1. Thou shalt break up long pieces of text with bullets, for it is easier to scan that way.
2. Thou shalt use short sentences, even if it feels thou art using more periods than commas. Punchy maketh for better reading.
3. Thou shalt bow down and worship thine spell checker.
4. Honor the inverted pyramid style of writing. It hath helped journalists for decades for good reason.
5. Useth not more than one idea per paragraph. Readers never readeth carefully enough to catch more than one.
6. You shalt not make wrongful use of verbs. Choose active verb construction rather than passive.
7. Thou shalt cut everything you write in half. Shorter articles art better.
8. Thou shalt use highlights, such as bolds and hyperlinks, to call attention to important words.
9. Thou shalt not be creative with sub-headings and instead use clear ones. They aren’t the place for cuteness.
10. Useth lists and numbers to organize ideas into an easy-to-read format (cf. 10 Commandments).

If you don’t know who’s visiting your website, you can’t accurately guide them to the information they’re most likely looking for. That’s why before you begin planning a new website project, you should do a little demographics research. Your research into who’s using your site – the people who make up the segments of your audience – will prove invaluable when you begin working on a web building (or rebuilding) project.

The best way to do this is to take it to a literal extreme by creating a user profile, sometimes called a persona. We use these in web development to help us imagine the many ways visitors will use a website and to know how different visitors’ needs differ. Think of it as a character profile for a book. You should know things about the person’s age, gender, financial background, job description, computer set-up, nationality, etc.

It even helps sometimes to associate that persona with a picture and a name. That might help solidify the fact that real people go to your website, not just traffic numbers.

Here’s a sample questionnaire you can use to begin thinking about the people who visit your website. Copy and paste is into a document and fill in the blanks. Flesh it out if you think you can come up with additional important characteristics.

Website User Profile

Age:

Address:

Marital status:

Nationality:

Other important demographic characteristics:

Job description and responsibilities:

How often will this person use the website:

Computer and software capabilities:

Technology experience:

Physical limitations:

Education:

Reading level:

Tasks they will perform on the website (be specific and list in order of importance):

The day I bought my mother a cell phone, she cried. Believe me, they weren’t tears of happiness. She looked at all those buttons and numbers and codes and had a little meltdown. We put the phone away and gave her a new cordless phone instead.

My mom is 70, and while there are plenty of hip 70-year-olds e-mailing pictures of their grandkids around and doing online banking, not all of them are. To many people of my mother’s generation, the online world is utterly confusing. They look at websites with no history and with no idea how to navigate.

At the same time, more people are moving into a 60-and-older age bracket than ever before. These are the people who will be using your website. If you’re a non-profit, these are also the people who may be looking for ways to donate their money and time.

Make it easy for them. Here are a few things to keep in mind when presenting a website to older viewers:

Put the most important information up top.

This should be a given no matter what age demographic your audience is. But in studies, older users failed to scroll down the page because they didn’t know it was a possibility.

Explain things in plain English.

We’re all guilty of using too much jargon, but sometimes we don’t realize how much. These are all terms that may confuse: user, content, URL, homepage, browser.

Use a search tool.

Studies have shown that older audiences are more likely to use a search tool to find items than younger people. One possible reason is that younger users are more accustomed to conventions of placing items on a page or within navigation.

Provide a text resizer.

This makes it easy for people with visual limitations to increase the font on the page. Some older users find anything less than 12 points a challenge to read.

These tips are common sense. Follow them, and your website will be easier to use not only for older people, but for everybody.

Honestly, who feels like delving into those voice mails and uncompleted projects this early in the week? Fill your cup of coffee and watch these five great little movies that will help polish your tech education.

What Is Drupal? from help.asu.edu on Vimeo.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) basics for Non-Profit Organizations (NPO) from Firstgiving on Vimeo.

Demo Usability Test by Steve Krug from Larmon VanWinkle on Vimeo.

History of the Internet from Melih Bilgil on Vimeo.

Why Video Content Is Important from WebDesign.com on Vimeo.

[This little gem is the e-mail newsletter our subscribers just received. Want a slice of this for yourself? Sign up now.]

Websites are like silverware drawers. They start out the vision of order, with special compartments for everything. Then a grapefruit spoon gets mixed in with the soup spoons. Someone tosses in a ladle because they can’t figure out where else it should go. Toast crumbs accumulate at the bottom. Before long, what was a bounty of neatness can become a chaotic mess just from day to day living.

It’s understandable, because websites are always growing and changing. Nevertheless, it helps to take a periodic assessment to figure out what should go where, and if it’s operating at optimum capacity.

Here are a few things you can check right now:

1. Is your name clearly identified on your homepage? Make sure it appears on internal pages too.
2. Are your organization’s colors consistently used? It’s a good idea to limit your colors to two.
3. Are there broken links? If so, fix them right away!

While that’s a good start, you should do a complete website assessment and do it regularly. Lucky for you, we’re here to help.

This month, as part of Talance’s year-long 10th anniversary celebration, we’re performing free website analyses to determine how you can improve the performance of your website. The analysis includes a review of design, user-friendliness, search engine visibility and how popular it is in social media. We’ll deliver you a handy report you can keep and refer to while you make updates.

>> Request your FREE website analysis now!

First impressions count for everything when it comes to websites. In real life, you might have second crack at forming someone’s view of you: making a joke or warmly shaking someone’s hand. But online, when the average viewer’s attention is being pulled in a million different directions, you have to hit them exactly right to make sure they keep coming back.

Working with clients over the years, we’ve uncovered five simple tips that will help you present a great first impression so you can convert a website visitor into a fan.

1. Make your pages consistent.

Few things are as confusing as when each page looks different than the page that came before it. Web users need consistency when it comes to websites. This means when they click through the items in your menu, they always thing they’re on your site. If your structure is sloppy and inconsistent, you look sloppy and inconsistent.

2. Ensure quick load times.

If you think the people in the line at the DMV are impatient, multiply that by a factor of a bajillion to approximate their impatience with website loading pages. If your site doesn’t open in a reasonable amount of time, your visitors are gone, baby.

3. Clean up your logo.

Your logo is the flag of your website. It communicates important information about you at a glance. If that information has anything to do with tired clipart or design ideas borrowed from anybody else, it can have a negative effect on your visitors.

4. Appropriate colors.

Colors can communicate a mood to someone before they even read a word. The colors of your website should be attractive and also appropriate. An IBM blue probably isn’t the right color for a preschool website, and electric pink isn’t the right shade for a funeral home.

5. Everything works.

If a link is broken, if your margins are askew, if your images don’t load – these are all big mistakes that reflect badly on you as an organization. Taste is subjective, but operability isn’t.

Newspaper articles need to explain who, what, when, where, why, how. Anything less than those elements doesn’t tell the whole story. Websites also need to tell a story. Someone visiting for the first time should be able to know what you’re about and what you do without thinking too hard. Thinking too hard, in Web terms, means clicking off your page.

Here are the questions you should be able to answer easily if your website is well built:

1. What is the site all about? What’s its identity and reason for being?

2. Where do site visitors begin?

3. What’s the site structure? Does it have a clear hierarchy?

4. How do visitors search for things?

Pose those questions to your site, and if you can answer quickly and concretely, you know it has good bones.

[Photo credit: unicorn by Totally Severe, on Flickr]

Conventional wisdom counts with building websites. Some techniques are proven and really will make your life easier and bring more traffic to your site. But there’s plenty of misinformation out there too. Watch out for these easy-to-fall-for myths.

1. Building a website is easy.

There’s “easy,” and then there’s “easy.” True, there are tools that can make managing a website easier, but that doesn’t mean going through the process of creating a site is a walk in the park. Successful sites contain heavy forethought and attention to detail, which never comes without hard work. Technical prowess aside, be prepared to sweat a little when it comes to planning and maintenance.

2. Fancier websites are better.

Everybody likes glitz, but it’s not always better. A four-page brochure can be infinitely better than a wham-bam Flash affair with movies and sophisticated animations. Before you put a bell or whistle on your site, make sure it has a good reason to be there.

3. Accessibility doesn’t matter.

It matters if you’re a potential member, volunteer or donor and can’t see the website. It matters if you’re looking at a website on your cell phone. It matters if you’re a web crawler from a search engine looking to catalog the site.

4. You can cut corners by copying the text and format of successful websites.

Plagiarism aside, you won’t gain anything by creating a copy of someone else’s site. You might find inspiration from some of their features, but successful sites should be built from the ground up. Otherwise, they won’t be unique enough to meet your goals.

5. Mission statements should be front and center.

I get the idea behind mission statements, but most of them are loaded with double-talk and jargon that mean nothing to the average website visitor. Include a link to your mission statement, if you must, but devote your website to the most important thing your visitors should be seeing.

6. The key to SEO is submitting to search engines.

You won’t see much of a bump in search engine rankings if you limit your SEO (search engine optimization) to this single move. SEO is a multi-step process that never really ends.

7. You never need to check your website in different browsers.

It’s easy to get stuck in a rut when it comes to web browsing, but IE, Firefox, Chrome and Safari (and the other guys too) go through changes over time, and so does your website. It’s a good idea to periodically see how your site works (or doesn’t work) in browsers besides the one you’re used to.

8. Design is design.

The person who designed your business cards might be a web designer too, but probably not. Designers specialize in print or web, because each craft applies different principles. Designers want work, though, so some over-promise and deliver websites that don’t make sense.

9. Usability isn’t necessary.

If no one knows how to use your website, they won’t use it. ‘Nuff said.

10. I need a webmaster to update the site.

Webmasters are nice to have, because they can handle updates and field questions. But if you assign responsibility wisely and have a website that’s easy to update, a webmaster isn’t necessary.

What we’re reading this week:

What Makes a Product Cool
People go nuts for the iPod. It’s useful to read about neuromarketing to understand better how people emotionally connect with products. How does this transfer to popular websites?

Twitalyzer – The Average Twitter User
This slideshow from the company that measures who uses your Twitter account. Good overview to the kinds of people who use Twitter.

Design Patterns
Ever wonder why things are designed the way they are? This library of conventions tells you the why behind where website widgets are placed.

Building a successful online community
One of our own mantras is to make the web a friendlier place. This article from the Creating Passionate Users blog shows you how you might build your own community through being friendly.

If you’re trying to sell a house, update the kitchen and bathroom. If you’re trying to get people to use your website, do it with these easy upgrades.

1. Most recent blog entry.

Some organizations have a blog, but hide it. An easy way to bring your words closer to your visitors is not only to provide a prominent link to your blog, but to also let the first few entries display on your homepage.

2. Twitter feed.

If you have a Twitter account, you should provide access to it on your website. It’s surprising how many organizations have an account, but you’d never know it by visiting their site. Treat your Twitter updates just like your blog updates, and show the most recent ones on your website.

3. Big Share buttons.

Any time you publish something worth sharing, you should encourage people to do so through e-mail or a social network. Big buttons encouraging people to share do better than small ones.

4. One-click donation.

It’s a pity if you miss out on donations simply because no one can figure out how to donate on your site. Make sure it’s easy to donate by clicking just one link.

5. Search.

If you have more than five pages, include a way to search your website. And make search easy to find. No hiding it in the lower regions of your site.

6. CMS (Content Management System).

If you’re struggling with keeping a mass of single-file pages looking the same, give up and get a CMS. Your visitors will respond to the organization.

7. Call to action links.

Tell people what you want them to do whenever you provide a link on your site. If you want donations, name your donation button “Give.” If you want people to register for your newsletter, call your newsletter link, “Sign up for the newsletter.” People will respond if you make it clear.

8. Home link.

Always, always provide a clearly labeled link that says Home.

9. Feedback form.

If there’s no way for people to respond to you, they won’t. Make it easy with a feedback form.

The best thing you can do for your website is to keep thinking about it. Keep tabs on what people like and what they ask for. Make upgrades on a regular basis, and you’ll notice a difference.