Web site design and development is both a science and an art. There are many things that affect the way your web site will work, and not all of them are visible on the page when you, or someone else views your site.

In this article I will be telling you just a few of the vital elements your web site needs to contain, if it is going to work successfully for you. This is not a definitive list, because to give you details of everything that should be included in a web site would need a book, not just a short article like this!

Meta tags

Meta tags are inserted in the HTML code in your web pages; they are not visible to visitors but are very important, because they give the search engines vital information about the content of your page and your web site as a whole.

These tags contain information that is necessary to help the search engines categorise your web site. There are many different meta tags, which provide a variety of data to the search engines. For example a meta tag can tell search engines if the content of your web site is suitable to be viewed by children. Your site needs to have all the correct meta tags inserted into the page HTML, because if not you will struggle to get your site found by potential clients, or listed in any of the major search engines.

Web site design

Of course you want your web site to be attractive, to give a professional impression, and encourage visitors to buy your products or services. And the design does play an important part in this.

There have been a number of studies which show that the use of colour on the internet affects people differently from the use of colour in print. And using the wrong colours on your page can put your visitors off browsing further through your site, and even discourage them from buying your product or service. It is not only the colours to choose for your site, but how or where you use them, which influences your visitors’ decisions.

Copy

How you present your copy, that is, the words you put on your page, is highly influential on the way your visitors react to your site. How you choose to say something can determine whether your web site visitor stays or leaves, and often this decision is made by your visitor within the first five seconds of browsing your web site!

Text layout

There have been a number of university studies made which show that the way the eye travels across a web page is different from the way we would read a printed page.

It is not only how you say it, but how you lay the words and sentences out on the page. Sometimes simply changing just one word of your copy can make a major difference to the effectiveness of your content!

The majority of web site users will view your page content in a particular order. Certain elements attract the eye before others, such as your business logo, certain types of images, where your navigation is positioned on the page, various types of text formatting and positioning, to name but a few.

If you get these elements wrong on your web pages you can be sure that your visitors will not hang around to see what it is your offering them, and as they are very unlikely to visit your site again, you loose any chance of converting them into a customer.

Optimisation

Web site optimisation is sometimes described as a ’black art’, because there are so many different elements involved in optimising your web pages, and getting it all right seems like a type of alchemy.

A recent survey concluded that only about 5% of web sites currently online have been optimised.

So if your web site has been optimised you’re only competing for search engine placement against 5% of all the web sites currently online! However, if it isn’t properly optimised you may really struggle to be found on any search engine. And that means it is so much less likely that any potential customers will find your web site.

If you are really serious about your business, you need to make sure that your web site has all the elements it needs to make it a success. Then the money you have spent setting it up will be a real investment in the future of your business.