Tag Archives: Web Design

Designing High Performance Websites

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High performance delivered is a slogan that Accenture has made famous. It is a powerful reminder of how businesses can achieve success. The thinking can be applied to any business function: that includes websites.

When you hear the words high performance, your mind may immediately switch to images of glossy automobiles with highly tuned engines. In some ways a website can be similar to that glossy automobile. In both cases high-performance means doing what is necessary to ensure the vehicle will perform as well as it can. With both that only has meaning when there is a clear objective to be achieved. In the case of the automobile it may be high speed. In the case of the website it probably has something to do with how visitors appreciate and interact with the website.

Efficiency in meeting website objectives

High-performance is a question of efficiency. Only when you have scales to measure performance can you begin to tune it for even better performance results. For a time it was customary to do website reviews. As we pointed out in the previous post, with greater knowledge, people are now requesting website audits. As with any audit, this gives concrete results that measure what has been achieved and suggest what improvement can be targeted.

A website is much more than just what people see in the first ten minutes exposure to it. Many factors are involved in delivering the best customer experience to website visitors. A big part in getting visitors to the site may be the search engine visibility the website has created. Once on the website the first impression is very important. Thereafter the visitor must find it easy to navigate around the website in order to get the information they are seeking. The content of the site must be such that visitors develop a sense of trust in the website owner. This in turn increases the probability that they will react positively to any call to action. For example some may choose to buy the product they were looking at.

How to choose a website designer

If a website must now be strong in all these different dimensions, this raises the question of how best to choose a website designer. Any website designer who is aware of all these different dimensions will no doubt illustrate their team’s multitalented abilities through their own websites.

If one is seeking an all-around website designer, what might their website showcase. A prime example of this is PrimeView who offer Arizona web design.

Their website features a number of skill sets which they feel are important.. The main ones are web design affecting the immediate impression of the website, Internet marketing, e-commerce where online purchases are involved and Arizona SEO.

This is not the case of being good at everything but master of none as you can check by visiting their cool before and after gallery.

As more people become frustrated by a nonperforming website and become aware of those who are operating high-performance websites, the shift will be on. Websites can achieve very strong results if they are only built with high performance in mind right from the start.

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Best Practices For Great Web Design

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Installing Internet Explorer 8 provided a great reminder of how complicated it is to produce great web site designs.  Just read the explanation of how Microsoft Is Expanding Support for Web Standards

Internet Explorer 8 has been designed to include three rendering modes: one that reflects Microsoft’s implementation of current Web standards, a second reflecting Microsoft’s implementation of Web standards at the time of the release of Internet Explorer 7 in 2006, and a third based on rendering methods dating back to the early Web. The newest rendering mode is forward-looking and preferred by Web designers, while the others are present to enable compatibility with the myriad sites across the Web that are currently optimized for previous versions of Internet Explorer.

That is the reality of the online world that Microsoft has created through its continued support of the legacy websites that were designed with prior versions of Internet Explorer.  On top of that you have the problem that different browsers interpret the web standards in different ways in such matters as the width concept (padding in or out, etc.).   No wonder web designers need all the help they can get in coping with this complex world.

Some people have tried to produce checklists that will help the web designer develop with best practices in mind.  For example, Terry Morris has a Web Design Best Practices Checklist.  He covers in detail such topics as Page Layout, Browser Compatibility, Navigation, Color and Graphics, Multimedia, Content Presentation,  Functionality and Accessibility. It is good as far as it goes, but it does not cover the big picture. 

Robin Good casts the net wider with his 20 Rules Of Smart And Successful Web-development.  However again it relates much more to the visitor experience on the website, than how the website should achieve whatever goals may have been set.

Ensuring you know what you are trying to achieve and measuring your progress towards those goals is an essential part of effective website management.  This covers more than just what is important in web design.  It must also deal with how the website is marketed for maximum relevant traffic and how visitors to the website ‘convert’ to become clients or at least warm prospects. 

This is what Andreas Huttenrauch, Internet Strategy Consultant  and Web Architect, covers in his guide to Web Development Best Practices.  That of course includes what might be designated as Best Practices in Web Design, which are covered in great detail. In addition based on almost two decades of experience, he covers all other necessary topics including legal requirements and obligations and security matters.  Only a well-rounded guide like this can ensure all critical issues are handled successfully.

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Website Reviews Free, Really?

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SMM has now launched a very useful website mini-review service. In doing market research on other website review services, some interesting aspects came to light that many will find of interest.

Free Is Never Free


That innovative thinker, Chris Anderson, will be publishing his new book, Free, at some time in 2008, we presume. This will discuss giving zero cost products/services away for free and then making money on upgraded versions. That’s one of the opportunities this zero-cost virtual world now gives us. A more important sub-theme in the book is that of course everyone pays for such products or services by investing their personal time in them. This means that you should be even more skeptical in checking the teeth of any gift horses. Looking after that horse could involve major effort and expense.

This is particularly important in thinking about website review processes. Whatever you learn from such a process may well involve you in major effort to implement the findings. Given the importance of your website and of your time, it’s important to make the right choice.

Who can best assess your website’s performance?

Whatever objectives you as the owner may have for your website, they can only be achieved if there are enough visitors to the website and if they can take the actions that you hope for. So it boils down to good visitor traffic and visitors having satisfactory experiences on the website. Both aspects are tough to evaluate. If you do not think so, just spend a little time checking out the excellent research work that Jared Spool, and his team at UIE (User Interface Engineering), do on website usability. There’s more to the way visitors move around a website than the you might have imagined.

Which website review process is best for you?

Assuming that you are not about to invest in a massive program of visitor testing of the website, some simpler process that looks at all aspects of performance must be found. All aspects of performance covers a lot of ground. To get a sense of this, you might wish to review a very long checklist for website review put out by Polson Enterprises. Unfortunately this has not been updated since 2006, but most of it is still very appropriate. It stretches to fifteen pages and includes almost 300, often meaty, paragraphs on different aspects of website performance.

A website review covering that degree of detail is a major undertaking. A better initial step is to take a ‘big picture‘ or ‘helicopter vision‘ approach. This will help to identify where work may be needed. If you are searching for free resources for this big picture approach, there are two main alternatives. Some Forums offer such ‘big picture’ website reviews and some experts will do such reviews but require the freedom to publish their work.

Forums Offering Website Reviews

The type of website review you will get from a Forum depends on the interests of its members and their skills and experience. You should only consider active forums where you’re likely to get a number of members commenting. Three Forums seem to do a reasonable job in this respect:

  • Estetica Design Forum > Graphic Design & Web Design Critique
    Given the fields of interest of its members, you might expect a review that will put much more emphasis on graphic design aspects of the website.
  • Web Design Forum, UK > Web Designing Resource > Website Reviews
    Checking on activity in other threads, although the main emphasis of the Forum is Web design, some attention is paid to other Internet marketing aspects.
  • Cre8asite Forums > Web Site Building, Testing and Support > Website Hospital
    The Cre8asite Forums (where I moderate) covers all aspects of web design and Internet marketing. Reviewers would therefore bring a variety of perspectives in their comments.

Experts Offering Free Website Reviews

If you do not mind an expert giving a public review of your website, then there are a number of experts you can consult.

For example, Jackie Baker at Search Engine Guide offers a weekly site clinic column. As she says:

Small businesses are invited to submit their websites for review. Can’t beat a little free advice, right? I’ll be looking at the design, copy, usability, SEO, marketing, and any technical issues that may prevent websites from drawing loyal, active visitors and meeting goals. Each week, I’ll give the top five issues the website owner/manager can address to significantly improve performance.

Scott Hendison offers a Free SEO Site Review. As he explains:

For a limited time, you can get a video made of your own website, seeing how it complies with generally accepted search engine optimization best practices.
…
In exchange, all I ask from you is that you agree to allow me to make my information public, so that others may learn from the experience. Selected video reviews will be shared on my site and on my blog.

Such expert views are likely to be well-founded, particularly since the expert is also going public and their reputation will be affected by what they reveal.

Free Website Reviews Come With A Risk

There is a risk in having your website reviewed in public. The UK Web Design Forum outlines this well:

When posing a link to a site to be reviewed remember that some people may not like your site and could leave comments to that effect. These threads can appear on a search engine results for your website or other searches, so if you get negative comments people who search for your site may see these.

Please be sure that you don’t mind that some members may not like your design and may criticise the work you have done. Most of these members will offer opinions on how to improve, which is what this section of the forum is about. So if you are looking for helpful advice and a honest view of your site this is the perfect place to do it.

Really all we are saying is post your sites at your risks, this forum will not be held responsible for any loss of business or negative things that happen due to you deciding to place your site here for a review.

Time Is Money

Each webmaster will decide for herself or himself how to balance the usefulness of the website review, its cost and the time it takes to get it. However it is done, it is important to have your website performing well and that requires knowledge. SMM is now offering a Website Mini-Review service that gives good value in getting the right big picture view. It’s not free, but it may be less costly, taking everything into account, than these other free services.

If you have your preferred method of assessing the performance of a website that you think others might find useful, why not give details in a comment.

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