60 ways to create a successful website

Everyone goes online these days to find information, do their research and pick out products or services to buy. That’s why your own website or online portfolio should be the best it can be, helping to attract and retain visitors while turning them into paying customers.

But how you make your website a success depends on a number of things. From its usability and content to its design and marketing – there are lots of ways to ensure your website or online portfolio is working as it should.

I’ve put together these ’60 ways to create a successful website’ in the hope that you’ll benefit from having a strong online presence that’s turning web visitors into customers. If you’ve got any of your own suggestions, by all means please add them by commenting below.

Understanding your users

Before you even begin to design or build your website, it’s essential to go through a research process. There is no point in building a site unless you know who you’re building it for and that means you could mess up your navigation, design and content. If you follow these next 10 steps, you’ll not only plan a website that works – you’ll be satisfying the needs of the people you’re targeting. Do this now before you do anything else and you’ll also save money in the long run. Because poor planning can lead to expensive mistakes.

1. Know your customer: To get started, find out who your customers are by carrying out some initial research. Who are they? How old are they? Where do they live? Are you targeting men only? Or just women? There’s no point in building a targeted website if you don’t know who your audience is.
2. User Research: Once you’ve established who you’re targeting, do some user research.  Find out what people need. Ask people direct and see what they look for the most when browsing other websites. Understanding people’s needs will help you to create the right focus and content for your site.
3. Understand what you want to learn: Before you start learning about the people you’re targeting, think about what you actually want to learn and why you want to learn it. User Research can reveal everything from shopping behaviour to getting a broader understanding of people’s web browsing habits. Don’t go around in confusing circles, actually think about what you want to learn about your target audience.
4. Go out there and ask questions: Now you understand what you want to learn about people, you should think about carrying out some proper market research. But remember, you really need to ask the right questions. Consider why people will go to your website, what they’ll learn there and what they’ll need to achieve their objectives of landing on your website.
5. Find out who to research: Are you going to research existing customers or potential new ones? Once you’ve identified who you want to research, you’ll have to find them. You can do this via formal or informal market research. If you go formal, you can hire a market research company and get them to speak to people themselves. But as the formal approach can be expensive, why not do things yourself and ask people via social media channels or even just speak to family and friends?

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Opera Dragonfly web design and developer toolkit now buzzing

Norwegian browser developer Opera is this week unveiling its Dragonfly web developer toolkit. The new product is emerging from its exoskeleton as a collection of tools for web design and development, with a special emphasis on debugging.

Opera Dragonfly a hybrid web application — which means users never need to update it, since the latest version is always pulled from the web. Plus, it will always be compatible with the version of Opera being used at the time.

Opera clearly realises that the world has gone mobile — and has provided a remote debugging tool for mobile devices this time.

A web designer/developer turns on the ‘remote debugging’ function and Opera Dragonfly will connect to Opera Mobile and allow for debugging directly on the device.

“You can even hack your site on tablets, TVs or your colleagues’ computers with the remote debugging feature. And, Opera Dragonfly can mask as other browsers to help ensure cross-platform mobile compatibility,” says the company.

There are also advanced colour-picking tools, options to debug Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) and a JavaScript debugger.

“Just one wrong line and your masterful script is in ruins. So, we make it easy to go through your code with conditional breakpoints, deep property inspection and watches to turn even the most jumbled JavaScript into a thing of beauty,” says Opera’s press statement.

West Midlands secures £500m business from London 2012 Olympics

More than £500 million in Olympic Games contracts have been won by firms in  the West Midlands, it has emerged.

The region’s spin-offs from the London Games were revealed as the countdown  to next year’s event passed the 500 day mark.

Birmingham’s sport scrutiny committee heard that the contracts have been  evenly spread throughout the city and region.

The contracts include design and building work on areas of the Olympic  Village, legal services, consultancy, architectural services, lighting, signage,  safety clothing and equipment, building materials supply, catering, AV equipment  and website design.

There remains further opportunities to bid for both Games contracts and  legacy contracts.

The committee is reviewing the city’s exploitation of Olympic opportunities  as the July 2012 Games approaches.

Council sports official Mike Osborne said: “The West Midlands has been the  most successful region in attracting Olympic contracts after London and the  South-east.

“Contracts have been awarded to firms in nine out of 10 Birmingham  constituencies, only Hodge Hill so far has not received any, so we are looking  at that.”

He said that efforts were continuing to secure even more Olympic business for  the region. But added that firms are told not to publicise their success as  major multi-national firms, such as McDonald’s pays substantial sums to have its  brand linked to the Games.

It has also emerged that 10,000 people from the region have volunteered to  work at the games in the capital next summer, with a range of duties including  tourist information officers, event marshalls, medical support and IT  technicians.