By: Master Web Creations
2/24/2006

A website doesn't need to be huge to be useful. It only needs to serve the purpose it was created to fulfill. Some possible purposes of a website include

• to provide information on products or services
• to provide an in-depth background description of a company
• to sell products online
• to increase awareness of a company
• to provide a searchable database
• to provide access to documents
• to provide user accounts
• to get quotes, gather feedback
• to provide an archive of articles or gallery of work
• to communicate with your audience
• to have fun/play games

Many of these website purposes are frequently combined, for example to provide user accounts for accessing documents across a secure connection. User access can also be at different levels, controlling who has access to what

Thus, if your website is created to provide information about your company and its services as well as increase awareness of your company and the products you sell, what purpose would a ten-second Flash intro serve? This is what is commonly referred to as a "splash page" and serves no purpose except to waste time and money. Many people find them irritating, especially if they are on a dial-up internet connection or have an out-dated computer. This could result in their leaving your website without even seeing it. In addition, a splash page will lower your search engine ranking because your most valuable page on your entire site is the default or index page, not just for search engines, but especially for your visitors. Most Flash files have no keyword value, unless you have a skilled Flash designer, and if that is the only content on your page, regardless of how many keywords you plug into the meta tag, there will be no value. Even if you have a skilled Flash designer, Google is the only search engine that will spider a Flash file for the necessary content.Veer away from Flash. It is not user-friendly, search-engine friendly, or purposeful.

Another part of having a quality-content site is your navigation design. The best navigation you could have for your site is plain text that tells you exactly what page that links to. Text navigation also works best for search engine optimization as well as for users that have disability software that reads web pages aloud for them, and allows any user to control text size (when formatted properly), if they have poor eyesight or a high-resolution monitor.

When designing or redesigning your website, your designer should know how to create quality content in an easy and sophisticated design that is understandable, stylish, organized AND meets objectives. There should be a minimal amount of graphics, if animated gifs are absolutely necessary, they should be used sparingly. The more graphics you have, the longer it will take to load the page. A good designer knows to design a backwards-compatable site that takes less than ten seconds to load a page on a dial-up connection, for starters. An experienced web designer also knows that blinking, flashing and scrolling text and images are not only bad design decisions, but can cause epileptic seizures in those that have no other history of epilepsy.

You CAN have a cool site with lots of useful information as well as interactivity, if it is planned in advance and designed with a purpose. The best example of a quality website with useful content that is both pretty and massive is IBM.com.

The best way to have the best website you could have is to plan with a purpose. Write down your goals, write down your primary keyword phrases, create a hierarchy of pages and sections and consult with a web designer.

For more information on planning a website, contact Master Web Creations and include a description of your website's purpose and where you are in the process of planning your web design.

~ a www.masterwebcreations.com article