1. Electronic Marketing: Integrating Electronic Resources into the Marketing Process, 2e 8/26/2015  2004 Joel Reedy and Shauna Schullo Electronic Marketing Chapter 11 Web Page Design

2. Electronic Marketing: Integrating Electronic Resources into the Marketing Process, 2e 8/26/2015  2004 Joel Reedy and Shauna Schullo Web Site Design, Both Simple and Complex A Web site is a collection of information residing on a server connected by an address to the World Wide Web A Web site may include text, color, photographs, illustrations, music, motion, or other computer programs On the Web site are smaller files called Web pages that are accessed by clicking on “hyperlinks,” usually colored text, pictures, or icons of instructions directing the computer to other pages on Web sites

3. Electronic Marketing: Integrating Electronic Resources into the Marketing Process, 2e 8/26/2015  2004 Joel Reedy and Shauna Schullo Web Site Design, Both Simple and Complex In designing a Web site, the marketer must be prepared to answer questions: –What is the purpose of the Web site? –Is the site a primary or supporting vehicle? –Should it provide exposure, house publicity articles, support retailers or field sales representatives? –Who will be reading your pages? –Should the graphics be fast-paced for a younger market or more conservative for a middle-aged viewer? –Should you include sound or motion?

4. Electronic Marketing: Integrating Electronic Resources into the Marketing Process, 2e 8/26/2015  2004 Joel Reedy and Shauna Schullo Web Site Design, Both Simple and Complex Questions Continued: –What types of computers will the typical user be using? –What browser software will they have access to and how fast are their connections to the Internet? –What search engines does the market prefer? –Will they be viewing the site with a color or black and white monitor? –What size screen will they be using?

5. Electronic Marketing: Integrating Electronic Resources into the Marketing Process, 2e 8/26/2015  2004 Joel Reedy and Shauna Schullo Web Site Design, Both Simple and Complex Once these questions have been answered, a design should be created for a working plan Web pages are created with a very simple text-based scripting language called Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)

6. Electronic Marketing: Integrating Electronic Resources into the Marketing Process, 2e 8/26/2015  2004 Joel Reedy and Shauna Schullo Issues of Web Site Design There are basically three stages to the design of a Web site –The analysis phase –The design phase –The building phase

7. Electronic Marketing: Integrating Electronic Resources into the Marketing Process, 2e 8/26/2015  2004 Joel Reedy and Shauna Schullo Issues of Web Site Design The analysis phase is important to the development process because it provides proper background for the designer in setting the content of the site to communicate with target markets Analysis Phase

8. Electronic Marketing: Integrating Electronic Resources into the Marketing Process, 2e 8/26/2015  2004 Joel Reedy and Shauna Schullo Issues of Web Site Design The marketer must identify the audience Technology levels of the audience must be determined Decide on the media elements that should be included in the Web site What does the marketer want to accomplish with this Web site? –Provide information? –Collect information? –Communicate with your markets in other ways than the Web? –What marketing purpose will the Web site serve? Analysis Phase

9. Electronic Marketing: Integrating Electronic Resources into the Marketing Process, 2e 8/26/2015  2004 Joel Reedy and Shauna Schullo Issues of Web Site Design The actions of the design phase –Make an outline of the topics that should be included –Determine what information needs to be gathered –Determine the order in which it is to be presented –Decide what items or information are most important to the markets and present it first or display it prominently –Plan how to structure the Web site; think efficiency Design Phase

10. Electronic Marketing: Integrating Electronic Resources into the Marketing Process, 2e 8/26/2015  2004 Joel Reedy and Shauna Schullo Issues of Web Site Design –Do not require the user to click too many times –Decide if the site will be kept simple with a few textual links or a graphical interface that uses buttons or icons to navigate throughout –The flow of the Web site will be crucial in keeping the audience interested and connected –Limit graphical elements on the opening Web page to “one screen” –Extra media elements such as graphics, movies, sounds, and animation will make the site larger, unwieldy, and harder for someone with a slow connection to use –Choose graphics, sounds, and motions only if they are appropriate to your market and make the site stronger Design Phase

11. Electronic Marketing: Integrating Electronic Resources into the Marketing Process, 2e 8/26/2015  2004 Joel Reedy and Shauna Schullo Issues of Web Site Design –What skill level does the consumer need to learn in order to navigate your site? –How will the site grab the viewer’s attention? –How will the site intrigue the consumer to see, do, or buy the site’s offering? Build Phase When you begin to develop the actual appearance and feel of the site, there are many things that the marketer needs to consider

12. Electronic Marketing: Integrating Electronic Resources into the Marketing Process, 2e 8/26/2015  2004 Joel Reedy and Shauna Schullo Issues of Web Site Design Attract the customer’s attention by creating a site that is: –Easy to use and understand –Fun and fast –Personalized –Comprehensive –Highly visual –Easy to navigate Build Phase

13. Electronic Marketing: Integrating Electronic Resources into the Marketing Process, 2e 8/26/2015  2004 Joel Reedy and Shauna Schullo Issues of Web Site Design Flow is a function of control, content, and motivational characteristics of a Web site –The consumer is “hooked” and wants to continue investigating the site that has caught his attention –Interactivity is the key; intimacy with the customer grows through interactivity The marketer can catch the consumer’s attention with content that is well structured and enticing Hyperlinks make interacting with a Web site easy Build Phase

14. Electronic Marketing: Integrating Electronic Resources into the Marketing Process, 2e 8/26/2015  2004 Joel Reedy and Shauna Schullo Creating HTML Documents: The Language of the Web Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the scripting language in which documents seen on the Web are written A new standard called Extensible Hypertext Markup Language (XHTML) is now popular Web documents contain content that is then interpreted by Web browsers such as Netscape or Internet Explorer

15. Electronic Marketing: Integrating Electronic Resources into the Marketing Process, 2e 8/26/2015  2004 Joel Reedy and Shauna Schullo Creating HTML Documents: The Language of the Web The content consists of codes called “tags” or “elements” with “attributes” that tell the computer what to show on the screen HTML editors are available to make the job of creating a Web page much easier In addition to full HTML editing programs, many word processors and other software programs now have the ability to “Save As HTML”

16. Electronic Marketing: Integrating Electronic Resources into the Marketing Process, 2e 8/26/2015  2004 Joel Reedy and Shauna Schullo HTML Standards If these standards and practices of HTML are followed, the Web pages will work with most of the current browsers “Good” HTML follows the current versions of HTML, as specified in the HTML DTD (Document Type Definition) “Bad” HTML is considered to be documents that ignore standard practices

17. Electronic Marketing: Integrating Electronic Resources into the Marketing Process, 2e 8/26/2015  2004 Joel Reedy and Shauna Schullo HTML Practice Tags are the instructions that the computer is looking for to decipher the code’s function There are different types of tags or elements, but they all have one or two basic structures –Container tags –Tags that stand on their own

18. Electronic Marketing: Integrating Electronic Resources into the Marketing Process, 2e 8/26/2015  2004 Joel Reedy and Shauna Schullo HTML Practice Now that you are getting the idea of how things work, you need to be aware of what should be on every Web page –Head section –Page title –Signature or contact information

19. Electronic Marketing: Integrating Electronic Resources into the Marketing Process, 2e 8/26/2015  2004 Joel Reedy and Shauna Schullo HTML Practice The title identifies a string of text, which is the name or title of your document. Memorable titles serve three major purposes: –Titles are used by applications such as searches and indexes to identify the page –Titles act as indicators of what to expect –Titles are at the top of the HTML document giving the viewer an easy visual clue to identify the source files quickly when changes or corrections are needed The signature is usually at the end of the document but before the tag

20. Electronic Marketing: Integrating Electronic Resources into the Marketing Process, 2e 8/26/2015  2004 Joel Reedy and Shauna Schullo HTML Practice The section: making it searchable –The Head section defines the function of the document and adds a quick reference for the Web browsers –The tag contains information about the document, such as keywords, expiration dates, author, page generation, software used, and many other document-specific items and is important when the marketer wants the document to be found in searching with keywords –Good XHMTL documents have a DOCTYPE declaration which is used to declare what kind of HTML is used in the document

21. Electronic Marketing: Integrating Electronic Resources into the Marketing Process, 2e 8/26/2015  2004 Joel Reedy and Shauna Schullo HTML Practice The section: holding it all together –The body of HTML documents contain the majority of your information –The body tags form a container ( ) that encloses the content of the HTML document

22. Electronic Marketing: Integrating Electronic Resources into the Marketing Process, 2e 8/26/2015  2004 Joel Reedy and Shauna Schullo HTML Practice Formatting the page: making it look good –HTML provides many tags that can be used to format text to allow for uniqueness and creativity –Text level formatting can occur in multiple ways: Using HTML, the marketer can format the actual font properties, describing how the text is being used Additional formatting of text can be in a block-level format For more sophisticated text layout, the marketer could use formatting styles for lists and tables

23. Electronic Marketing: Integrating Electronic Resources into the Marketing Process, 2e 8/26/2015  2004 Joel Reedy and Shauna Schullo HTML Practice Interactivity and Visual Appeal –Hyperlinks let the designer move from one place to another on the Internet or within a Web site by maneuvering the mouse –To add the visual appeal necessary to make the site attractive to the market, images and image maps are used –Image maps are used to create “clickable” regions in images

24. Electronic Marketing: Integrating Electronic Resources into the Marketing Process, 2e 8/26/2015  2004 Joel Reedy and Shauna Schullo HTML Practice XHTML and Compatibility Issues –XHTML is the successor to HTML –It is a transitional language to XML –XHTML is almost identical to HTML 4.01 but is stricter and cleaner –There are really only a few rules to remember Cascading Style sheets (CSS) –Provide a means for Web developers to separate the appearance (or style) from the content of Web pages –Both HTML and XHTML use CSS the same way –CSS is the method recommended by the W3C for formatting Web pages

25. Electronic Marketing: Integrating Electronic Resources into the Marketing Process, 2e 8/26/2015  2004 Joel Reedy and Shauna Schullo HTML Practice For lessons in what not to do in Web page design, the site with an attitude is “Web Pages That Suck” (www.webpagesthatsuck.com) Testing the Web Site is a very important step in the process of creating an effective marketing tool –To get a certain effect, the marketer will need to test the pages on multiple browsers; this is a good way to double check the functionality of the site –Then and only then, notify the world that the site is online

26. Electronic Marketing: Integrating Electronic Resources into the Marketing Process, 2e 8/26/2015  2004 Joel Reedy and Shauna Schullo HTML Practice Be sure to register the site –Hire a service to register the site since there are more than two hundred search engines to consider –Pick and choose the search engines by doing the registration yourself with InterNIC