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By Root 722 0

almost 15 years, I’ve seen any number of website design strategies and have become convinced that most companies design websites backward. The typical method of designing a website is to retain a web design company that then uses a graphic designer to produce a few versions of what your website should look like. Essentially the entire process is composed of an artist looking at your current site, creating a pretty picture of what they think your site should look like, and the company selecting which pretty picture will be the basis of its new website. This is backward. The website must be an extension of the business goals and support those goals with every page. This means that before any design is created, the purpose of the site, the focus of the content, and the goal of the visitor need to be established and developed into a marketing plan. That plan will determine how the website should look and feel but, more importantly, how it should be organized.

In Part IV, the content will go deeper into creating the information architecture and user interface, both of which are critical for good usability; building a successful marketing presence; and, as a nice side benefit, getting good rankings. In this chapter, the point is to focus on the purpose of design, which is to enable your website visitors to know who you are, what you do, why you are the best choice, and how to take action. If those elements are not immediately available because of the “prettiness” of the website, then you have lost your visitors.

A great architecture with clear navigation and obvious and readable clusters of content and links that help answer the visitor’s questions do more to enable good rankings and good usability than an artist’s initial vision of a website. The artist, while a critical part of the design process, should not be the architect. I liken it to moving into a new office building. I hope that the building was designed and built by the architect, not the artist. The architect understands the foundations, weights, human factors, and logistical layouts. The artist will add the touches that make the building human and connect with the tenants on a different level. The same is true for your website; an information architect will scope the website with a knowledge based on research, human factors, and business principles. Once that part is established, then the artist can be used to create a look and feel on top of the established architecture and business goals of the website.

Lack of Direction Becomes Evident in Marketing

The problem with unclear business goals isn’t limited to site design; it extends to the entire organization’s view of marketing. From content to function and from blogging to the entire social-media gambit, a lack of stated goals becomes more and more evident.

In no other area is an organization’s lack of business focus more evident than in social media. If the marketing message is not clear, then it becomes even more diffused by the many reflections in each social-media application. When companies build a blog mainly because they heard it will increase their rankings, they neglect to make it a sales or acquisition tool. I find that the vast majority of business blogs neglect to integrate their business message or their website into the blog. The blog is developed as a stand-alone presence, and the marketing message is lost, simply because the purpose was not established prior to the practice.

I was reviewing some articles on analytics when I caught the DM News Special Report on Analytics on August 14, 2006 (www.dmnews.com/cms/lib/6502.pdf). I was impressed at the amount of information contained about the business case for analytics, all coming from some very intelligent people. The great thing was the consistent thread of thought throughout the entire report: analytics is growing, and it’s more than web stats—it is marketing intelligence. Unfortunately, the gold mine is sitting untouched, because many businesses are unaware of the untold riches sitting just a few feet away.

However, this grabbed my attention more