• Is the text well-organized?

• Is there some kind of summary or index at the beginning?

• Does the text remain fairly understandable, if not read from the beginning?

• Are the words selected to become hyperlinks well-chosen and intuitive?

Many Internet Service Providers (ISPs) provide not only hosting services, but roll-your-own-site software. For fledgling companies and beginning entrepreneurs, what advice would you give, regarding content on their new sites?

Again, I'm not terribly familiar with this kind of software. But from what I've seen, commercial sites that use some kind of template, often end up being nothing more than online brochures. That's informative for people who happen to be looking specifically for information on your company or organization, but it's not likely to attract a wide audience or even many repeat visitors.

Regardless of the tools you're using to create your site, whether your coding HTML in a text editor, using a what-you-see-is-what-you-get package, like FrontPage, or using roll-your-own software from your ISP, the key to a successful site is careful content planning. Before you create a single Web page, think hard about these questions and answer them as specifically as possible... vague answers are useless:

• Why do we need a site at all? What purpose will it serve?

• What are the goals for this site?

• What target audience(s) do we want to reach, and why?

• What kinds of content, including services, will interest our target audience(s)?

I'm always dumbfounded at the number of sites on the Web that have never given any of these questions the slightest consideration... and it shows!

Both small and large businesses and the self-employed have Web sites which offer some information on the company and usually head straight to the sale. To some viewers, this is a negative aspect of the Web, too much Buy me! What type of content could assist businesses, or others offering products for sale, in making a Web site visitor enjoy their business site? In essence, what constitutes good content?

I've been covering these issues in detail in my column series, How to Think Like a Publisher. The specific content solution is different for each site. However, as long as the site owners/developers have taken the time up front to answer the basic questions I listed above, user-focused content will be the natural outgrowth.

That's the philosophical answer. In practical terms, it's important to provide information that, while applicable to your company, isn't necessarily sales or PR-oriented. For instance, a regular column on a topic highly relevant to your company/organization could attract repeat visitors. So could a collection of backgrounder or how-to articles. A searchable database can be a big draw, as long as the data is high-quality and up-to-date. Industry news also can be a big draw. Or even humor. The possibilities are endless, once you stop looking at your site strictly as a brochure or online store.

If you're not sure what your target audience wants, ask them! Preferably before you've sunk a lot of resources into developing a site that may or may not appeal to your target audience.

When I did a search for Web content, I came up with only a few listings. Obviously, this wouldn't surprise you! Being the amount of valuable content, on Web site content, is so limited, how should a designer of a Web site, business or personal, resolve the issue of content? Should they hire a consultant, i.e., a content writer? Or should they just read your zine, and locate any other available sources, then make a go of their Web site?

You definitely do not need to hire a professional writer or editor to develop great content for your site. That said, for many organizations, large and small, it's a pretty good idea!! I'm constantly amazed at companies that without hesitation will spend thousands... even hundreds of thousands... of dollars on site design and engineering, but balk at the thought of hiring a writer or editor. That makes absolutely no sense.

If, however, your organization does not have the resources to hire a writer or editor, there are ways to learn more about creating effective content. Contentious, of course, is one resource... and I try to make it as useful and specific as possible. But there are others, like the Online-Writing list, which I co-host.

In many ways, learning how to write and edit well, for print or broadcast, will help you write and edit better, for online media. There are differences, of course, but many of the most basic skills and techniques are the same.

If you were going to create content for a site whose main emphasis was artistic, what questions would you need to ask, to ascertain your potential audience's content needs?

Well, with an art site... or a fiction site, or a poetry site, or even a music site... the artist's expression and intent is a very vital consideration. There's much more at stake than simply attracting an audience. Still, for most art sites, it seems to me that attracting an audience is a consideration... or else, why publish on the Web at all?

I think it all comes back to the goals of the site. If the paramount goal is to create an audience and a following for an artist's work... hopefully so that the artist will either sell more work or the value of his/her work will increase... then it's pretty important to make the site accessible and understandable.

This does not mean the art presented on that site has to be blatant and obvious... in fact, the work might be quite esoteric, subtle, or obscure. However, the content that introduces and surrounds the artwork should be accessible... it should explain what the artist seeks to achieve, or it can even pose questions that would frame a context for the work.

For visual art, there is always the issue of how faithfully the work will be displayed on the Web. Different browsers use different color palettes, and resolution can be an issue also. It's helpful for artists to be aware of these considerations/limitations, and to explain how these might affect how their work is displayed on the Web.

Now, on the other hand, it's possible that the paramount goal of an art site is to create an experience of puzzlement. If that's you're goal, then it's OK to create a confusing or chaotic site that offers little context or guidance. However, don't expect this kind of site to draw a huge audience, unless it is somehow entertaining or sensationalistic.

You sub-title your magazine, The Web Zine for writers and editors who create content for online media, do you feel that your magazine offers worthwhile information to graphics-intensive and graphics-dependent Web sites, such as art galleries or 3D design?

Actually, I've just changed the Contentious tagline to mention writers, editors, and others who create content for online media. Yes, I do think there's a great deal of worthwhile information in Contentious for designers, marketers, programmers, site owners, usability professionals, etc..

At the most basic level, this zine can help increase their content awareness. Also, it offers insight into how to evaluate a site's content, and how to create great content for their own projects. Most of Contentiousdeals with text-based content, but I do often bring design and other issues into the mix, and I will be profiling a Fluff and Contender pair of art sites in the near future.

Also, more and more Web developers and designers are working with writers and editors on Web projects. Surprisingly often, this is the first time many of these professionals have ever had to work with a writer or editor, and they don't know how that process works. Contentious helps explain that kind of interaction and collaboration, to foster more effective working teams.

Do you believe that in the future, people will have to pay to view valuable content? Or will webmasters, possibly under pressure from their users, provide it for free?

I think that there will always be a lot of free content on the Web. Some of that will be great... but I think for much of it, users will get what they pay for... low quality and/or biased information.

Users aren't stupid... they understand that. This is why I firmly believe that as micropayment systems mature and proliferate there will arise a stunning array of high-quality, targeted content available for a negligible fee... say, a few cents to read an article or search a database. This offers a special advantage to users... content that is not tainted by the influence of advertisers or sponsors.

Subscription systems haven't had a lot of success so far, but I think they have a lot of potential for certain types of content. Basically, wherever there is a need for very specialized information... medical, scientific, business, academic, educational, engineering, and so on... there's a potentially viable market for a subscription-based online service. Basically, in this case, password-protected sites, or e-mail publications, can serve as a more up-to-date and far less costly alternative to printed journals or newsletters.

If we create an analogy between Web content today and television content of the fifties, what prediction would you make regarding content on the web, 30 or 40 years hence?

I do think that the Web represents a convergence of media. Currently, bandwidth limitations constrict the amount of video and audio that can be used effectively on the Web. But in time, those limitations will fade.

Right now, people turn to magazines for one kind of content, books for another, television for another, radio or audio CDs for another, the movie theater for another. It all depends on what kind of content they want, and also how they want to experience that content. As the Web evolves, aesthetically and technologically, a variety of types of experience will become equally available through the same conduit.

Look at it this way... when the telephone first came out, it was mainly viewed as a new conduit for conversations. But, combined with information technologies, now virtually every business or organization has extended the role of the telephone... through voice mail, through automated response systems, even bank-by-phone.

To sum all of that rambling up, I think the point is that people always want some kind of content. Right now, they have to use different conduits to get different kinds of content. But ultimately it'll simpler, more efficient, and even more effective to have one main conduit. Then you can concentrate on the content, not the delivery.

As an ending statement, or possibly a beginning trend, what summary advice would you give to Web designers?

It's pretty simple: design is only one part of Web development. It's an important part, to be sure... but content is at least as important. A great Web design enhances content and communication. Sites that are designed only to impress other designers won't impress most Web users.