One of the biggest mistakes that happens so often when it comes to web design is that a website is built from the eyes and mind of the owner of the website. Every thing- color, photos, text placement – is the vision of the owner. Sometimes this is the fault of the owner, sometimes it is the fault of the web designer. You can’t always blame the web designer as he/she just wants to get paid. But the problem here is that the websites has to, and I say this again, has to, be built with the idea of who your audience is. Having a clear visual of who this audience is will allow your website to help you achieve the goals you have for your sight. Oh year, I forgot, you also need goals.

Goals are the backbone of the success of any project. Without having the goals in place you will always be frustrated with your website. Even if you have a clear definition of who your audience is you will not be happy with your website. Why is this? It is because there is no measure of the success without having the goals in place. Let’s say you have the targeted audience pinned down, now what? Well you need to make sure you know what you want to happen when this audience comes to your website. And once they come and they do as you hope they will, you need to have a way of telling if they have reached what you have set out to be the goal.  Taken the old approach that has been used in marketing will allow you to handle all of this before you even start to design your website, on your own or with your webmaster. This is the AIDA approach. Let’s talk about this.

A = Attention

The first goal  you should have with your website, as far as the design and placement of objects, is that it should grab the audience attention. Having the targeted audience in place will allow you to put objects in the right places to try to grab this attention. For example, if your main goal is to sell more breedings to a stallion you have, yet it takes a visitor 30 seconds to find information about this stud, more likely than not they will be gone. This stallion should be visible and stand our more than any other object in your design. Same can go for your sale horses. If you have a goal of your website being an avenue to potential buyers, your sale horses should stick out like a sore thumb to grab the attention of those visiting your website. Now that we have their attention, what do we do next……

I = Interest

We get them interested. How is this possible? You need to have some good copy, that is captivating and easy to spot, that will make their eyes go right to this object. When I say you need good copy, I am saying you need to have some type of headline that is easy and quick to read and right to the point. Why should it be easy to read? Because it will lead to the next step…..

D= Desire

If you really want to grab potential customers/clients, you need to put a desire in them to want what you are offering. This can’t be done in any boring fashion. This needs to be done with captivating objects, whether it is with images and/or text, this needs to grab them and pull them in. The desire we are usually looking for is for the visitor to want to go further into the website to find out more. This is part of the goal you have set. And with good analytic software you can easily set up analytics to find out if you are getting the desire you want the visitors to have. Which in turn will lead to the last step….

A = Action

If you have your visitors this far to your website you are doing good. If there is a desire to learn more about what you are offering you have a good chance at leading the visitor to action. And this is the result you want from the goals you have set. What would the action be? Most likely it would be someone communicating with you to find out more about your stallion or your sale horse. This communication is what you can expect to get from your website. I would recommend not making goals that your website will sell the horse for you, but it will be an avenue to lead people to you that will then give you the door open to make the sale.

In summary, the most important tip I can give you today is that you must do the important planning before you even start to think about the design and look and feel of your website. Once you have done this you can then start to create the look of your website that will produce the goals you have set forth in the beginning and in return get the communication and actions you hope for from your visitors.

Take this and run with it.

Equine Journal is using our content management system built for equine media companies that allows for complete control over articles, online magazines, banner advertising, and more.

Aria was the first site to use a full blown equine only content management system that we have created designed for the equine industry. This system allows for everything from handling horses, videos, photo galleries, pedigrees, news, pages, etc.

You can visit the Arabian Horse Insider at www.arabianhorseinsider.com.

It was great to get away a little from the horse industry and go into a field that I have little knowledge of. The research was a lot of fun and finding ways to implement a site that would reflect Headwaters and their staff was a joy. They are great people to work with and they made the building process a lot of fun. What I likes the most from the work side was the more involved I was able to get with dynamic CSS. A great learning experience while I worked. Take the time to check out the site as they have a great mission, as does any program that deals with children.

One way that the region keeps visitors and members informed is by use of a forum. We installed the forum and set it up to match the site and the way they wanted to forums to work for their needs.

To help promote the members of the region, Region 15 had directories added. These directories are for farms, stallions, trainers and classified ads. All someone has to do is add their entry and the region verfies it before it goes live. To help with the graphical layout of the content of a directory listing, tabs are used for the content layout. We also added the ability to send to a friend, download dynamic PDF’s, contact forms, and more for each entry.

One of the concerns Cherokee Stables had was that they had to post most of their information on a page Google supplied to them. Putting their information on the web was not a problem, but the page layout was not the same as it would be if they could have the information inside of the website. So we built a blog for Cherokee that was implemented into the website.

Below you will see the design feature that is now www.cherokeestables.biz.