| There are two basic ways to approach
design, often called the outside-in and the inside-out
methods.
The inside-out method is the most common way to design
a Web site. Here you begin with your company name or
purpose and move outward through what you do, your products
or services, their features and benefits, etc.
The outside-in method is a little different. Here you
begin with what customers look for when they contact
you initially. What questions do they ask? What do they
want to know? What problem are they trying to solve
or what opportunity are they trying to seize? Once you've
determined this, move on to what information they will
need to help make that decision.
When you're doing this kind of site design, it should
be done in graphical form. Standard outlines and "tree"
diagrams are not effective because the Web is inherently
a nonlinear medium.
The tool that I've found most effective for both inside-out
and outside-in design is mind mapping, a tool originally
designed as a way to organize information for a presentation
or capture and organize information when taking notes.
The process of mind mapping is similar to the way the
brain works - you use graphics and key words that your
brain finds a natural way to hook lots of information
to. It links items on a page in a graphical form similar
to the way that your mind links items as you jump from
one concept to another.
Look at other Web sites to see what kinds of good ideas
you can pick up. This will often spark an idea for you.
You should also be checking out your competitors' Web
sites to see what they're doing and what you'll have
to do to compete with them.
I've found that after you've done a bit of the inside-out
and outside-in design, suddenly they start to merge.
When that happens, you should have an idea of how your
site will work. The result should be a graphical, nonlinear
site plan.
3. Develop the site - site construction
Now you're ready to develop the site itself. This is
where you put together the actual pages and links and
see how things work.
Start with a mock site. This is a site that you build
on a hard drive somewhere, but not on the Net. Once
things work on the mock site, you're ready for your
beta test, which is where you put your site live on
the Web and see how it works there.
You'll find a couple of things are different when you
move your site from a computer to the Web. The first
and most obvious is that things will slow down dramatically.
They will also become less reliable. That's just the
way the Net is.
When you put your site up for your beta test, be sure
to test it in a lot of different ways. Visit your site
at various times of day and with various kinds of Web
browsers, and be sure to view it with different monitors.
Things can look very different on different sized monitors
and on systems with different color palettes.
Also, don't forget to view your site from both Mac
and PC browsers. There are often differences there as
well.
What you must give users is, at minimum, what they
have come to expect from other Web sites. To do that,
you need to know what sites your customers frequent.
Media Metrix (which provides demographic data about
World Wide Web usage) reports that Internet users tend
to hang out at places like www.aol.com, www.yahoo.com,
and www.netscape.com. These sites are known as portals
because they act as doorways to the rest of the Internet,
but they also perform enormous amounts of work in their
own right. They declare intent. They tell visitors what's
in it for them. And they offer quick access to actionable
information.
If you think of your own home page as a kind of miniportal
- this is, as a guiding light to the real information
that resides inside - and make your miniportal as easy
to pass through as possible, then you will have gone
a long way toward creating a successful site.
Every Web page needs:
- An informative title
- The creator's identity
- A creation and revision date
- At least one link back to the home page
Your home page should contain your company's name,
address and phone number. So obvious it's laughable,
right? You'd think so, but IBM, an $82 billion company,
makes site visitors click five times to find its address
in Armonk, NY.
In addition to showing the world you're smarter than
IBM, your home page must explain exactly what it is
you do. And slapping on the company name isn't usually
enough. Power Lift Corp. displays its name and slogan,
"Everything from the ground up," in letters large enough
to be read across the room. Still, visitors might think
they were on the site of an elevator manufacturer if
the home page didn't also immediately list all the company's
product lines: "Lift Trucks; Parts, Tires & Service;
Warehousing Systems; People Movers; and Power Clean
Systems."
Before your site goes live on the Web to be tested,
you should be doing the things that get your site ready.
This includes preparing your rollout strategy, as well
as looking at how your site will be integrated with
your other marketing and business materials and strategies.
4. Deploy the site - site marketing
This is where you roll out the site and present it
to the general public. Start by making sure that your
Web site and all your other marketing materials work
together. Put your Web address on all collateral materials
including stationery, business cards, brochures, etc.
You may even want to have special announcement postcards
sent out when you're ready to take the site public.
Prepare a news release for the trade press and to send
it to your key clients, prospects and friends. Don't
forget to post notices in appropriate newsgroups and
forums where people who are both online and in the groups
that you want to reach congregate.
Also devise a plan for how your sales force can make
the most out of your new Web site in their sales efforts.
Have them use the new Web site as the focus of a sales
call. When they make the call, they can show the site
on the prospect's computer and then ask to add the site
to their bookmark file. They will almost always say
yes.
You should be preparing your deployment steps almost
from the time you start designing your site. As soon
as you have your Web address, register your site with
all of the major search engines (Yahoo!, Excite, AltaVista,
etc.). Look at your site design and consider registering
all of the pages that are likely to be primary contact
points, rather than just your home page.
Your home page URL should appear in all:
- Print advertisements
- Radio and television advertisements
- Lobby kiosks in high-traffic areas of your enterprise
or in local libraries, schools, or other suitable
venues
- Direct mail campaigns
- Business cards
- Stationery
- Bills and statements
- Product manuals, product packaging
- Response cards, warrantee cards
- Publications and promotional materials
- Press releases
- Posters and billboards
- E-mail signature line
At this point your site should be well-tested, well-publicized
and working for you. But the job's not done yet.
5. Do it all again - tracking, evaluation and maintenance
No, I'm not implying that you should immediately start
to redo your entire site. But I've found that the businesses
that get the most out of their sites are the ones that
are constantly improving them. This involves both regular
updates and some redesigns.
When you've had your site up for three or four months,
take a look at it again with a fresh eye. Think about
the kinds of things you'd like to do differently. Review
the reports you're getting from the people who manage
your Web site and the results you're getting compared
to your original business objectives. An abundance of
information about visitors to your site can be recorded
with your Web server software. Even the simplest site
logs track how many people saw your site over a given
time, how many pages were requested for viewing and
many other variables.
Why take a fresh look after three or four months? That's
usually enough time to get a good sense of how things
work and to let your publicity campaign kick in. Also,
things are still fresh enough for you and for others
to get a fair impression of what kinds of things could
be changed.
Your site needs attention. Links on the Web are perishable
and you'll need to check periodically that links to
pages outside your immediate site are still working.
Once you develop an audience, don't lose them by not
following through. It is even more difficult to attract
them back.
When you are ready to make some changes, it's time
to go back to step one again. Look at your business
objectives; decide how you're going to measure your
achievement and work through the process again. This
time it will go faster.
Having a great Web site is easy.
Just follow these 5 steps
- Define a solid business objective.
- Design the site based on how people will use it
and how they will link information in their head.
- Develop a prototype and test the site.
- Deploy the site by making sure it is well-publicized
and that it works together with your other marketing
materials.
- Track the results and update, redesign and modify
your site to make it more effective.
|
