Blog
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Why most Web sites fail… and how yours can be different
October 1st, 2007
Seven common mistakes of corporate Web sites
Considering how important the Web is to most businesses, and how much time, effort, and money most companies spend on their Web channel, it is amazing that so many corporate Web sites serve their sponsoring organizations so poorly. The Internet has been an important tool for business communication for almost a decade, and many corporate Web sites are on their fourth or fifth incarnation, yet most fail to deliver measurable business results. Here now, in no particular order, are the seven common mistakes made by corporate Web sites:
1. Weak messaging, lack of clarity of purpose
Visitors to a company Web site should not have to figure out the site’s purpose. You should not assume too much about the knowledge of your visitor, or their patience. You can assume that their appetite for reading small type will be low. Instead of figuring out your business – or whether they are in the correct site at all – they can simply leave. But looking at this positively: The home page is an unequalled opportunity to deliver a succinct value proposition that clarifies your purpose in terms relevant to your customers. That is why the most common design for corporate Web sites features a large, sometimes animated, value proposition image with messaging occupying the better portion of the area "above the fold" on the home page.
2. Poor structure, no clear paths
This problem is like #1—the site is not structured to make it easy for the visitor. They cannot quickly identify the path that leads to what they want. Structuring the site according to user needs (related to business goals or course) is very important, especially for companies or organizations that serve many different audiences. This is why many sites create alternative structures or navigation for each of their most important audiences. For instance, an insurance company may offer content "For Patients," "For Businesses," and "For Healthcare Providers." Fashioning these structures begins with an information architecture methodology that models the user experience of your crucial user types: prospects, customers, investors, and employees, for example. "User scenarios" simulate user activities they pursue a task or business related need. Doing this for all your focal user types and for all focal user tasks will create a user-centered basis for site structure.
3. Poor navigation and labeling
Unclear navigation and ambiguous labeling are common problems. Many sites have multiple and competing navigation controls with no clear sense of hierarchy. Sometimes the typography or alignment makes it difficult to scan and evaluate choices. Very often, the labeling is hard to understand: how is "Company Info" different from "About Us"? Or perhaps jargon is used that is easily misunderstood by laymen. Problems like these can be identified through formal or informal usability testing. Our approach to user experience design incorporates user testing throughout the design process. This way, problems in structure, navigation or labeling are solved early, before too much design or programming time is invested.
4. Poor content, irrelevant to user needs – good content, that’s hard to find
One of the most difficult problems for Web site and intranet is developing and managing content. Most companies do not think of themselves as being in the publishing business. But the reality today is that businesses create a lot of content. Most of that content is on shared drives or individuals’ hard drives, but much of it is pushed eventually onto corporate Web sites and collaboration-oriented intranets. This gives rise to one or both of a pair of related problems: content that is poor quality or irrelevant to the user, and content that is good, but cannot be found. Information architecture helps you evaluate and organize content so it is easily accessed by those who need it. On a public Web site or a company intranet for employees, the quality of content is very important and deeply affects the success of the user experience.
5. Site doesn’t spur action, invite contact, or generate leads
The advantage the Internet has over other communication media is that it is two-way: your audience can respond or interact with you. But many sites make only a passive effort at initiating communication, with a "Contact Us" link in a low-priority location on the page. A Web site can be powerful lead generation tool, and there can hardly be a more important business goal than increasing sales and revenue. Successful Web sites may invite contact directly on product pages, with specific contact names, emails, and phone numbers or email forms right there. Offering alternative methods of contact is another good approach: click-to-phone (VOIP) and live chat can provide visitors with immediate assistance. Some Web sites will proactively initiate a live chat session with a visitor themselves. Capturing visitor information via a contact form, newsletter signup, or by offering a library of whitepapers or resources can feed leads to your sales funnel – don’t miss this opportunity.
6. Inadequate promotion, poor traffic
How a site is structured or designed, and what functionality it offers hardly matters if no one visits it. The user experience begins before the user reaches the Web site. How do they find it: search engines, banner ads or offline ads, broadcast or print? Incorporating the company’s URL in offline media such as business cards and all other print materials, display ads and even radio and TV are the norm. But promoting an URL online rather than offline is more important since the audience has an opportunity for immediate response: they can click the address. While banner advertising is important for some businesses, most need to promote their Web site using other avenues. Listings on professional directories is important, and you can also seek exposure through email newsletters … your own or that of a third party. Online PR sites are a good way to get links posted back to your site. And this has the benefit of improving your ranking on popularity-based search engines like Google.
7. Not measuring performance, neglecting the intelligence in log files
Using Web log analysis is an excellent way to judge the performance of a Web site, yet many Web managers do not use Web traffic reports to measure progress against business goals. This is partly because they may not have established the benchmarks to begin with. The first step is to establish business related goals. Then model user activities that support reaching those goals. Then it is a simple matter of analyzing common user paths through the site as they complete or abandon those activities. Rather than general log analysis software such as WebTrends, it is sometimes more helpful to use highly focused, task oriented analytics tools like HitBox or HBX to clearly identify return on investment in your site visits.
Success or failure should be judged as much as possible on measurable results related to business goals. Web professionals have worked very hard to create ROI models for Web site investments. Some have suggested that ROI is meaningless for Web sites, saying they are a "cost of doing business". Do you need to prove ROI for your desktop computer, for instance?
This lets the company Web site off the hook to easily. Furthermore, it misses the point: if you do not set goals in terms of business results, you are not likely to reach them. Furthermore, focusing on business goals – together with user needs – is the most effective approach to the architecture and design of effective company Web sites.
Justin Borntraeger
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