northStudio

If you are not sure whether you need a redesign of your old web site, take a minute or two to review our web site check list below...

1. Branding

Branding is the sum of the components (a name, text, visual graphics and/or sound) used to identify your company and distinguish it from your competitors. A brand is comprehended by the viewer on several levels: emotionally and visually.

• Do you have a logo?
• Is your brand well defined on your site?
• Is your site branding consistent with branding in other media such as brochures, business cards, newspaper advertisements, magazines, signage, television or radio ads?

2. Architecture

Your site’s structure means what are the main sections, and how are they organized into sub-sections and pages. It also refers to your site’s underlying framework, code and programming

• Are any areas on your site deeper than 5 clicks?
• Does your site structure flow logically from one topic to the next?
• Do old java menus still work?
• Is your HTML, CSS, JavaScript and XHTML up to standard coding techniques?
• Is your web site designed for proper monitor resolutions and the correct user audience(s)?
• Is the site content manageable?
• Has your web site become costly to update even simple text and images?

3. Navigation

Navigation refers to the “interface” that allows the User to travel through your site.

• Is the navigation process understandable, intuitive, relevant and consistent on all areas of your site?
• Is it fast and easy to navigate from page to page within the site and to find the information your clients need?
• Is it easy to figure out where you are within the site?
• Can visitors access your homepage, e-mail and contact information from every page?
• Are all your links working properly?
• Do visitors leave your site in trouble areas?
• Can you add pages, and modify the navigation of your web site to meet the needs of your clients?

4. Graphical Design (User Interface)

This refers to the overall “look and feel” of the site and its “WOW” effect!

• Do the colors, page layout, typography, photos and graphics complement your brand, and are they consistent and creatively placed within the web site?
• Are the colors used for links, backgrounds and navigation harmonious and web safe (that is, do the colors appear on a variety of different monitors and browsers in the shade and tone that you really want?)
• Does your browser work in Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, Safari, and Mozilla (FireFox) and on both PC and Mac computers?

5. Content

This refers to the actual information contained in your site: text, images and animations.

• Does every page have meaningful, concise content and clearly articulate concepts?
• Does the usefulness and quality of your site’s content inspire visitors to return to your site, or to dig deeper into your sub-pages?
• Do you update content frequently, providing added value and updated resources?
• Is the text grammatically correct and free of typos?
• Are the images current, bright, clear and optimized for the web?

6. Function

• Does your web site accomplish the goals you want it to?
• Could it be working better?

7. E-mail and Webmail
Is your e-mail “spam filtered”?

• Do you gets lots of spam (it’s easy to stop that!)
• Is your web site built with technology to hide your e-mail address(s) from bots, crawlers and gofers that harvest your e-mail?
• Do you need webmail (all our hosting packages come with webmail)

8. Marketing and Promotion

This just means the ability to have your web site found and ranked well in the various search engines (Google.ca, MSN.com, Yahoo.com and in directories, successful email campaigns and related print materials.

• Is your web site search engine optimized?
• Is your pay-per-click marketing campaign working?
• Has your site been submitted to the search engines monthly?
• Are your pages optimized for current and relevant key word terms?
• Are your Meta tags out of date?
• Are your competitors starting to creep up on you in the search engines, or have you started falling in search engine results or been lost altogether?
• Have e-mails and phone calls from your site slowed down or stopped?
• Have your unique visitors per day been declining?
• Do you have Flash on your home page, or a complete flash-based web site?
• Does your web site consist mainly of graphics which can not be found by a search engine?
• Has a company performed illegal search engine ranking techniques and had you banned from the search engines. (This happens, but not with us ;o)
• Are you paying a lot of money for little or no results?
• Do you find updating the content of your web site hard to do and generally unmanageable because you have to manage your site with Dreamweaver, GoLive, Frontpage, and other text and WYSIWYG Editors?

9. Hosting

• Does your web page appear quickly?
• Does your server crash often?
• Does your email stop working a lot?
• Do your clients complain that your web site is not available?