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The Lenox Hotel is a rather smart hotel in Boston. Their website is a model of good design and architecture.
Let's take a look at why - the principles upon which the site is built are instructive and worthy of note:
Consistency
All the pages on the site feature the tastefully restrained logotype in the same position. Once the homepage has loaded the logotype, all other renditions are loaded from cache, which increases speed.
The same holds true of the sidebar and the link images.
Navigation
Navigation is a snap, due to the image links at the top of the page, which are repeated at the bottom as textual links.
The labels themselves are self-explanatory and descriptive - there can be no doubt about where you are or where you are going.
Speed
Within the site there are numerous images. They have all been reduced, and with few exceptions, serve to illuminate and enhance the text.
They are placed in such a way that they load as the reader is perusing the text, thereby not detracting from the function of the site, which is, primarily, to inform.
Copy
The copy itself is lean whilst being informative. Paragraphs are, on the whole, short and to the point. The language is easily comprehensible and compelling.
All in all, a site which does precisely what it intends to do - which is to ring that 800 number.
Creating a super site is simple. All you have to do is go to a decent book shop and pick up any of numerous titles which will give you step-by-step instruction on how to do it.
(You don't even need to fire up the car - just point your browser to Amazon, and an even greater choice awaits you.)
What's really difficult, however (and something no book will instruct you in), is how to put together a site which is guaranteed to send visitors to their bookmark file within seconds of hitting your site.
So, as we start a new year, dear readers, here, for easy reference, are a few pointers on how to deter visitors from ever penetrating the really interesting stuff at your site.
Remember, your mission (should you choose to accept it) is to:
Drive Away Users
A good start is to present users with a long registration form before allowing them entry to the site. The form should ask questions like income, number of siblings, pre-existing medical conditions etc. Ideally, users should require a password which will be eMailed to them.
Include some background music in an obscure audio format which requires users to download a plug-in, quit, install, re-boot etc.
Use plenty of proprietary tags, and include lots of "Best Viewed with....." graphics;
The "homepage", when finally reached, should feature a huge graphic in millions of colors. Anything under 100k is inadequate. ALT tags should be omitted, as should "H=" and "W=" tags.
Obfuscation
This is more difficult than it sounds, requiring as it does the use of complex, industry-specific jargon (liberally spiced with words like "awesome" and the prefix "cyber-"), the grammar of which should include an unnecessarily large number of dependent clauses, which are preferably provided by the Research & Development Department in conjunction with the Director of Marketing, all of which tend to upend the existing paradigm , but only within the context of an aggressively post-modernist organization, despite the need to explore and develop an evolutionary (as opposed to revolutionary) business model which takes into account the restrictions of the New Medium.
Don't forget a "Mission Statement", "Our Goals", and "Our Vision". And the obligatory statement from the Chief Executive along with an unflattering image (see above).
Never include any contact information. Unless it's on level 8 of your site.
Look Like an Amateur
Needless Capitalization Is a Good Start, But Don't Forget; the Unnecessary punctuation And. Particularly Not The exclamation Points!!!!!!!!!
Bad spelling is more difficult than it appears, but homonyms usually escape spell-checking. "Its" and "it's" are good ones as are "they're" and "their".
Be reckless! With the degradation of written American, it can actually be quite difficult to come up with prose which is riddled with spelling errors which doesn't look OK to the average user.
Adverbs are fertile ground. "We do it good and quick" is the kind of thing we have in mind. But don't, under any circumstances, use the word "hopefully". Chances are, in attempting improper usage, you will stumble upon the correct usage.
Use frames in profusion, no less than five per page. If frames are beyond you, use tables - the bigger the better!
And remember - never, ever integrate your web efforts with any of your other publicity of promotional material....
We recently found ourselves at the homepage of Zenith
Media Germany (don't ask us how....).
In fact, when we got there, we wondered why we'd bothered. We'd been distracted
by a telephone call, and, on returning to the screen, were somewhat bewildered
as to what could have brought us there.
You see, the homepage has seven large buttons on it, labeled as follows:
We wondered what this had to do with us.
After all, once the initial excitement of indiscriminate surfing wears off
(after about six months in our experience), users tend to use the Web to find
specific information, goods or services.
Bluntly, no matter how how attractive your site, revolutionary your business
model, unique your product(s) or service(s), if your homepage doesn't state,
in no uncertain terms, what you can do for the user, it is simply not
fulfilling its function.
There's simply no time or space for convoluted "Mission Statements"
or words of wisdom from the guy with the big stock options.
Your homepage should answer the user's question, whether or not they are
framing it consciously:
"What's in it for me?"
Oh yes, Zenith Media is "an independent media agency and a 100 % subsidiary
of CORDIANT PLC, London".
But what do they do?
According to Global Promote,
1997 saw the number of Web users whose first language is not English grow
from 10 million to 30 million. This is about one-third of the world's entire
online population.
Indeed, Europe's total population of 525 million includes around 17 million
people online whose native language is not English (of which around 6-7 million
are on the Web), and it is growing at some 15% per month.
Asia is clearly the largest Internet user growth area. Although many of these
users learn English in school, they prefer to surf the Web and find information
in their native languages. A recent analysis of the server logs of ShopUSA,
a Japanese and English language shopping site, revealed that nearly 99% of
the visitors from .jp domains (Japan) immediately clicked the link to the
Japanese language version of the site.
So how to communicate with all these people? The "English Method"
of communicating with non-English speakers - enunciate very clearly and raise
one's voice - is, fortunately, not an option.
Which is where Global Promote comes in. They combine translation of
Web pages with Web site promotion in all languages that are appropriate for
online marketing.
Through "a unique network of highly skilled Internet marketing specialists
throughout Europe and Asias, a client's Web site will be localized and heavily
promoted in the countries chosen".
Global Promote uses the following techniques to build Website traffic:
Whilst we see "localization" as a trend to follow in the coming
year, we also like the notion of inclusiveness on a global scale that sites
like Global Promote seek
to foster. --John Blower
Take a look at the Archives. We've indexed all the past issues with topic pointers.
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