ONVIA

Does your Web site rock?

By Charles Mandel

Being online these days just isn't enough. If your Web site isn't properly designed, you could be losing customers in droves. So just what does it take to pull your customers in and keep them at your site?

Congratulations. You've just went live online with a really hot Web site. The introductory five-minute flash animation alone ought to blow your customers away, right?

You're bang-on the money about that. If you forgot to include a way for impatient Web surfers to skip that long introduction, they're going to be blown away all right - away to a different site.

"I think many small-business owners forget that design is very important and sometimes sacrifice design at the cost of technology,'' says Leila Boujnane, CEO of the Toronto Web design firm, Idée Inc.

"From our perspective, there are basically, two things.'' she says. "The content has to be relevant to the user as well as the design."

Good design starts before the Web site is even built. Boujnane advises small-business owners to sit down and think about some key questions such as whom the site will target and what type of information that audience might be searching for.

Know thy audience
Virginia Ise agrees. Ise is a senior content developer at Vancouver's Brainium.com, a producer of online educational materials, and often lectures on Web site design. She says the biggest problem with many sites is they don't know their audience.

"You really need to do a lot of research, and study who is going to be visiting your Web site,'' Ise says. "What are they going to be doing there? What are their needs? What sort of information do they care about? I think the worst thing is to have tons and tons of information that nobody really needs or wants to access."

Both Boujnane and Ise put a premium on good, clear navigation. Ise says surfers don't want to struggle figuring out what an icon or an image means, but want to be able to move around a site quickly and easily.

Boujnane advises not to throw everything possible onto the site in the mistaken belief that more is better, but says to target the information on your site. "We look at who the audience is, what the requirements are going to be, and then we design based on those challenges."

Introduce yourself
On the first page surfers see, Boujnane says you should tell the purpose of the Web site, who you are, and what type of services and products you provide.

Ise says a common mistake many sites make is they try to be everything to everyone, instead of having a clear goal in mind. "You hear a lot of complaints about brochure ware and that kind of thing, but if that's what your site is for, I don't see that's a problem."

Boujnane recommends a team approach, using someone who is skilled in design, another person who understands navigation and user interaction, and a third person who is good with technology.

Depending on the type of Web site you're creating, you may also want to enlist someone with some marketing expertise, Boujnane says. "A lot of people forget that once they build the Web site, you still have to get people to view the information and interact with it. You should never forget the business aspect of building a Web site."

Do your homework
Ise recommends that you come into a meeting with a design firm with a clear idea of what you want so that you aren't disappointed with the finished product. She says you can point the designers to other Web sites you admire or even show them pictures torn from a magazine.

Boujnane agrees that preparation in the initial meetings will help cut down on the cost of having your site designed. "If you do a lot of homework yourself, you should be able to minimize the cost of developing a site."

She also advises companies to build in a place where users can post and share information. "It makes your Web site grow in an organic way."

Ise is also keen on having a community aspect incorporated into sites. "People get tired very quickly of the Web. If it's not new, not innovative, they tend to get bored with it. You really need to keep your Web site alive."

She notes that many companies sink money into the initial design and then never add to the site again. "It ends up being a dead dinosaur online, which isn't what the Web is all about. It needs to have content that's updated on a regular basis to give people a reason to come back every day."