Corporate Websites: What Goes Wrong?

Almost every big corporation makes mistakes while creating and managing their website. As the organisation grows, the mistakes also increases and becomes more complex. For most of the corporations the mistakes are often similar and they seem to repeat it again and again. I have seen customers drifting away and opting for other providers because the website lacks good design aspects, navigability and ease of use.


1) YOU NEED A SEPARATE WEB DIVISION

In many organizations the website is managed by either the marketing team or IT team.But in reality none of these departments are fully appropriate to manage the website. IT must be good with systems but it lacks the sense of design and brand building. On the other hand, Marketing is totally clueless about technicalities. As Jeffrey Zeldman says "The Web is a conversation. Marketing, by contrast, is a monologue… And then there’s all that messy business with semantic markup, CSS, unobtrusive scripting, card-sorting exercises, HTML run-throughs, involving users in accessibility, and the rest of the skills and experience that don’t fall under Marketing’s purview."

So, you can do a favour and form a dedicated web team comprising web designers, web server professionals and PR professionals. Trust me, this unified team will be doing a far superior job. As Zeldman says again "Put them in a division that recognizes that your website is not a bastard of your brochures, nor a natural outgrowth of your group calendar. Let there be Web divisions" . 


2) MANAGING WEBSITE IS ACTUALLY A FULL TIME JOB


Not only the website it torn between IT and marketing, it's usually under resourced. Instead of having a dedicated team, the web designers who are managing the website are also expected to do their other "day jobs". The situation worsens when some changes are rolled out or some features are changed in the website. The team is over-stretched. Website management is not only about the coding and making changes, it's also about collecting usage information and analyzing that to create consumer behavior profiles.


3)  PERIODIC RE-DESIGN IS NOT ENOUGH


That is right! Re-designing the website every six months does not work. You are just wasting money. There so many things happening in a big corporation that no body cares about the website until the website starts attracting the wrath from users. The management desperately tried to intervene and presses for immediate revival. A sudden and drastic change will make the customers more angry. The best way is to continuously work on the website and lay out a evolution plan in terms of technology, content and reach. Not only this is less wasteful, it's also good for users. As Cameron Moll points out "Good designers re-design, but great designers re-align".


4)  YOUR WEBSITE CANNOT APPEAL TO EVERYONE


Most of the companies say that they want to cover all demographies- all age, all gender, all class of society- basically everyone. Now corporation needs to understand that websites cannot be customized for each person. So don't even try to do it. Understand your business and then design the website. Keep it simple and straight. Understand why customer is on your website. Top of all, the website should be accessible to all and should not offend anybody.

5) CORPORATIONS WEBSITE IS NOT ABOUT YOU


While some designers want the website to appeal to everyone, some designers and bosses want it to appeal to them. The boss rejects the design because "I don't like green". Well the fact is that green is soothing and is soft on eyes.


6) A CMS IS NOT A SILVER BULLET


Content management systems are good way of updating and managing content on the websites but it cannot be trusted to run a complete website. If you have dedicated team is place then why to put so much reliance on CMS. Many CMS based websites are poorly designed, out of date and poorly written content.If you look to a CMS for all website maintenance issues than your are making a mistake.


7) YOU HAVE TOO MUCH CONTENT


The problem with the maintenance of large websites is that there's too much information. Corporations say that "our websites have evolved and provides much more information ". Well, why can't they keep the outdated info out of the memory. Stacking too much content acts negatively and gives the impressions like-


* Fear of missing something: Companies want to give all the information but the thing is without proper segregation no one will be able to find any data.


* Desperate desire to convince..ahem or sell: I have come across this situation a number of times. companies paste so much information about there products that it sounds like a desperate sales pitch.




The conclusion is that every corporation faces unique challenges to be effective on the web sphere. It is important to learn from mistakes, understand and respect the role of web presence and change the way you control the brand. Doing so will give significant competitive advantage and will help you in managing a web strategy for long term.

About The Author

Iam a Lifestyle Photographer, SEO Consultant and Database expert.I studied Biological Engineering at Amity University.I grew up in India,Can't mention a single area here.. My family was like a japanese bagpacker. Roamed to many indian cities.I have several ideas of what I might do with myself in this lifeworld. Although I feel very much a part of this world, I spend a lot of time questioning it. That's the social scientist in me.People say i am full of attitude and i think that's good.I'm idealistic and maybe naive, but at this point in time I can't imagine living any other way.I have two business ventures- XpressoStill and OptSEO.Xpressostill is a lifestyle photography venture which i started in early 2010.Currently it has two portfolios for wedding photography and travel photography.OptSEO is a new idea, atleast for me. OptSEO is about managing e ventures. My main objective is to try to create,develop and execute a cost effective program to maximize the communication between enterprises and their customers and generate high quality sales inquiries. And if that is not enough..Iam also training to become a pro deep-sea diver. You Can write to me at rakesh.mahato@live.com

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