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Let's take Web pages seriouslyA few months ago, I was working with a municipality on developing a public Y2K forum for their citizens. I decided to see what other cities were doing and spent the afternoon visiting as many as I could in the western suburbs of Chicago. After a while, I realized that I was experiencing some pretty bad Web designs, and thought it would be useful to you if I summarized a few of the more egregious examples for you. I won't list the names of the towns - Hopefully, I will someday find myself in a business relationship with a couple of them and I don't want this article to come back to haunt me. However, one of them is worthy of comment. The Village of Hoffman Estates has a very nice page. It's frames-based, but it is clean, loads fast, doesn't have a lot of graphics, and is accessible and useful. What's more, it's up to date! Kudos to Hoffman Estates for setting a standard for others to emulate. Their page is at http://www.hoffmanestates.com/ Now on to the hall of shame: 1. Have an email list server set up. Lots of people may be interested in your site or company, but don't want to hit your Web page every few days just to see what's new. Set up a list server and let people subscribe. You don't need your own technology; you can use Web-based services, such as Listbot. We happen to use Listbot here at The Gadwall Group, and it has been relatively painless. 2. Do NOT bury your menu in graphics. Use graphics to decorate and to make your site pleasant and accessible. But do not force people to wait for some gigantic image to download before they can click on the next screen. And putting a tiny little collection of text links at the bottom is cheating. If you're going to use them, put them at the TOP of the screen, not all the way down at the bottom. And make them a little more integral to the design of the page. Don't let them be an afterthought. 3. Keep your page up to date. As I write this, more than a few villages have not updated their events pages for several months. One city has a Y2K plan that has not been updated since April 1999. Another has a banner scrolling across the bottom of the screen that hasn't been changed since April 1998! Letting your page get stale is almost worse than having no page at all. It says that the organization got really excited about this new technology, but was unprepared to make the commitment to keep it up to date and useful. They just forgot about it or worse - abandoned it. Therefore, you feel you can't rely on the information and can't assume that it is complete and accurate. When the site is obviously kept up to date, it has more credibility. 4. I visited one site where there was a button for "News and Announcements." Since that was what I was looking for, I clicked. Then I was presented with another screen (that took about 15 seconds to download) that presented me with two buttons, one that said "News" and another that said "Announcements." Don't you think it might have been simpler to have two buttons on the first page, rather than making me deal with the intermediate page? There is a web design philosophy that says that no part of your site should be more than 3 clicks from any other. While I don't think that should be a hard and fast rule, it sure seems that you should try to avoid obvious time-wasters. 5. Get a real artist involved. I personally am art-disabled. I can't leave the house in the morning without my wife raising an eyebrow at my choice of tie/shirt combination. I occasionally use graphics in my writing, but frankly, I know I do it badly and try to avoid it as much as possible. I know my limitations. Note that when I say a "real" artist, I don't mean someone who has mastered a computer graphics package. I'm talking about someone who is well-versed in the process of mixing color, light and images into a pleasing whole. In other words, an artist. Just like you probably would avoid having someone do your corporate taxes just because they can fill out their own 1040 form, you don't want to have someone design your page because they can download images from the Internet. 6. Tying in with the above suggestion, watch your color combinations. It may seem cool to your webmaster, but ask yourself when you last saw a piece of literature that had that odd combination of yellow on black. 7. Try to avoid squeezing as much text as you can into the page. I visited a site that had a large photograph of a statue in the town covering three quarters of the page, and then they squeezed the really important text menu into the other fourth. It was a column of items, and it was hard to tell where one link ended and another started. Reading was a challenge. If you do decide to use a small font, try something other than the default Times Roman. This font looks a little messy at eight or ten points. Try Arial instead. 8. This is a simple design basic, and will go against the grain of all those Web buffs out there, but THINK PAPER! If your design wouldn't work if it was printed on paper, why the heck to do you think it will work on a Web page? While we're talking about paper, watch your "wallpaper." While the technology lets you take images like your logo and tile them in the background, it can interfere with reading the text. Again, is it something you'd do on a piece of printed material? If it isn't, why are you doing it on your Web site? Just because you can? 9. Review your design on multiple computers and displays. Make sure it looks OK on a Mac, a 17" monitor and a 21" monitor. View it with both Netscape and Internet Explorer. You'd be surprised how jumbled your screen can look if you don't test your design on other systems. 10. Don't design your page for either Netscape or MS Explorer. Are you really getting so fancy that you're using capabilities that are unique to one or the other? Why? And don't put one of those little images on your page saying that it's "viewed best with Netscape" or "Internet Explorer." If I don't want to use that particular browser, are you saying that I shouldn't visit your site? Do you expect me to change browsers just to visit your page? 11. Don't get fancy and try to make it a puzzle for visitors. A few sites had an opening page that had no buttons, and no information other than a logo. You had to click on the logo to continue. Why? Is the site supposed to be a game for your visitors, or are you trying to make them feel welcome and provide them with useful information? Or is the sight of your logo, sitting there on an otherwise empty screen, supposed to fill them with such a warm feeling that they'll rush out and buy your product without even turning off their computer? 13. Don't put fancy bells and whistles on your site like animated GIFS, scrolling banners, etc. They're fun, but unless they're integral to your design, they're superfluous. 14. Get your own Internet domain name. It's easy, cheap and it looks classier than having the official site of your organization buried within the URL of another company. As with other design issues, it demonstrates a lack of knowledge, interest, and commitment on the part of your executives. Web design has, for a long time, been something that was done because someone at an organization was enthusiastic about the Web. The thought process was generally along the lines of "Hey, let's do a Web site" Someone in the IS department built it, or maybe the nephew of the CEO did it for a class project. But Internet access is fast becoming a standard method for consumers and companies to do research and find resources. Web pages have to start being treated not as an interesting little diversion, but as an important part of an organization's information distribution and marketing strategy. You don't have to spend a lot of money and you don't have to hire full time personnel. You should build a site that matches your abilities and the needs of your organization. It can be a simple one page presence that provides the kind of information you'd put on a small brochure or business card, or it can be a voluminous site full of arcane information about your organization and industry. But you have to sit down, think about what you want to do, build a plan, make a commitment, and take it seriously. You need to make it look professional, no matter the size or scope. Let's put it this way. Did you design your latest brochure with crayons and a number 2 pencil, or did you use the right tools and pay attention to the impact it would have on your customers and your business? Use the same care and common sense with your Web site and you'll look like a pro.
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