Welcome to the Website Owner’s Manual! If you’ve picked up this book, you probably run a website and want advice about how to make it more successful.
There is certainly no shortage of advice available, in the form of books, conferences, blogs, podcasts, magazines, and tutorials. These offer an unbelievable amount of detail; for example, entire books dedicated to designing website forms and blogs only look at online typography. The problem is not too little advice but too much!
Even if you had endless time to review all this information, with so many sources and such depth available, it’s impossible to know where to begin. This book endeavors to overcome this problem.
The Website Owner’s Manual provides an overview of running a successful website. It focuses on the issues you need to know and teaches you how to work with experts for everything else.
It covers your own role as website owner and looks at strategic issues such as business objectives, target audiences, and success criteria. It goes on to teach you how to work with web designers, content providers, and technical developers. It also provides a basic understanding of design, usability, best practices, content creation, and online marketing.
In short, it is a manual for website owners.
As the title suggests, this book is primarily for website owners. But who are website owners? Chances are you don’t describe yourself as one, but this book is probably still for you.
A website owner is anyone who is responsible for their organization’s website. That doesn’t mean you have to be a web expert. There are few full-time, highly qualified website owners. Most are marketers, project managers, IT professionals, or business owners who have either been given the job of running a website or have volunteered because nobody else would.
Often, the website is just one more responsibility alongside your official job description. Most website owners lack any training in the role and have little experience managing websites.
If that sounds like you, then this book is the answer. I wrote it to tell you all you need to know about running a successful website.
But this book also has a lot to offer web professionals. If you’re an experienced website manager, this book will serve as a useful checklist when you’re initiating new projects and will bring you up to date with current best practices.
If you’re a web designer or developer working with clients or management, this book will provide you with valuable insights into effective communication and how
to guide a client through the process of building a website.
Website Owner’s Manual guides you through the various stages of planning, building, and running a website. The principles laid out in this book apply whether you’re building a website for the first time, relaunching an existing site, or adding functionality.
Each chapter deals with a different aspect of web design:
• Chapter 1 defines the role of a website owner. It explains that this role is the key to a successful website and examines some the challenges involved.
• Chapter 2 addresses the importance of planning. In particular, it tackles understanding your users, learning from the competition, and analyzing your existing site. It also asks, “How will you judge your project a success?”
• Chapter 3 focuses on recruiting the team you need to build your website and ensuring that you clearly communicate with that team.
• Chapter 4 looks at the contentious issue of design. It provides advice about working with a designer and how to select a final design less subjectively. It also explains some basic design principles and tackles the thorny subject of the home page.
• Chapter 5 deals with the biggest challenge facing most website owners: content. It looks at writing user-friendly content, organizing that content, and understanding the importance of context.
• Chapter 6 is about making your site more user friendly. It presents a business case for usability testing and tells you how to test your own site at minimal expense.
• Chapter 7 goes on to address best practices in web design. These include accessibility for both users and search engines, as well as the need to separate content from design.
• Chapter 8 tells you all you need to know about selecting a content-management system. It also offers a word of warning about seeing such systems as silver
bullets.
• Chapter 9 explains the fundamentals about how the web works and helps decode the technobabble used by many web designers.
• Chapter 10 looks at driving traffic to your website through the use of search engines and other marketing methods. It goes on to demonstrate how you can monitor these strategies.
• Chapter 11 explains how a successful website facilitates a conversation between users and the site owner. It suggests practical ways to engage with users and nurture community.
• Chapter 12 concludes the book by looking to the future. It stresses the need for continual development and focuses on emerging trends.