I don’t exaggerate if I claim that today a company’s web site is the pulsating heart of its presence on a global market. The ground where any company today, be it a small one-man/woman show or a planetary scale multinational corporation, meets up with its clients and interacts with them on an ever more personal basis is the web. Consequently, the demands made on web designers are ever increasing and companies should have some understanding of what makes for successful web interaction and communication. The stakes are higher than ever.

Basically you need to understand this: what your web site is expected to achieve is to attract visitors, engage with them so that they have reasons to stay longer on your site and come back to it and get your business message across. Sure, there are experts to implement the technologies required to achieve these goals. However, as a business owner, you know that information is power. The right information in this case is the principles behind a successful web site that promotes who you are, what you stand for and what you can do for your clients. Here are 3 simple rules to put under your belt and use in your next chat with your web agency representative.

1. Content

It’s not by chance that content is number one on my list. It’s the first thing that leads visitors to a web site. Think about yourself: you’re thinking about going to the cinema but you’re not sure about what film might be worth your time, money and attention. What do you do? Most likely, you turn to your favorite search engine and type something like ‘latest movies’, ‘films of the week’, or simply type the name of your local movie theater to see what’s playing.

Obviously, you’re not just looking for a string of movie titles. That would be very disappointing. Instead, you’re looking for useful information that helps you pick a movie, something like the story line, the director and actors, previews, etc. The site that has all this available will most likely be in your list of favorites and that’s where you’re likely to go back every time the cinema bug bites on you.

How the content is presented is also key: several studies (http://www.useit.com/eyetracking/) have now confirmed that reading characters on screen puts more strain on the eyes and therefore it becomes more of an effort for people to focus on reading web pages accurately and for a prolonged period of time. Text is scanned rather than read. Therefore, it’s crucial that paragraphs are well spaced, that information is easy to find at a glance and that visual clues are there to help the user.

One thing that’s especially important to contemporary sites is to think about what you want your visitors to do once they land on your web site. This interactive bit is at the core of business success as far as the internet is concerned. It makes the user feel close to your business and opens a two-way channel with them. If your site sells products, then make it easy for the user to click that ‘add to cart’ button. If your site is about films, highlight that ‘Buy a ticket’ link. If your site is about web design, direct the visitor to get in touch. Make sure that you use an action verb so that it’s clear what that button on the page is for. In jargon this is called a ‘call to action’.

Here’s an excellent example:

The web site offers at least two ways to get in touch, one being the traditional phone call and one by filling out a form. Both present a nice, user-friendly interface and a clear invitation to the user to take action.

2. Design

Whether you want to admit it or not, you know that looks and first impressions do count and they’re very important. A web site has to grab visitors’ attention, strike their imagination and immerse them into a full experience very quickly. But don’t forget that attention-grabbing looks are there not for their own sake but to convey, represent and strengthen your brand. Therefore, all the visual elements, the color scheme and the layout have to work in unison to achieve the main web site goals.

For example, when you visit the Bean Exchange Coffee House web site (http://www.beanexchange.com/index.aspx) everything about the design is aimed at making you, the visitor, feel the warm atmosphere of having coffee with friends. You can almost smell the coffee through the choice of colors and tones, as well as communicating the company’s expertise when it comes to coffee:

3. Navigation and load time

It’s happened almost to all of us – you’ve found the right site but you can’t get at the bit of information that really interests you. It’s frustrating and it’s likely that you just close the site and look for another one easier to use. Easy and accessible navigation aimed at guiding your site visitors to where they want to go is, in my view the number one rule of a usable web site. After all, the nautical metaphorical language that’s used when talking about the web, e.g., surfing, navigating content, etc., is not completely a matter of pure chance.

Next is something now found in your Google Developer Toolkit checklist: page load time. How long does it take for your site to load into users’ browsers? If you believe that having broadband means that you can now check this item off your ‘things to think about’ list, then think again.

Contemporary web sites are usually complex entities often packed with images, video and audio files, script files, etc., which occupy a lot of bandwidth and can take some time to download. I’m sure you’ve come across a site where you click a button to get some information and the page disappears in front of your eyes. You keep staring at the little circling icon indicating that the page loading process is ongoing but your hope of seeing anything materialize on the screen gets proportionally smaller and smaller. What might have happened is that a call to a database was made but the data couldn’t be immediately available.

This often occurs because the server is too busy, the database is receiving multiple calls at the same time or the system needs to perform some specific operations on the data before displaying them on the screen.

Another cause for a slow download time can even be the location of the company where your web site is hosted: if your web site is hosted too far from the location where it’s being downloaded then this might degrade the user experience.

The result is a site that is not user-friendly. A lot of visitors, potential clients, simply get exasperated and go to another web site. This is bad enough, but if you think that your site ranking position on Google also undergoes a heavy blow, then you’ll agree that being mindful of loading time is crucial to the making or breaking of your web site. Making sure your trusted developer has some good caching techniques in place and masters the best coding practices is essential to the success of your business.

Conclusion

The alchemy that makes a web site work to promote and further your business takes expertise and knowledge in a number of fast growing technologies. Mastery of the competences involved takes time, commitment and some talent. However, the web is the privileged direct line between your business and your clients. Therefore, you should aim to grasp the key principles that make it work for your business goals, i.e., content, design, navigation and load time. Your web site is one crucial business decision … don’t blindly go with what your designer says. Ask questions if need be, ask them to explain anything that you have concerns about. There are good designers and bad designers, so there’s nothing wrong with asking questions.

Veronica Davis is a freelance writer and internet business columnist for Examiner. She works with a variety of design and SEO businesses online, including a specialty Orlando web design firm.