Structural Defects

Have you ever pulled up a company Web site in search of information, only to be confounded by the menu of choices? You’re looking for, say, product specifications, and the options all sound like jargon you aren’t familiar with?

Companies have a common tendency to design their Web sites to reflect the company structure instead of the user’s needs. Instead of thinking about the site from the user’s point of view, the site is designed to look more like a company’s org chart. “It’s still something we have to work on, almost every project it seems,” says Emily Eaton, principal with EatonGolden, a Web design firm in Minneapolis.

Rob Silas, president of Ciceron, a Web marketing firm in Minneapolis, agrees: “Do we see it every day? No. Do I see it with enough frequency where we come back to the office after the meeting and kind of chuckle about it? Yeah.”

“The main reason people’s sites are designed the way the organization is structured is that . . . most folks look in the mirror and they say, ‘When a client looks at us, what do they see?’” Silas says. “In their minds, what the client sees is their organization the way they perceive it, and that’s what you see on the Web site.

In the User’s Shoes

Eaton notes that though companies may be used to presenting information through print media, targeting users on the Web is different: “The end user has to decide, ‘What part of this Web site is applicable to me? Where should I click first?’ In   offline media, in direct mail or advertising, usually there’s a tailored list. A magazine has a pre-defined demographic, so they can tailor a message to who they know is looking at that and who they know is not looking at that.”

The increasing use of Web site metrics, which measure site visits, page views, and more, is making site weaknesses more apparent. Silas says one of Ciceron’s new clients told him: “We knew on our home page performance was terrible and no one was getting to the rest of the site.” If a company knows its site is underperforming, it’s usually not hard to get them to rethink its structure, Silas says.