website owner’s manual, the secret to a successful website
Paul Boag shows in straight forward language and terms what makes a website work, how to create and maintain a website that people will not only return to but enjoy using so they want to return.
Contents 24/25
Ease of Understanding/Practicality 24/25
Pictures/Illustrations 18/25
Additional Features 15/25
Total 81/100
Paul Boag has created a great reference guide for anyone creating and maintaining a website to help you understand how to design and maintain a website that works including design, content and search engine optimization help. The website owner’s manual has a very self explanatory title and the subtitle makes perfect sense once you leaf through its pages, the book goes from design and concept to actual maintenance and tips for a successful website that any website owner can use.
The start of a website begins with concept and a simple design that takes into account not only the type of website but usability, maintenance after the site is up and future expansion. The book helps you understand concepts of web design that are proven effective and ones that should be avoided so you don’t make the same mistakes others have with less traffic to their sites.
For anyone wanting to create a site that works and get people to come back you need to have a design that is useable by visitors as well as continuing to work with the site after its has been posted for owners who maintain their own site. The website owner’s manual makes sense of design and concept that works well for various types of websites like content sites that are informative and educational or sales sites that create a shopper friendly atmosphere.
The manual goes from design and concept or planning on paper to actual coding in a quick look at what you can use to create your site but not actual tutorials or web design programs, the book is more a how to for user friendly sites and not actual coding specifics. The manual goes in depth to what you need to look out for in designing and working on your site and what makes sites user friendly so people will return to your site because it’s easy to work with.
I have done my share of website surfing as well as some deign and find several things very annoying on certain sites and the book covers just about every type of site and annoyance I have come across so it does a great job of spelling out what to avoid as well as what to use. General and specific examples are shown in the pages of the website owner’s manual so you can see what works and why as well as things you should avoid whenever possible or even things to avoid at all costs.
The book goes from design and concept to actual work on the site including logos, corporate fonts and more like when to outsource your web creation and what to look for when you do use others for your website design or maintenance. The book does a great job of helping you decide how to proceed with your website whether you create it yourself or look elsewhere for professional help and gives plenty of tips to help you when you do go with a professional.
One chapter even goes into depth with web design language to help you understand what all those terms designers use so you can know what all the talk means and help get the facts you need for your website design. The different chapters all cover various areas with several covering different aspects of web design in various ways such as website maintenance or user friendly design and the importance of the different subjects.
The website owner’s manual does a lot with web design and shows various aspects that are important to understand and constantly be aware of while not only designing but maintaining a site over the long haul so your site continues to be a user friendly one. While this is more of a concept book and less of a how to tutorial you have a lot of information that is very helpful to website design and continued maintenance to help any web site owner have a successful site.
The website owner’s manual gives several examples of things to avoid and shows in real pictures what they are talking about but the book is in black and white for all the pictures and graphics so no high resolution colored photos. This is not a real problem as the pictures, graphics and charts look fine showing examples mostly and are all easily readable and more than usable.
The website owner’s manual: the secret to a successful website by Paul Boag is a great book and one I highly recommend to any website owner as a design and planning tool for your website to go from concept to continued website ownership.