Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Where to start?

This is a biggie ... there are so many elements to a well functioning and productive business website it can be a bit hard to identify whats not really contributing, so lets start at some very easy stuff.
Get an objective friend to check over your site, preferably someone with some internet browsing experience, but not necessarily a techie.
Ask a for some feedback, such as
How fast did it load on your computer?
Were you able to see the whole page, did everything come up? (graphics, links etc)
On reading thru your site, were they able to navigate around it well (it would be good to ask them to find a few specifics on your site, something a few clicks away from the home page (but not listed on the nav bar) Could they find it easily? What problems were there?
Ask them to fill in the contact form and send it off to you - what did they get back? What information did your website receive?
Did they understand the purpose of the site? What you are selling, promoting, or informing them about?
Was the language, terminology easy to understand? Did you get your message across well, and what is the message your site is sending?
Did your friend find it interesting, boring, difficult to read, hard to understand?
Based on their response, we can go forward from there ..
Next time we will go over the specifics, one by one ...