Website Development

Design is only the first step in running a website. New pages, and new features on existing pages, add to a site's usefulness and interest.

These include:

• A shopping cart. Online ordering transforms a promotional site into a more direct source of revenue.
• Downloadable literature. Anyone with a Web connection and the free Acrobat Reader can have access to your:
• Fliers
• Brochures
• Spec. sheets
• Catalog
• Almost anything on paper
• A carefully designed and placed animation. Draw attention to a page's key point.
• Feedback forms and comment pages. Find out what visitors think of your site.

Research into the website's performance, and comments from visitors can suggest directions for development.

This research can take a webmaster down unexpected paths.

I discovered that some folks were coming to Brendan's Island to keep up with life in Sauk Centre, or to read another person's view of what was happening. I hadn't expected this sort of interest, but it encouraged me to put more time in on a feature that is now called the Sauk Centre Journal.

The report I maintain on Brendan's Island's performance also showed that a link page was one of the website's top performers. This surprised me, too. I originally developed that page to show that the outstate part of Minnesota was not an Information Age desert.

Because of interest in the link page, I spent more time developing it. I focused first on websites which would be of interest to travelers and tourists: mostly along the I-94 corridor from St. Cloud, Minnesota, to Fargo, North Dakota.

The page continues to be an important, and growing, part of the website. My hope is that people who come for the directory will occasionally get curious about the rest of the site.

Changes in online culture can indicate directions for growth, too. The "typical" Web surfer not too many years ago was a techie young man with no family. Today, most households in the U.S. have a Web connection, and just over half of Web surfers are adult women. Website design needs to adapt, or a site will lose interest for many potential visitors.

copyright © 2004, Brian H. Gill

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