Web Strategy
A lot of people like to focus on social media, like Twitter and Facebook, when talking about web strategy. While I recognize both as valuable tools, I feel that 80% of website strategy revolves around having a simple, redundant and usable website. The other 20% is a combination of Social Media, Search Engine Optimization, and keeping it current.
As you can tell from this website, I’m all about keeping things simple and focusing on the user.
In my opinion Simplicity, Redundancy and Usability are the three most important words in web strategy. Put simply, you need to focus on the user, and make life easy for them.
Simplicity
Simplicity, in my view, means taking it easy in terms of graphics and words. Using few, small words is good – and keeping graphics to a minimum is essential. In my opinion, a huge reason why Google has been so successful is that they remain JUST a search engine. No muss, no fuss, just a box that you type words into.
Redundancy
Redundancy is important because it allows users to get to where they are going from multiple starting points. For instance, you can find a number of different pages on this site either through the top navigation, the items listed in bullet form, or through hyperlinked words through ought the text.
Usability
Usability is the study of how humans interact with machines – and is often a highly neglected aspect in websites. Most people arrive on a website to do a task, and are very impatient – it is very important to constantly think about how people are interacting with your content.
Google Analytics is a great tool for any website
I have found that a great tool for figuring out what your users want is Google Analytics. If you operate a website, and don’t have Analytics installed, close down this window and go to: www.google.com/analytics right away. In a nutshell, Analytics tells you what your visitors are doing, where they are coming from, how long they are staying, and where they are getting lost.
Using these rules I have had some pretty successful outcomes. I’ve boosted traffic on www.rcav.org and boosted sales on www.mediquest.ca without the help of Facebook or Twitter. I believe that both of these sites have done well because they are simple. There is lots of white space, and it is easy to find what you are looking for.
