Neturf Newsletter

Gauging Website Factors
Measuring The "Welcoming", "Convenience" & "Functionality" Factors Of Your Website

When developing a new website, or evaluating a current website for redesign, there are three important factors that should be used to gauge and measure a website and its effectiveness:

1. Welcoming Factor
2. Convenience Factor
3. Functionality Factor

By evaluating these three factors, one can determine where and how to improve a website including:

• increase traffic
• customer appeal
• improve effectiveness
• or overall conversion

Each factor is important in its own right, but more often than not, each factor has an affect on the other. For the best end result, it's important to find a happy medium, and balance between all three factors as a whole.

The "Welcoming" Factor

The Welcoming factor is used to determine how approachable your website is to visitors and customers:

• Do customers "want" to interact with your website?
• Is your website friendly and inviting?
• Are there aspects of your website that scare customers away?

There are many angles in which one can look at a website and determine the Welcoming factor. From color schemes to pictures and images to verbiage and content, all these aspects can affect how your website reaches out to customers with the message of "come on in" or "enter at your own risk".

Click here to read the full article

Quick Tidbits
Designing Websites for the Way People Live

In today's world, most every business has a website presence. Due to the growth of internet usage via cellphones, palm computers, and other mobile devices (as reported by Deloitte called State of the Media Democracy), it is even more imperative then ever to minimize the utilization of non-compatible medias and technologies.

Some of the following are the most important factors to consider when attempting to make sure your website is compatible with any platform whether it be multiple browsers, a cell phone, palm pda, or other mobile device:

• Flash
  Flash can be a useful tool in the right situation but is not supported by many cell phones and mobile devices.
  
  
• Javascripts
  Javascripts often break down into plain text and loose many dynamic functions (such as hiding text until such time as a visitor hovers over) on cell phones and many mobile devices.
  
  
• Large Images
  Large images with huge download times are a major reason many visitors leave or abandon a page. Keep images small and optimized for the web for quick download times.
  
  
• Simple Navigation
  Quick and easy to decipher navigation. A visitor normally should not have to search through more about three links to find what they want on a website.
  
  
• Simple Design
  Using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) can make a great looking website that is quick and easily to download and allows for site-wide design changes from one style location.

The above guides should be followed on a general basis as there will always be certain exceptions to the rule.

Goodies & Freebies Featured Solution
Google Chrome - Free Web Browsing Software

Google Chrome is a free, secure and reliable alternative as a PC or Mac web browser. Google Chrome combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier. Learn More.