Transcript Group B

Website Effectiveness
Group B:
Casey Caudill
Josh Hauserman
Sara Sievers
Chris Simmons
Amy Zak
Objectives
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Criteria for Website Effectiveness
“Rules for Cool Web Pages” –Dave Taylor
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Demonstration of Poor Website Design
“Web Pages That Suck” –Vincent Flanders
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Measuring Customer Satisfaction on the
Web
“BizRate.com Raises Industry Bar with Launch of
Next Generation Shopping Search Engine” –Business
Wire
“Rules for Cool Web Pages”
–Dave Taylor
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Development and Maintenance
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Understand users and uses of site then design
accordingly
Be sparing with graphical elements
Pages should load within no more then 30 seconds
Minimize color palettes
Design horizontally-oriented graphical elements
Content-centric
1 qualified visitor is worth 12 anonymous browsers
Keep info up to date
Navigation of Websites
• defines manner of in which visitors move
through the website
• 3 Click rule
• Breadcrumbs
• Followed links
• “Mystery meat navigation”
Importance of Homepage Design
Effectiveness
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Most Important page on websites  gets the
most page views on entire site
Homepage is usually the starting point 
improving it can definitely increase the entire
website’s business value
Customers evaluate homepage content to
decide whether company is legit/credible
How to Make Homepage Effective (1)
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1. Make sure site purpose is clear
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Include a one-sentence tagline
Write a window title w/ good visibility
 Use
Company name for effective search engine
searches
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2. Help Users Find What They Need
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Emphasize the site’s top high-priority tasks
Include a search input box
How to Make Homepage Effective (2)
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3. Reveal Sit Content
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Show Examples of real site content
Begin Link Names with the Most Important Keyword
Offer Easy Access to Recent Homepage Features
4. Use Visual Design to Enhance, not Define
Interaction Design
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Don’t’ over-format critical content (navigation areas)
Use meaningful graphics
“Web Pages that Suck”
by Vincent Flanders
The Biggest Web Design Mistakes of 2004:
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Believing people care about you and your website
A man from Mars can't figure out what your web site is
about in less than 4 seconds
Mystical belief in the power of Web Standards,
Usability, and tableless CSS
Using design elements that get in the way of your
visitors.
Navigational failure
Using Mystery Meat Navigation
http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/
The Biggest Web Design Mistakes of 2004
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Thinking your web site is your marketing
strategy
Site lacks Heroin Content
Forgetting the purpose of the text
Too much material on one page
Confusing web design with a magic trick
Misusing Flash
Misunderstanding graphics
AFFrontPage
Examples of Websites that Suck
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www.northcantonmedical.org
http://historywired.si.edu/index.html
www.facetroughgemstones.com
www.thetoyguy.com
www.frysteel.com/data/index.html
www.daltonmailingservice.com
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World’s leading comparison shopping site featuring
40,000 stores
proprietary shopping search algorithm, orders stores
by relevance, weighing many factors like prices,
popularity and availability of products, as well as the
reputation of stores that sell them.
Within equal relevance bands, stores that pay are
listed above those that do not. In this way, consumers
can be sure that they are always getting the most
relevant results
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Over 1 million reviews each month, has by far the
largest continuous feedback network of any shopping
search site worldwide
BizRate.com's new searchengine will check product
availability and pricing continuously and makefull-index
updates four times per day
will answer the majority of shopping search queries in
under 20 milliseconds,approximately 10-50 times faster
than other leading search engines -- evenGoogle's
http://www.bizrate.com/