1. Stand out on the Web: Essentials for a Great Site
Dustin Hartzler
Twitter Hashtag: #wccbus

2. About Me
✓ My Name is Dustin Hartzler
✓ Full-time WordPress developer and podcaster
✓ I study the website industry

3. Worksheet
✓ Download at:
YourWebsiteEngineer.com/wccbus

4. Assumptions as we begin
✓ I’m going to assume that you already have a WordPress website
✓ I’m going to assume that you know how to make changes
✓ Some things you might need a developer to help you with
✓ Tons of great actionable information is coming up NOW!

5. ARE YOU READY?

6. Overview
✓ #1 Priority for Every Website Owner
✓ Necessary Pages
✓ Don’t Make Me Think
✓ Immediately Remove Items

7. #1 Priority
What Do You Want Visitors to Do?
✓ This should be the Number #1 priority to think about when
developing / redesigning your website

8. Pick One Thing

9. Hick’s Law
T = b * log2(n + 1)
✓ The time it takes for a person to make a decision as a result of the
number of possible choices.

10. What would you do here?

11. Focus - Examples

12. Focus - Example

13. Case Study - Old YourWebsiteEngineer.com

14. Case Study - New YourWebsiteEngineer.com

15. What’s my Focus Now?

16. Overview
✓ #1 Priority for Every Website Owner
✓ Necessary Pages

17. What Pages to Have
✓ Home (that should be obvious)
✓ About
✓ Contact
✓ Archived Blog Posts

18. Order of Pages
Home About Services Blog Contact
Add More if Necessary Here

19. Home Page
✓ Purpose of the page:
✓ Get email sign ups, Facebook Likes, +1’s
✓ Second goal - easy navigation

20. About Page
✓ Second most visited page
✓ If you are running a business, also create a “Meet the Team” page
✓ Have fun with this page, show people your personality

21. About Page
✓ Picture of You ✓ List top posts
✓ Show how your site / blog will ✓ Biography Information
help them
✓ Contact Information
✓ Tell how often you show up on
your blog
✓ Have a subscribe button

22. About - Examples

23. About - Examples

24. Contact Page
✓ Give your readers and opportunity to contact you
✓ Put every type of account you know how to use
✓ Contact Page Items:
✓ Email / Phone ✓ Live Chat
✓ Address ✓ Interactive Map
✓ Hours of Operation ✓ Social Media
✓ Web Contact Form ✓ An FAQ page

25. Contact Page - Examples

26. Contact Page - Examples

27. Contact Page - Examples

28. Archived Blog Posts
✓ Make it easy for people to find your old
content.
✓ Helps people to stumble on to other content
they are interested in.

29. Archived Blog Posts - Examples

30. Archived Blog Posts - Examples

31. Archived Blog Posts - Examples

32. Overview
✓ #1 Priority for Every Website Owner
✓ Necessary Pages
✓ Don’t Make Me Think

33. Don’t Make Me Think
✓ When designing your website, you job is to get rid of the question
marks

34. Link Your Logo to Homepage

35. Add Breadcrumbs
✓ Breadcrumbs or breadcrumb trail
is a navigation aid used in user
interfaces.
✓ It allows users to keep track of
their locations within a website

36. Make buttons look like buttons

37. We Don’t Read, We Scan

38. White Space
✓ Don’t try to jam everything down a customer’s throat
✓ White Space is Good
✓ What is the Number #1 website used in the World?

40. White Space
✓ Don’t make the mistake that
Yahoo! did with their early 2000
version of their home page.

41. Do You Need a Mobile Site?
✓ Look at the design of your site through the eyes of your viewers

42. ✓ Are you learning anything yet?
✓ Do you have any actionable items written down yet?

43. Overview
✓ #1 Priority for Every Website Owner
✓ Necessary Pages
✓ Don’t Make Me Think
✓ Immediately Remove Items

44. Immediately Remove Items
✓ Items that should be removed on most sites

45. Negative Social Proof
✓ Everyone love the share buttons, but don’t display the information
until you start getting a lot of shares

46. Social Profile Buttons
✓ Remove buttons from above the fold content
✓ I like them in the footer
✓ Also, when people sign up for my newsletter, I include the images
there

47. Floating Buttons
✓ Get rid of the buttons that cover
up part of your mobile site

48. Clutter
✓ We talked about white space before
✓ Don’t be a Yahoo!

49. Sidebar Content
✓ Do not take people to different website
✓ If you must, open up a new tab

50. Sidebar
✓ Get rid of the bazillion widgets
you are using
✓ Don’t let the widgets go longer
than your content (on average)

51. Pop Up Overlays
✓ The most annoying “feature” that I see on websites is the pop-up box
that wants you to sign up for your list.You have stumbled upon this
site and you are looking for great information and all of a sudden, you
are interrupted by this large overlay that causes you to not be able to
read all of the rest of the content on the page

52. Pop Up Overlays
✓ IF YOU MUST USE THE OVERLAY:
✓ Have it delay popping up for at least a minute
✓ Or only show it if someone has navigated to more than one page
✓ If the user clicks the ‘X’ make sure it sets a cookie to remember the
users choice.

53. Action Items
✓ Determine Focus of Your Website
✓ Update / Add Necessary Pages
✓ Make your site easier to use by
implementing “Don’t Make Me Think”
✓ Remove the “Immediately Remove” items
YourWebsiteEngineer.com/wccbus

54. Worksheet
✓ Download at:
YourWebsiteEngineer.com/wccbus

55. Any Questions?

56. Thank you!
✓ For more free WordPress information:
✓ Listen to Your Website Engineer Podcast
✓ Go to YourWebsiteEngineer.com
✓ What do you want to learn?
Email: Dustin@YourWebsiteEngineer.com