Be good to your Web site visitors

A Web site is a means for communication. An effective Web site does what you want it to do. For example, you may want your site to communicate a message to your target audience, sell your products, or teach, entertain or inspire.

An effective Web site follows design, content and usability principles that focus on the site’s visitors. You want to make information easy to find and easy to understand. You want to make it easy for visitors to take action, whether that action is to contact you, engage in a conversation, buy a product online, or simply to smile.

To remain an effective means of communication, most Web sites require proper care and feeding. And not just any old tinkering around. The key is to base the TLC primarily on what your site visitors need.

It doesn’t matter if you’re bored with the colors or other visual design elements. It doesn’t matter what Technology Tom says you gotta have. It doesn’t matter what Artsy-Fartsy Fara thinks would look fabulous. If it doesn’t enhance or support your communication with your target audience, forget it.

Gerry McGovern addresses this issue in his New Thinking article, Resist Redesign:

Redesign is classic organization-centric thinking. It rarely has much to do with making things better for the customer.

Your website isn’t working. What should you do? Well, how about finding out why it isn’t working and fix that. But let me tell you this, the problem with your website has rarely anything to do with its graphical design.

Your website is working. But it’s four years old. What should you do? Leave it alone. Or focus on making it work even better. But let me tell you this, making it work better has rarely anything to do with its graphical design.

Organizations love projects. You get a budget and a launch date. You can get busy and look like you’re working really hard. Some web teams love website redesign projects. It’s fun. They get to go to lots of meetings and talk about graphics and colors, and to extol about how bored they are with the old design.

But usually it’s not the web team that wants the redesign. Rather, it’s some marketing manager. Or some senior executive in communications who has had a golf course conversation about the Web. Or some newly appointed manager desperate to reinvent the wheel.

Great websites are not redesigned. They are continuously improved. The website that gets some new budget every couple of years for a redesign is the website that is being managed like a brochure. In other words, it’s not being managed.

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• About TFC

  Talking Feather Communications is located in Anthem, Arizona. We provide business and marketing communication services, including copywriting and content development, Web site development, WordPress blog setup, and search optimization.