Website Effectiveness Group B: Casey Caudill Josh Hauserman Sara Sievers Chris Simmons Amy Zak

Objectives Criteria for Website Effectiveness “Rules for Cool Web Pages” –Dave Taylor Demonstration of Poor Website Design “Web Pages That Suck” –Vincent Flanders Measuring Customer Satisfaction on the Web “BizRate.com Raises Industry Bar with Launch of Next Generation Shopping Search Engine” –Business Wire

Development and Maintenance “Rules for Cool Web Pages” –Dave Taylor Development and Maintenance Understand users and uses of site then design accordingly Be sparing with graphical elements Pages should load within no more then 30 seconds Minimize color palettes Design horizontally-oriented graphical elements Content-centric 1 qualified visitor is worth 12 anonymous browsers Keep info up to date

Navigation of Websites defines manner of in which visitors move through the website 3 Click rule Breadcrumbs Followed links “Mystery meat navigation”

Importance of Homepage Design Effectiveness Most Important page on websites  gets the most page views on entire site Homepage is usually the starting point  improving it can definitely increase the entire website’s business value Customers evaluate homepage content to decide whether company is legit/credible

How to Make Homepage Effective (1) 1. Make sure site purpose is clear Include a one-sentence tagline Write a window title w/ good visibility Use Company name for effective search engine searches 2. Help Users Find What They Need Emphasize the site’s top high-priority tasks Include a search input box

How to Make Homepage Effective (2) 3. Reveal Sit Content Show Examples of real site content Begin Link Names with the Most Important Keyword Offer Easy Access to Recent Homepage Features 4. Use Visual Design to Enhance, not Define Interaction Design Don’t’ over-format critical content (navigation areas) Use meaningful graphics

“Web Pages that Suck” by Vincent Flanders The Biggest Web Design Mistakes of 2004: Believing people care about you and your website A man from Mars can't figure out what your web site is about in less than 4 seconds Mystical belief in the power of Web Standards, Usability, and tableless CSS Using design elements that get in the way of your visitors. Navigational failure Using Mystery Meat Navigation http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/

The Biggest Web Design Mistakes of 2004 Thinking your web site is your marketing strategy Site lacks Heroin Content Forgetting the purpose of the text Too much material on one page Confusing web design with a magic trick Misusing Flash Misunderstanding graphics AFFrontPage

Examples of Websites that Suck www.northcantonmedical.org http://historywired.si.edu/index.html www.facetroughgemstones.com www.thetoyguy.com www.frysteel.com/data/index.html www.daltonmailingservice.com

World’s leading comparison shopping site featuring 40,000 stores proprietary shopping search algorithm, orders stores by relevance, weighing many factors like prices, popularity and availability of products, as well as the reputation of stores that sell them. Within equal relevance bands, stores that pay are listed above those that do not. In this way, consumers can be sure that they are always getting the most relevant results

Over 1 million reviews each month, has by far the largest continuous feedback network of any shopping search site worldwide BizRate.com's new searchengine will check product availability and pricing continuously and makefull-index updates four times per day will answer the majority of shopping search queries in under 20 milliseconds,approximately 10-50 times faster than other leading search engines -- evenGoogle's http://www.bizrate.com/