So what do you do?

Well, this is actually a fairly easy answer. Check out your favorite websites, the ones you visit daily or weekly in or outside of radio and see what they have in common.

A. They don’t make you wade through a splash screen or some long Flash intro before you can get to the main page.

If they did, you’d probably have stopped going to the site a long time ago. While splash screens (a page that loads and shows you a graphic or animation before you get to the main page of the site) may not be a horrible way to introduce first-time visitors to what your site and station are about – they do nothing but impede your core and repeat visitors from getting what they want!

Your P1’s are likely to be the most common visitors to your site. They already know what your station’s positioning is and they just want to know what’s going on - either what is coming up or what just happened. Don’t get in their way. Besides, every page should already reinforce your position across the top without needing the splash.

B. Your favorite sites make it relatively easy to get around and understand their structure.

They have navigation links to the top or left of every page. They have branding near the top of every page. They have content in the middle of every page.

Whether or not you feel that this is the best way to organize a site, this is the basic convention of the internet. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel as your visitors are perfectly comfortable with the wheel and have come to expect it. A wacky, funky site may look cool, but who wants to return to a site that makes you feel stupid when you can’t find the photo gallery?

C. The content changes frequently.

The only reason you would visit a site multiple times is if you expect it to be different every time you get there. If a site is part of your daily routine, it’s because you expect to find something interesting on it every day.