The Internet is an incredible resource and a great tool for any one in business. As far as web design is concerned, it takes a multidisciplinary approach, with 3 major design elements to deliver a rich experience to visitors:

Information Architecture

Programming

Visual Design

The distinctions between design and programming are becoming less and less discernable. The rare few who stretch beyond their comfort zones and learn these other disciplines can become design masters.

Information Architecture / Structure
Information architecture defined - from the Web's biggest sites to the simplest user experience to an XML-enabled future. Initiating the IA process is the first thing you should do when designing a site.

1. Define your site's Goals
Determine who will be involved in defining the goals. Review your mission statement and business plan. Gather as much of your literature and marketing materials as you can and make sure that everything you do complies with your Corporate Identity Standards

2. Key Questions
What is the mission or purpose of the organization? What are the short- and long-term goals of the site? Who are the intended audiences?
Why will people come to your site?

3. Create an Outline
After collecting everyone's rankings, you need to distill them into a master list and create an outline for your site’s content.

Technical Design / Programming
The technology behind the scenes, “Back-end” design is the key to getting the performance results you want from your site.

Goals:

Search Features – Site Map – Search Engine
Shopping Carts

Gather information-collect data.
Provide personalization
Establish and maintain relationships with customers

Interactivity-the key to stickiness
If a user is involved with your site, they will stay longer. Stickiness results in increased ad viewership and purchases!
ie.: Mortgage Calculators

Online Ordering – Security – SSL – HTTPs
Credit Card info gathering through encrypted email - PGP
Credit Card Verification – ISP
Credit Card Processing
Provide other payment options

Browser Compatibility
With so many browsers, you'll need a strategy for designing for them all. Netscape, IE, AOL, WebTV

Visual Design / Web Design Foundations
Good design comes from a deep understanding of the technologies behind the scenes. The Interface designer needs to understand the objectives of the site, how the back-end programming is involved in achieving those objectives, and how to best layout/design the navigation of the site to help the visitor access and take advantage of what the site has to offer.

• Consistency
  Learning from convention will make your site better. Look closely at the competitions web sites. Determine their strategies.
  What have they done successfully?
  Where have they failed?
  What technologies have they employed?
  What can you do to improve on what they have already done?
  
  
• Design Considerations
  Offset — By exactly how many pixels is content offset from the edges of the browser window?
  
  Canvas size — How wide can a page be and still work at 640-by-480-dpi and 800-by-600-dpi resolutions? How much height is available before the user will have to scroll?
  
  Text size — How big are the standard HTML text sizes? What's the tracking and leading? You'll need this information if you want to mock up your pages accurately in Photoshop.
  
  Form elements — How much room does pull down menus or text input fields take up? What about other form elements?
  
  Speed
  The performance of your Web site is the most critical factor of its success. All images, graphics, and animations should load quickly and efficiently without any assistance from the visitor.
  Optimize images – keep graphics small
  Use Plug-in detection

Results: A web site which is designed to perform!
A site which is rich with information, easy to use, and visually attractive.

Evaluation

After considering the factors above, be sure to ask yourself the following when evaluating web sites:

3 Questions to ask yourself from the audience point of view:

What is this site’s purpose?

What can I do here?

How can I do it?

Great Web portals for small business owners

AllBusiness.com, founded by Boutros Galli, offers 350 ready-to-download forms, from licensing agreements to venture capital term sheets. Frequently asked questions (FAQs) and how-to guides are concise and informative, if sometimes too basic.

CCH Business Owner's Toolkit Great resource for the start-up. The site's SoHo (small office/home office) Guidebook is a massive section on building a business, smartly broken up into Web-friendly bites, where terms are linked to definitions and related material. There's a wealth of how-to information on marketing, taxes, incorporation, financing, and employees.

Office.com covers a wide variety of many industries from architecture to medicine to solid-waste collection. The portal offers general advice on running a business and news and info for your particular field. A search engine makes it easy to get right to what you need.

Smalloffice.com offers plenty of advice on how to start and run an online business.

Workz.com has what you need to know about running an online business, from creating banner ads to accepting credit cards. And a wealth of information explaining the ropes of e-commerce as well as comparing the vendors that make it happen. You can check prices for 11 site-submission services and compare the fees of dozens of merchant account providers. That's info sorely lacking on other portals.

Conference Resources

www.Photodisc.com
www.PGP.com
www.HSH.com
www.webmonkey.com
www.sgnet.com/tips
www.mbda.gov

News

June 20, 2001 - Jon Shoates presents web design tips at MBDA Conference in New York.