Positive User Experience Equals Website Success
Long gone are the days when a few pages of static information were considered successful website.
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Nowadays, website design is more about the user experience than the aesthetics of the design. Of course it is still a factor but all the whistles and bells of a fancy design will not compensate for poor quality content or a non-existent user-experience.
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If you start planning a website around the end user, this alters the way you approach the design of the site, the navigation structure and the way the content is accessed managed.
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Ideally, you should get into the mind set of your ’typical’ user and try to imagine what makes them tick. What do they want to see on your website? How often do they want to return and find new and fresh content? Do they want to buy something, or are they looking for advice or to be entertained or informed?
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Until you have asked, and answered these basic questions, your website cannot even begin to get off the ground.
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Once you are comfortable with what it is your audience is expecting, give it to them. This sounds simple but this is where the real work comes in. Keeping an audience engaged will either mean providing such a vast repository of information that users can find something different each time they return, providing content that is updated on a frequent basis or by guaranteeing some superlative: ’the cheapest car insurance’, ’the most up to date stock market news’, ’the latest DVD releases’ etc.
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And once you have set out your stall, you need to keep offering the same standard of content into the future. This means frequent updates so that you are the best, the cheapest or the first and this is where many website owners fall down.
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Keeping your site up to date is an investment, either in your time or somebody else’s. It needs to become as much a part of your working day as answering the phone and sending out invoices. Once you have seen the benefit of giving your website and the user-experience it delivers such a high importance, you will begin to see that the investment is worthwhile, in terms of web traffic, sales, enquiries and in the overall profile of your business.
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The key is in having the faith to invest the time and energy into something that today is totally unknown to you.
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