Info: Key Elements and Principals to Great Website Design 

A great summary source of information to prepare your mind before diving into website planning and design.

• Original Content  
  An excellent website is content that clearly states your business in terms that are meaningful to your viewers.  Visualize your content the way someone "on the outside looking in" would want to view it.
  Great content and original content is key to a good website design, give them a good reason to return to your site.
  
  

• Organized and Easy to Read 
  Place the most important information "above the fold" on your pages, where they can see without scrolling. 
  Your site should be easy to read ... on the screen or printed.  Organization of content and information is key to a good website design.
  Viewers should easily find their way around your site, and  locate important information quickly. Less clicks the better, and a search box with good search results is highly recommended.
  
  

• Purpose
  State the web site's purpose up front and clearly of the site. Do this as quickly as possible.
  Tell the visitor immediately if they have landed on the right site.
  Also, "what`s in it for me to stay here."  - in the eyes of the visitor.
  Insider Information: Lacking this, the visitor is gone. It's amazing that most sites on the web don't tell people what their purpose is.
  
  

• Click!  not Scroll  
  This is a powerful, but often overlooked, advantage of using websites to present information. 
  Layout organization of graphics, buttons, menus, and information is key to a good website design.
  
  

• Post your Knowledge 
  Use your website to showcase your valuable asset, knowledge and information.  Share your knowledge with your visitors.
  "White papers", "how to" and "help articles" , publications... all make good content.
  Make sure they are organized on your website properly. Your knowledge is key to a good website design.  
  
  

• Links to External Sites 
  Links that help your visitors in some way.
  If you provide a list of useful links, people may return to your site for reference.  Links to other websites is key to a good website design.
  A well thought-out list of links adds credibility to your site, and in fact, it will get your site listed higher in directories such as Yahoo! and Google : )
  
  

• Graphics 
  "A picture may say a thousand words"
  Try to balance the graphic elements with the text so the viewer's interest is kept alive, and your message gets across. Interesting graphics are key to a good website design.
  
  

• Add Interactive Elements
  Try to encourage the viewer's participation. 
  Get information from the visitor wherever possible.
  A "Contact Us" form, a Poll, or a more complex database driven application, interactivity is key to a good website design.
  Interactivity is a Bonus key element to great website design.
  
  

• Keep it Fresh  
  Keep your site "alive", treat it as maintenance, and schedule it into your business processes.
  Make it a simple task to perform updates so it gets done immediately.
  Updates to your Home Page is a key to great website design that will add liveliness, value and credibility to your site.  

• Navigation
  Site navigation must be easily understood.
  Clear paths, forwards and backwards. It's very important for a surfer to be able to go back, don't rely on the 'back' button.
  Give them more than one target to hit. We recommend more than one link to pages, more than one way to arrive at a page, don't expect people to see everything on a page.
  All site areas can be reached with a minimum number of mouse clicks.
  
  
• Accuracy
  Test each link on every site page.
  Test each programming element on the site for practically all anticipated user responses.
  Check for errors in spelling and grammar.
  
  
• Speed
  Fast Page Loads
  Optimized Graphics to load as quickly as possible.
  
  
• Browser Support
  Test that the Website looks similar in many different browsers.
  Mindflow tests with; IE6, IE7, Firefox 2, Opera, Safari (on Windows)
• Each of these browsers use a different page-rendering-engine
• 99% market coverage with these browsers combined
  
• You are safe to say, all visitors will see my site as intended.

• Fluid Payment
  In cases of; Shopping Cart - eCommerce - Online Shops - Online Market Places
  It must be fluid, no hiccups.
  All auto responders must be well written and positive. If someone purchased something, they need the energy of a personalized "thank you."
  
  
• Valuable Value
  Offers visitors something that's of good value.
  Can you change or improve your offers?
  Can you add new valuable offers often enough to keep your visitors coming back?
  
  
• 80/20 Rule
  80% value and 20% marketing.
  Keep Newsletters or any content consistent with the 80/20 rule.
  
  
• Subscribe, Join, Memberships!
  
• Absolute key ingredient to your site... people show faith and trust in your website when they subscribe.
• Introduce your subscribers to new features on your site.
• Write newsletters to them.
• Offer them new products or services.
  
• Things you may want to add to your website's Subscribe
  
  Age range & gender
  

• Research
  Research; relevant industry information sources, competitor websites
  Identify potential strategic partners
  Identify good external sites to link to
  Find directory sites on the internet that will list your business, eg: hotfrog.com.au
  
  
• PR's - Press Releases
  Get the news out there, one idea is use free press release sites.
  Example: http://www.free-press-release.com/
  Specially if you have a new breakthrough product or service - There are many free and paid  Press Release web sites now that help you to easily get your message out there for Media sites to use.
  PR also stands for Public Relations. You may want to get a professional PR agency to handle your needs.
  
  
• Key Phrases and Key Words
  Generate a list of Key Phrases and Key Words for your site and purpose
  If you have an existing website, look at these information elements;
• keyphrase frequency (how many times a particular keyphrase is used in the search engines - the more frequent, the more traffic would result)
• number of competing sites (the number of sites competing for that keyphrase - the more sites, the more difficult to obtain a good listing)
• specific product relevance (the more specifically related to your product and pages a keyphrase is, the better your chances of success - more visitors may click through from generic terms, but they will be less likely overall to convert to customers than visitors drawn by specific terms).
• if you can customize the META keywords for each page then do so! Make sure each of your pages has an optimized set of key words and phrases in the HTML Meta.
  Info: Meta content is read by the search engines to get a good understanding of what your page and web site has to offer
  

• Search Engine Optimization
  Simple or advanced - either one is better than nothing.
  SEO will attract more visitors as your site will show higher in Google search results, this means more exposure, and more traffic.
  While search engines will still find your site and you may appear on first page sometimes, with active SEO you will appear on the first page for many more thousands of searches.
  Active SEO is a key element to good website deployment.
  
  
• Website Copy - Selling Copy
  Leave this to the professionals if you want to sell a product and maintain higher conversion ratios.
  Professional copy is a key ingredient to a good sales website.
  
  
• Security
  Most important for a Cart eCommerce website.
  An absolute key to your website design when building trust with your online shoppers.

I hope this has been an informative and worthwhile read for you.

- Chris De David - Mindflow.com.au

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