Design With Purpose


If your website is falling through the cracks, the chances are that the site has no message, no central core to build traffic or a core readership. Websites that try to do everything usually fail.

We begin every web site evaluation by helping you define your web site goals. You can do this yourself. Knowing what your site is supposed to accomplish should be the first step in your design process. Your website success starts with understanding your site's purpose and goals.

Start by grabbing a notepad and pencil and begin brainstorming your website's purpose. Write down everything that comes to mind. Some common goals include:

Now ask yourself what is most important? Prioritize your web site goals so you can prioritize your web site's needs. Sometimes your list will not be linear, it may look more like a bubble chart or be structured more clearly. Your priorities should be reflected in the site organization. Do you lead with you top priorities or are they shyly hidden within your site map?

It's time to get real. Once you understand your goals go to your site and see how close you are to achieving them.

Your website content should reflect your site's purpose and nothing else. Start a blog if you want to offer your poetry, opinions or family photos. Don't try to sell widgets and cats on the same site. Focus your attention and you'll grab the attention of the search engines and your target audience alike. A web site evaluation that doesn't begin with these basic questions is doomed to be useless.

Don't waste your time fixing anything on your site until you know what it is supposed to do!

JoMarie Thomson of Crucible Designs has been designing websites since 1997. She offers website success strategies on JoMaries Dot Com for do-it-yourself website makeovers.

MORE RESOURCES:
RELATED ARTICLES
How Your Business Can Win Online
There are lots of websites out there that do little to encourage their customers to stick around or buy their products from them. In this article i'm going to show you a typical example of where a small company has gone wrong with its website.
How Not To Get Web Design Work
I get the occasional web design lead from my website. I wanted to find a company I could pass these onto.
Use Feng Shui Techniques To Design a Harmonic Website For Your Business
By following feng shui guidelines and techniques, you can build and design a business website that is not only visually attractive but also attractive to wealth and prosperity. The elements that are part of a business website are somehow equivalent to the objects distributed through a working space since the website is the electronic version of the actual business' offices.
9 Ways to Gain Your Visitors Respect
The internet is filled with sites and they are good and bad. Some have been known for a long time and some still struggle to get the respect and fame they think they deserve.
Creating Quality Websites
Websites, there are literally billions of them out there in cyber-space. How many of them do you go to and just think this is boring, bland, or hard to use? It seems like too many to mention.
Marketing Basics for the Webmaster
What is the relationship between Marketing and Web designing? How can a better understanding of Marketing help the web designer manage his business more profitably?What is marketing?The American Marketing Association defines Marketing as "the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion and distribution of ideas, goods and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational goals". On the other hand, The Chartered Institute of Marketing, UK defines Marketing as "the Management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customers' requirements profitably".
Digitalize It! : (Modification of images with tools such as Adobe CS and Corel)
Then it was a choice among crayons, paints and palettes for an artist and designer to create art. It was a box of crayons that make one happy designer during his early years of formation.
Graphic Design Can Make or Break Your Web Site
We all want high impact graphics for our Web sites - Right.Sometimes it is easy just to pick a template that comes included with a site builder and or hosting package.
Custom Icons For Your Specific Brand
Developing a software application is not easy at all; apart from the effective creation of the application you'll have to think of other things as well, like: making the software easy to work with, giving it a unique and appealing look, making it better than other software, etc. Apart from the qualities of the application, these little things are the ones that promote your software application among the end users.
Website Design: 10 Web Site Design Pitfalls To Avoid
If you've a website that is not generating a lot of sales, it may be due to some design flaws.Below are website design flaws you should correct now, to empower your website:1.
My Top Ten List Of Extremely Annoying Web Page Design Elements!
Easy navigation and usability are one of the most important aspects of creating a "user friendly" website. However, there are still a "plethora" of web-sites out there that are, to be politically correct, "functionally challenged.
No Matr How Goud The Infomation...
Typos, misspellings, hideous grammar, exclamation overkill and run-on sentences all undermine a Web site's message. Your reader will have to work too hard, and you won't have that reader long.
The Technology May Change, But Human Nature Remains The Same
Let me repeat that..
Web Site Professionalism? What Is It?
Your web site should be-visitor friendly to navigatesearch engine friendly for the crawlersAutomated with ecommerce and subscription forms..
Choose & Use the Best Colors, The Psychology of Color
Are you using the best colors for your web site? Many web designers often overlook the issues of color in web design. When choosing colors for your web site there are three main areas that should be addressed.
Love at First Site: Giving Your Website Visitors the right Impression
Think of the people who visit your site as blind dates. When you open the door, your blind date usually knows whether they are attracted to you within the first minute.
Long Copy Sales Letters on the Web: Hype or Not?
I have written before about long sales copy on the web. But I have more to say on the subject.
The Importance of Choosing Your Website Keywords Carefully
The importance of choosing your website keywords carefully is very high. The reason for this is many search engines rely on keywords, at least partially, to help determine the rank of your web page when certain keywords are searched for.
Very Cheap Website Design Services
Are you looking for somebody to build you a website, however do not have a very large budget? This is the position many people find themselves in and are on the lookout for very cheap web design services.There are companies out there or people who are just starting out in a career building websites who to start with will often offer their services at a very reasonable rate, basically to build up a portfolio.
Orient Your First-time Web Site Visitor
Imagine spinning someone around so profoundly and for so long that when you finally tell them to open their eyes, they ask "Where am I?" not knowing if they are even on the same continent they started from. When someone comes to your web site from a search engine or through a link from another site, it's like that for them.