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Build It and Maybe They Will Come
By Gwynne Spencer
Nobody warned me that building a website would be so hard.
My original webmaster asked me questions I had no idea how
to answer: what kinds of buttons I wanted, how many, what
sorts of uses they would be put to, and any number of other
details that I was totally unprepared to deal with.
It was like that moment when you've just moved, you've
changed all your mail and utilities to the new address,
you've managed to get all the kids and pets to the new house
and then somebody asks you, "Where do you want the forks to
go?" and you have a total meltdown. I was in meltdown mode.
On paper, I drew an outline of what I thought I wanted and
needed for the project based on total unfounded speculation.
But at least it was a plan of sorts. When I had to make
decisions about colors, about buttons, about 'nav' bars, I
felt like I had a rudimentary plan. I wanted to avoid repeat
meltdowns.
During my construction project, it was really helpful to
find three websites I liked and tell my webmaster, "Make it
look like these." I also found several websites that made me
want to stick needles in my eyes, and said, "Don't do this!"
I've gone through three different designs with three different
webmasters. Here's what I've learned.
Look at your website as if you had just recently arrived….
from Mars. Does your home page tell you right away, "above
the fold"…
whose website is this?
how does a visitor get in touch by phone, email, snail mail?
what is this website FOR? What does it DO?
where can visitors go inside this website?
why would visitors want to bookmark it?
If you've been at this for a while, you need a pair of fresh
and naïve eyes to look at your work. Ask somebody who is
totally ungeeky to navigate your pages. Maybe Aunt Martha who
hates computers and can only do email. Can she easily go
from page to page? Can she get back home from each page? Do
the buttons work on every page?
Is your website monster-filled? Are there long scary forms
with unnecessary fields? Is there weird formatting? Is there
long text in reversed-out type? Does it look like it was
designed by the same committee that brought us the gnu and
the Edsel?
Is your site safe? Does it say so? If you solicit people's
email addresses for a newsletter are they sure that you do
not sell, give away, or otherwise pimp their names?
How do people find your website? Unfortunately, there is no
truth to "build it and they will come" in the exciting field
of web pages. What happens if somebody googles your site? What
if they use the dreaded AOL browser? What if they don't spell
the website name just exactly right? Do they end up in some
dirty dark corner of the universe that smells like cat pee?
Does your website look like a 7th grade art class project?
Does your home page look like you've been in a pie fight?
Don't let your website get out of control with junky stuff
like flying monkeys and weird music.
Do you have links to other sites? I found links were a good
way to get my website to show up in the "top ten" on Google;
without them, it fell into the oblivion of interstellar wastes.
In the end, whether you do it yourself or have a good
webmaster, everybody deserves a good first web page. And
no meltdowns.
BIO
Gwynne Spencer is most recently author of Fund Raising Ideas
From A to Z ( amazon.com ) and co-author of Ferocious Promotion
for the Timid Author (
www.fundsforwriters.com/ferocious.htm ).
Her website is www.gwynnespencer.com.
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Writer's Digest 101 Best
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