IT TAKES TIME AND COMITTMENT TO MAKE AND MAINTAIN AN EFFECTIVE WEB SITE MORE AND MORE companies are feeling the push to jump on the World Wide Web bandwagon. Done well, a site on the web can make your company or product accessible to a new audience and can effectively promote your image or message. Done poorly, an Internet site can be a confusing maze of bad graphics and unnecessary information that does little to help your company or serves to frustrate potential customers. What’s the secret to a well-crafted web site? How do you avoid expensive, time-consuming pitfalls that frustrate site users–your potential customers? The answer, according to Larry Berlin, ’94, is planning. “People don’t see web site development as a big, long-term project,” explains Berlin, ’94, senior consultant at Ganymede Corporation, a Chicago-based web consulting firm. “Planning is essential to a successful web site. Assess your own needs carefully. You have to know what you want before the process begins.” But before a company even begins the planning process, Berlin says, it is important to assess your company’s need for a web presence. It’s the hot new thing and everybody wants to be there, but will it really add value to your business? “Believe it or not, a web presence is not perfect or needed for all companies,” he says. “Think about how it will affect marketing, finance, information flow to shareholders.” Is the web the best way to share information about your products or services? Can you move beyond marketing and deliver services directly to clients via the web? Are you developing new services tailored especially for the Internet, and if so, will they pay off? If your early work indicates that a web site would be beneficial, the next step is to determine a specific vision. What advice does he have for companies that have determined the need to start up a web site? Map out your needs in a design document–a map of the site with the links and interactive functionality built in. As you build the design document, you must consider many questions: How big will the site be? What level of machine will people need to use the site? How will you optimize for all systems? What types of graphics will be used? What palette of colors will the site use? Consider all the issues, big and small, up front. “Learn about the technology,” he says. “See what your competitors are doing. Surf around and look for sites you like and don’t like.” When in doubt, start small, Berlin advises. “Plan to get bigger, but begin with a small, well-done site that you can add onto,” he says. But even when you start small, it’s important to keep looking forward, which leads to another planning-related problem: failing to fully consider the potential for growth. And don’t underestimate the commitment and time required to create and maintain an effective site. “I think people generally don’t realize how tough it is to develop a site,” Berlin says. “They underestimate the amount of work necessary to do it and do it right. They look at is a chapter rather than a book. They have to realize it’s a big undertaking.”
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