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Your Company on the Internet - Effectively
A website can improve your corporate image and provide useful services to existing and potential customers. Just about anyone can design a website with commercially available software. However, many sites fall short of their intended purpose. Sites can appear competent but ultimately fail to provide any return on investment. The content, delivery, style, target audience and return on investment are all important design considerations. The subtleties of an effective website are often overlooked by many businesses seeking a presence on the web.
Understanding How Websites Are Used
The majority of visitors to your website are neither your customers nor your competitors. The typical visitor to your website are your "potential customers." The kinds of responses that your site generates from these visitors will determine the success or failure of your website.
The Internet is above all, a reference tool. People who use the Internet are in search of information. They are not interested in trivia, corporate self-promotion or cutting-edge animated graphics. They are looking for something. They are looking at your website to see if it has what they want. Having what they were searching for will determine if your company has the capabilities or products to meet their needs. If they find what they want, you have a "potential customer." It is a mistake to forget that people who use the Internet are impatient. Website savvy users will quickly determine if your site is a waste of time and will not spend any time trying to figure out what your business has to offer. They want answers immediately and they do not want to work to get those answers. Websites that do not give visitors what they want, quickly and easily, are discarded and rarely visited again. Visitors that receive no value from your site will not likely become customers. Therefore it only makes sense that your website must focus on the needs of your potential and current customers. Websites that provide value reflects positively on your business. It shows that you understand your customers.
Avoiding Common Mistakes
Will you benefit by being on the web? Maybe, but only if you are ready to make the commitment by investing your company's time and effort. Eventually, having a website will be as common as having a listing in the telephone directory. Having the wrong website can do more damage than having none at all.
On the web, first impressions are important... but not as much as the last.
Web users, your customers, are looking for information that is clear, concise and relevant. They will not find your website by randomly typing in addresses. They will find it by searching for subject matter that they hope might be on your website. Once the potential customer arrives at your website, they hope to find what they were searching for. If the customer is greeted with company history, mission statements, and other forms of shameless self-promotion, they will likely be disappointed and probably leave your website without further exploration. You would have failed to understand your customer's needs. The impression left of your website is that it offers no relevant information and it is just another page cluttering the Internet. That potential customer is lost never to return.
Visually, the site should mirror the purpose of the site. An artist's site would require greater focus on visual design than a hardware catalog. When the visual image does not match the purpose of the site, a lesser impression of the real value of your site is provided to the visitor. It's like food coloring - if given the choice between a normal slice of bread and one that had been colored blue, 99% of the population would choose the normally-colored slice. Though both slices of bread are the same, the uncolored slice is chosen because bread is supposed to be that color, not blue! Likewise, an artist's site needs to be artistic and a business site needs to be businesslike and so on. People tend to associate the visual impression with the product or purpose of the website. Making the right match with appropriate style will give your website the advantage.
Everyone has been to websites that are nearly impossible to navigate... not intuitive or easy to understand. For example, navigation link titles such as, Places, Custom and Projects are not clear as to their meaning. On the other hand, references like Residential Developments, Custom Residential Design Capability and Past Residential Design Projects are much clearer. Simplicity is the key where simple is preferred over stylistic navigation labels. The typical visitor is impatient when it comes to navigating a website. If it takes too much effort to find the right information then, again, they might be left with the "last impression" that your website is not done professionally and you run the risk that they will attach the same impression to your company. Remember that you might not have other opportunities to change that perception.
How your company operates with the website is crucial to the website's success. I've been to websites of national companies that do not list either a telephone number or email address. This doesn't appear that they care about their customers. Having contact information listed on your website is important - how quickly and accurately the responses are done are even more so. Web users expect replies to email messages within a short period. They make decisions based on the content of those replies - their decision could be one that decides if your company is to be considered for their needs. Corporate policy should be developed that outlines how email inquiries are handled and to what level of content they contain. The reply that is delivered from a website based inquiry can determine your company's consideration for future work or sale of a product. A late or non-responsive reply will be the "last impression" of your company - they are not professional.
The three most important things about a website are "content, content and content!"
Cutting edge graphics, animations and sound mean nothing without content. Content must be relevant to visitors' interests. The amount and depth of content reflects on your company's image. Content must be current and correct to be of any value. This is responsibility of the company and not the website developer. Only you know what your customers want. You know their frequently asked questions. You know their concerns. By creating content that reflects this, you have a website that visitors will find utility in and that provides a positive image of your company. It gives your customers a reason to visit your website.
Too many websites allow content to become obsolete or do not check for correctness. A webmaster can only check for technical problems, it is the company that must continuously check content and insure that it is current and correct. A well-known business went six months with having an incorrect telephone number listed on their website. When the error was corrected, many calls were received each day resulting from the website - six months of lost business from the wrongly listed number is not a comforting thought. Content checking also means to check all links for operation. Having a website with reference links that go nowhere doesn't bode well on the image of your company.
Anyone can do website design. Only a very few can do it effectively.
When I was a young lad, I got a camera for Christmas. I was told people make a lot of money taking photographs and I could too. "Yeah, right!" If photography were that easy, everyone would take pictures like Ansel Adams. Anyone can learn how to use a camera but on a few can take a good picture. However, when it comes to a corporate website, many companies find the first person that is computer literate to create and maintain their website. This is akin to my knowledge of camera workings and being able to take a good picture. Some computer literates even succeed in creating a site that is visually attractive. The rest of the company is happy about the "look" and think the person did a good job. Are they knowledgeable about effective website design? In most cases, no. This is ignorance judging incompetence whereas the ignorant likes the incompetent. Good design is not based on appearances. Good design is starts with accurate, clear content of value to the visitor within a structure that facilitates a visitors' ability to find your site and intuitively navigate about the site to find desired content.
Is the site cost effective?
It doesn't take rocket science to know if a website is generating new business. A bit of investigation will show if existing customers are using your website too. Now comes the cost of the developing and maintaining the website. If your company is performing this work in-house, how much are you paying this person? I know of one company whose company's webmaster is paid six figures. Of course, that isn't the person's primary job. They were obviously hired for something else and time spent doing the website took away from revenue generating work at their pay scale. If they only spent 3 days a month related to the site, that would be over $1,000 per month it costs the company! Potentially, even more if this employee has a role of generating new business. Regardless of how good anyone thinks the person with the company's website, the company frequently can do it for much less elsewhere. This is typically done by either hiring a web design employee or hiring a consultant.
Finding competent expertise to develop and maintain your company's website should not be taken lightly. Many companies don't realize how inefficient their websites really are and that good design practice could improve business. The website portrays your corporate image in both style and content. Your company's website is a reflection of the real image of your business.
Note: Adapted from the Original Article Written for a/e ProNet