Website Fundamentals: Twelve Years Later
“You know all this, you’re just not doing it.” That’s how internet marketing strategy consultant Jim Sterne started out his highly entertaining session. He was right, on both counts. Sterne gave an entertaining “show and tell” of the history of the web complete with screenshots, starting with the “Paleozoic” period of FTP, Gopher, and newsgroups and moving on to Mosaic, Netscape, and into the current era. Remember when websites went from grey backgrounds to colored ones? Remember when Amazon claimed to have one million books online?
Sterne summarized his lesson in five points, and illustrated each with multiple historical examples and lots of juicy screenshots of websites with grey backgrounds. This was one of the most “how-to” sessions I’ve attended. No fluff, just the facts. With each point, he hammered home his mantra: think about it from the customers’ perspective.
1. Make it easy to find. Use search engine optimization, search engine marketing, banner ads, direct mail, TV, yellow pages.
2. Make navigation comprehensible.
3. Make it viewable to all. Not just people with broadband or huge screens.
4. Make data live. Use real time data, in language the customer uses. Sterne showed us the CDW website as an example. CDW has a page featuring one’s customer representatives, who show up as “In” when they’re at their desks. When one of the reps steps away and his or her screensaver activates, the reps’ status changes to “Out”.
5. Make your customer part of your site. A website is a place where people come to do things. It’s a whole bunch of processes, but they all need to be integrated and easy to understand. Ask for feedback, and act on it. Personalize your website so your visitors feel it’s theirs.
Usability is critical, and Sterne commented that “Flash is trash, content is king”. If you have to put “skip intro” on a page, you shouldn’t have the page in the first place. Find out how confusing your site is. Test it following these four rules:
1. Use no more than five people. Don’t use people you know—get them off the street.
2. Ask them to talk out loud as they navigate.
3. Shut up.
4. Don’t listen to what they say, watch what they do.
All advertising has one objective: to get me to interact. Amazon and Fedex have thought this out. Their websites say:
- Remember me
- Communicate with me
- Work with me
- Make my life easier.
For a given task ( find, register, buy), ask yourself:
- How many buttons to click?
- How many paragraphs to ponder?
- How many pages to read?
- How many mouse movements?
- How many forms to fill?
Design with your customer in mind:
- Loads fast
- Easy to find things
- Put most popular at top
- Index, map and search
- Don’t buck the conventions
If you remember only one thing, remember this: your website should not be about you. It should be about your customers.
