Every business should have a great website.
That’s the philosophy we started with when beginning to build Sprout!, our website-building online application for businesses (now in a limited open-signup period). It was a great goal – only then, we had to actually figure out exactly what that meant. We scoured the web and collected our favorite sites, analyzing them for their commonalities, their differences. We had heated discussions about what worked and what didn’t. Here’s just the beginning of our findings.
It turns out that it doesn’t really matter what kind of business you are – the fundamental concepts are the same. Every website – particularly for businesses – should have four qualities, as judged by the primary audience of the site. The primary audience, of course, are your customers and potential customers. Here are the four qualities, all of equal importance:
- Content
How relevant the content is to your audience – do you have what they need on your website?
- Usability & Navigation
How easy is it for your audience to get to the relevant content from any other page in the site.
- Wow Factor / Aesthetics & Beauty
The impression your audience is given of your business, by viewing your site.
- Distribution / Getting There
How your audience will find out about your site to begin with.
Now some of you may not yet believe that each of the four qualities are of equal importance (and many business websites out there seem to exemplify this belief). However, all of these qualities are ineffective without the existence of the others. Audience members will never read your content if they can’t find it. They’re also much less likely to do business with you if you don’t have a wow-ing appearance of a reputable, successful business.
We’ve tried to build each of these qualities directly into Sprout!, so it would be difficult to design something that didn’t have one of these qualities. But let’s take a closer look at each of them for a better understanding of these qualities, looking at some of the best examples we’ve found, along the way.
Content
How relevant the content is to your audience – do you have what they need on your website?
Content & copywriting is the most important place to start in the creation of your website – and yet, it can be the most daunting. For a business, there is some basic content that every business needs, as well as some crucial content on your website’s home page. But remember: this is required content according to the audience. Let’s not forget that as we go over relevant content in detail.
Every business has one or more product or a service that it offers to customers and potential customers, and it’s a really easy place to start for most business people – because selling is what they practice day in and day out. What would a new customer want to know about your products and services: What is it? How will it improve my life? Entertain or make me happier? How is it going to save me time, save me money, or make me more money? What makes it special? And once you’ve sold me on it, how much does it cost?
There are several other sections which are definitely important to your audience, like who you (or your team) are, why they should do business with your company, and how and when they can get in touch with you. As a company, you probably have a modus operandi, or some guiding principals as to why you are in your particular field doing business. For companies with some history, anecdotes and the “company story” can be told as well. This is incredibly important to some customers, and easy information to put on your about page. Let’s review the most basic content we have here:
- Products (Sell them)
- Services (Sell them)
- People / Bios
- About the Company
- Contacting / Location(s) / Hours
As your website grows and generates more traffic (along with your business, hopefully!), there are other types of content that will be important to your customers, but above are the basics. Further down the line, you’ll want to think about interacting more with your audience, providing them with valuable resources elsewhere, events you’ll see them at, blogs/newsletters, and more. But order is important – get the basics done and published, first!
The Homepage
To tie all of these sections together, you’ll need an effective homepage. Everyone knows that for this reason, the homepage is the most important page of all on the site – but how do we make it the most effective content on the site? Understanding who will be visiting the homepage gives insight into what content should be on it; and it’s not rocket science, thankfully. Your homepage will be visited by (1) current customers looking for information quickly, and (2) customers who found your business through some means, and want to know what it is, if it can help them, and if it’s reputable, quickly.
We found that the great websites typically accomplished this with 3 basic sections on the font page:
- Business Name & Tagline
What the business is, and what it’s primarily known for.
- Navigation
For exiting customers: how to get to relevant information
- Introduction: What & Why
For new customers: sell them on a concept
- Call to Action: How
For new customers: you sold them, how do they get started?
Pictures speak louder than words, so I’ll let screenshots of the great websites do the talking as to how these are accomplished. Understanding these simple concepts, we were able to create a highly effective homepage for the sites built with Sprout!
[Pictures]
Usability & Navigation
How easy is it for your audience to get to the relevant content from any other page in the site.
Getting your audience to the pages they want is an exercise in organization, copy writing, as well as graphic design. A fundamental piece of knowledge in designing a usable site, is understanding the “F-Pattern” your audience will use when skimming a page. In general, when people skim websites, they read across the whole top of the page, and as they go down, they start on the left, but read less and less of the right side of the page.
For this reason, we’ve found that the best websites put their navigation bar across the top of their site. The topics are categorized into the highest level topics that the audience will be interested. Of course, the number of links you put on your navigation bar is a balance between minimalism and the convenience of quick movement. And make sure they are easy to read. Many websites have tiny text, or very little spacing between the elements, which make it almost impossible to skim the navigation bar. Icons can also help
To design your navigation bar, pick between 4 and 8 pages that you know your customers will want to get to quickly. For most websites, this will typically echo the 5 main content sections on your website: products, services, people, contact us, and about. For some companies, particular products might be at the top if they’re incredibly popular, or a link to a menu if your business is a restaurant.
Of course, we’ve built an easy to skim navigation bar right into Sprout!, and below are a few of our favorite examples from other sites.
[Pictures]
Wow Factor / Aesthetics & Beauty
The impression your audience is given of your business, by viewing your site.
Most websites that pass content and usability tests tend to fail in the aesthetics & “wow” department. The problem, with this, however, is that while you are trying to sell your audience with text on your website, they are also judging your business (and being sold) by the image that your website portrays by your business. To compound this problem, the length of time a single person will visit your site, on average, will probably only be a minute or two (if you’re lucky)!
That means that impressions & image are important on the web. If you can design an experience for your audience that sells them on who you are, and the products or services you provide, they will be much more likely to continue reading the content of your website, and consequently become or stay a customer.
And now for a few technicalities: design can seriously impact how your content is written, and how your navigation is designed. Pick colors that represent your company: do you want your company to be perceived as trendy, classic, strong, warm, serious, relaxed? Also, pick fonts that are easy to skim and easy to read, and adjust the letter spacing (-1 for big fonts) and line height (1.6 spacing is usually good). If you’re writing articles, choose a Times-based font. Otherwise, choose a sans-serif font for easy skimming.
In an interview, Steve Jobs describes how design is ingrained in all products – not just a veneer applied afterwards. We followed this principal when designing Sprout!, and you can choose from designs that match your company’s feel. There are great design resources out there, but here are a few of our favorites.
[pictures]
Distribution / Getting There
How your audience will find out about your site to begin with.
Distribution, distribution, distribution, is certainly more art than science, currently. At least, efficient & cost effective distribution is. But you have to get people to click over to your site from their computer, search engines, and other websites. You can classify website distribution channels into a few different buckets. We think the best ones are free (non-advertising) – especially to get started – but advertising is a 400 billion dollar market for a reason: it can get customers.
- Offline
Printing your website on your voice mail recording, schwag, receipts, postcards, menus, and flyers.
- EMail & IM
Putting your website on the footer of your emails (and instant message status)
- Review Sites
Get your business & products reviewed by relevant sites, whether they are many people reviewing, like Yelp or a single, well known critic in your industry. And make sure they link your website!
- Social Bookmarking & Networking
One of the most popular trends on the internet now is social bookmarking (like Del.icio.us and Digg), as well as social networks, like MySpace and Facebook. Tell your friends who have accounts on these sites (or create your own), to post a link to your website – so others on the network can vote on it and do the same!
- Search Engine Optimization
Designing and structuring your content so that search engines pick up ‘keywords’ correctly; the common terms people will type in a search box to try to find your site.
- Link Building
Getting others to link to your site is the best way to get more popular in search engines. Ask your friends, colleagues, and related industry professionals to put a link up to your site.
- Press Releases
Submit a press release to news sources that will syndicate it on the web.
- Advertising
By paying for clicks, you can buy traffic from search engines, like with Google AdWords. Take it from us: this is an advanced technique that requires some time & effort to do well. Plus, on expensive sites, advertising is getting expensive & comparable to the cost of snail mail.
- Make a Video
Many companies now are creating videos about their company and posting them on YouTube.
More Resources
Where to find help & knowledge in building your website.
Sprout! by ThriveSmart (that’s us!)
Make a great business website quickly and easily.
Design Inspiration
A Photoset on Flickr
A set of screenshots of some great web designs
CSS Remix
An up-to-date, social directory of great web pages
A Site A Day
Another site, for those that want a constant feed of good designs.
The Importance of Design in Business
An article on particletree about why design matters.
Copy writing
Who Needs Headlines
An article on the art of creating great headlines, from A List Apart
Distribution
Big List of Press Release Sites
A list of free press release sites that will syndicate your content.
WWW Observer & SEO Wacko
Two great blogs for improving your website distribution.
30+ Social Media Sites
A list of social media sites you might use for distribution.
Things have been busy at ThriveSmart HQ the last couple of weeks. Yesterday we unveiled event publication and distribution, and today an update to help Sprout websites rank higher in search results! With today’s upgrade all Sprout! websites receive site map files and updated URLs to improve search engine results.
ThriveSmart is happy to announce that we have just unleashed Event functionality in the latest update to 
Last night we deployed an updated version of sprout with a couple new features. We are also really excited to start posting regarding the latest and greatest version of Sprout! For those not familiar with Sprout! a little background:
We just had a great experience last weekend at the BAOC meeting in San Francisco @ Fort Mason. 
