Deconstructing Your Website - Training Course on Dissemination and Communication Techniques

1. Training course on Dissemination and Communication Techniques and Tools for European projects Third session DECONSTRUCTING YOUR WEBSITE

2. Table of contents Haivisio Training session 3 on Communication: Deconstructing your Website

3. WEBSITE – AN OPEN WINDOW TO THE WORLD In this session we are going to learn about the Website, its importance as a dissemination and marketing tool and which items are key in order to build an effective website Haivisio Training session 3 on Communication: Deconstructing your Website

4. Haivisio Training session 3 on Communication: Deconstructing your Website

5. WEBSITE: THE MARKETING TOOL As you know all the projects co-funded by the European Commission must have their own website These websites have a similar structure: Haivisio Training session 3 on Communication: Deconstructing your Website

6. WEBSITE: THE MARKETING TOOL There are webistes more visually attractive than others but most of them are boring or is difficult surfing through them or finding them (unless you know the name of the project) at cyberspace. WHY? Because project consortiums usually adopt one of these postures: • time and energy is spent on making a prettydesignthan on making sure it’s going to do the communication job effectively. • all the focus is on trying to save money so consortiums build a site themselves using templates, or hire the cheapest company they can find • they forgetthat their website is just one more in Internet so they must design it in order they can drive traffic towards it Haivisio Training session 3 on Communication: Deconstructing your Website

7. WEBSITE: THE MARKETING TOOL Ask you some observations about your present website or before developing a new one: • How’syour Website working for you? Does it regularly send you hot leads or make sales? Or does it just sit out there in cyberspace costing you money? • Unfortunately, most project consortiums aren’t even sure what their Website is for. This happening makes a problem. Why?Because… Haivisio Training session 3 on Communication: Deconstructing your Website

8. WEBSITE: THE MARKETING TOOL • From your tagline to your headline, what you say and where you say it are critical. • Mess that part up and people won’t know what you offer…how to go about getting it…or why they should cooperate with your consortium instead with others. FOUND OR GONE! MAKE SURE YOUR WEBSITE LETS VISITORS KNOW RIGHT AWAY WHAT THEY CAN FIND THERE, AND MAKES IT SUPER-EASY AND FAST FOR THEM TO FIND IT Haivisio Training session 3 on Communication: Deconstructing your Website

9. WEBSITE: THE MARKETING TOOL Before you go spending another dime or minute on your Website, ask yourself these questions: Haivisio Training session 3 on Communication: Deconstructing your Website

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11. DESIGN - PRINCIPLES • Start with the end in mind. • Plan ahead for your website to cut down on time spent building and re-building. • Develop aclear goal and objective. Decide what you want to accomplish with your website and stay on course. • Yourgraphic elements should support your objective. If you have a children’s website you should use colors and images to show that your website has information for children. • Yourwebsite structure should support your objective. Be sure that the information on your pages flows well from one page to another. • Prepare for search engine optimization ahead of time. Decide how you want your viewers to find you and structure your website information around it. Haivisio Training session 3 on Communication: Deconstructing your Website

12. DESIGN - PRINCIPLES • Don’t Bury Your Offering. • 3” to CONVINCE your visitors to stay. Your message needs to be clear and uncluttered. • Avoid “intro” pages containing videos, flash animations, etc. • Easy Navigation is Good Navigation. • Best locationsare across the top or down the left. • Do not put the navigation above the header graphic. • Be careful of multiple navigation locations. • No more than three clicks to get anywhere. • Use important words in navigation. • No “back” clicking needed. • Make it easy to contact you. • Make your navigation search engine friendly Haivisio Training session 3 on Communication: Deconstructing your Website

13. DESIGN - PRINCIPLES Be sure to follow the Rule of Sevensfor your main navigation. If you have more than seven pages consider using a drop down menu or a secondary navigation. • Make it easy to UNDERSTAND your message. • Use fonts that are easy to read. • Use good contrast between the text and the background. • Have a consistent look and feel to all of your pages. • Consistent navigation • Consistent graphical elements • Consistent layout • Optimize all photos and graphics for faster page load times • Pages should load quickly. • Easy to order – for your visitors to demand information from any page on your website Haivisio Training session 3 on Communication: Deconstructing your Website

14. DESIGN - PRINCIPLES • Not all of your viewers will have the latest technology • Build site for older technology. • Don’t assume visitors have a super fast internet connection. • Avoid using the latest plugins. • If you design and build your website for only the newest technology you may be limiting your number viewers or stakeholders. • Make it easy for people to FIND you. • Use text directly on your pages not just text on a graphic or graphics alone. • Search engines have a difficult time seeing graphics. • Make your text keyword rich. • Consider text links that are keyword rich. • Use “alt” text containing keywords for all graphics. • Use keywords in file names and folders. Haivisio Training session 3 on Communication: Deconstructing your Website

15. DESIGN - TOOLS Metatags Whatare Meta Tags? Meta tags are pieces of information inserted into the code of a web page. This information is not seen by those viewing your web pages. When a search engine robot finds your website, it reads the meta tags and then uses that information to index your website in such a way that users will be able to find it. Give on every page you want the search engine to index a title and a description. Haivisio Training session 3 on Communication: Deconstructing your Website

16. DESIGN - TOOLS Types of Meta Tags: Haivisio Training session 3 on Communication: Deconstructing your Website

17. DESIGN - TOOLS Layout Managers What are Layout Managers? Layout Managers are a key tool in arranging content on your page. They help to organize and arrange your content. Without any Layout Managers, your content will displayed on top of one another. Haivisio Training session 3 on Communication: Deconstructing your Website

18. DESIGN - TOOLS Sitemap What is a Sitemap? There are 2 common definitions of site maps. Haivisio Training session 3 on Communication: Deconstructing your Website

19. DESIGN - TOOLS Currently only the four following pieces of information about each page are cataloged in the site map: Haivisio Training session 3 on Communication: Deconstructing your Website

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21. The best web site in the world will not attract substantial traffic if left to its own devices.There is no shortage of people offering magical shortcuts to attracting swarms of visitors. There are a number of legitimate and effective ways to drive traffic to your site, but they all take some work. Haivisio Training session 3 on Communication: Deconstructing your Website

22. TRAFFIC – KEYWORDS RESESARCH Why Keywords are Important? What is Keyword? A keyword is any word or short phrase that describes a website topic or page. - The more a keyword is used by searchers and websites the more attraction power it has. Haivisio Training session 3 on Communication: Deconstructing your Website

23. TRAFFIC – KEYWORDS RESESARCH How to Generate Good Keywords (1)? Haivisio Training session 3 on Communication: Deconstructing your Website

24. TRAFFIC – KEYWORDS RESESARCH How to Generate Good Keywords (2)? With social networks, this is becoming more and more important. Do you have links from Facebook or Twitter sites? links from Research sites? Haivisio Training session 3 on Communication: Deconstructing your Website

25. TRAFFIC – KEYWORDS RESESARCH • LET’S PRACTICE! • 1.- Do searching in some of the Following Search Engines • and compare their results: • Elderly assistance • Fall detection project • Health monitoring systems • Do you think results are satisfactory from the EC point of view? • 2.- Choose one keyword from your project website and check if it appears in the first 30 results of any of the search engines. Compare the results with those get in Exercise 1. Haivisio Training session 3 on Communication: Deconstructing your Website

26. TRAFFIC – SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION What is SEO?SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimization. SEO is a series of processes to improve website visibility on search engines such as Google, Yahoo or Bing. Using your keywords and website content SEO works with the search engines to rank your website in the search results. A Georgia Tech study estimated that 80% of website traffic comes from search engines and, even more to the point, 75% of searchers never make it past the first page of results. Obviously, you want to be on that first page. AGood SEO can get you there.Your competitors also covet that first page and will not be sitting still. It takes serious effort to get to that first page, but it takes just as much work to stay there. Haivisio Training session 3 on Communication: Deconstructing your Website

27. TRAFFIC – SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION Why SEO?The main reason for SEO is you want your website to be found.To increase your web traffic and potentially increase your visibility and impact (and business) from that web traffic you must optimize your website for the search engines. SEO is a very cost effective way to “advertise” your project. SOME SEO TOOLS: Haivisio Training session 3 on Communication: Deconstructing your Website

28. TRAFFIC – SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION Structure of a SEO Report from a SEO Analyzer Haivisio Training session 3 on Communication: Deconstructing your Website

29. TRAFFIC – ADVERTISING & PAYING PER CLICK What is Paying Per Click?(also called cost per click) It is an internet advertising model used to direct traffic to websites, in which advertisers pay the publisher (typically a website owner) when the ad is clicked. With search engines, advertisers typically bid on keyword phrases relevant to their target market. PPC "display" advertisements, also known as "banner" ads, are shown on web sites or search engine results with related content that have agreed to show ads. Websites that utilize PPC ads will display an advertisement when a keyword query matches an advertiser's keyword list, or when a content site displays relevant content. Such advertisements are called sponsored links or sponsored ads, and appear adjacent to, above, or beneath organic results on search engine results pages, or anywhere a web developer chooses on a content site. Organic search results are listings on search engine results pages that appear because of their relevance to the search terms Haivisio Training session 3 on Communication: Deconstructing your Website

30. TRAFFIC – ADVERTISING & PAYING PER CLICK In the figure there are different areas that have been marked down in yellow, this is paid advertising. Paid Advertising So the listings at the top and down the right-hand side are paid advertising! Haivisio Training session 3 on Communication: Deconstructing your Website

31. TRAFFIC – ADVERTISING & PAYING PER CLICK Here you can find some tools specialized in improving advertise results Haivisio Training session 3 on Communication: Deconstructing your Website

32. Analytics TRAFFIC - ANALYTICS Analytics What is web analytics? Study of the impact of a website on its users. USE: It is used to measure such concrete details as: “Google Analytics lets you measure your advertising ROI as well as track your Flash, video, and social networking sites and applications.” Google Analytics tells you what’s happening. KISSmetrics tells you who’s doing it. Haivisio Training session 3 on Communication: Deconstructing your Website

33. TRAFFIC - ANALYTICS In Analytics we use KPIs (Key Performance Indicator) • What is a KPI? Measure that can perform corrective actions • Which KPIs are important for Content Websites? Haivisio Training session 3 on Communication: Deconstructing your Website

34. TRAFFIC - ANALYTICS Haivisio Training session 3 on Communication: Deconstructing your Website

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36. CONCLUSION CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORSThere are several universal principles that successful websites embody: Haivisio Training session 3 on Communication: Deconstructing your Website

37. CONCLUSION CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS Haivisio Training session 3 on Communication: Deconstructing your Website

38. CONCLUSION CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS Haivisio Training session 3 on Communication: Deconstructing your Website

39. CONCLUSION CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS Haivisio Training session 3 on Communication: Deconstructing your Website

40. THANK YOU! Haivisio Training session 3 on Communication: Deconstructing your Website