aguide to web design and strategy

When customers reach your home page, you have their attention. Use it -- or lose it. Involve them immediately. Think of yourself as the maitre'd in a fine restaurant: how can you anticipate the customers' needs? How can you help them?

Your strategy should be to create compelling content that answers important customer needs immediately. Make a promise on your home page -- and keep it. Think constantly of rewarding the customers for the time spent. Let this ROTI guide your content, your site organization, your choice of graphics.

Can a visitor to your site get something really useful from a quick "pit stop" (30 seconds)? Or a 1 to 2 minute visit? Conversely, can they easily spend an hour? Is there enough content -- and a clear roadmap through it? Can they quickly find content of the greatest interest to them? Customers should never be more than one hyperlink away from content. Avoid screen after screen of information and endless checklists.

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It's a new medium, really!
Create a strategy using information, tools and community

Forget about rehashing print or TV media. Forget those tired offers to mail literature. Your Web visitors will leave tire marks as they peel away from your site as fast as they can.

Empower your visitors with information, tools and community.

Provide strategies and solutions that will make them ready, willing and able to buy your products. Filter information. Provide valuable search capabilities. Brainstorm new interactive tools. Strategize about how to place your company at the hub of the user's electronic community.

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Make your site customer-oriented, not company-oriented

Avoid the "vanity" site. Don't make your site a company "tombstone" with dry facts and figures. Avoid slow-painting photos of your new company headquarters or lengthy descriptions of your corporate divisions. Put customers -- not your company -- at the center of your Web strategy. Identify and consider each of your target audiences -- and how you will meet their needs. You have more audiences than you think: customers, shareholders, suppliers, prospective employees, regulators, investors, competitors, etc. Which audiences will you target? How will you balance their needs? How will you steer them through the site, straight to what they care about most?

Focus on customer actions. What do you want them to do?

Focus on events in the customer's life or work. Do they have an immediate problem or need you can help them with?

When and why will your visitors come? Where are they in their decision process? Do they own the product, or are they trying to choose which one to buy? Each has vastly different needs. How about customer service problems? Are they dealt with on your site? Use a critical eye -- or a focus group typical of your target market.

Avoid a self-congratulatory style or marketing "puffery" -- you'll only drive off even the most motivated visitor.

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Make your customer a full, active partner in your interactive venture

Are you ready for Web visitors to come to your site as active equals? Are you ready to solicit product development ideas, rather than just ask vaguely for suggestions? Are you ready to develop different business models or strategies based on customer collaboration and feedback?

Actively involve your visitor in meaningful interactive activities. No shovelware. No static or stale information. No gimmicky games.

Be humble. Actively solicit suggested improvements to the site. Then implement them (or at the least, discuss them on your site).

Provide two-way e-mail. Answer incoming e-mail in hours, not days or weeks.

Implement the classic "push/pull" marketing concept. Use registration, mailing lists and alerts to "push" information out to the customer when things change they will want to know about (e.g. an earnings report due out tomorrow on a leading stock in their portfolio, or an update in an important product spec or price).

When the customer comes to you through the Web --"pulling" information -- avoid the temptation to pile too much extraneous data on them. Give them plenty of choice as to how much or how little information they will accept.

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Create content that is original, targeted and timely

Last month's press releases are not timely. A list of your new branch offices is not news! Update them with the status of your products, projects or news. De-emphasize information that your customer can already find in print. Concentrate instead on up-to-the minute, hard-to-find, or hard-to-assemble information. Think about how you can customize information for the individual. If you are a periodical publisher, realize that you will be speeding up your time frames. Monthlies should be updating weekly or more often. Weeklies should update daily or hourly. Dailies should be updated continuously.

Don't just rely on product information. Provide your customers with strategies, success models, tips and techniques.

Organize your content around changing events in your customer's life (such as moving, changing jobs, planning for college funding or the care of an aging parent). Organize your content around changing events in the outside world: regulatory developments, tax changes, demographic changes, cultural events.

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Keep your user happy with effective design and navigation

As the great architect Louis Sullivan said, "Form follows function." Make your graphics functional. No "eye candy": illustrations should be meaningful rather than just decorative.

Good design respects constraints. Respect the speed limitations of today's modems. What sells as a splashy image in the boardroom overhead may bring a user's 14.4 modem to its knees. Avoid graphics larger than about 14,000 bytes. Make performance requirements part of your original graphic design specification.

Create a navigation model. Make the anatomy of the Web site clear from all points in the site. Consistency is king. Use flags, bookmarks, and icons to signal where you are and where you've been.

Keep graphics beyond the home page to a minimum. Identify pages with simple graphic elements. Include the date of material and updates.

Use the established Web symbology (construction signs, "new" markers) -- unless you have compelling reasons not to.

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Empower your customer with new, valuable on-line tools

The Internet provides a great and unique opportunity to deliver tools to your customer -- to "put your product down a wire." Give thought to the types of tools you can deliver to gain a competitive edge or reduce costs.

Is there a calculator you could create to help your customers with their pre-sales questions? Is there a simulation game your customer could play to make them more ready to take advantage of your product or service? Are there scenarios your customer can work through to match their situation?

Can you take advantage of the emerging, powerful search engines to provide the customer with custom solutions or answers?

Try brainstorming fantasy tools for your customer. They may be more feasible than you think.

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Use community effectively. Be a responsible Net citizen

Understand the total community of your Web site. It goes beyond the traditional customer relationship of advertising. Think of your suppliers, employees, investors, etc.

Carve out a lead role in that community -- by organizing content for each group, by providing links to other valuable sites, by adding value to others' material. How can you expand and focus this community? Should you create an "umbrella site" that brings different companies together on one site for your customers' benefit?

Let other sites know about your effort. Develop a plan to promote your site -- both on-line and in traditional media.

Give something back to the Internet community. Share some of your strategies and findings with others.

Provide valuable information for free to related sites and strategic partners.

Learn and respect the Internet culture and "netiquette." Surf the Web yourself on a topic of personal interest. What do you like and dislike about the sites you visit?

Be personal in tone and material. Give users access to specific key people in your company, rather than some anonymous "info@xyz.com." Provide forums and discussion groups. Create virtual communities with your customers and suppliers.

Consider the use of "avatars" or electronic personalities that can be tailored to the needs of your diverse clientele.

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Have a plan to bring them, keep them, keep them coming back

How will you attract visitors to your site? Do you have a "focus" to bring them to the site and keep them there after they have linked to your page? Have you explored the use of contests, club membership, couponing, free trials, and e-mail deliveries?

What actions do you expect your visitor to take? Make sure you have a plan to get them to act, not just look. Have them enroll in a club. Participate in a contest. Provide you with feedback.

Links to other Web sites are a tradition on the Web, but don't be too quick to send people away. Route them to an "exit" page that offers something to encourage their return. Announce upcoming events. Suggest they bookmark your home page.

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Get ready for the next generation of Web sites!

After months of effort, you've finally launched your Web site -- relax. Well, not exactly. Web sites are works in progress. Update the site regularly. Add new features and tools. Extend the scope to new constituencies. Build the infrastructure necessary to support and maintain the site.

Track the usage of the site. Where do people go? How long do they spend in an area? What do they avoid?

The Web design process is a cycle: Evaluate ... Develop a vision ... Plan ... Build ... Launch ... Promote ... Track ... Maintain ... Build infrastructure ... and start the cycle again ... Evaluate ...

Emerging technologies such as Java and LiveScript are creating new possibilities in Web design. The next generation of Web sites will deliver miniature applications, and the simple text and graphic Web pages of today will be history.

Web sites will be alive and highly interactive. The Web page will become the Web stage, ready to play out whatever is in the imagination of its creators. Companies will join efforts -- and repackage each others' materials -- to create holistic, powerful solutions to customers' needs, not just static information sheets.

As Sun Microsystems' Chief Technologist Eric Schmidt says, "The Internet hasn't been over-hyped, it may actually be under-hyped." It's just beginning. Welcome aboard.

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