ISPCON: Twenty-Three Website Wins

When Tucows talks, people listen, especially when the subject is one that the speaker knows very very well.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [July 6, 2007]

We always say that although reading articles about Jupitermedia conferences is good, being there is better. That's especially true in this case because we had to leave the session easly to catch our plane.

Ken Schafer has given his "Thirty Website Wins" talk many times over the years and is sure to give it again in the future. He's the vice president of marketing for Toronto-based Tucows and was a freelance web designer before joining the company. He knows websites.

When he gives the talk, he always says that if you don't find five things that will help you improve your website, e-mail him and he'll give you five tips.

He grouped the list by themes, each with its own theme song.

Everything I do, I do it for you
1) A website should deliver the right tools for the right people.
Know who your users are and what their goals are. Don't put a message from the CEO on the front page of a website designed to sell a product.

"It should be obvious, but almost no websites do this," said Schafer.

He recommended two books:

Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?: Persuading Customers When They Ignore Marketing

and

Designing for the Scent of Information: The Essentials Every Designer Needs to Know About How Users Navigate Through Large Web Sites.

2) Say "no" by default (in response to, "wouldn't it be cool if...?")
Even if your company offers many products, highlight a few on the front page. Focus the offering on the website. He compared the following: an example of a bad site, Net2Atlanta.com, which is too crowded; and an example of a good site, mediatemple, which has a focused website.

3) Don't use apples to make orange juice
He showed several examples of websites that look cool but aren't easy to use. One site, Jewelboxing, looks cool and bloggy but when you arrive there, it's not obvious how you'd buy what you want.

4) Don't make me think
This is the title of an excellent book recommended to us some time ago by John McKown. See Book Review: Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability. Even if you don't read many books, do read this one, because it's got a lot of useful information in a package that makes it easy to read.

5) Tell them to "start here"
Web.com is particularly good at this. If you've never been to the site before, you'll know immediately where to go.

"I was lost but now am found"
6) Be memorable
All too often, Schafer said, people try to find a short domain name instead of a memorable one. "What do you think is the domain name of Restoration Hardware," he asked. "It's restorationhardware.com. Easier to remember than, say, rh-inc.com."

7) Add spell check to your domains
Schafer admitted that the company he works for is a registrar, but said that if you have a named that's misspelled frequently, you should register the common misspelling as yours.

8) No dub dub dub? No problem
He said that users should not have to type in "www" in front of the domain name to reach your site.

9) Have a marketing list, blog, RSS/XML feed

10) Build for all three browsers
Are you paying attention? This is a trick. Schafer said the three browsers are FireFox, IE, and Google. Your website should have meta tags for better search (click "view source" on this page to see a simple example of meta tagging).

"Do the locomotion"
11) Don't use a splash page

12) Think landing page, not home page
Since many users arrive on your site through a search engine, they will not necessarily land on the home page. They need to know where they are no matter where they land, and they need to able to figure out how to get to where they want to go.

13) What's the next action?
It must be easy to figure out what to do next.

14) Link on verbs, not nouns
There may be verbs you're particularly fond of, such as "buy".

15) Design from the bottom up
Pages should conform to a consistent template and the entire website needs a consistent look and feel.

16) Tell them, "you are here"
Google's beta services fail this test. Once you go here, how do you get back to Google?

17) Put search everywhere

What you don't want to hear
Schafer said that the recommendations above are the kind that designers want to follow whereas those that follow can be more difficult.

18) Remove eye candy
Designers all too often put in objects that look pretty but serve no function (like the spam data on the Net2Atlanta page).

19) Use high contrast colors
People with poor vision can find pastel colors difficult to see.

20) Don't make people do what computers do
Automatically remember people. Fill out forms for them the way that Amazon.com does.

21) Don't be nosey
Don't ask for more information than you need. The web is full of intrusive forms that simply drive people away from websites.

22) Optimize for speed, but support broadband

23) No ads
People know that traditional banner ads don't work, so don't use these positions to post vital information, because people will ignore it.

Conclusion
And that's all we've got. Of course, if you'd been there, you'd have got more out of this. The visuals were excellent.

—End