This week I’m concentrating on a series of posts about Effective Web Design. Part 1 offers strategic questions to ask yourself when eyeing up the work your competitors are doing.

There are a myriad websites out there. New ones crop up every second and it is getting harder to get your message across, especially if you’re a new company starting up. Some sites are outstanding communication tools; other are not effective at all. In fact, they’re a darn nuisance. But knowing what makes them work or not is essential if you’re going to take full advantage of the web yourself.

The bottom line is that learning to identify effective and ineffective sites and understand the difference can really help you improve the effectiveness of your own site.

Tips
If you’re looking to improve your site (or start your very first website) it’s a good idea to start off by examining the competition strategically.

Ask yourself:

1. Does the site identify and target its audience? E.g. Are there different menus for different customers?
2. What is the purpose of the site? Is this clearly achieved?
3. What is the strongest message the site communicating? Is the main purpose of the site blurred by messages about the company’s image, for example?
4. Do the style and tone of the site correlate to the products or services up for grabs?

As you evaluate each website critically, take notes about the effective and not-so-effective elements of the work on display. Make sure you store these in an application that you can access readily and that allows hyperlinks so you can easily remind yourself of information.

Tomorrow I’ll look at the question of website navigation.