This article offers nine common sense suggestions to those who are thinking about how to maximize the value of their business or organization website. Obvious? Yes. But apparently many web designers don't grasp these simple concepts.

Does Your Website Sing?

Joseph R. Garber, Forbes Magazine, 06.12.00

MANY CORPORATE WEB SITES ARE JUST PLAIN awful--slow as snails, baffling to browse and banally designed. The worst of these turkeys look as if they were cobbled together by high-tech geeks, clueless as to how lesser mortals use the Web.

If you want to check how good your own site is, use the following test. This is a take-home test; trying it on your souped-up office PC is cheating.

1. Does your home page load quickly with an ordinary modem? The gang who built your Web site have high-speed hookups, but most of the customers who visit it go no faster than 56 kilobits per second. If information doesn't show up in a flash, they're going to look elsewhere for answers.

2. Is your message loud and clear? Flip through this or any other magazine. The stories attract readers with punchy headlines, eye-catching art and provocative opening paragraphs. Journalists have spent 300 years figuring out how to grab the public's attention. So what makes your Internet consultants think they have a better idea?

3. Can you even find the message? Web wizards work on monitors the size of IMAX screens. Ordinary civilians use 14-inch or 17-inch tubes. They won't hunt for information invisibly hidden on the right-hand side of the screen. Indeed, several surveys indicate that a lot of Web surfers won't even scroll down a page.

4. Does everything work? Your office computer probably is equipped with the latest operating system, Web browser and all those handy "plug-ins" that let you hear music, view animations and so forth. Home computers aren't because consumers don't upgrade their software very often. That means if your programmers have spiffed up your site with all the latest gizmos, visitors will be bombarded with error messages--or worse, system crashes. As a rule, you shouldn't use any technology that is incompatible with the state of the art three years ago. Another hint: If your customers have to spend a half-hour downloading plug-ins before they can use your site, they won't appreciate it. But your competitors will.

5. Does your site meet its objectives? There are plenty of good objectives for a Web site: selling merchandise, servicing clients, steering prospects to distributors, comforting shareholders, recruiting new employees--the list is endless. And you certainly can implement multiple objectives at your site. But not all on the same home page. If you do that, you will get the electronic equivalent of one of those pizzas ordered by Oscar the Grouch, the Sesame Street character who lives in the garbage can--anchovy and banana. Henry David Thoreau's advice applies as well to the Web as it does to any other customer communication medium: "Simplify, simplify."

6. Are you having fun? Too many corporate Web sites are digital Prozac--calming, but not conducive to closing the sale. If you're excited about your business, your Web site should show it. If you're not excited, then you shouldn't be in that business.

7. Can people find answers fast? Customers who want to see your ads will turn on the TV. The reason they use the Web is to fish for information. Your marketing department knows the questions customers most frequently ask. Use the Net to answer them honestly--honesty being essential because every experienced Web surfer knows how to ferret out the bad news.

8. Is the site really interactive? No, it doesn't have to be all singing, all dancing--but it should have some features customers can play with. Some good ideas I've seen various companies use: software to compare complex product configurations; online pricing calculators; and interactive surveys (e.g., what's your life expectancy, or how good an entrepreneur would you make?).

9. Does your site answer all your customers' questions? Of course not! No site can do that. That's why you should have hotlinks to other Web services that can help your customers solve their problems. Linking to government sites is almost always a safe bet--the Centers for Disease Control if you're in pharmaceuticals; the Department of State Travel Advisories if you sell to tourists; the Securities & Exchange Commission's Edgar database if you're in the investment industry. For anyone who sells to small businesses, there are a host of excellent federal sites that can give your customers great advice.

Take an objective look at what your company is doing on the Web. Then recall Robert Burns, "Oh wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us to see oursels as others see us."