Users Come First.  On our Website, that's you: our prospective client. On your Website, it's your users: customers, would-be customers, employees, members, colleagues/partners: whomever you designed the Website for. You want to describe your company; but your users have their own priorities. If you want their business, they get to win more of this difference in perspective than you do. We will work with you to determine who your Website visitors are, what they need or want, and how you can provide it. Then we'll promise results on the Home Page, and produce what we promised on the interior pages.

Most Users Go Online for a Reason. They have a goal, and it isn't to ogle your animations. Help them reach that goal, and you'll benefit. Provide them with solutions (on your site if possible, somewhere else if necessary) and remove any obstacles that you can between them and the solution.

Users Just Came from a Website That Wasn't Yours. Maybe it was a competitor's, maybe not; but in any event, it had different colors, different format, different organization. Now the user has to adjust to your way of presenting things. Don't overwhelm them with novelty and creativity. Many techniques are becoming accepted standards: use them unless you have a very good reason to deviate. Then make clear what you've done and why you've done it.

Users Are More Assertive Online. Trendsetters got online first, and trendsetters are used to having their way. This assertiveness may be diminishing as the user base broadens, but at least some of the ethos is being taught to the new arrivals. Another factor contributing to assertive behavior isn't diminishing: it's what S&C calls the Power of Click™. It's channel surfing with the TV remote, only on steroids. There are a million Websites out there, a dozen search engines to help find them, and previously bookmarked favorites only two clicks away. There's no reason for users to tolerate self-centered or inefficient Websites. And they don't.

Note:

The fact that many users will give you only seconds to prove your value is taking impatience too far -- but it's a fact that neither you nor I can change. Fail to impress immediately, and ... click.

See our "Assertive Users" essay.

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Conclusions from the Usability Perspective

We learn all we can about you, your customers, and your Website audience. We need your help in this:

• We need to see your business plan. Please.
• We need to know who your audience is and what they want.
• We need to know what your Website does (or what you want it to do): sales? customer support? advertising? employee support?

We bring in six YEARS of Web design expertise. We designed our first site in 1994 (HTML 2.0 and Netscape 1.1 had just come out), and we encountered a usability problem back then that is still worth telling. Since then, we have addressed local groups on numerous occasions and multi-state conferences in Austin, Salt Lake (twice), Denver, and Seattle. (Most conference handouts are in the Archive.)

We bring in relevant experience from training, research, and reference. This deserves more attention than it's gotten. Trainers understand better than most that different people have different learning techniques. As ex-instructors, we write for clarity, and we write for retention.

Attention to Detail and Follow-up. Clean coding and minimizing file size are tedious activities. Easy-to-learn authoring tools don't do this effectively, but we do. Effective Websites require monitoring and maintenance; this is another area where it's easy to cut corners, but we don't. In addition to adding fresh content, you should monitor use statistics and make changes. Which pages are most used? Which least used? At which page did the user leave? Why? These answers don't come easy, but they are vital. When you get them, you will revise your Website to make it more effective.

Because of this, we prefer to contract the assessment phase separately. Websites with complex graphics, database calls, or e-commerce will require assembling a team of specialists; and the assessment will determine which of these resources are necessary. Most important, the assessment will ascertain whether you have a clear view of what your Website should do and how it fits in with your other information efforts; until your plans are clear and attainable, effective Website development is impossible.

Note:

Most of our design contracts have come after these assessments, and to show you how we approach the task, we have placed a sample critique in the Archive. This one resulted in a redesign contract; and the resulting Website led to an offer to Bill to be the company's Dir. of Information Management.

As with all of S&C's services, the assessment comes after an initial scoping session, which is free and without obligation.