About this Book
Welcome to the Website Owner’s Manual! If you’ve picked up this book, you probably run a website and want advice about how to make it more successful.
There is certainly no shortage of advice available, in the form of books, conferences, blogs, podcasts, magazines, and tutorials. These offer an unbelievable amount of detail; for example, entire books dedicated to designing website forms and blogs only look at online typography. The problem is not too little advice but too much!
Even if you had endless time to review all this information, with so many sources and such depth available, it’s impossible to know where to begin. This book endeavors to overcome this problem.
The Website Owner’s Manual provides an overview of running a successful website. It focuses on the issues you need to know and teaches you how to work with experts for everything else.
It covers your own role as website owner and looks at strategic issues such as business objectives, target audiences, and success criteria. It goes on to teach you how to work with web designers, content providers, and technical developers. It also provides a basic understanding of design, usability, best practices, content creation, and online marketing.
In short, it is a manual for website owners.
As the title suggests, this book is primarily for website owners. But who are website owners? Chances are you don’t describe yourself as one, but this book is probably still for you.