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Introduction to Website Design for Publishers and Authors
Permalink: http://daily.mequoda.com/i//website_design_tips/introduction_website_design_publishers_authors_152-1.html
By Kim Mateus, Managing Editor Mequoda Daily and Library
Look at your website!
Usability and design are two key factors in publishing great websites. You may have a clear strategy and great content, but if your site is unusable and unattractive, it will be difficult for users to find what they're looking for, difficult for you to get users to do what you want them to do and difficult to get users to become loyal customers and revisit again and again.
In the not-too-distant past, publishers were content with creating a single corporate website that integrated all of their various business units, products, content, commerce activity, advertising... everything. For many publishers, that's still true today. A single-site strategy, however, results in a kind of uber-site (particularly for multi-title publishers) that is incredibly complicated in terms of content management and too complex and confusing for the average user to navigate easily.
After reviewing hundreds of websites, interviewing dozens of media organizations and conducting a series of expert usability reviews and actual user tests, we developed 14 website design guidelines—best practices for creating user-friendly websites—and a Mequoda Website Scorecard that you can use to evaluate the overall effectiveness of your own site.
Over the next 14 weeks, we will share with you each of the 14 website design guidelines. At the end of the 14 weeks, we hope that you will take each guideline to task on your own website to determine where your site could be improved.
As Mequoda Library Contributing Editor Roger C. Parker likes to say, "The goal is not to get As in some guidelines and Cs or Fs in others. The goal is to get As across the board."
Mequoda Library Members Only: If you're a Mequoda Library member, reference Don and Jane's entire chapter, Introduction to Website Design for Publishers and Authors. Or check the full Table of Contents for Website Design for Publishers and Authors.
If you're not a Mequoda Library member, and are interested in accessing the full text of this chapter along with 413 other chapters, start your 14-day FREE trial.
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