Snippets of great wisdom

Earlier today, I was writing up a web design client info sheet. I was kind of proud of a couple parts of it, so I thought I’d paste them in here:

Having a website should be a responsibility.

• You should check the entire site from time to time to make sure that information is current and accurate.
• If you have dates on your site, they should be kept current. For example, a blog or news section should be updated frequently and regularly. If the most recent news item is from sometime in 2006, the site will not be credible to viewers.
• In the same way, people change over time. If you have photos of staff or other people on your site, the photos should be kept current.
• Don’t spread yourself too thin – don’t take on more than you can handle in a website. If you have two blogs, a news section, recent photos, and a section of restaurant reviews, you probably will be burned out trying to keep it all up-to-date.

Use your site as a part of your marketing strategy.

• Maintain other marketing materials as well, not everyone is online
• Reference your site in your other marketing materials
• Make sure that your site exists for your customers, not for you. Consider why people are coming to your site and what information they will be looking for – and make this information easy to get. For example, on a software download site, users probably won’t want to read a long statement about the history and development of the software – instead, the “Download” button should be prominently displayed and the download process should be simple.

Do you like your site well enough that it can replace Google as your home page? I actually enjoy browsing through my own site. I figure, if I like it so much, my target audience should also. Of course, this is a general statement, but it’s a good rule of thumb.