Best Practices in Web Design
As consumers spend more and more time online, they are becoming much more intolerant of sites that do not meet their basic needs. Web visitors want their experience to be relevant, engaging, and personal. However, many Web sites make users struggle to complete simple tasks, have little or no emotional involvement, and fail to cater to the diversity of consumers’ wants and needs.
Over the past year, we have designed and built a number of new web sites for our clients. More marketers now recognize the need to move beyond a simple brochure site and are updating their sites as a key part of their branding strategy. Many are also taking the opportunity to add more features to make their site more accessible and usable by site visitors. But not all marketers are moving as fast as they could, or should.
In a recent feature article in Washington Healthcare News, I reported on a web design survey by Forrester Research, Inc. (“Hospital Web Sites Still Not Up To Par”, June, 2007). As you can tell from the title, Forrester found a number of deficiencies in current hospital web sites. Since then, I’ve received e-mails from readers asking me to be more specific about how to improve the design and usability of their sites. So here are some things to keep in mind as you look for ways to update and upgrade your site. While many of the examples I cite in this article are drawn from healthcare sites, the points they make are valid, regardless of your business category.
1. Know who is visiting your site, and know why they came.
Good web design starts with knowing your user base and understanding why they have come to your site. You should always keep in mind that web users are goal-driven. They visit sites because there’s something they want to accomplish. Make sure your design prominently features the areas of information most users are seeking. The ultimate failure of a website is when it doesn’t provide the information that users are looking for.
2. Consider using separate landing pages if you have multiple audiences.
Many sites have more than one key audience seeking more than one answer to their questions. Some good examples in the healthcare industry are insurance providers who must cater to both Members and Visitors – two distinct audiences with two dramatically different information needs. The goal of the website designer should be to make each of these different audiences feel that the site is specifically designed and suited for their individual needs. Another thing to keep in mind if you have multiple audiences relates to search engine optimization. You should carefully consider the keywords these different audiences might use and link them directly to the page that is more relevant to their goals.
3. Make it easy to find what they are looking for.
Sounds simple enough, but how many times have you visited a site and had trouble understanding the navigation. Or had to click several times before you finally got to the information you were seeking? I am amazed at the number of sites on which I had to move backward when I discovered I was traveling down the wrong path to my goal. When we design a site, we usually recommend a Search function on the site, but we also apply what we call “intuitive logic” to our navigation. To make sure we are not over-estimating the computer skills of our audience, we test that logic with employees or family with varying Internet skills and comfort levels to make sure the flow of our site plan isn’t affected by our knowledge of the site schematic, or our own comfort with surfing the web.
4. Use language that your audience understands and identifies with.
Again, this sounds simple enough. But we’ve seen too many sites that use formal or internal language that the company is familiar with, but can often be confusing to the site visitor. Let’s go back to those healthcare insurance providers for another example. What is the difference between “care management” and “care facilitation”? These terms were found on more than one site I visited while writing this article. Even something as seemingly innocent as the term “routine services” can be confusing without explanation. What is routine to the company may not be routine to the site visitor. The best sites are written in plain English, with a conversational tone and “voice” that makes them easy to understand. The best sites have a style that invites the user to appreciate, and spend time with that site.
5. Offline marketing is about getting attention; online marketing is about giving attention.
I heard that descriptive phrase in a speech several years ago, and I’ve never forgotten it. When someone comes to your website, you’ve already got their attention. So most marketers don’t really need Flash Intros or extra pages to draw them in. They are already here, so get to the point. People can get very impatient on the web, especially if they are accustomed to a high speed connection at work but have a slower connection at home. Try to avoid byte-heavy graphic elements and multi-page pdf documents that take a long time to download. It may be better to sacrifice some of the art direction to offer the information in a more judicious time frame.
6. Simplify your homepage.
In our experience, a well-designed home page is organized around two or three main elements that dominate your attention. And, we always try to design the homepage so that viewing the entire homepage doesn’t require any scrolling. In a split second it should be pretty clear what you offer, and to whom you offer it. When reviewing hospital sites for my previous article, I noted one site that had forty-six click options on the home page. Some of the better examples of how to simplify your homepage can be found on retailers’ sites, like www.nordstrom.com and www. rei.com. They are great examples of how to use bold graphics and white space to direct the site visitor to the place they want him or her to go.
7. Make your Search capability easy to locate and use.
The best sites prominently display a Search capability on every page so the site visitor can always move faster to find the specific information they are looking for. Part of simplifying your homepage can be to eliminate all but the most relevant data and options, and make your Search function more prominent. For those of you who don’t have a Search function on your home page, I urge you to consider adding one if your site visitors would benefit from that feature. For most sites, Search has become an expected function. And if your users want it, and can’t get it, they will not be satisfied.
8. Get out your blue pencil and edit your copy.
Too many people spend most of their effort on graphic design and give too little thought to the content or the look of the copy. I’ve already discussed the importance of your copy content being easy to read and understand. But the way your copy looks on the page is just as important. How many times have you looked at a web page or article and said “no thanks that is just too much copy for me to take the time to read”. I wonder why the very foundation of the web, written text, has taken a strategic back seat to design. Take a hard look at your copy and cut out all of the unnecessary words and phrases. Your audience will appreciate your efforts.
9. Keep it fresh, I may come back tomorrow.
Good web design and site management is an on-going task, not a one-time project. Too many marketers in all categories make the mistake of designing a site without thinking about how to keep their content fresh and meaningful to the user. “By The Numbers”, a 2005 Benchmarking Study by the American Hospital Association reported that the average hospital allocated only 4% of their marketing budget to web site management. I’m sure that figure has increased since then, but I still visit too many sites that feature their latest press release from 2003. My advice is to invest in a Content Management System and have a single, senior level “owner” responsible for web site management.
10. Make it readable for all ages.
Advertising art directors are fond of using very small type with extra space (they call it leading) between the lines. It looks modern and contemporary, and works fine on a written page in a magazine. It doesn’t work as well when reading from a computer monitor, especially with reverse white type on a dark background. That can be hard for anyone to read. When designing your site, make sure it can be easily read in different screen resolutions and in all browsers. And don’t forget that the fastest growing age segment of new Internet users is 55 years and older, so larger, sans serif typefaces may be a better option.
11. Spell check is important, but don’t forget to use a human proofreader.
One typo is one too mini, since not all typos are misspelled words as this sentence clearly demonstrates. While researching the Washington Healthcare News article that focused on healthcare insurance providers, I did a quick review of five corporate sites – regence.com, kpshealthplans.com, phyins.com, premera.com, and ghc.org. For the most part their home pages passed the test of being logical and inviting, but two seemed to be geared more to Members than to Visitors. As noted earlier, when you have multiple visitors with dramatically different reasons for visiting your site, you should make sure that you take all of their needs into consideration when designing your site.
As a Visitor, I had trouble with some of the sites when I tried to find out more about the plans they offered individuals and families. One site made it very cumbersome for me to compare the various options they offered by requiring multiple clicks on each plan and no easy side-by-side comparison chart. Another site asked for too much personal information before they would reveal the details of the plans they offered and seemed more interested in giving me a quote than in giving me the information I needed to decide if I wanted a quote.
With the growing emergence of consumer-directed health plans, insurance companies need to make sure they are addressing the needs of Visitors who are shopping for a new plan as well as current Members.
One concern I had with all of these sites is too much page/copy redundancy. Too many times, I needed 3 or 4 clicks to get to the information I needed. For example, when I click on the Individual Plans icon on the navigation bar, I’m looking for information on the plans, not another page that tells me I’ve reached Individual Plans. Remember what I said about impatient site visitors. It was definitely true with me on more than one site I visited.
As a final thought, let me go beyond web design to say something about web content. I was particularly impressed with the myregence.com blog, although they certainly make it difficult for a Visitor to obtain a Guest Pass to log in to the Message Boards. I visited the blog just to see what it was about and ended up spending almost an hour there. It was full of useful information, including many positive comments by Members. I wonder if they aren’t missing an opportunity by not making the blog more accessible to Visitors who are shopping for a new service provider. By the way, congratulations to Bob, a Regence member who recently completed an Ironman Triathlon and raised $200,000 for leukemia research.
I will be writing more about blogs in a future article. For now, I will just say that if you aren’t considering adding a blog to your site, you should. Blogs will soon be one of those Best Practices I’ve been talking about in this article. Have a great day.
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