Know your audience

I was discussing recently with a prospective client why we couldn't talk about their site re-design before we could clearly identify their user goals. Actually, my first question to them was:"Who is your audience? Who's the site for." Fortunately, the answer was not "the CEO" as this is a recipe for disaster. I'll expand on that later.

We then proceeded to draw up some scenarios that would allow us to define the scope of the site, and eventually, the new architecture and then the re-design.

Frankly, without the anwer to the audience question, we wouldn't have been able to continue much further.

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Sent from my Treo 600

Tell them about yourself

I've just read an interesting article that claimed that users do not care for links pointing to a "About us" type of section. I disagree with that. If you land on a site because you used a search engine, you may not know (hence trust) the source of the information provided on the site. This is especially true for e-commerce sites. Today, anyone can put up a professional-looking site that seems legitimate. One of the first thing I do when I get to a site I do not know, I check out how they describe themselves. Sometimes you will have customer feedback, list of affiliated companies, list of partners, etc. All information that you can use to ensure the site is legitimate. In fact, at my last company, our "About us" section was one of the most visited. So, even though you may not have too many people reading that part of the site (and they should), you should always have a predominately position link to such vital information.

What site stats can't tell you

Good traffic stats are truly hard to get. Sure, there are many stats packages available, but my biggest problem is the misconception of what information traffic stats can provide you. I will not disagree that measuring the number of visits, visitors, and page views can provide site managers with a basic view of their site usage. However, when people try to look at path analysis (how do visitors go from point a to b), average time on the site, top exit pages, top entry pages, I think that we need to take these with a grain of salt. Afterall, what you are missing here is the motive. You are not there with the user to look at their behavior. I think that these analyses are interesting, and can provide some insight, but not the true picture of what is happening in your site. If your Web presence is essential to your business goal, you will have to rely on good old user tests to see what's working and what's not; and that's expensive!

Keep it simple

When companies want to build their Web presence, or re-design their site, they tend to think big. In most cases, thinking big is a good idea. However, on the Web, that's usually not the right way to go. If you take on too much, and your site is too large for your team to maintain, you will be wasting resources in producing the site in the first place. In my many years of managing Web sites, I think that this is the number one problem I've encountered. People do not realize that you're not done when the site is launched. Building a Web site is not putting most of your resources on building site, but rather you should be focusing your efforts on maintenance and future enhancements. That's better planning.

Why not get a hosted WCM?

ASPs died prematurely following the dot com bust of 2000. The idea of getting your application hosted by a professional hosting company was ahead of its time. However, it's back, and with a vengeance. There is a resurgence of web hosted services, and I believe that WCM is not going to be left aside this time. The best WCMs are already Web-based, and so, it's not a difficult to see that getting your WCM as a hosted service is a good idea. Now, it's not for everyone, but if you have a manageable site (a few thousand pages), a few content providers (a dozen or so), and most importantly you do not want to be bothered with having your own Web servers, you are a candidate for a hosted service. In the next few days, I'll elaborate on this re-emerging topic. Watch this space.

"Scent" of information

The first time I heard that expression, I thought this must be one of these crazy ideas from a consultant wanting to attract attention. However, the concept is very important. It refutes the famous, age-old 3-click rule. The belief was that all your site pages must be reached within 3 clicks from the home page. For years, I thought this was a very difficult challenge, especially because the sites I managed where very deep by nature. I was relieved to discover the concept of "scent of information." It simply states that users do not mind to click on more then 3 clicks, as long as they receive enough clues that indicate they are getting closer to the information they need. A good example is the support section of a software company site. The site visitor will be asked a few questions before being to able to offer the support needed. This will certainly take more then 3 clicks, yet users do not mind that. My feeling is that the lesser the amount of clicks, the better, as a general rule of thumb. However, your site content may require a complex hierarchy, and as long as users are given enough clues, they will keep on going until they get to what they need.

Note: You can find more about the "scent of information" at the User Interface Engineer's Web site: http://www.uie.com

On Information architecture, aka site map

As much as people generally agree that content is king, few realize that the way this content is organized makes or breaks a site. Fresh and relevant content, free of errors cannot be viewed unless it is easily found. Although many site visitors depend on search to get to where they want to, a good site navigation will guide your visitors and help make their visit fruitful. The process one needs to go through to obtain the optimum content structure is too long to explain for this blog. Suffice it to say that it is worth spending some time analyzing what your users needs. Combine that with what you'd like to showcase, and your site information architecture will emerge.

More on look and feel

It is fairly obvious to whomever I talk to that corporation Web sites should have consistent look and feel, but the problem is the definition of what "consistent" means. For some, it is a fixed C-clamp (top banner, left-hand navigation bar) throughout the site. For others, it is a constant brand within each part of the site, giving the site as a whole a series of different looks. For example, the Products area could have a different look then the Iinvestor area, or the Recruitment area. The theory is that people visit only the part that is relevant to them. The problem is that this argument fails to take into consideration search, among other factors. When a user searches the site (and that's a large amount of people), they will inevitably land in areas that weren't designed for them, and if the look and feel is different, they will get confused. Bottom line, the safest way to ensure that your site is as usable as possible is to have a truly consistent interface and navigation on all your pages. There are many ways to have specific identities associated with different areas. I'll discuss them in future postings.