I want to know

This means lots of relevant content. Provide your visitors with the information they are expecting. If that information is hidden amongst a bunch of adverts and affiliate links then your visitors are unlikely to even see what you are offering.

All your visitors want to do is read the facts, look at the images or buy the products. Everything else is just padding.

And if you have lots of information, break it up into easily digestible chunks with each chunk on a different page. If of course you want to publish a long and complicated article then do so, let me know what is coming, give me a synopsis and lead me in gently.

Rule 4- Show me where to go

Once I have arrived I will want to explore. So make sure I can understand your navigation system. Make sure the navigation text is intuitive and describes where each link leads. Don't rely on complicated JavaScript menus or icons, provide a variety of methods of navigation and make sure they don't change from one page to the next. Don't make me have to look for and decipher your navigation system. Build it for me - and assume I'm stupid.

Rule 5 - Make it easy for the Search Engines

Building a search engine friendly site is the same as building a user-orientated site. This means use meaningful URIs, page titles, headers, image captions, anchor text and so on.

Ensure your keywords are prominent, write relevant titles and headers, provide keyword rich content. Make sure you have lots of internal text links for the robots to follow. And just before you publish, add relevant description and keyword metatags.

And if you really want to keep it simple, make sure your pages are properly structured using CSS instead of tables and frames.

But do not concentrate on Rule 5 at the expense of Rules 1 to 4

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