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For the last three to four years I have been asked, by directors from large companies, the same question: just why is it, after I have spent a great deal of time and money specifying, commissioning and developing a website, I hardly ever receive one valuable sales enquiry in return? In fact just about every week, someone else tells me that their enquiries from Teletext or telephone directories are in terminal decline.

Well frankly, the answers are numerous. Indeed, often if those same people applied the same logic they would to any other aspect of their business they wouldn’t find themselves floundering. The critical thing is to be open-minded! There is no great secret to good web design – if it’s slow with a confused message to you… it’s slow with a confused message to your customers. However, I will do my best to enlighten those of you who are open-minded enough to the underlying reasons for website flops, and desperate to get some insight as to how to avoid those very same pit falls (perhaps at the risk of upsetting a proportion of technical and developers, but never mind!).

There are two inextricably linked aspects to a successful website – the site itself (its speed, ease of use and clarity of message) coupled with the site’s visibility to your prospect base. The likelihood of your website being considered a success is far greater if it is easily found, simple to navigate, and provides ample information in a clear, direct way, thus making it simple for a potential customer to make contact with you.

Furthermore, when looking at the performance of any website, there are a number of statistics worth considering – and whilst statistics may be misinterpreted or manipulated, the logic behind these particular statistics is (I’m sure you will agree) sound.
 
Independent research has shown that more than 90 per cent of people searching for a product or service on the Internet, do so using one of the major search engines or directories. The same research has shown that 78 per cent of people don’t look beyond the front page of the search engine results, and (perhaps not surprisingly), 28 per cent of them won’t wait more than 12 seconds for a website to open. Anyway, its logical isn’t it? Once your website is found, those same people will then take no more than about seven seconds to make up their mind whether or not yours is the site that will fulfil their requirements. Is it surprising that so many websites disappoint the companies that commission them?

One concept I offer you, that flies in the face of common decisions about development of a site, is that websites are about marketing – they are not a technical issue (even though their development requires technical understanding), yet so many companies succumb to the laments of the technical manager who complains that it should be his or her department that develops the company website. The huge flaw in this strategy is that by their very nature, technically minded people are detail orientated – they have to be, yet a marketing person will be more open, less intractable and have a greater purpose of mind for this particular project.

Take the bull by the horns, tell the techi that they are good at their job and you still love them – but the website will be the responsibility of the marketing department! OK you may need to duck as he or she chucks their rattle from the pram but the decision stands!

And now you are talking to the marketing people, they will talk your language and you can let rip – first off, take your prospects point of view! Now I can’t emphasise this enough, as why, for example, when the English-speaking world reads from left to right, do so many websites have their navigation buttons on the top, bottom or right? I will tell you why. This common folly is driven by designers who want to express their design abilities – well, sorry, but who cares? Surely what you want is customers? And the less time a prospect takes figuring out how to work there way around your site, the more of this ‘7 seconds to enchant’ is left for them to see what you sell.

Indeed, there is rarely one single reason why a site fails, although there are many issues that work against success. I’m going to stick my neck out here and say that my guess is that in excess of 90 per cent of websites contain several of the factors that lead to failure, and the effect of this combination of features is abject failure and zero return on investment (ROI).

So what are these factors and how do they get in there? Well let me firstly say that I don’t feel there is any website developer who deliberately includes a design element that will work against you. But there are many who simply don’t understand that what they are putting forward may look nice and add to their portfolio, yet it’s impractical and works against you getting an enquiry.

A basic, (yet often neglected) fact is that the first web browser was developed by a British physicist named Tim Burners-Lee and he developed a programming language to do so called Hypertext Markup Language or HTML. Thus the greatest compatibility with the Web and search engines will always be achieved with a site that is developed using HTML, and given that background I would say that some of the greatest and most common features that lead to failure are these:

Developing a site using ‘frame sets’

Now these ‘frame sets’ are a method of developing a website, which can be quick and profitable for the developer and can provide for good navigation of the site – yet a site developed using ‘frame sets’ will not be listed by some search engines and will fail to be visible on some older computer systems, which will limit listings of the site on search engines which are tolerant of ‘framed’ sites.

Flash-driven sites

Now ‘flash’ is a fabulous piece of software, developed by Macromedia. It has the benefit of vibrant colours and moving images, which can be used (and I have used them) for all manner of applications and presentations. Yet ‘flash”’ was surely never intended to be used to develop sites in their entirety, as ‘flash’ won’t even work on a large number of computer systems (perhaps as many as 33 per cent) without a download, and can be slow and frustrating when used this way. Indeed, if you have any doubts or some developer is waxing lyrical about developing you a ‘flash’ site (because he has just finished his training on it and its what he does best) take a look www.macromedia.com and ask yourself why it is that even macromedia have developed their own website in HTML and then selectively use flash within it – I rest my case.

Database driven sites

Now I will be the first to extol the virtues of a database for some applications, however please accept that if search engine prominence is a critical aspect of your business plan, some search engines simply don’t like databases. Lets face it, some search engines look for information within the body of your website and when well-developed, within all the pages of the site – yet the pages of a database don’t exist until you ‘click’ to request them (think about it). So how can a search engine search what doesn’t exist?

A thought about search engines

Google is big and attracts loads of traffic, but ignore the others at your peril. Not only did one of our clients secure a very nice account from an enquiry that came via Ask Jeeves recently, but throughout the history of man has not the biggest of everything become the target of everybody? Expect someone somewhere to develop a challenge to Google (and probably succeed) – and if Google is the only search engine you have got a listing on… well, don’t say that I never warned you.

So, six do’s and six don’ts of good web design:

• Don’t – Use big pictures (images), big logos and anything flashy, revolving, moving (they slow the site).
• Don’t – Utilise garish, wacky design ideas.
• Don’t – Allow one single page to become a dead end that a user can’t navigate back from as they will be frustrated and trapped and probably leave the site.
• Don’t – Programme long and lengthy pages of information and pictures as they will be slow to load and difficult to navigate (and probably never read).
• Don’t – Utilise fussy, coloured and changing backgrounds (like one may find acceptable in print) as they slow the site and make text difficult to read.
• Don’t – Start your home page with words like: ‘Welcome to our website, established in 1904 and now with five factories and 2,000 staff, John Smith and co. embrace the age old concept of good customer service.’ – it tells me nothing!

• Do – Be succinct in your introduction ie ‘Designing, manufacturing and delivering widget’s for over 100 years, John Smith and Co…’
• Do – Include contact details, name, address, phone number on every page.
• Do – Be very, very clear about the purpose of the site you are about to commission and just as clear about its potential audience.
• Do – Plan consistent navigation that gives a user a sense of comfort whilst navigating the site.
• Do – Develop primary navigation that resides on the left of each page (we read from left to right!).
• Do – Use a fairly standard left aligned font like Arial or Verdana (of at least 10pt) as this way the site will enjoy a high level of readability.

• Bi words – Quality, easy, intuitive, simple, fast, succinct.
  

AND – ask someone else to look at it and ask them what they think you do, because if it’s not clear to them, it’s not going to be clear to a prospect.

Lets face it, the World Wide Web hasn’t been around for long, but throughout its short life it is unlikely that there are many companies upon which the Internet has had no impact at all, yet there are precious few companies that have managed to exploit the opportunities it offers to the benefit of their business.

Alan Eager is Commercial Director of Web on High

(This article was originally published in Director of Finance 2004 edition)