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CategoryInternet
TitleTop 10 Mistakes in Web Design
Body“1. The Web Strategy doesn’t follow the Business Strategy

Whether you’re designing for a Fortune 1000 corporation, small business, government or non-profit, your organization has a direction and a purpose, and your Web strategy must reflect and support that purpose.

2. The Web design doesn’t follow the Web Strategy

Assuming your organization has taken the time and effort to develop a documented Web Strategy, your Web design (or redesign) project must be aligned with the objectives of this strategy as it is aligned with your organization’s Business Strategy (see #1 above).

3. No one has developed a content strategy

Has your Web design team given any thought to developing a Content Strategy? If your team cannot clearly answer questions such as “How is all the site content being prioritized?” or “What is this content supposed to achieve for us?” or “Who are the 2-3 target audiences for this content?” then you need to write a Content Strategy or a Content Requirements Plan.

4. Users are not consulted in advance about the Web design

Often organizations will undertake a major Web design/redesign, and then consult their users afterward to try to confirm whether they did a good job designing the site. You can’t please everyone, but once you know how people want to use your site (task flow) and what content and applications are important to them, then you MUST consider these when developing your prototype Web design.

5. Users are consulted too much about the Web design

Don’t be held hostage by user feedback or usability studies. When you continue to over-research what people want on your site, you can set up expectations on the part of your users that cannot be reasonably met. You cannot possibly offer everything on your site that users want because the site has to align with your Web Strategy, which has to align with your Business Strategy.

6. The Web design is confused with ‘look and feel’, ‘colors’ and ‘branding’

Too often, early discussions about Web design and redesign centre around ‘look and feel.’ In a Web design project, one of the first tasks should be making the entire organization know that it is not just about what the site will look like, but also how it will be constructed, how it will be used, and how it will be managed.

7. The Web design has no 'muscle'

Web sites that perform tasks for their users must have muscle to do it. That means not just search engines, payment processing, and other applications and databases that make the site work, but also the information design helps users with the task of scanning, reading and interacting with content. Sites should be designed based on task analysis and task flow rather than by gathering heaps of content.

8. The Web design has no 'brain'

Web sites with muscle also have to have a brain that controls the muscle. The brain is the documented site architecture and interaction design — making the site logical and intuitive to most people through the application of best Web practices. The site’s critical navigation design has to be based on task flow so it will make sense to users.

9. The Web design has no 'soul'

The soul of Web design is the collective mass of human beings behind it that may hide behind the ‘browser wall’, but nevertheless must imbue the site with humanity and human qualities. A Web design has no soul if it doesn’t use the language of the marketplace. It will also have no soul if it does not provide ample means for users to contact the Web site’s owners and administrators.

10. The Web design is not scalable

If a single generation of a Web design cannot be sustained because it cannot accommodate new content and applications without distorting or mangling the original design, then it’s not scalable. A Web design should allow for continuous improvement of the site, a kind of progressive evolution that allows for change as the rule, not the exception, i.e. not ‘what we are now,’ but ‘what we will become.’”
Photo
Short biographyGarth A. Buchholz is the President of DigitalPractices Media Inc. He is an author, researcher and certified usability analyst.
ContactGarth A. Buchholz
DigitalPractices Media Inc.
Victoria, BC
Canada
 
E-mail:E-mail this author
Website:DigitalPractices.com
Copyright:2008

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