By Trenton Moss
Contributing Writer
Article Date: 2004-08-16

A Web site is like an information flow, with you as the provider and your site visitors as the receivers of the information. If you don't plan your Web site with this in mind right from the start, you could find yourself with a brand new Web site that solves all your immediate needs... but not those of your site visitors.

Clicking away from your Web site has never been easier for Internet users. There are about 35 million web sites competing with yours on the Internet (source: http://www.zooknic.com/Domains/counts.html ). Search engine results are becoming better and better and Internet connection speeds faster and faster - finding one of your competitors' web sites is now very quick and very easy.

1. Work out your site visitors' immediate needs

Your Web site has to provide information that fulfils the immediate needs of your site visitors. This is the fundamental principle behind usable Web site design, so let's repeat it one more time: Your Web site has to provide information that fulfils the immediate needs of your site visitors.

OK, now we've got that straight, we come up against a problem: Your goals for the Web site are probably different to the immediate needs of your site visitors.

Identify the visitor's immediate need/questions:

# Can I trust this company?
# Are they any good at what they do?
# Will they get the job done?

Before the Web site begins to sell to its site visitors, it has to answer their questions and put the visitor's fears to rest. This is fundamentally important, so one more time: Before the Web site begins to sell to its site visitors, it has to answer their questions and put their fears to rest.

2. Create an information flow

Now we've worked out what our site visitors' immediate needs are, we need to create an information flow, a path (or paths) that your site visitors will traverse whilst on your Web site The path(s) will initially address their concerns and needs and will gradually take them towards completing your goal for them. To create this plan we'll need to:

# Identify the different groups of people who'll use your Web site (target market)
# Work out what you want each of these groups to achieve on your Web site (order? fill out a form?)
# Identify the information you'll need to provide for them to achieve this (and in what order)
# Work out what might put them off achieving this (aggressiveness? sloppy design? Poor information)
# Identify the information you'll need to provide to prevent them being put off

From this, you'll be able to create a list of Web site pages and a rough idea of how they might flow together. You'll then be able to work out exactly what pages to include on the Web site and how to group these pages together.

Bear in mind though, some users will need more information than others, so you'll always need to provide them with a choice of continuing on the information flow or jumping off so that they can achieve the goal you've set for them.

The links may look something like this.

1. Homepage
2. Portfolio
3. Client testimonials
4. Company background
5. Staff bios
6. Terms & conditions
7. Good web design tips
8. Contact us
9, Privacy Policy
10. Ordering/return policy

The company's ultimate goal is for site visitors to contact them and request their services. Wherever users are in this flow, they must be able to easily and immediately jump straight to the contact page/shopping cart/ at any point.

About the Author:
Trenton Moss is crazy about web usability and accessibility - so crazy that he went and started his own web usability and accessibility consultancy to help make the Internet a better place for everyone

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