Web Design Detective Work Casing the Joint to Uncover the Secrets of Successful Web Sites Contact Us Contact and Subscription Information

Information Design Use Good Design to Keep Your Customers

Web Design Detective Work

Episode One: Casing the Joint

It's occurred to us recently that building corporate web sites is a bit like playing Sam Spade; there's a lot of detective work involved.

Over the next several issues of the Digital Wind newsletter, we'll look at the investigation needed to build a web site that works for a client.

In meeting with other people in the web design industry, we've been surprised to learn that many firms are strictly design-only businesses; they don't offer content writing and editing. When we asked why, their answers were certainly reasonable: "No one knows more about the business and product than the owner." While true, we'd like to point out that most business owners don't specialize in writing for the web. And neither do they usually have the time or the resources to do it properly in-house.

So, the web designers we've met have then asked us, "But how do you go about getting the information you need to be able to write?" This is where the detective hat comes in. Like any good P.I., we case the joint, interview the witnesses, and draw up a list of likely sources of information.

It all starts with an interview process that we have put in place. We have a list of fifty questions that we take to the senior staff of a client company. The questions are targeted and segmented by subject and by person within the company. The topics that we cover include the corporate objective, graphical layout, the current web site (if any), the support web site (if needed), products and services, and clients.

Often, the best information comes not only from the president or CEO, but surprisingly, from people a few rungs down on the corporate ladder. Different people in the company often have different kinds of knowledge about the company, each uniquely valuable to the design of a corporate web site.

Once the fifty questions are answered, we go back to the word processor, and begin to write.

In our next episode, we'll talk more about who in the company are the best sources for a web design detective.

Web Design is Information Design

Good information design helps keep your customers

The most important thing about a web site is not how good it looks, but rather how well it works.

It seems obvious, but too many companies pour megabucks into web sites that are lovely to behold, but are utterly unusable. Take a look at this unreadable site for deaf people. Or this one for Kenwood, which requires visitors to memorize that #7 stands for "toasters" and #13 stands for "new products."

Both of these sites present unusable information. Their web jockeys spent a lot of time designing pretty pictures and multimedia, but spent no effort designing the information.

So what is information design? There are a lot of definitions: We prefer this one: "Information design is concerned with transforming data into information, making the complex easier to understand and to use."

Your corporate web site must deliver a jarring set of concepts to visitors, each with competing priorities: Pitches for products and services, the character of your company, support information, company news, contact information, and oh yes, site navigation. How do you manage to create order from this potential chaos?

At Digital Wind, we start by setting the site's priorities right up front. We ask our clients:

1. What is the purpose of your web site? Is it simply an online business card, or is it a catalogue? Or something else?
2. If the site is a catalogue, will it be a point of sale? Or will sales take place over the phone?
3. What point of the sales process does the web site occupy? Or in other words: Will your customers already know you when they visit the site, or is the site going to be the first point of contact for a lot of your customers?
4. Who is the site visitor? The buyer, with money in hand? The manager, who is looking for competitive information? Both? Neither?
5. What is the marketing message and style for the site?

Only with the answers to questions like these is it possible to begin to develop the information design for a web site. And that's the first step in enabling the site to bring you more customers.

More on information design in our next issue.

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About Digital Wind

Montreal-based Digital Wind can manage your company's entire public image, from logo design to web design to corporate email newsletters.