Since
the mid 1990s, the Internet has become one of the most important means
of communication and disseminating information that we presently have.
For the business community, it's indispensable. It allows all types of
businesses to share information about their products and services with
all potential clients and to do so in more detail and with far less expense
than any other means presently available. It also expands your available
sphere of influence to foreign countries as well. If you are in a particular
business that appeals to the population as a whole, you will frequently
start getting inquiries from people in other countries once your website
begins to get recognized.
Websites range from very simple to extremely
complex, from small one or two page listings to multi page sites with
all kinds of visual and audio effects. Just how complicated should a website
be?
There are two schools of thought. One says
to impress your site visitors with all kinds of fancy graphics and provide
some "entertainment" as it were to keep your visitors interested.
A second body of opinion says that a website should be simple and to the
point. Actually both approaches have merit. Generally, however, the all
important home page, which is generally what your visitors see first when
they come to your site should be fairly simple and to the point. You want
this page to load very quickly, even if your visitor uses an older computer
or is in an area where dial-up is the only available means of connecting
to the Internet. If it takes three minutes for your home page to load
because you have lots of artwork on your home page, you will lose many
visitors
At Horn & Whistle Web Design,
we feel that keeping the home page simple and direct is the best approach.
If your visitor arrives at a page that takes a very long time to load,
or if it is so crowded and complicated that he has a hard time finding
the information that he wants, you will lose him. Much research by reputable
marketing firms shows that a visitor will usually spend no more than twenty
seconds on a web page unless he can find what he is interested in.
A classic case of a simple and extremely
effective web page is that of Google™,
and Google is and is very like to remain the search engine of choice when
you are looking for information on the Internet. Google's home page is
really great! [And fast, too.]
Farther along in your website you can include
more elaborate pages that can detail your products or services. You should
also include a site map, which is really a table of contents for a web
site. If you have a big and complex website with hundreds of pages, a
site map is a necessity. A textbook without a table of contents or an
index could prove very frustrating for a reader. The same is true of a
complex website without a site map Make it easy for your site visitors
to find what they are looking for.
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