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Web Site Design:
How Do You Want To Communicate
Teacher: Richard
Lowe, Jr.
By this point you know what your
web site is about, you've got a good idea about your audience
and you know what you want to tell them. Now it's time to figure
out how you are going to get that message across to them. What
is the best way to deliver your thoughts to the people who
want them?
The first step in this process
is to ask yourself if a web site is the best or only way to
reach your audience. This is useful as there are many different
ways to communicate on the internet and a site is only one
of those methods. You could, for example, create an electronic
book (ebook), electronic magazine (ezine) or even an egroup
(an email discussion list). Each method of communication has
it's pros and cons, and they are by no means mutually exclusive.
On our web site (Internet Tips
And Secrets) we use some of the above mentioned methods to
communicate our message to our readers. We have a web site
and two ezines (a daily and a weekly version). In the future,
we will probably create a discussion list and several ebooks.
Web Site
- A web site is a great way
to communicate. First, they are easy to promote and are highly
visible. They are generally straightforward to create and
hosts are easy to find. They are also highly configurable
- you can do almost anything you want with a web site. In
addition, a good web site can be used to promote the other
methods used to communicate your message.
Ebooks
- Ebooks are very good ways
to deliver information to people. They are almost as flexible
as a web site, and only slightly more difficult to create.
They have an advantage over a web site in that it is usually
easier (in my opinion) to sell an ebook than access to a
membership site. Ebooks are great when you have a message
to deliver that once finished does not need to be changed.
Ezines
- If you want to deliver periodic
information to someone an ezine is perfect. You can, for
example, create an ezine for daily tips or jokes, weekly
updates, email courses and many other things which are useful
to people.
Email Discussion Lists
- An email discussion list is
great for delivering periodic messages to your audience,
as well as getting information from them. Email lists are
good for keeping an audience interested in your message day
in and day out.
There are, of course, other ways
to communicate with people. These are just some of the more
popular methods.
Once you have decided on one
or more methods, it's probably a good idea to begin thinking
about which technologies you want to use to deliver your messages.
For example, if you have a web site will it be mostly static
(straight HTML) or dynamic (changing regularly) or even database
driven? In the case of an ezine, will it be HTML, text or both?
Other questions to answer may
involve interviewing or surveying your intended audience. I
cannot over emphasize how important it is to get feedback from
these people before you begin writing your specifications or
a single line of code. You have no idea how many times developers
think they know what their end user needs and wants turns out
to be completely different than their actual requirements.
You also need to consider your
own skill set as you go through this exercise. You may want
to create a fully dynamic database driven web site, but if
you don't have a clue how to do it you will either (a) have
to learn, which will delay your final product or (b) hire someone
to do it for you at a significant expense. So be careful to
make sure that you are creating something that you are capable
of creating.
Another variable that may limit
how you deliver your message is finance. If, for example, you
want to include some interactivity on your website requiring
CGI, you must understand that this is usually not available
for free. Database driven web sites are even more expensive,
at least in time, to maintain.
This is a great time to start
considering how graphical your finished product will be. Will
you create a web site which contains a large amount of beautiful
graphics or a fairly plain, content oriented encyclopedia?
Will the web site have animation and other dynamic elements
or will it be fairly static?
Again, this is a thought process
not a writing or coding process. The more of these types of
questions you can answer near the start of a project, the smoother
your project will be and the happier you will be with the result.
In addition, the more time you spend ensuring that your message
and the way you deliver it matches your audience, the more
likely they are to read that message.
Be sure and tie every single
answer back to your earlier stages of design. Ask yourself:
does this help me with my original goal? Is it something of
interest to my audience? and does it fit into the type of information
that I want to deliver?
I know this all seems like a
lot of work to do before writing a single character of code
(after all, that's the fun stuff), but it will save you an
incredible amount of time later on. It's trivial to change
your mind now, as you have not created anything permanent.
As you proceed through your project it will become more and
more difficult to make changes, until it becomes virtually
impossible to modify anything significantly without starting
over.
Remember, your goal is to communicate
(and possibly to sell something), not to code a website.
About the teacher:
Richard Lowe Jr.
is the webmaster of Internet Tips And Secrets at http://www.internet-tips.net
- Visit our website any time to read over 1,000 complete FREE
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