Redbox Biz Blog

We were among the four invited guest speakers at yesterday’s event at KDU Penang, a local college. We were among speakers such as public speaking extraordinaire, Gerald Green; writer, novelist and creative writing lecturer, Robert Raymer; and actor-cum-playwright, Himanshu Bhatt.

The Literary Day event was organised by KDU Penang in conjunction with the National Reading Month, inviting the public to participate in its activities aimed at promoting English language usage - reading, writing, listening and speaking.

While the other speakers elaborated on their craft, we spoke about what we did best. Our focus has always been the Internet, which is why we talked about writing on the Internet - the ever-popular and growing phenomenon called blogging.

Titled Blog Right: Secrets to Successful Online Writing, our 35-minute talk gave the 150 participants an idea of what blogging is, how it is defined and what constituted quality blog content. We showed the audience different types of blogs and gave tips on how to make one’s blog attractive and credible.

Over lunch, the coordinator for KDU’s Centre for English Language told us they were amazed at the good response, having had to turn away people due to space constraints.

If you missed this event and would like to attend, look out for their Open Day as we have been invited again to talk to an even larger crowd (especially for those who missed it yesterday).

KDU Penang is located at Jalan Anson, next to Jabatan Pendaftaran Negeri Pulau Pinang. It’s one of the more well-known colleges in Penang. Besides the regular business, computing, engineering and tourism courses at certificate, diploma and degree levels, KDU Penang also offers a number of creative and performing arts courses.

Whether you are designing a website yourself or getting someone to design it for you, here are some things you should NOT be placing on your website.

1. Last updated on (day/month/year)
Please don’t tell your web visitors that you did not update your website. When you put this line “this site was last updated on day-month-year” no matter how current you are, you have just informed your visitors that your website is outdated. Many people do not update their websites on a monthly basis and if you go to any Government website (especially in Malaysia!), you would cringe in horror as their last updated year is probably in 1999.

2. Best viewed with IE 5.5 and above
You can usually find these lines at the bottom of the webpage. It could be a throwback to the early days of the Internet but it’s too passe now. And many people, even if they notice this little line “best viewed with…” would not know what to do. Do you think your web visitors would start installing the latest version of Internet Explorer or simply go off to another website? Which is quicker and less bothersome? If the designer cannot design his website to be viewed easily across different browsers, start getting worried.

3. Number of visitors to your website
Some websites have little counters at the bottom of their websites to track how many people have visited since the year the website was launched. If you need to track the number of visitors who come to your website, make it inconspicuous! By this, I mean you should be keeping the information to yourself (ask your webhost for access to your Cpanel and you can view the web stats to your heart’s desire) and not announce the numbers to the world. If you have too few, your website loses credibility in the eyes of the visitor!

4. Underlined text in blue
Do not have text in blue if the text is not clickable and does not go anywhere. The general web public is so used to the principle that underlined blue text means a clickable link (or hyperlink) that if it does not go anywhere, they’d feel rather cheated! If you want to play with colours, avoid doing so with blue, especially with text. Don’t mislead your visitors no matter how unintentional it is.

5. 101 Links
The fact that you can link to other websites does not mean you should link to each and every one of them. Link exchange used to be popular a few years ago where if you link to my website, I’ll link to yours. This reciprocal link exchange worked well initially but quantity does not always represent quality. Look at the quality of links first before you go all out to link to every website you come across. Dedicate a website entirely to links if you want to but beware that more links means you must do more frequent checks to see if these links work. Over time, links might rot and instead of doing your web visitors a favour, you might be frustrating them. So link with caution.

6. Guest Book
Another early Internet feature on websites. A guest book is for web visitors to leave their remarks and comments but with today’s super sophisticated spambots and what-not, it is best to avoid opening yourself up to unwanted attention. Otherwise you’d be spammed all day!

Web usability is about making the web more usable for people who go online. It is about making websites easier to navigate which in turn help people find what they need faster. As we know, people like you and I go online to look for information, to learn more about a specific product or service before we commit ourselves to buying a product or a service.

When websites are not designed to be usable, then I cannot find the information I want. In short, this frustrates me and I leave and the business loses a potential customer.

Regardless of whether you are selling a service or a product, making your website usable is one of the key elements in ensuring you have a steady stream of satisfied prospects and customers, who come back again and again and hence, producing for you a sustainable and profitable business.

What makes a website usable?

A website consists of a number of web pages. These web pages contain graphics, text, colours and logo. How these elements are arranged is the difference between making a sale or making your customer frustrated.

Web usability focuses on the customer. At every step of the way, your website must be designed with the customer in mind.

The problem is, many websites do not do this. They are designed to look great and perhaps elicit a couple of wows but whether the websites actually function in the way customers want are not taken into account at all. When this happens, customers are confused and frustrated, unable to locate the information they want and leave with a bad impression of the business. This defies the very reason websites are created. Websites are created to communicate, not irritate!

What can I do to make my website more usable to customers?

Design with consistency

If your menu links are on the left, ensure it is on the left on all pages of your website. If you have a logo on the left top corner, ensure the logo is on the left top corner on all your webpages.

Links in same window

If you link to other pages within your website or link out to other websites, ensure your link opens up in the same window. Most users usually use their Back button to get back to the original web page. If your link opens up in a new window, users would not know and would not be able to use their Back button at all.

Be simple and direct

There’s no prize for being clever online so name your navigational links in easy, simple and clear language. Users don’t like to guess what’s behind a link like “Knowledge Repository” but they do know what “Free Articles” are. Language must be simple and direct so that everyone, regardless of their educational level, can understand when they arrive at your website.

Scannable information

Users do not like reading online because it is 25% slower than conventional print reading according to http://www.useit.com. Users prefer to scan websites for vital information. So if you want to help them scan faster, chunk your information into bulleted lists. Keep one idea per paragraph and keep paragraphs short. Use bold text or headlines to highlight important information. Align your text to the left because this helps users read faster.

Fast downloads

Websites must download fast or you lose the visitor. You have less than 10 seconds to capture your visitor’s attention. To ensure your website downloads fast, design with the assumption that every web visitor is using an old computer, accessing your website using dial-up Internet services. Other methods include optimizing website graphics and reducing time-wasters such as Flash graphics.

A friend of mine (let’s call him John) called up a few months ago to talk about redesigning his business website. He said he designed his website using MS Frontpage. I gave him a number of tips and told him if he ever needed help, he could let me know and I could give him a quote.

Unfortunately, he never came back to me. So I decided to see how John was doing since he did tell me that he was renewing his domain name.

As I had seen his previous website, this new website of his was much better. But had he asked me, I would have given him a number of key points. He was essentially a business person, not a web designer. He thought he could save himself the money by designing the website himself. Continue reading »