What can a website offer my lake group?

 

Accessibility

For the cost of web hosting space, you can be reached by anyone with access to an internet connection at any time. There are also online resources (Google Sites is an example) where free web hosting space is available.

Cost

Websites are inexpensive when compared to the costs of printed material. You can use full color, add additional pages, and update information almost instantly.

Content

A well designed site can provide users with lots of information that might be too detailed or take up too much space in printed material. Users can navigate a site based on the task they are trying to accomplish and the subject(s) they are interested in.

Credibility

A well-designed online presence can boost your credibility/legitimacy as an organization. The image you portray (professional or amateur) will influence your visitor’s opinion of your group.

Sell

Small nonprofit sometimes resist the idea that they are “selling” things, but the opposite is true. You are selling your ideas (a cause you want others to feel is important), and your organization’s mission.

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What will your group use a website for?

Spending some time identifying how your group can use a website as part of your communications will help you determine what website content you need and can also help you make website design choices. For many lake groups a simple site of a few pages may be enough to accomplish what they need. 90% of good website design is planning, and no matter who designs your site only you can tell them how it should be organized and what the content should be. Websites have been used by lake groups to:

• place to post meeting agendas and minutes, group newsletters, and other organization information
  
  
• provide lake group members who have a different primary residence or live out of state with a way they can access information at their convenience
  
  
• Keep decision making of the group board or commissioners transparent to the membership
  
  
• develop lake community
  posting photographs of the lake and lake events, archiving lake history, sharing stories from the people of the lake
  
  
• link members to other websites that may have more information, or to electronic files that members can download.
  For example, posting your lake’s lake management report and sending an e-mail to members to let them know it is available online may be one method you might use to distribute information.

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How people use the web

How we use the web for has dramatically changed. The web does live up to its early promise as a forum for discourse, although its pages are a blend of information, misinformation, opinion, hype, and spin. It’s become its own sector of the economy. Both entrepreneurs and ideologues are using the web to sell products, advertising, and ideas. It has changed the way we get information and do research. It has also shortened our attention spans and lowered our frustration tolerance for bad design

Users are “task driven.” The vast majority is coming to a website with a specific task to complete or is looking for specific information. The tasks can be recreational (for instance, keeping track of your favorite movie star, or sports team by visiting fan pages), but users start out with a purpose to fulfill rather than a desire to explore. If your website design gets in the user’s way instead of enabling them to complete their task, they will likely decide the frustration isn’t worth it and leave.

Users are impatient. They scan information rather than reading it , they don’t scroll through lengthy pages unless absolutely necessary, they will not hesitate to leave a site at the slightest provocation. These traits combined with a focus on task completion directly influence web design. For example, anything that can help facilitate scanning—like bullets and headings— improves web “usability” (see “Usability” section).

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Usability

Jakob Nielson’s (www.useit.com) Law of the Internet User Experience: users spend most of their time on other websites. This means that you first have to attract users to your website and convince them to stay there.

“Usability” assesses how easy a website is to use. Here is why Jakob Neilson says it’s important:

“On the Web, usability is a necessary condition for survival. If a website is difficult to use, people leave. If the homepage fails to clearly state what a company offers and what users can do on the site, people leave. If users get lost on a website, they leave. If a website's information is hard to read or doesn't answer users' key questions, they leave. There are plenty of other websites available; leaving is the first line of defense when users encounter a difficulty.”

The following list (from Jakob Neilson) outlines the basic website quality questions “usability” studies attempt to answer:

• Utility or Design Functionality: Does the site do what users need? It matters little that something is easy if it's not what you want.
  
  
• Learnability: How easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks the first time they encounter the design?
  
  
• Efficiency: Once users have learned the design, how quickly can they perform tasks?
  
  
• Memorability: When users return to the design after a period of not using it, how easily can they reestablish proficiency?
  
  
• Errors: How many errors do users make, how severe are these errors, and how easily can they recover from the errors?
  
  
• Satisfaction: How pleasant is it to use the design?

Good planning about the content to include in the website and how to organize that content is essential to building a usable website. The organization is the skeletal structure of the site; the content is the muscles and connective tissue that get users from place to place; the design is the finishing layer of skin that gives the site finesse without getting in the way of what lies beneath.

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Web design conventions

Simply defined, design conventions are elements that users expect to see when they visit a site. There’s no critical threshold separating design conventions from unalterable design standards.

Design conventions usually apply to specific elements (navigation bars, links, logos) and the placement of those elements rather than the actual content of a site. Here are a few examples of design conventions:

• Navigation bars are generally either vertical in the left hand column or horizontal across the top of the page.
• Hypertext links are generally blue underlined text that turns into purple underlined text after clicking.
• Any underlined text is assumed to be a link by users
• Logo is almost always in the top left or right corner
• Placement of certain elements (logo, navigation bar, search functions) is consistent throughout the site.

Conventions are flexible in the same sense that the word “chair” can mean a barcolounger, folding lawn chair, or formal dining chair. While the look of all three of these chairs is dramatically different, the underlying function (“a piece of furniture consisting of a seat, legs, back, and often arms, designed to accommodate one person.”) is the same. So it is with web conventions. It is standard practice to put logos in the upper left (or upper right) corners of sites. The convention is the placement of the logo not the look of the logo. Following such conventions does not squelch creative freedom, it guides creativity and places it within user’s expectations.

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Web design strategies

There are some general design strategies that have emerged based on how users use the web.

Create a simple, easy-to-understand navigation system that doesn't take up too much space.

The more naturally intuitive the navigation is (for the user unfamiliar with your group) the better the chance of retaining them on the site. The more useful the information on the site is to the user, the more likely they will return again.

Users will likely visit only part of your site

Users frequently explore only part of a site. Think of this in terms of a photo album. Users flip to a page and may only look at one or two snapshots: is your site design enabling them to get as complete a picture as possible? Make sure elements (such as logos, colors, and other branding tools) are consistent across pages.

Don't make users dig deep

For purposes of arranging the website's structure, it should have as much of the content accessible at the first level, including contact information, news (upcoming agenda or events, latest newsletter, position statements, etc.).

Users scan

Text needs to be concise, focused, and use elements such as headings and bullets that help facilitate scanning

Chunk information

If you are working with detailed information, “chunking” is a useful strategy. Chunking means splitting information onto more than one webpage; the initial page has the basic summary and interested users can link to “deeper” pages filled with more detailed information. If you are referring people to the site (either in printed documents or word of mouth) make sure your site contains more detailed information than what you have already provided

Keep it short

Pages should be kept short, so the need for scrolling is minimized (this is especially true with the first and second tier of links; if you are chunking information into third or fourth level pages this is less important because users who have clicked through at least two links clearly want more information.). The most important information should be prominently visible.

Use graphics strategically

Graphics on a site should serve a purpose; branding, illustrating a textual point, showing an example, as a selling point, etc. and should be used sparingly (3-5 a page rather than 10+).

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Web design pitfalls

There are a lot of badly designed websites that should serve as warnings of what not to do. Here are some general things to avoid.

Gizmos

Just because something is technically possible doesn’t make it a good idea. In fact, many of the gee whiz (animations, sounds, etc.) functions that are so appealing to web designers serve as roadblocks for users rather than enabling them to complete their tasks.

Matt Brown, who works for Macromedia (the company who makes Dreamweaver, the industry standard web design software), says “Anything that doesn't contribute directly to the understanding of the site or doesn't impart information should be thought about long and hard…Think about noise, movement, or anything that spins twice… The same caution goes for music, whistles, and beeps.”  The moral of the story is form goes hand in hand with function. If you need an animation to truly explain a concept, then it is appropriate. If you are including it because it looks cool or it’s the latest gizmo, chances are you and your friends will be the only ones impressed.

New gizmos also demand different amounts of user sophistication and computer capacity. Just because a new tool exists, doesn’t mean it is supported by browsers (like Internet Explore or Mozilla Firefox) or user’s older computer equipment. If a design element is going to get in the way of someone using five year old computer and browser version, think twice.

Poor use of screen real-estate

In web design the screen is your canvas, and the term “screen real estate” refers to the amount of space available to display your page. If screen real estate is used effectively, there is very little “wasted” space i.e. most of the content of the page is useful to users. The visible screen is the only space you have to convince your users to stay on your site, define who you are, what you do, and how what you do is relevant to the user.

Getting in the user’s way

Whatever initial favorable impression a visitor gets from a pretty site will quickly disintegrate if the site is not user-friendly. Items like Splash pages (an introductory page that precedes the home page) and pop up windows annoy users and keep them from getting to your site’s content.

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